Chapter Three

Harry looked around his cupboard, trying to remember how he came to be there for a moment before he remembered that he had hurried home, which was odd since he never used the word 'home' to think about Privet Drive. He fixed dinner and then moved into his cupboard, though for some reason his mind seemed to try and supply the word 'room' for a moment before being taken over by reality.

Though the reason for his desire to enter his cupboard so quickly escaped Harry. He had a niggling impression that he had thought of something he wanted to read, but Harry didn't have any books, the school library didn't let book go home unless the family paid a fee, and the Dursleys would never do that. And he couldn't get a library card without his guardian's okay.

Shrugging, Harry simply decided he must've wanted to go over his notes from class for some reason, and pulled his small dingy backpack open pulling out his very tattered notebook. Reading through the last few pages however Harry frowned. Has someone been into my notebook?

There were notes there that Harry didn't remember making, but as Harry looked at him, he saw they were in his handwriting! Why would I do that, I don't have enough room in here to waste on imaginings, and they're in pen too! I can't even erase them! Harry scowled angrily throwing the notebook down onto his bed, shaking his head in leaning against the wall of his cupboard. But his eyes kept on going back to the notes, as he tried to work out why in the world he would've done that.

He couldn't remember doing it, which was another odd thing. Harry knew he had a decent enough memory, certainly better than Dudley's, or indeed any of the other students in his class. Once he wrote down something himself, he remembered it. Why'd I do that? He thought scowling angrily. And in pen too!

Yet his eyes continued to stray to it, until finally he sighed. All right, there's an easy way of checking to see if this is anything but some weird craziness that I can't remember.

That evening Harry snuck into the bathroom and stared at himself then down at the notes before staring back up into his image in the mirror. He concentrated, and after only a few seconds he watched in shock as his hair began to change color.

It really does get easier over time then! With that thought in mind Harry quickly made his way back to his cupboard, turned on the hanging light and began to read the notes he had made avidly.

A few hours later Harry was still awake, frowning in thought as his finger tapped the word 'magic' among his notes, where it had been underlined and even circled. He'd read through his notes several times, and felt he understood what he'd been doing, but one thing continued to bother him. How did I forget about it?

Harry worried at that problem for several minutes without coming to a solution, however a sudden thought came to him as he looked down at one of the first notes, which read 'could the Dursleys know about this, is that why?' If that's so Harry thought, then could other people know? But if so, how would they have made me forget about all this?

After a moment he came up with a solution that to his young yet intelligent mind made sense. There could be other magic users around. And I suppose there could be spells dealing with the mind, though if so, could there be magics against that kind of thing too? But, but why wouldn't someone want me to know?

Sighing, he put that thought aside. Too little information, nothing I can do about that. But, if they don't want me to know about magic, what does that mean? Could they want me to be normal, or could they just want me to be weak?Harry was used to people wanting him to be weak, the Dursleys did everything they could to beat him down. This was the first time that Harry thought there might actually be a reason behind it, rather than just something about him that set them off.

Once that thought began, there was no stopping it. The Dursleys said my parents died in a car crash, but what if they didn't, what if they had enemies, and what if those enemies are now looking for me?Then magic might be the only way to fight against them. Harry's face firmed in a way that a young just turned 10-year-old boy's face, no matter how intelligent or adult he had to act at times, should have been able to.

But does that mean that the Dursleys are either enemies, or are simply pawns like in chess? Shrugging his shoulders on that, Harry realized that either spelled trouble for him if they found out that he knew about his magic.

He decided to go through his notes again, trying to figure out what bit of experimentation had alerted whoever it was that had taken his memories. After a moment he stopped, frowning. So I moved from trying to do something with my hair to, to teleportation? That's a huge leap! But teleportation doesn't have a lot of notes here. So that must've been what alerted whoever it was.

But if what I can do is really magic, why would be limited to just stuff I can do with my hair or teleportation? Magic isn't limited, that's part of what makes it magic, right? With that thought in mind Harry grinned, but then took out a pen and wrote a very small message to himself just in case. 'Yes these pen messages are from you, no you are not crazy, signed Harry Potter,' and the date afterwards.

With that done Harry spent the rest of the night writing down thoughts of what he could do with magic. It wasn't a very long list, but the list of things he wanted to do with magic was. In particular one was underlined. That note said 'figure out a way to hide your notebook.'

If whoever it was that had taken his memories came back and they found out about his notebook somehow then he'd lose all of his work. That had to be stopped, and that didn't even include Dudley. He routinely messed with Harry's stuff, especially his school stuff just because he could.

Harry spent the next two few days spending all of his free time in the library going through every book that had magic in it, the Sword in the Stone, Island of the Mighty, the Prydain chronicles, though he did have some trouble with that one, and many, many more. He even tried his hand at some of the older teen books, including some Terry Pratchett books.

Feeling greatly daring Harry also tried one of the nearby comic stores, despite it being one of Dudley's main hangouts. He had to run away from another bout of Harry Hunting after that, but was able to get away cleanly.

