Disclaimer: It should be readily apparent that this is a fan work, and that I in no way, shape, nor form own, nor hold any rights, to either the work of J.K. Rowling, nor the original works of Chas Adams, or whomever currently holds the rights to his works.

Shad Nemo Freud Proudly Presents Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

a Crossover between the worlds of Harry Potter, and the Addams Family (snap snap)

Chapter One – The Serpent Hatches

A grey tabby watched as a horrid family made their way home. She stretched, arching her back to work out some of the soreness caused by watching a house, nearly motionless, for hours. This family was to take care of the "savior" of the wizarding world? She rolled her green eyes in the darkness of the shadows, watching as the walrus of a man escorted his horse-faced wife and swine of a child to their door, the piglet squealing about sweets. The cat raised her paw in a rather human like gesture, attempting to pinch the bridge of her nose without the advantage of having thumbs.

'There are times I wish I'd been polydactyl,' Minerva McGonagall groused to herself, feeling a rather human headache coming on. 'If anyone other than Albus confirmed the Potter child was the one that struck down…' She looked up, feeling that headache intensify as a very loud, very illegal flying motorcycle and sidecar came in for a landing, it's suspension creaking in a futile attempt to inform the rider that he may, in fact, have been too big for the infernal motorbike. Said rider, some eight feet tall, and six feet wide, was none other than the groundskeeper Minerva regularly visited in his hut in the break periods, whenever she wasn't trading barbs with Severus over a glass of Ogden's Finest, or meeting at Grimmauld place during their illicit Order meetings while battling against the forces of He Who Must Not Be Named. The cat silently jumped down from the wall and hissed at the great oaf to get his attention before shifting back to her human form, that of a raven-haired witch wearing black robes over her family tartans, a pair of pince-nez glasses on her nose.

"Hagrid, would you be ever so kind as to turn that infernal machine off? You'll likely wake the whole neighborhood."

"Sorry, Minerva. Brought along little Harry, as Dumbledore tol' me to. Got him in my pocket. Here we are. Now, about these muggles he's supposed to be with…"

Minerva removed her glasses, feeling every one of her years as she tried, again, to stave off the headache her day had caused. "I almost think senility must be finally catching up with the old Wizard, as the family he wants us to entrust with the wee bairn is about as useful as legs on a flobberworm. I've had the distinct displeasure of keeping an eye on them for the last few hours, and they seem to let their wee sprog run their lives, and he's nae much older than wee Harry!" She paused as the streetlights began to flicker out, one at a time. A man walking down the street had an old-fashioned cigarette lighter that he would occasionally point at the lampposts as he approached them, and the lights would flicker out, small orbs of light flying to the lighter. "Speak of the devil." Minerva said as the old Wizard, dressed in clothes with a selection of colors that made him look like Ray Charles had been his tailor, approached the pair, a faint smile peeking out of a long, wintry beard that would have been more at home on Father Christmas.

"Ah, Minerva! Hagrid! I see you found the right place."

"Albus," Minerva said, looking at the old Wizard askance, "you can't honestly think that that pair of muggles would be appropriate to raise a wee bairn of the Potter lineage? I can think of at least six Light families that would take him in in a heartbeat! Not to mention the fact that Sirius-,"

Minerva paused as Albus held up a hand to interject. "I'm afraid, my dear Minerva, that there is no alternative. The Potter's only known relatives are sadly across the Atlantic, and even they are a cadet branch. I believe you've heard of the Addams branch of the Potter Family?"

