Extended Family 2: Finding Out

sequel to Extended Family, a Hot Fuzz/Harry Potter crossover AU

by Setcheti

 

 

Disclaimer: Don’t own Hot Fuzz or Harry Potter – no money made, no infringement intended.

 

Author’s Note: This story is not part of the Tales from the Sandford PD series, but if you want to read it as though it were that would probably work out for you just as well.

 

Nicholas Angel, Inspector for the Sandford P.D., did not and never would deny that he was a worrier. Concerns weighing on his mind got him out of bed some nights, and his partner Danny would find him sitting on the back step of their little cottage, just staring out into the night as he turned whatever was bothering him over and over in his mind.

 

This was especially common since they’d adopted Nick’s second cousin Harry just over a year previous. Nick had suspicions about the situation that he had found the boy in – and suspicions about the way his cousin Lily Potter and her husband had died. Because it simply didn’t make sense that someone would sow corruption into a local council solely for the purpose of keeping one small child in an abusive, neglectful home. Or that that same someone would leave that same child in a basket on the doorstep of his nearest and most unpleasant relative along with a large cash payment to help achieve same. Blackmail, and the possibility that the elder Potters were still alive, he had dismissed almost immediately; such a plan would not, could not have been brought to fruition without the active cooperation of the Dursleys, and Nick was positive they hadn’t known anything. Which meant it was entirely possible that Lily and James Potter had been murdered, most likely by someone who had wanted something that they had, perhaps some sort of trust or inheritance which Harry would gain access to when he was older. This hypothetical someone most likely meant to swoop in and ‘rescue’ the boy from the Dursleys after a number of years, thereby gaining his complete trust…and with it access to the inheritance.     

 

The idea that this person – or persons – were still out there somewhere, wallowing in their sick and twisted plans, was very, very worrying to Nick. He couldn’t investigate the situation and neither could anyone else, lest in doing so they trigger a red flag that would alert someone, somewhere, that little Harry was no longer in his aunt’s custody.  Because they had flags up of their own, Nick and his detectives and a certain judge in London, and so far no one had come looking for Harry and so in all probability no one  who might be trouble knew anything about what had happened.

 

But at any time that could change. And so Nick worried, and waited. He desperately wanted to know exactly what was going on…but at the same time he was afraid to find out, because finding out would most likely mean the person or persons who did know what was going on had found Harry.

 

 

Nick’s fears, however, turned out to be groundless on that score at least. The day that he and Danny discovered the apparent root of the problem there was no one at home but themselves and probably no strangers for fifty kilometers.

 

Nick had been in the house writing out a cheque for a bill when his partner had called to him from their yard, where he’d gone out to play some catch with Harry. There had been something subtly off in Danny’s voice that had made Nick all but jump up out of his chair and very nearly made him look for his sidearm before running outside to see what was the matter.

 

At first glance, nothing was. Harry squealed when he saw Nick and threw his little arms around his legs, then bounced back over to Danny, who was holding the brightly-colored inflatable ball they’d just gotten from the shop the day before. “Again, again!”

 

“Yep. Just wanted Uncle Nick to see.” Danny had a shocked but thoughtful look on his face.  He held the ball up at about chest height, letting it rest on the palm of his hand without holding onto it.  “Go ahead, get it down,” he said.

 

Nick started to object, but then Harry laughed and squealed and stretched his little hands up…and the ball rose shakily off of Danny’s hand and floated wobblingly down to Harry’s.  Harry grabbed the ball and hugged it, then held it back out.  “Again, again!”

 

Danny took the ball back, ruffling the black hair as he did so, and then they went through the game again.  Then Harry wanted Nick to hold the ball…and once it was back in his little hands Nick went to his knees and pulled the little boy in for a tight hug, ball and all.  “What…”

 

Danny shrugged.  “It’s magic, can’t be nothin’ else.”  He went down to their level and joined the hug himself.  “I wonder if that uncle of his knew, Nick?” he said quietly.  “You said he called Harry the ‘f’ word, an’ so did his son.  Maybe this was why, they just couldn’t handle it.”

 

Nick nodded slowly.  “Can we?”

