AN: My goal is to release 5k word chapters once a week. Usually every Sunday but that may vary.
Dreamlock
By: Tridentwatch
Chapter One: Burning the Ashes
The Duel with the Parasite; the Battle with Quirrel
I need not remind you that as a boy I got into many an adventure, and it was the first year where I almost lost my life, for the first time. There would, over the course of my one hundred years that I would live on for, be many dangerous experiences but none as harrowing as that which happened on October 31, the day my parents would have celebrated Halloween in happiness and family bliss were it not for Voldemort's very existence, a blight upon all the innocents of this world.
As a boy I was quite bright, or at least that's what the teachers told me. But it was a muggle school and so we need not pay much importance to this area of experience. Suffice to say, my early development consisted of vigourous bouts of running away from bullies, frequent exposure to what I termed as the unreal and of course, my enviable intelligence that brought good repute from far and wide.
"He's done excellent on his test, ma'am," Miss Einstein said to aunt Petunia in a parents teacher conference. I sat in the back of the room, with Dudely a few seats away from me. The class was empty. It was four thirty in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten all day though I had stomach fulls of water from the water fountain in the hallway. I felt pretty keen, sharp and slightly energetic even despite not having eaten. I'd had a large meal last night, a great big slab of roast beef that Uncle Dursley put on my plate. He remarked I looked too thin. I agreed.
Aunt Petunia nodded absently, "Yes, and has he caused any trouble?"
Miss Einstein shook her head, "None, whatsoever, ma'am, very polite he was. Harry is a good team player, likes to work in groups and is quite social. He's likeable too, has made a lot of friends."
"Well thank you, Miss Einstein," Petunia said the word Einstein like it was distasteful. I could see the knobs turning in her head and cringed as she assigned Miss Einstein in the category of not likeable. It was too bad, because she was my favorite teacher and although the thoughts were all too readily apparent to me, due to my innate magic I have no doubt, it was also apparent that words would be said against me on the dinner table, probing to find all the faults possible on myself as if to bring me down from an imagined pedestal.
She was a pale woman, Miss Einstein, the kind of pale you would think were from a disease, perhaps she had vampirism or something. She wore a scarf around her neck. It was bright red and caught my eye, so I stared at the scarf, at the age of seven years old, and had the first intense burst of magic I can remember.
I felt myself go into a trance, as if I were falling into a well and although I was falling deeply, with my whole body becoming heavy and hard to move, I was not scared. In fact, a strange sort of courage took over me, my Gryffindor instincts came into play and I dived deeper into the redness of the scarf until all I could see was the strands weaving themselves around each other, strings of red intertwined.
Then there was nothing but a magnification, a focus as if I were looking at the scarf through a lens and I saw all the minute objects within the strings and the threads that made up the scarf, all the constituents revealed to me effortlessly. I was indeed farseeing, a term I coined myself and has been attributed to me the credit of being the inventor of the subject of far seeing, adding to my series of accomplishments. Truly the name Harry Potter is a house hold name, but the boy whom I was, who lived in the days I so often feel nostalgic to remember, had no knowledge or inkling of the fame awaiting him on the other side of the veil that divided the muggles and we of the magic.
Miss Einstein could see a lot through a single glance. She was observant that way. When we left the parent teacher conference she took me aside while Petunia scolded Dudley about his performance, and handed me a ten pound note. She didn't say anything. I didn't either.
The Dursley home had three bedrooms, the master for Aunt and Uncle, the smallest for Dudley's collection of toys, and the middle one for Dudley. I slept in the living room.
Aunt Petunia tried to put me in the cupboard under the stairs after the parent teacher conference, and told me to take my bed from Dudley's smallest room away from the clutter of his toys. I refused. I said, "You should make Dudley take all the toys from this room and put them in the cupboard instead. It would be better for all of us."
"Do as I say, Harry," Petunia said sharply, glaring at me for an instant. Still I remained amandant and would not budge from my position. Dudley got off the computer – I heard the beeps of his game stop suddenly – and waddled to the smallest room of Number Four Privet Drive. Even at that age, the rings of obesity gave him an unhealthy look and an enormous paunch.