Minerva cringed slightly, recalling the day that Gomez Addams and that ghoulish brother of his had been sorted into her own house. Granted, that had been when she'd been a bonny lass of twenty, and only in her first year of teaching, but that pair of rascals had been an utter terror for the school to deal with, between Fester's adoration of muggle explosives (that she still didn't know how he'd smuggled them into the school) to Gomez' fascination with a very pretty, if dour, Slytherin caused nothing but tension between both houses. Yet the pair had top marks throughout their years at the prestigious school, and it had been a relief when the pair went back to their ancestral home in the States. She tried not to laugh as she recalled thinking that a certain Potions teacher bore a striking resemblance to Morticia Addams nee Prince, his distant cousin, all except the hooked nose he'd inherited from his father while she sat at the head table during his sorting. She looked at Albus, shaking her head. "I almost think they'd be a better choice than this pair of…of…"

"Troglodytes?" Hagrid offered, trying to be helpful. Minerva looked up at the half-giant with a look of surprise, then blinked, then nodded.

Albus sighed. "Sadly, it must be. Lily…the why of it is largely unimportant. Suffice to say, the boy will be protected here, by old family magics."

The skies darkened rapidly, rain and lightning, causing Hagrid to look up at the sky warily. Flying the monstrosity, he affectionately referred to a motorcycle was a dicey proposition to begin with, but those clouds looked like the harbingers of a terrible storm. He looked down at the tiny child in the basket in his mokeskin jacket, and startled. For the barest fraction of a second, the boys eyes seemed highly intelligent, had glowed red, and were staring at him malevolently. A flash of lightning blinded the half-giant for a moment, and when he looked back into his pocket, the boy seemed fast asleep, his lightning-bolt shaped wound angry and red. He carefully removed the basket and handed it over to Dumbledore. "Here yeh are Albus. I need the get goin before I end up caught up in that mess up there." He mounted his motorcycle, and sped off down the street, nearly taking off the sign as he rounded a corner. Luckily, the residents of Privet Drive hadn't seemed to notice.

Minerva shook her head as she watched Albus place the basket on the doorstep, with a note of all things, and wondered just which movie from the depression era Albus had watched to hatch this particular hair-brained scheme. "Albus, shouldn't we have at least taken him to see Pomona? That wound is going to turn into an ugly scar if we do nothing for him.",

Albus shook his head. "Too many chances for someone to find him now. And, there is little Pomona can do for the boy now. That wound will likely become a curse scar. But, not to worry, scars caused by magic can be rather useful at times. I myself still have a scar on my knee that's a perfect map of the London Underground." Dumbledore chuckled as he cast his eyes upward. "Odd weather, but not uncommon. This is a rather auspicious night, after all."

Minerva nodded as she looked at the old man in thought. "Albus, did Harry truly kill…well, you know who?"

Albus shook his head sadly. "Despite appearances, and the rather cavalier way the wizarding public is celebrating Voldemort's death, I can't say for certain. I've the feeling we haven't seen the last of our snake-faced adversary. We should keep an eye out for the signs that he may return."

As the pair made their way back down the street, Albus relighting the lamps as they made their way to the agreed upon apparition point, the storm continued to gain strength, lightning striking nearby the small sleepy neighborhood, finally knocking the power out, and casting the entirety of Little Whinging in darkness. For several long, stifling moments, figures moved in the darkness, unseen by the locals, until a bolt of lightning struck one of the lampposts on the street, and an antique limousine appeared as the lights and power were restored. A black 1935 Rolls Royce Limousine, in fact, with an open-air driver's compartment. The driver looked reminiscent of Boris Karloff; tall, gaunt, his face more at home upon a shambling corpse than a chauffeur. He groaned as he exited the car, his long, ponderous gait taking him to the back of the car as he opened the door for his passengers, a middle-aged man in a stripped three piece suit, with coal black hair slicked back from his widows peak to the back of his head, an immaculately manicured pencil moustache resting just above a manic grin, and coal black eyes that did little to hide the madness behind his charming face. The man held out his hand, helping a drop-dead (literally, in the case of some of the men that tended to admire her beauty near open manholes) gorgeous, willowy woman with hair darker than pitch and eyes to match, slide out of her seat."

"Lurch, old man, is this the residence of our…foreign relatives?"

The Chauffer, Lurch, rolled his eyes upward as he groaned, raising his stiff arm to point at the house. Number four Privet drive. "Capital! Well, no point drawing things out. Keep an eye on the car, old man. Make sure little Wednesday stays in her bassinette. I swear, the way she chews through the ropes, it'll be no time at all before we'll need to chain the thing shut."

