Albus Potter and the Prophesied Year

Ch 65 The Lord of the Dementors

It was the first of April, twenty-twenty-seven, and Gabriel Habsburg sat in the conference room in the offices of the Swiss Aurors, facing Harry Potter and his son Albus Peverell. A number of other members of the Swiss Department of Magical Law Enforcement were also in the room. Gabriel frowned, admitting, "I don't like this.

"Switzerland has always admitted Magi from anywhere in the world, being a safe refuge for anyone fleeing persecution. Witches and Wizards have too often been persecuted, and our magic cannot always keep us safe. But we have beings here, mostly Magi but some Goblin Elves, that I don't trust. Well over two hundred of them, way too many to easily keep track of.

"The maps don't help?" Harry wondered.

"They help, but there is no way to record what is happening on the maps, unlike Muggle recorders," Gabriel noted. "We have some Muggle cameras, but too much magic can mess with them. We try to make sure someone is watching wherever Albus and/or Cleo are, but it is not easy to see who may suddenly Apparate next to them, and we cannot charm a mobile anti-Apparition spell around them."

"You are watching them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?" Harry tried to confirm.

Gabriel admitted, "We do not have much of a night shift, so we really don't have anyone watching the maps full time, although we do have someone on duty in the office, close to the maps and cameras, all the time. It is a rather boring job, and keeping someone fully engaged is a problem."

"I lost my best night supervisor at the Battle of Malfoy Manor, although she was getting ready to retire and I probably would have lost her in any case," Harry mused, as much to himself as to Gabriel. He looked at Albus. "What would happen if you or Cleo had to leave in the middle of the night?"

"Frerin and Dis would go with us, and there is almost always a duty Auror that would as well," Albus replied. "I can make the maps ring if we leave from about midnight to six in the morning. Will that help?"

"Some, but I would rather you didn't do anything spontaneously," Gabriel noted, frowning.

"I cannot plan on when Cleo will go into labor," Albus responded. "We have been told that with this child labor may go reasonably quickly, too. He should be born towards the end of June, but you cannot plan the date when they will be born. I will make sure the DMLE knows if we have to leave to go to the hospital in the middle of the night."

"Some of the beings we don't trust like to roam around in the middle of the night," Gabriel let the group know. 'I'm going to make sure we have a little more coverage in the nighttime."

*

Cleo woke up Albus very early in the morning of June first, twenty-twenty-seven. "I need to go to the hospital, unless we want Samson to be born here in our bedroom," she told Albus.

Albus notified the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and then roused Dis and Frerin, along with the Auror who was on night shift duties that evening.

The Swiss valley was honeycombed with interior passageways, many of them without stairs. For most of the history of the valley they had been used by push handcarts, or an occasional animal drawn cart, but now the vehicles used resembled No-Maj electrical vehicles used for golf or in factories. Albus had one of them he used at times, run partly by electricity and partly by magic, and he led Cleo to the center seat, as he sat next to her. The Auror drove, and Frerin and Dis stood on the back touching Al and Cleo.

Albus was worried as they started to drive to the hospital. The passageways were quite public in places. A hospital was open twenty-four hours a day, and Albus was sure there would pass a smattering of people on the way.