His face was wet. He had been crying. His eyes were red from fallen tears and looking at him I felt a stirring of pity. No doubt Aunt Petunia was chewing him out.
Dudley turned a look of hatred toward me. I was taken aback. I stared back at him, "Do you want me to live in a cupboard, brother?"
The use of the word brother eroded his brief moment of anger and he said to his mother, "Harry can stay." Then he locked himself in the second biggest room of Number Four Privet Drive.
Aunt Petunia took my mattress herself and brought it into the living room, and said, "You will sleep here from now onwards." I watched her do this with a bemused look on my face. The pendulum clock showed an hour remaining until Uncle Vernon's arrival from work.
"Alright," I said, "If that's what you really want, auntie."
She flinched. She looked at me strangely and I recalled the scarf, the bright red piece of scarf that I knew intimately from simply staring at it. I recalled the feeling of going into the very atoms and molecules that made up the scarf and once again, I did the same exact thing only half consciously. Aunt Petunia's eyes were brown. I knew it as I knew the back of my hand, gazing into those tunnels was like looking through a porthole into another world.
Petunia was thinking of Lily, her sister with green eyes and red hair and a perfect life. She thought about a castle, and a large broom draped across the grass in a backyard of a small country home. She thought about Lily my mother as a child and all those thoughts flashed through her mind. I was privy to those thoughts, the emotions that drove them, and for a few seconds I saw Petunia as she truly was: a woman who could not let go of her hatred.
I did not find out what she hated because she broke eye contact before my trance could deepen and shooed me to the smallest room. She told me to keep myself busy until dinner.
One of Dudley's best toys were what he called only fit for a book worm. I devouvered the books gifted to him from Gone with the Wind to Treasure Island. Adventure stories excited me, and I could read for hours without stopping, drinking in every word, sentence, paragraph, and eventually the whole goddamn story. Then I would drop the book and sit with my back to the wall. Sometimes it was a meditative, zen like sitting where I would think of absolutely nothing whatsoever, and sometimes I recalled the words swimming on the pages with a clarity I found astonishing. I hid my ability of recollection and never advertised this talent throughout my life.
It has always served a use for me. When I was running the war against Voldemort, with only a handful of aurors under my command and a thousand civilians ready to fight death eaters, willing to follow me to hell and back, I used my god awful memory to run logistics as well as a computer, crunching numbers to fit every possible scenario.
That night I reread Treasure Island with my back against the wall, reading every word underneath my eyelids, brilliantly displayed in my memory and imagination.
When I awoke from my trance night had fallen. I opened the window because the atmosphere was stuffy inside and the chill air breezed past my face. Tonight was a perfect night, the street lamps were not bright enough to obscure the stars and I could see Orien's Belt and Sirius the Dog Star.
My second major magical breakthrough came because I was delirious. I had eaten nothing the entire day. Petunia had "forgotten" to call me for dinner and apparently my absence went unnoticed. I felt light headed, perhaps from the effects of the trance, or from Petunia's memories of the mother I never knew.
My eyes boggled as the stars twinkled bright, brighter, and brightest. A blaze of light exploded from the sky. A thousand needles pierced my cranium. I buckled and fell onto the floor with a clatter. Energy swirled from my belly into my arms, from my feet rising through my spine, elongating my neck into a rigid rod.
The magic squeezed my stomach of air and breathless I stumbled down the stairs, into the kitchen. Everyone was asleep. My mattress was laid out in the living room, complete with bedsheets from the closet and two pillows. It was, in my drunken state for magical overload would do that to a person, a bed fit for a king. I crawled under the sheets and slept the effects away.
It is worth mentioning the side effects of a magical overload. My research into the subject states three postulates. Everyone has magic. The Magic within us can grow and atrophy according to innumerable factors, the most important of which being genetics. Magic is a mystery and one cannot expect consistency of results. In short, prepare for the unexpected.