Lurch nodded slowly, groaning as he pulled out a spiked baby rattle to amuse the tiny infant that lay in the miniature iron maiden on the back seat, the doors shaking ominously as if the contents wanted to escape.

"Gomez, darling…," Moriticia murmured as her dress swept the sidewalk, obscuring her feet, "Must we actually speak to these…relatives of yours? They seem so…cheerful. It's appalling that anyone should allow them to raise a child, much less an Addams by blood."

Gomez chuckled as he lit a match, using it to light one of his ever-present Buck cigars. "No getting around it, Tish. However odd and uncouth their customs may be, they're family. Even if none of them in this house…well, aside from Harry, of course…have a drop of magical potential in their whole bodies. Hello, what's this?" Gomez stooped down to lift a small blanket, and saw a small boy, no older than Wednesday, in a disgustingly comfortable little basket lined with warm, fuzzy blankets, in garishly bright colors. He grabbed the note attached, and the seal flared to life, the symbol of a Phoenix recoiling in horror from his hand as the wax melted, breaking the seal as the red wax turned black, and seeped onto the ground, bubbling ominously as it tried to eat its way through a paving stone. "Hmm…ah HA!" Gomez said, reading the letter aloud to his hauntingly beautiful wife. "It's addressed to Petunia, and that rogue of a husband of hers. Let's see…this is Harry, so that makes things a bit easy…take care of him? I think we will instead. Ah, Dumbledore, I remember that schemer. A shame he ended up defeating old Grindles, he was a marvelous billiards player."

The lights inside the house came on, and the door opened, revealing a fat, red faced man wielding a cricket bat and wearing blue and white striped pyjamas. "Now look here, you freaks, we don't want any…oh no." Vernon said, his flushed face suddenly becoming paler than his white-washed picket fence. It was Petunia's relatives, the odd ones from the states, with the terrible taste in…well, everything. He looked outside, to make sure none of the neighbors were looking, then looked Gomez squarely in the eye, speaking to him in a hushed, but aggressive tone. "Just what the blazes do you want, Addams? We've already told you we don't want any of your freakishness around here! We don't want your money, we just want to be left alone!"

Petunia looked over her husband's immense bulk and nodded. "Our little Dudley has no need of your brand of crazy…Uncle Gomez, and as such…oh please, just tell us what you want, and go away!"

Gomez' eyes widened slightly as his nostrils flared for a moment, his insane grin threatening to split his face in half before he took a long drag on his cigar, and blew the smoke out through his nose, causing both the Dursleys to grimace as they wafted the smoke away from their faces. "What we want, old bean, is to take little Harry here," he said, handing Vernon the note from Dumbledore, "and take him home with us, where he'll live with a real Wizarding family."

Vernon's beady eyes scrunched up in confusion for a long moment, then began to read the note. His face became redder by the word, and Gomez watched eagerly, wondering if the man would build up enough steam to pop like an over-ripened tomato. Finally, Vernon ripped the letter to shreds, and threw the scraps into the fireplace. "By all means, Addams, take the little freak before your madness infects this house! Take him and leave."

A strange tingling energy filled the air as the blood wards surrounding number 4, Privet drive, rose out of the grass, and disappeared. They ended up reappearing over a grand, if dilapidated, estate at 21 Chester Place in Los Angeles, nestling in comfortably with the other wards that surrounded the mansion and it's various death traps, bottomless pits, abandoned wells, and the rather oddly placed swamp that served as the family's swimming hole. The Addams ancestral home.

Back in Little Whinging, Vernon and Petunia shuddered as they felt some form of odd power leave the home. "You've got the little swot, so be on your way! And never darken our door again!" Vernon said before he went to slam the door, then thought better of it, and closed the door as forcefully, yet quietly as possible.

