The early summer sun struggled its way up into the overcast sky above the sleepy hamlet of Widdershins. As the first feeble rays broke through the cloud barrier, they gave a false sense of warmth to the young boy sitting next to a small duck pond. A slightly chill breeze blew through the area, sweeping a dusting of fallen cherry blossoms into the morning air and pushing the boy's sandy brown hair into his eyes.
Sleep had evaded the boy last night, as it did many nights these days. As far as he could remember, there were no nightmares, just a general sense of unease that wormed its way into his rest and unnerved him enough to keep him from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. The mornings after these found him anxious and unsettled, which had moved him to go for a walk outside and attempt to find a way to calm himself.
Happening upon the duck pond, with its numerous fruit trees in full bloom, the boy had felt a sense of peace wash over him and had settled down to watch a family of the common water fowl splash through the chill water of the pond. The one blemish on the tranquil area was a twisted old apple tree that looked as if it had died over the winter. No new leaves and blossoms graced its massive branches, and there was a general air of despair around it.
The boy tried not to think about the gnarled old tree too much, something about it made him feel uneasy. He faced directly away from it, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that it was watching him, waiting for him to come closer. In an attempt to distract himself, the boy picked up a withered blossom from the carpet of them on the ground. He could tell that the sad-looking flower he held had come from a tree that was full of life, and that comforted him slightly. He wasn't sure how he knew this, he just did.
A sudden yearning to see the bloom full of life and vibrancy swept through him, very much like the breeze that was whipping around his body at the moment, and he watched astonished as the flower quickly shifted back to a newly-fallen state. The petals softened and the color rushed back into it, rather like a brush filled with watercolor being touched to a fresh piece of paper.
The boy couldn't believe it. Had he caused this to happen? Strange things had happened to him before, but they had been explained away by his father and mother as quirks or accidents. From what he knew of his grandparents, they hadn't taken too kindly to it either when it had shown up in their household all those years ago. This made the boy nervous, he didn't know of anyone that he could talk to about the oddness that was happening to him now.
Deciding that he would find out for sure if he had caused the flower to regenerate, the boy picked up another one that was in even worse shape than the first one had been. He held it up to his deep violet eyes and concentrated. This one had come from a lesser tree, one that wasn't quite as vibrant as the tree the first blossom had come from, but the boy figured that a more difficult test would prove his ability if anything would. Again, he felt the life that had once coursed through the petals, and with a quick gust the breeze blew through him again. This flower reverted to its earlier health with even more alacrity than the first one had, taking on an almost otherworldly glow to it.
Making up his mind, the young man stood up and walked cautiously over to the gnarled sentinel that was the old apple tree. The sense of wrongness was still there, but something inside of him made the boy feel that he could fix it like he had fixed the small blossoms. He put his hand on the tree and closed his eyes.
At first the noxious aura of death was overpowering to his newly-attuned senses, but lurking in the background beyond that he could feel the faint life that had once been running through every fiber of the tree. He tried to find a way through the corruption to reach that purity, but every place he pushed at it to try and dig his way through, the death oozed around to fill in the gap he'd made. Frustrated, he opened his eyes and removed his hand from the rough bark.
How am I supposed to find a way through that? The boy circled the tree once, as if looking at its withered outer bark would reveal some sort of pattern that he could follow. Nothing that he could see inspired any new ideas in him, so he sighed and sat down beneath the tree, resting his back against it.
The tree didn't feel nearly as vile down near the ground. Curious, the boy rested a palm on one of the massive roots, and was surprised to feel the slight tingle of life coming from it. Of course, I was up too far. In a tree this large, the only life left would be in the roots! His excitement re-ignited, the boy turned around and put one hand each on the two closest roots and focused again.
The purity was much closer this time, barely behind the smoky aura of decay. Concentrating his thoughts, he willed a path through the thin miasma to the bright light of vitality that lay beyond. The purity flowed through the gap, first slowly, then with more haste as the boy willed it upward and outward. As if this desire from the boy gave the life within the tree strength, it pushed away the darkness and filled the towering tree with warmth and vibrancy.
When the boy could feel no trace of the darkness of death within the tree, he removed his hands from the roots and stepped back. He was immediately struck by how much healthier the bark right in front of his eyes looked. As his eyes traveled up the trunk, he was aware of the flashes of green that were now in his peripheral vision. He raised his gaze to where the branches now jutted from the trunk in a way that suggested the lively majesty of the tree and followed one of the largest ones out to its end. The branch, like its brethren, was now laden with fully ripe fruit. He reached up and plucked a particularly delicious looking apple and was about to take a bite when he heard his mother calling for him.
Sighing to himself, Edwin Dursley pocketed the fruit and walked back to his home, knowing that his morning reprieve of solitude was over.