The third magical explosion occurred when I was in a cavernous room with Quirrel for company and a mirror in the center of the room that I suspected had a stone Voldemort desperately desired.
The light of numerous candles floating above us glinted from the shattered pieces of glass that fell to the floor when I hit it with a stupefy. Quirrel glared at me in anger, "You fool!" He lunged toward me. I dodged his grab and swiftly brought my wand toward his neck, "Seperato!"
A coil of yellow light shot out of my wind, winding around Quirrel's fat neck and I felt like a beast, a killer with a mission. I ducked his incoming spell not knowing how he managed to get out of the trajectory of my prior curse. I fell down as a shockwave dropped me to the ground. I rolled, my heart thumping in my chest.
"Don't you know the power of the stone? We could have everything, sit on the top of the mountain, at the peak!" Quirrel's mad crazed eyes glinted with a bit of red and he brought his wand up. I was faster, my quidditch reflexes letting me dodge his curse barely looking as I swiveled on my feet, brought my wand up in a vast throw shouting every single bad spell I knew in a rapid fury of spell casting as I ripped the room. The adrenaline rush went through me, turned me crazy as I harshly shot spell after spell in a flurry of indiscent lights that glowed a rainbow array of colours and through the heat and the sulphur scented air I felt relentless, no mercy I felt .
The magic gripped me, an unknown abyss reaching out with solid limbs, coalescing pieces of thought and free floating emotion in my mind instantly translated into reality as my spells rocketed off the walls, cracking the ceiling. My wand was a blur, sweat fell down my brow and face as my body moved in its own dance, one I could not control.
The feeling took me like the trance that takes me to a different world when I play Quidditch. Flying on a broom and seeking the snitch felt a joke compared to this. A cold wind ran up my spine as I felt myself approaching the dark arts, as Quirrel dodged and deflected with far greater skill, riding my wave of fury with a calm, contemptuous glint in his red eyes.
My anger raged like a volcano about to erupt and I let it loose, let it all out. Gryffindor courage went to the next level. A part of me knew who it was, because the scar hurt and I knew in the bottom of my heart what it meant. The rage turned me into a fool. I lunged, ready with a spell on my tongue.
"Crucio!" Quirrel set his wand against my stomach in a quick lunge. I felt the currents of pain drown my body in a seizure of sweat and tears and blood running down from my bitten tongue. My throat felt raw from screaming when the pain stopped and my vision cleared of dark spots. I got up to my feet infinitely exhausted but not ready to give up. "Voldemort!" I hissed. "Come out, face me!"
My hiss sounded very foreign and strange almost like a different language… Oh. Parseltongue got a reaction from the sedate Dark Lord.
"I am strong enough for this," a hiss that filled the room, echoing off the destruction I brought to the room in my hazy trance like state. "The boy has potential. I wish to speak with him."
"My Lord, you have not the strength for this… you are too weak," Quirrel's eyes were rolled upward. My wand was beside his feet. I eyed it greedily. A cornered animal fights hardest and I coiled myself into a ready to spring tiger about to shoot out from a crouch. I charged using all the running my body had done in my life. The sprint rested on life and death and it was my last shot. I tackled Quirrel to the ground and dug my elbow in his gut, bit off his cheek like a crazed monkey in a zoo and felt a burning pain run up my jaw. It hurt like a burnt piece of toast times a million as the hot poker stick that stuck to my brain, digging a hole in my cranium. The pain clashed strongly with the after effects of the cruciatus curse and I was done for, had reached the limits of an eleven year old boy no matter how exceptional.
Quirrel threw me off, but not before I grabbed his wand. I pointed it at him as I landed on my spine and shouted with a hate only present in people who have been broken on the inside, who have seen the extreme, been there and conquered it and was too tired to try and reach for the next sky. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" The words turned my gut into a broiling pit of vicious dragon flies. A plume of green light flashed from Quirrel's wand toward the owner's chest. The light arced toward Quirrel's chest, bending slightly to reach the target.
My hatred was strong.
Quirrel raised his clenched hand and threw a piece of rubble at the approaching beam of light. The killing curse – intercepted.
