Dumbledore sat there, absolutely stunned by Harry's tirade and the knowledge that the Dursley family had treated Harry so poorly. He tried to explain himself - "Harry, the Hogwart's letters are not addressed in the normal sense. Much like Owl post, they do not need an actual street address. There is an ancient enchantment that sends them out directly to all registered students. It is this enchantment that displays the address to the recipients. It simply displays what the recipient thinks of as their address or current location. It does tend to be rather oddly precise."
Harry stared at Dumbledore. Talking about his time with the Dursley family was always difficult and never failed to anger him.
"Fine," he barked. "I could almost believe that. However, that still doesn't excuse you. Why on earth did you never check up on me yourself? And don't give me any bullshit about you being a busy man. Wizarding travel is almost instantaneous. You could have apparated or taken a portkey and been there in seconds. How long would it have taken you to check up on me? Five minutes, ten. I refuse to believe that you never had a free ten minutes over the entire ten years I lived with them."
"I thought it best not to have too much contact with you," explained Dumbledore. "As long as you had to stay in the muggle world, I assumed it would be confusing for you if you had any contact at all with the magical world. I was also afraid that someone might wonder why I was visiting a muggle area and deduce your location. I thought it would be safer for you if I stayed away. Also, as I said earlier, I had Mrs Figg sending me regular reports. If she had even hinted at you not being treated properly... I see now that it was a mistake and all I can do is beg your forgiveness."
Harry was really not in any sort of mood to listen to Dumbledore's excuses. In his mind, at that moment, Dumbledore was as culpable as the Dursleys for his miserable childhood.
"Then the blood wards. That nearly saw you defenestrated as well. When you told me you relied on wards fuelled by my mother's sacrifice," said Harry shaking his head as if he could not believe the Headmaster's stupidity.
"Harry, those wards kept you safe for many years, I assure you..."
"Oh please, the problem with your story is that I actually know a little bit about warding. Here in the States warding is a very dynamic field. Ward crackers and hackers are constantly working on new methods of breaking into wards. Warders are constantly improving their warding scheme to stay one-step ahead of the crackers. Why, not six months ago I had to replace my anti-portkey wards after a ward hacking group demonstrated a new way to break through them at MageCon."
"I fail to see..."
"Testing Dumbledore, testing. An effective warding scheme is one that has been tested to hell and back and been proven to last over years. Now according to you, your blood wards were based around my mother sacrificing herself in an attempt to save me. Correct? Now, I know that there was some sort of protection around me, Quirrell burning up when he tried to touch me proved that. But blood wards based around that? The problem is that you don't really hear about that kind of protection much. You'd think there'd be dozens of cases of mothers shielding their children from harm. Especially during a time of war. Yet I've never heard of anybody else having that type of protection."
"I believe this was due to the fact that you were the target and not your mother. If your mother had not come in Voldemort's way she would likely have lived. This would not have been the case in a random attack in which the mother would likely have been a target as well," explained Dumbledore patiently.
Harry waved away Dumbledore's explanation. "No," he said. "Like I said, whatever the reason, I know that I had some sort of protection around me. No, my problem with the situation is the rarity of that protection. Obviously, this is not a situation that happens everyday. So, when you set up a ward based on something like that - How did you know it would work? You would not have come across such a situation before so this had to be the first time you set up a ward of that type. Or was it? Do you make it a regular habit of going around looking for children whose mothers were killed in precisely that way? I would think it would be pretty hard to find people who precisely meet those requirements. Well, not unless you're the type to go around arranging the murder of young mothers. Are you that type of person? How many mothers have you had murdered?"
"HOW DARE YOU?" shouted Dumbledore, absolutely incensed at the allegation.
"HOW DARE I? You sir are the one who tossed up a totally unproven, untested ward around Privet Drive. There is absolutely no way you could have known that your so called Ancient Magic Blood Wards would have had any effect whatsoever."
"You are here, aren't you," snapped Dumbledore. "That alone proves that those wards were effective."
"No, all it proves is that no one ever tried to kill me while I was at Privet drive. Perhaps I was just lucky that no Death Eater ever came across me while I was staying at the Dursleys. No, as far as I can tell there was absolutely no good reason for me to stay at the Dursley house, none whatsoever. Hell, they didn't even have any way of contacting you if something happened. What could they have possibly done against any wizard who wished to do me harm?"
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