Gomez and Morticia stared at the door for a long moment, then looked at each other with amused looks on their faces, and Gomez lifted the small basket, offering Morticia his other arm. "Shall we head home, Cara Mia?"

Morticia smiled demurely. "Oui, mon cher."

Gomez eyes lost their madness for a moment as a rather lecherous smile graced his features. 'Why Tish, that's French! You know what you do to me when you talk like that!" Morticia inclined an elegant eyebrow as her smile became less demure, and more predatory. The two made their way to the car as the storm began taking a turn for the worst, and lighting arced down from the sky as Lurch held open the door, a larger bolt of lightning striking the rose bushes at #4 Privet Drive as he closed the passenger door, and got behind the wheel, groaning as e lights went out for miles, once more, and when they came back on a few long, suffocating moments later, the car was gone.

In his study back at Hogwarts, Dumbledore felt an icy finger slide down his spine, as though someone had stepped over his grave. He immediately consulted the various baubles and gubbins, most of which monitored young Harry. All seemed to be in working order, which meant that the boy was hale and healthy, and that the blood wards were intact. He relaxed in his chair. So long as the boy lived, he had hopes about his own future, and the legacy he had to maintain.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts opened a drawer and withdrew a prophecy orb. He knew they could be very dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands, but this one concerned the boy, himself, and Voldemort. A ghastly voice wheezed out of the orb as he held it.

"As light falls, Darkness shall rise. Blood of the covenant shall prove thicker than the water of birth, and a snake shall hatch on a stormy night. A dark hand shall nurture the snake, and that snake shall strike out at the light, plunging it into darkness. But, heed well the warnings of Pandora: Some boxes were not meant to be opened. When the snake bites it's own tail, magic shall reveal the evils within the heart of the four pillars of a Highland Castle; three shall remain a golden number, by three, and three again shall be of silver when the power of the keeper of Life shall finally know all.

"The Heirlooms of the Peverells shall at last find their way to their true master, and shall herald in the end of an era, and the birth on one anew. Be wary, for the world shall not be as it was, and traditions long held inviolate shall come crashing to the ground, burning as they fall, with the innocent to bear witness."

Dumbledore glared at the crystal orb as it's inner light dimmed, returning to its dormant state. While it was obviously relevant to the coming battle with Tom, he was unsure just what part the lad would play in this particular prophecy. The one that drunken slag Trelawney had gasped out just before he'd planned to put her out on her ear as a fraud had been heard by his double agent, Severus, and he'd barely nabbed the young man before he could escape. He'd planned to hire the young Death Eater anyways, to be able to keep an enemy close by, but that opportunity that had dropped into his lap was simply too good to pass up. A chance to twist a young man into his service, and gain full access to the Potter wealth, to fund his war chest? Dumbledore sighed wearily. With his skills as both and Occlumens, and a Legilimens, Severus's mind had proven resilient, even unconscious, and difficult to alter. Not, however, impossible. It had taken six turns of his time turner, but he'd gotten what he wanted. He'd altered Severus' memories just enough to make him think he'd only heard part of the prophecy, that he and Lily were still on poor terms, and that he had a blazing hatred for the last Scion of the Moste Ancient and Moste Noble house of Potter.

It had led to Severus running off to Voldemort rather than to warn the Potters. After all, Severus had forgiven James at the wedding, due to James saving his hide from the little "prank" Dumbledore had orchestrated by planting the idea in Sirius Black's head to send Severus to the Shrieking shack on a full moon. A life debt then owed, and an apology made to Lily for his vile little epithet. Not that Dumbledore cared who called who a mudblood; blood politics were largely beneath him, unless the family practicing their hate was aligned to the dark, like the Mulcibers, the Malfoys, or…he cringed as he tried to shy away from a memory that kept clawing it's way to the forefront of his mind. That of his erstwhile lover hovering over him with the Elder Wand, begging him to "see reason", and understand that what Gellert had done was truly for the greater good.