As if with a mind of its own, Quirrel's wand shot out of my hand. Quirrel grabbed it with a triumphant pumpkin smile on his face, teeth bared like a wild animal.
My heart broke to pieces and I knew the time had come, no hope left, I was going to die that night. My innate nature rebelled. My precise mind, honed to be as sharp as a blade, saw no solution from my dilemma beside a miracle.
Albus Dumbledore barged into the room, on his heels Professor Minerva McGonngal and Filius Flitwick. He eyed Quirrel coldly. "Tom, your end is here. It was a mistake for you to try your mischief in Hogwarts."
"My end?" A hiss of a voice, as snake like as the hiss of a rattle snake came from the back of Quirrel's head. Slowly, with shaking hands, Quirrel untied the turban on his head. He looked terrified. Albus readied himself, his posture tensing. He drew his wand. I urged him silently, within my mind, to blast Quirrel away.
The last thing I saw was a face emerging from the covered part of Quirrel's head, and red eyes gleamed, locking onto mine. I felt my mind pillaged, and wondered if this was how the Dursleys felt whenever I used my magic upon them. I was helpless, terrified, and totally out of my depth. I raised a mental shield, coalescing a web of happy thoughts, puppies and flowers. Voldemort slithered through the holes and into my deep dark abscesses, popping my defenses like fragile balloons. Thoughts raced, emotions flared, past memories too painful to remember came to the forefronts of my mind-the death of my parents, a scene remembered vividly in a single moment as Voldemort touched on the cords that bind me to dark memories, wiggling the strings and making me dance his tune.
I woke up in a hospital bed that smelled of cinnamon and valerian root, the scent wafting through the room from a cauldron pot on broil. Madam Pomfrey stirred the concotion. She looked up to meet my eye. We were alone in the Hospital wing.
"What happened? Where is Ron and Hermione? Did they get out safely?"
My flurry of questions went unanswered. She took a bowl of the mixture in the cauldron and fed it to me sip by sip. I drank the vile liquid down, and asked what it was. "It's basically a high dose of vitamin C, ascorbic acid, mixed in with some spices and approximately one gram of valerian root concentrate. You should be feeling sleepy in an hour because valerian is a tranquilizer and your immune system should work better with some vitamin supplementation." She went on in a monotone voice, extolling the benefits of her concotion.
"What happened to me?"
"It would be best to ask the Headmaster that question, Mr. Potter," Madam Pomfrey said as she fed me a second bowl of the murky yellow-brown liquid. I gulped it down quickly.
"I hope this stuff works," I said, "It tastes like shit."
"Language, Harry," said an old voice. I craned my neck over my shoulder. Albus Dumbledore stood in the doorway. A bright blue light emerged from his wand lighting his way. The darkness curled around the windows, and I realized it was the middle of the night. "The young need to be disciplined early, if they are to grow up as gentlemen."
"So you say this medicine is a form of discipline?"
"An added component," Madam Pomfrey murmured, "But its good for you. I want you to drink the whole cauldron's worth."
"There's got to be at least four bowls full more in there," I protested.
"That's right, and you must drink every single drop if you are to regain good health."
"Did you by chance put some fish oil into the cauldron?" Albus asked.
Madam Pomfrey shook her head.
"Try putting in 2 grams and stir it lightly, over a slow fire. It will help the ascorbic acid settle in and the fish oil will give Harry his omega 3s."
Madam Pomfrey nodded, "Its brilliant, why didn't I think of that?"
Albus smiled, "If you have the good fortune to live to my age, you will gain much experience in the art of good health."
"Your words of wisdom are cryptic as always," Madam Pomfrey said. "I'll go get the fish oil. Professor Snape has been most kind in extracting it from the batch of salmon Hagrid caught in the lake."
"Wonderful," Albus said, bursting with childlike joy. "Hogwarts always makes sure to provide for her students. You'll be up and running in no time."
