The First Spark of Freedom

The leaves had started to change colour and fall and Harry was sent outside to rake them up and see to the lawn. He did the laundry. He did the cooking. He did the gardening. He was, for all intents and purposes, just a house elf.

But other than giving him an exhaustive list of things to do each day, the Dursleys mostly just left him alone. They pretended not to notice him until it was time to punish him or give him more work, just like some purebloods pretended not to notice their house elves until they had need.

The days began to get colder and shorter, though his list of jobs never did. The large piles of leaves that Harry raked up each day always ended up scattered all over the grass the next morning. Dudley always seemed to wear that smug smirk at the sight of the front garden covered in debris. Vernon seemed particularly frustrated with the lack of progress, but he never lifted a hand against Harry.

He lashed out verbally instead and cruel remarks were common.

At first, Harry had recoiled and flinched from each drop of spittle that landed near him. It was disconcerting that, after months with no contact at all from his family - he was beginning to doubt they even thought about him at this point - and near-constant verbal assaults, he was becoming numb to it.

Harry still held out hope - a fantasy where one of the family's post owls would swoop in at supper with a letter for him that the threat was gone and he could come home. Or that his mother would burst through the front door and take him back.

Winter arrived and the days didn't seem to last at all. He now recognised that something ugly had begun to grow inside him. He'd been locked out one night and forced to try to find some slight shelter under the overhang of the back door. He was cold and he was wet and he was miserable and he just wanted his parents to come and get him and take him home.

But James and Lily never came.

He started to let go of the fantasy of being rescued. He started to hate them, James and Lily and Skylar, just a bit, just in the isolation of his cupboard, when he was alone with his thoughts.

Christmas came and went. Harry sat in the darkness, locked up in his cupboard on Christmas Eve. He spent Christmas Day under the stairs in his little cupboard, quietly reading his books under the single replaced lightbulb, with a plastic bowl for a loo. He spent the majority of Christmas break reading at the odd times of night, needing less and less sleep and kept awake by the numbing chill of winter permeating his cupboard. He was so cold and lonely and reading offered him some small comfort against his own treacherous thoughts, whispering that no-one would ever want him.

Instead, he read and practiced and tried, over and over, again and again, he tested the theory of magic without ever actually knowing what he was doing.

And on the first of the new year, Harry smiled, happy again for the first time. He'd gotten the lock on his cupboard door to unlock.

...

'The wand is used as a conduit.

Magic, similar to the concepts of souls, is an aura surrounding and permeating all living

Things.

Not being magical themselves, Muggles can be affected and altered with focused magic. Muggles are unable to store influxes of magic, thus are unable to harvest or use it on their own.

Wizards are able to produce and store magic.

Using conduits to direct the flow of magic, a wizard is able to alter the source into a specific object or energy if given enough intent and focus.

Spells are often used to direct magic in a specific fashion, each spell is created carefully to trigger a soul and magic response which will result in the desired effect. When combined with wands and proper wand movements, the magic is directed with an objective and pre-fashioned template which results in the desired outcome.'

Harry closed the thick book once again, running his fingers over the worn cover. The once crisp pages had long since become soft and almost fuzzy to the touch. Along the spine it had been stained with dirt and grease from his fingers. The back left corner of the book had cracked, the leather split from where it had hit against the floor a little too harshly. The letters were dulled and scratched, Magical Theory and Phenomena, was more difficult to read without struggling.

Harry had read the heavy book cover to cover twice already, understanding more the second time around. The theory of magic was more useful to him than the other book of spells. Although the book of spells did list countless spells and charms that did seem fascinating, Harry didn't have a wand, so he couldn't very well use the meticulously detailed descriptions of wand movements and pronunciations.

The last book he brought, Scalding Scales, was one of his favourites. He took comfort in the many pages, each drawn with magical ink which was charmed to move and swish

with each bat of the creature's tails.

....

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