Unfortunately for Grindlewald, the .45 caliber derringer Albus had secured up his sleeve had been just as effective as a piercing hex, and the main reason the current, and sole prisoner of Nurmengard did little more than stare at the ceiling as he drooled, essentially brain dead, a long healed over scar marring the left side of his forehead. It would have been a mercy to end his life, but spurned lovers as vicious as Albus Bloody Dumbledore were slow to forgive. Gellert had chosen his little war, to subjugate the muggles, and left Albus alone, and heartbroken. In return, he'd turned that beautiful man into a vegetable. After all, it was for the Greater Good.

He looked up as Minerva entered his office, and he smiled as he offered her one of the ever-present sweets from his candy bowl. "Sherbet Lemon?"

And, as usual, she declined. He looked at her over his half-moon spectacles. "Something troubles you, Minerva?"

She nodded. "Why couldn't we have raised him here? I would have been happy to. Or, well…Sirius is his Godfather! Why didn't you let him take the wee bairn?"

Dumbledore's eyes took on a dark cast for a moment. The compulsion charms he'd placed upon the deputy headmaster seemed to be wearing off sooner and sooner these days. It appeared he'd need to take more drastic measures. After all, she was one of his staunchest, if reluctant, supporters. She'd told him, time and again, that he'd spread himself too thin with all his duties, and he was growing tired of using kid's gloves while handling the harridan. His wand shot into his hand, and he hit her with a petrification curse under the desk, shooting her in the foot.

"My dear, I'm afraid I must give you a bit…stronger conditioning than before. I can't have you questioning my orders any longer. I do apologize, Minerva, but there is too much at stake for me to allow you to continue to flaunt your free will. Voldemort will return, and I only feel comfortable telling you that because you won't remember." He pointed his wand at Minerva's forehead as she glared at him with a venomous look full of hatred and betrayal. "Now, don't fight me, or I may end up damaging you. After all, Severus did used to have an occasional smile. Legilimens!"

Within her own mind, she felt a soft, calming balm settle onto her frayed nerves. She didn't know why she'd questioned Albus…he was the leader of the light, after all. A phoenix chose him as a familiar, and they never choose evil people. All that mattered was…was…all that mattered was protecting the most people. All that mattered was ensuring the Greater Good was unimpeded, and that Voldemort was defeated.

She shook her head, and smiled at Albus, making her way out of the Headmaster's office. She felt tears running down her face and couldn't for the life of her figure out why. Exhaustion, she thought to herself as she wiped away a small trickle of blood coming from her nose. A good night's rest was all she needed. Besides, it was high time she took over more of the Headmaster's duties, as he was a busy man, being the Supreme Mugwump, the Chief Warlock, and the Headmaster of Hogwarts, not to mention the Leader of the Order of the Phoenix and, therefore, the Leader of the light. The man that sought to ensure the Greater Good of all was maintained.

All thoughts of Harry were forgotten as she entered her office, and saw Severus sitting in his customary chair, two glasses and a bottle of Ogden's waiting for her. Funny, she didn't think it was Saturday. She could have sworn it was Thursday. She shrugged, and poured them each a glass of fire whiskey, and toasted each other as they spoke of their shared past time: Quidditch.

To be continued

Author's notes:

Hello, all! I will try to maintain a weekly update schedule for this story. I sat at karaoke, on a Tuesday night, well into my fifth Gin and Tonic when I had the idea to write this particular little tale. I know that at times, some details may not be 100% accurate, and I simply ask that you bear with me as I write this story.

For those of you scratching your head about the Addams Family Estate, I chose Los Angeles because that's where the original house from the 1964 series (staring John Astin and Carolyn Jones) was filmed. Certain aspects from the TV show, and the Burton movies shall come together in an amalgamation of the characters. After all, while Jackie Coogan did a marvelous job, Christopher Lloyd will always be Fester to me, just as Raul Julia will always be Gomez.

Please feel free to leave your comments below! I enjoy feedback from my readers. That said, if all you seek to heap upon me is abuse, know that I'm armed with a vicious pen, and you may end up in one of my stories, in a less than pleasant light. You've been warned.