One idea that stuck out with him was that wizards in many books could make themselves unseen. The most interesting was Granny Weatherwax's, which was a sort of 'uninteresting field' that she could project, simply becoming part of the background. It didn't seem to stand up to a lot of exercise or something of that nature, but Harry felt that had a lot of potential for hiding his notebook.

That evening Harry once again spent a sleepless night staring down at his notebook, somehow trying to force to become invisible or unnoticeable. It didn't work. Sighing, he laid it beside his school books before reaching up to the hanging light. Only to stop, staring from the school books to the notebook. "If I can't make it unnoticeable, could I disguise it?"

The next day at school Dudley finally cornered Harry for the first time in days. He knocked Harry down from behind, spilling all of his school stuff out of his bag. "Watch where you're going Potter!"

He laughed, stepping forward to break several of Harry's pencils as he walked through the clutter, reaching down quickly to pick up a book. He frowned however when he noticed that it had the school stamp on it and with a huff threw it down again. Ms. Hicks was hell on anyone who damaged her priceless books, and Dudley had learned that she was one of the teachers that actually listened to the freak for some wouldn't be worth it to do anything to a school book.

Just then one of his friends shouted at him from the cafeteria entrance. "They've got pizza Dudley, come on!"

Dudley raced off as fast as his pudgy legs could carry him, while behind him Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He picked up his notebook, the cover and spine of which he had changed to look like a book from the school, a picture bookthe class had been reading lately.

Harry bent down to pick up his stuff while all around him the other students of the school moved around him with the ease of long practice, some of them even snickering while others simply shook their heads. Harry however allowed himself a small smile. It worked!

Over the next few weeks Harry began to experiment, doing small little things to see what was possible and what wasn't. Of course when he noted what wasn't he simply put down 'yet'. The books he'd read that all dealt with magic were so wide and varied he was unwilling to say that anything was impossible with it. He also got far better at changing his hair color, though he still couldn't do anything about its normal scruffy appearance.

Eventually he even could do things with his clothes, though that was much harder. After the first time where he had changed how his clothes looked, their colors and the shape of them, he almost collapsed from exhaustion. That was an important learning experience: that magic took something out of him. His change of clothes and hair however was worth it because they allowed Harry to move around the neighborhood in relative safety for the first time since Dudley and his friends wouldn't mess with a child they didn't know.

That kind of thing brought trouble, as it had the one time they tried it with an exchange student, who did not only fight back, but blabbed to his parents. Those were good few days, Harry thought to himself as he remembered them. Dudley, Vernon and Petunia were all walking on egg shells, because apparently the transfer student was the son of some army man who'd just gotten medically discharged. But it faded after a while when that family moved away to a better area, and things went back to normal.

With his new looks Harry explored areas where he hadn't dared to go before for fear of Dudley and his gang, in particular the nearby park, which backed a small but overgrown national park. In there Harry found an area where no one could see him, and he began to use that place for some of his experiments, continuing to keep his notes as he went as well as he could.

From changing how things looked or their size he moved on to levitating things, which was surprisingly much easier. Harry reasoned that changing something was much harder than simply moving its place in the world. He started with one small pebble, then graduated from that into four small pebbles, holding them up at the same time, then moving them around each in a different way. It was hard, and it really strained his mental muscles, but even so afterwards Harry felt elated, somewhat tired, but not as much as that first time he'd changed the way his clothes looked.

Over the next few months after that, Harry's experiments got more and more varied. He learned that emotions powered the spells somewhat at one point when he began his experiments after a particularly ugly bout of teasing from Dudley and Vernon when he hadn't been allowed to escape into his cupboard after fixing them dinner. When Harry, entering his cupboard saw his little stones piled into a corner he scowled angrily at them, and then waved his hand hard, not expecting anything to really happen because he wasn't concentrating very much.

When the stones zoomed off away from that corner into the other one with small 'spang' sounded as they hit the wall he gasped in shock. The sight also calmed down somewhat, and he frowned. "Emotions," he mused to himself, then moved over to sit down. From that point he decided to experiment a bit with the emotions, though not much.

That was because when he tried to use anger again, he found it more difficult to control himself afterwards, and decided that that experiment was one area he didn't want to go got angry all the time at the smallest of things from Harry's point of view, and he always took that anger out on Harry. Harry did not want to be like Vernon in any way, shape or form.

On the other hand, happiness also seemed to be able to power certain spells, though the effect was weird. When he was levitating his pebbles, gesturing with one hand as he sometimes did because that helped him concentrate, he brought to mind the feelings of joy that he'd felt when he first realized that the notes about magic in his notebook were real. Instead of powering the spell however, making the task easier or perhaps even making the stones fly up higher, a silvery sheen began to appear around him, but it only lasted for a few moments before Harry collapsed into exhaustion.

When he came to a few moments later he shook his head groggily. "All right, so anger is easier, but harder to control, and happiness, maybe good feelings in general, are harder to use but their effect is weird." He grinned to himself for a moment then pulled out his trusty notebook. "You learn new things every day."