Madame Pomfrey left the two of us alone. Albus sat beside my bed on a stool. "Your friends have brought you many presents," he said, opening a curtain on an adjacent bed to reveal a mountain of candy and presents. He picked out a chocolate frog and unwrapped it. Then he handed it to me.
I bit into the juicy chocolate, letting the cocoa wake me. We sat in silence. I enjoyed the chocolate, and I thought perhaps Dumbledore enjoyed my silent company. He hummed to himself as I finished.
I asked him about my friends who had accompanied me on the dangerous adventure to the Philosopher's stone.
"Ron recovered yesterday afternoon," Dumbledore said, "The Weasleys have always been very healthy people. He has made a full recovery. Miss Granger on the other hand suffered multiple burns over her body and is in St. Mungo's critical care unit."
"I want to go see her," I said.
"First you must regain your vitality," Dumbledore said, and urged me to drink another bowl. I stomached it down reluctantly in tiny sips.
Madame Pomfrey walked in with a tiny jar filled with a murky yellow substance-fish oil. She poured two scoops using a wooden spoon into the cauldron, and then poured some water from her wand to dilute the solution. She stirred the mix gently over a slow heat. Dumbledore helped her stabilize the concentration of the ascorbic acid and the fatty acids in the fish oil by doing a five minute titration with a clear blue liquid of some sort he pulled out from within the folds of his robes. He talked about his work and said this reminded him of his days working with Flamel. "What we're doing here, Harry, is merely basic alchemy."
"Alchemy or not," Madame Pomfrey said, "Your instruction makes the best healing potions."
"You flatter me, Madame," Albus said.
Madame Pomfrey smiled slightly. I asked Dumbledore, "Do you think if you substituted the cinnamon with, say, a few peppermint leaves the flavour would improve?"
Albus looked stunned for a moment. Then he smiled brilliantly. "Why, what a great idea Harry."
"I guess I'll go fetch the peppermint," Madame Pomfrey sighed, then went to do so promptly, leaving Albus to stir.
He spooned out a scoopful into the bowl and handed it to me. "Drink," he commanded, "Your magic reserves are low. You need all the help you can get."
I drank the mixture obediently. "It tastes worse than before."
"The peppermint leaves will flavor it." Albus took the vial of blue liquid he had put in before and handed it to me. "And of course the exiler of life will add a special little something."
My eyes widened as I grasped the half empty bottle. Albus winked.
I recovered fully thirty six hours later. Madame Pomfrey called it a medical miracle, considering the extent of damage inflicted on my battered body.
I said it was magic.
The storm thundered down Hogwarts. A cold rainy day like this was perfect for not practicing Quidditch. Oliver Wood had a different opinion. We played soaked to the bone, cold and hungry because we skipped lunch to book the pitch early.
I circled the pitch, eyes seeking the snitch. I saw a flash of gold from the corner of my eye and raced down a trajectory I saw in my mind's eye. Estimating the bludger's position at its current direction and speed, I realized I would collide right into it unless-
I ducked the bludger, allowing it to sail by me and hit McCormack in the jaw. He whirled to the side on his broom, fell off. I stopped, silent and still on my nimbus 2000 as I watched his free fall to the sandy ground. I raised my wand and shouted, "Leviatus Elevatus!"
The falling quidditch player's downward velocity decreased to zero until he was resting in mid air. Then he started to rise upward, slowly at first.
"Harry! What are you doing?" Oliver roared at me.
I was lost in a trance. This was my fourth magical explosion. It was my second year. First month.
The rain peltered my sweater. I felt the rush of adrenaline burst through my system. My senses were sharp and honed, smells a thousand times unnoticeable came to me readily apparent as a sudden wave of magic displaced my consciousness to a higher level. I felt rather than saw the oncoming bludger. Dodging the projectile, I swerved to the right and flew toward McCormack who was rising steadily into the gray clouds. I grasped the folds of his robe, and thrust him downward. He started to fall very slowly. I went parallel to his motion and focused deeply on myself and on the magic pouring into me from the sky, the air, the winds rushing from the east with salt water spraying and the scent of minerals turning me more alive than I have ever been.