 

His partner just rolled his eyes.  “ ‘Course we can – we can handle anything.”

 

That was true.  Nick relaxed into the three-way hug, his mind already speeding along the possible ramifications of this new discovery and what their best plan of action might be for each of them.  “We’ll need to keep it a secret,” he said.  “At least for now.”

 

“Yeah, that,” Danny agreed.  He tickled Harry, who giggled and cuddled into him.  “We’ll need to teach him, too.  There’s got to be books or videos or somethin’ out there.”

 

“We’ll have to be careful finding them,” Nick cautioned, having just come up with a thought he didn’t much like.  “Vernon said that the second time he dropped Harry off at CPS he was back on the porch within the hour.”  He nodded when Danny paled.  “I’m wondering now.  I’d originally thought it was corruption in the local office, part of an inheritance scam, but what if it was something more?  What if this was about more than money?”

 

“That would make sense, yeah.”  Danny squeezed Harry a little tighter in the hug, making the little boy squeal with pleasure.  “So we’ll have to be really, really careful.  If they find out he’s here and come for him…”

 

“Then I’ll kill them.”  Nick leaned more into the group hug, dropping a kiss on Harry’s soft, messy black hair.  “They’re not getting him again.”

 

 

Several years passed. Contrary to what Danny had hoped, there were really no books or videos or things to be found that were about real magic – and books about stage magic or new-agey type magic were not going to help a little boy who could cause objects to float into his hands and turn his breakfast toast blue with sparkly purple butter. So Nick and Danny had been forced to improvise.

 

There were, of course, plenty of movies about people using magic, and television programs, and even books. The two men selected their source material carefully, keeping it age appropriate and making certain that the witches and wizards and sorcerers in what they used were good, law-abiding people, people with honor. They taught Harry not to use magic outside of their home or in front of anyone who might be visiting, and they taught him not to use it for the wrong reasons – turning his toast blue or making his kippers dance was fine, getting down things he’d been told not to touch was not. Other than that, though, they let him use magic whenever he felt like it. “It’s like he has an extra set of hands,” was how Danny explained it. “Tellin’ him not to use them don’t make any sense, because usin’ them should be natural for him.”

 

Nick hadn’t been too sure about that at first, but he’d gone along with it and had eventually admitted that Danny had been right. Harry did not see his magic as something strange or separate from himself, and possibly because of that his use of it was easy and natural and he learned new skills quickly. He was a very smart little boy, and bubblingly happy most of the time, and he brought a good deal of happiness into the lives of the people around him just by being himself.

 

And once he started school, a whole new world opened up. Science was fascinating to him, math was a game, and all of the new books that the school wanted him to read were adventures waiting to be discovered. His teachers gushed over him, and not just because he was their inspector’s nephew. He wasn’t a perfect angel of a child – no child is, really, unless something is very wrong at home – but his mischievous streak was not mean and he was polite and obedient most of the time. In short, he was every inch Nick and Danny’s child, even if he did call them both Uncle. “He had parents,” was the answer Nick always gave when someone questioned that. “And they loved him very dearly, just as we do, and we’ve made sure he knows that. Because we decided early on that surprising him later with the revelation that we aren’t his parents – he was so young when we got custody of him – was not in his best interest.”

 

What Nick could not say was that he feared the person or persons who had left Harry with the Dursleys would show up looking for the boy and tell him about his parents in the worst way possible. That fear dissolved around the time Harry was about seven, however, when Nick’s sources in London reported to him that Vernon Dursley had been promoted by his company and relocated along with his wife and son to Melbourne, where they would likely be staying for a good long time. Vernon hadn’t left a forwarding address, and the sister who was his only family had apparently moved to Australia to stay near him, so whoever had seen to engineering little Harry’s three years of hell with the Dursleys would have no way of tracking that family down or finding out that Harry was not with them – or, more importantly, of finding out exactly where Harry had gone and when and with who. And Nick had a gut feeling that magic wasn’t going to be able to help anyone find Harry in Sandford; he didn’t understand why he felt that way, but he trusted his own instincts so it did stop him worrying.

 

About that particular concern, anyway.