Faery Heroes

Chapter 10: Home Sweet Home

I'm letting you know now, the first part of this chapter is somewhat dry and technical as it gives a brief introduction to warding theory. If you skip it, you'll probably be confused later in the story when the trio start their heists.

Disclaimer: Did Harry ever punish the Dursleys for how they treated him his entire life? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.
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The drive back to Number 4 Privet Drive was tense, just like it always was. There was a routine here, a ritual of sorts, that the four relatives in the car followed every time Harry returned from Hogwarts to Surrey. Vernon, the small-minded bigot, would drive, snarling whenever he saw something or someone that did not fit in his perfectly normal world; needless to say, he did so the entire way back. Petunia, the gossiping harpy, would make snide comments about all their neighbors, even though it was clear that none of the three males in the car were listening. Dudley, who while a month older than the boy wizard already weighed as much as three Harrys, would constantly stuff candy and sweets down his throat, his piggy eyes seeing nothing but the route between hand and mouth. In the past, Harry would have been silent while he relived whatever traumatic event signaled the closing of the school year, but now he did so because he had nothing to say to the three people he was riding with. Not yet, at least.

Ah, we're getting close, he thought as he recognized several landmarks of Little Whinging. Subtly sliding his wand into his hand, he tapped the rim of his glasses and whispered, "Oculos magicae." The outer edges of the lenses shimmered, almost like they were reflecting the surface of a lake, and a paper-thin, brownish-red dome flashed into existence a few blocks away. The magesight charm was more effective when used on the eyes rather than glasses, but he did not need to see the runes and formulae for the much-vaunted blood ward. No, he was interested in spotting a more relevant ward. There, at the corner of Magnolia Crescent and Ivy Drive, he saw the first of several pale pink orbs. These were the sensors for the open ward that the Ministry, in its infinite intellect, had decided to set up around the Dursleys' home.

Wards came in two distinct types, and Privet Drive had one of each. Closed wards, like the blood ward or anti-Apparation wards, served as barriers and prevented wizards from performing a certain action. They could be as specific or general as needed; transport wards, for example, only interrupted a certain form of magical travel, but the war wards he could raise around Potter Manor would the house and its inhabitants from a variety of threats.

Open wards, on the other hand, were set to detect whatever their casters wanted to know about. The Taboo that Voldemort had used during the Second War was a country-wide open ward, while the one Harry was currently looking at would record any magic that was used in the vicinity of Number 4. This was why he had been registered as the source of Dobby's hovering charm in 1992, and like the Trace, this magical detector would need to be subdued if he was to get any work done this summer.

Thankfully, Hermione had been onto something at the end of their first year when she stated that wizards had no logic. Each recording sphere had its own range, and none of those ranges overlapped. This created 'dead zones' where magic could be used without anyone at the ministry being the wiser. When he had first lived through this upcoming August, his Lumos charm had fortuitously be performed in one of these safe areas, hence the Ministry not tacking that charge onto his casting of Prongs.

The average witch or wizard was not meant to know anything about open wards, because it was actually fairly simple to neutralize them. Harry did, and it gave him a tactical advantage over the zoo rejects that he had the misfortune of sharing blood with; when the confrontation occurred, and he knew it would, he could safely make use of their greatest terror to force them to leave him be for the rest of the summer.