A sense of awareness filled me. Fred sailed toward me on his broom, his twin following close behind. Oliver at the three hoops guarding the posts from Katie and Alice who had the quaffle in their control, looked worried. They converged on me as I lowered McCormack to the ground.
He was half conscioius when his back lightly touched the mud. He opened his eyes, "W-what happened?"
"Harry Potter here saved your life," Katie said offhandedly. She tossed her hair behind her. The gesture caught my eye and I gave her a loopy smile, which she returned with slightly less enthusiasm. "You were about to fall-"
"Then he cast some sort of spell-"
"And here you are," finished George.
"Fuck me," Oliver said, "We are going to lose if you guys keep horse playing around. Okay, lets rerun the drill."
"Aaw!" Fred looked immensely disappointed. So was I.
"Not anymore," I said, and my voice seemed so far away as if I were watching myself from the sky. "I need to go somewhere."
I had nowhere to go and nothing to do but enjoy what was happening, a spontaneous emission of magic seemed to explode out of me, from each and every cell in my body. All the atoms that made up who I was vibrated at the same frequency, I could feel the synchronism and the rhythm, the tune and the harmony all revolving around the bulbous piece of energy on my forehead that seemed to throb with a life of its own.
I walked to the kitchens. The house elves fed me a hearty dinner. Then I went to the Gryffindor common room and curled up by the fire. Ron came by a half hour later with a book in his hand.
"Hey Harry," he said sitting beside me on the couch. "How was practice?"
The feelings had receded and the strangeness felt like a dream. The most predominant question, where had the spell come from, seemed like a fragment of a distant dream. I quickly forgot it when Ron invited me for a game of chess. We lost ourselves in the pieces and when we were sick of chess we worked on our transfiguration essay.
Hermione was nowhere to be found.
The second year escalated in terms of workload. The Defense Against the Dark Arts class, taught by Professor Pauling was by far my favorite.
She was a very old woman with gray hair and bright eyes. She looked like a thin crow. Her black shawl covered her body but her collar bones protruded. She seemed a starving woman, but her vitality was optimal and she was as healthy as an oxe. Her eyes gazed around the room, mentally doing attendance. "Where is Longbottom?" Her voice was a bird like caw, deep and resonant yet having something fragile and light in it, a quavering weakness perhaps only I could sense.
I sat alone in the back of the class. She went on with the lecture for the day, the stances one would use in dueling.
"It all depends on the context," she said, "If you're in a fight to the death and the opponent has taken you by surprise, you need to be aware of the terrain. For example, is there a chair or a bench you can use? If so, how will you use it, when will you use it? What is your plan of action, always have one no matter what in any situation. If a dark wizard surprises you in a blind alley with a knife, what will you do… Granger?"
Hermione's face was haggered. She looked unusually tired as she rose up a little straighter. "I'd… um… probably draw my wand as fast as I can and stun him."
"Good answer," Pauling nodded approvingly, "But incorrect. You will not have time before he jabs you with his knife. How about you, Patil?"
"Run," she said. It met with snickers all around.
"Potter?" Pauling asked.
"I'd give him my wallet," I said. More chuckles.
"Hmm…" Pauling looked disappointed. "The answer I was looking for was-"
"Sorry I'm late, professor!" Neville said as he barged into the room. "I was in the hospital wing."
"Take your seat," Pauling said wearily. "Now to continue with the lecture, if you know the terrain you can use it to your advantage, and if you know how to walk, how to talk, how to interact with your opponent in the correct manner, you will have an advantage."
"What do you mean by correct manner?" Hermione asked.
Pauling shrugged, "Depends on the situation. With werewolves, I recommend a bit of aggression in your stance, a bit of the alpha sort of mindset in the way you behave or else they won't respect you. With dark wizards it varies from country to country, but I know in Albania if you meet a dark wizard you should never look him or her in the eye."
"Why not?" asked Ron, "What's bad about that?"
Pauling went on to talk about legilimency. As she described the subject, I realized I had been doing it my whole life, and that made me feel cold and alone.