It takes a single point of light to keep from giving up. Something to burn and never gutter in the darkness. A spark of hope when there's nothing else. A tad cliched, perhaps, but a single light is not very useful for much else. "I am," it says, a reminder of your existence. Affirmation that it's not the end, at least not yet.
More lights push beyond hope. Two lights, a twin shining brightly to bring direction. Two lights to bring reference. "I am here," they say, "Here, and there, and they are different." Two lights can tell you if you are close, or far, or in-between.
With three lights, contrast is inevitable. Specificity can be obtained and relations gauged. Each light grants the measure of the remainder. The first shape can be formed from even the slightest misplacement of the third light, whereas before there could be nought but lines.
The fourth light is a stopgap. By now, chances of a fluke are few and far between. The fourth light provides a gathering place; a bated measure between burning desire, indomidable will - and the hard part. Four lights is a mother lifting a car off of her child, an artist finishing a masterpiece, a grandmaster's checkmate.
Five lights is commitment. You delve in, and you might argue – from this new perspective - that five lights are the true beginning. The first four can service, but before the fifth there is no appreciation for effort undiluted. There is no appreciation for the darkness now illuminated. There is no turning back from five lights – born to a shared will of expression and intent. Five lights is a book from the top shelf, a cookie from the jar above the fridge. It's fire in the hearth or a broken glass sticking back together, if a bit spider-webbed.
The sixth light blazes to life, and the tremors in your hand still, dissipating as if they'd never existed. In six lights, purity of purpose is balanced against the thrill of success. Another disaster averted. Another truth discovered. Six lights is feeling warm during the cold walk to school, feeling full when there's nothing for lunch. Six lights reminds you that everything will be alright, that bones will mend and teeth grow back overnight if you want them to.
Seven lights. There is no darkness now, save for seven shadows all around you, writhing unnaturally from seven lights unflickering. You aren't worried about the neighbours, or about your brother sleeping across the room from you – only you can see the lights.
Sweat from your face drips staining the covers, and steam – or something like it - rises from your open palms. You can see the air warping around the lights that hang impossibly in the air above your tiny bed, though you know that it would take someone else – someone more observant than any of your relatives and neighbours and classmates and teachers – someone looking very closely to notice that anything was amiss. Six lights had done more for your eyesight than glasses ever did.
Seven lights – your exuberance is tempered only by the original memory of desire. You study each light intently, nudging them minutely as improvements to the original pattern pop out at you. You can see them even with your eyes closed – the lights and everything they illuminate are visible in your mind no matter where you look, a problem that manages to unbalance you still.
Seven lights pulse briefly, their pattern held still, under your gaze. Everything must be perfect. Then, at your acceptance, the lights shift orientation. Still held in pattern but spun about an invisible axis, and just as suddenly the sounds of your room are replaced. To your ears the voices of your parents – once a muted buzz from below – now echo and crackle as if from broken speakers to either side of you.
You twist the lights slightly more, nudging the pattern to bring clarity and focus, but by now it's set as if in thick clay. The lights resists you, but perserverence has taken you this far already – you manage to catch the middle of an argument, words that mean nothing as your exhaustion catches up to your efforts. The lights twinkle, and then wink out.
Your hearing is your own once more, filled with your own heavy breathing and the rustle of sheets. Night-time noises paint a harsh contrast against the muted buzz of conversation from below, and any words or inflection you might have caught are swallowed up in the cacophany.
Seven lights. Seven Damned Lights. Eight lights have never been attempted. There's no place for another, no matter how perfect or plain the pattern, how simple the desire or dire the need. Seven is the terminus, where your thoughts become reality. Where you begin to exist, if only for a brief moment.
The last time you attempted seven lights was just before you'd fixed your sight. Your glasses broken, knees and elbows scraped and bleeding from the scuffle. The pattern for the fix was one you'd been working on for days, and the additional light seemed to just slide into place at the forefront of your consciousness. The other boy was still in the hopsital, and you heard – in hushed tones from Susan, who's mother is a nurse – that he might never wake up.
You hadn't meant to knock him out that day, over a week ago. You'd meant to show him something scary, force images into his eyes so he couldn't see you, couldn't chase you down. Before that, you'd meant to make a cupboard, like the one from The Indian in the Cupboard. It bit you, and you burned it in the backyard. Tonight, you'd meant to hear a conversation. At least no one got hurt, this time.
Maybe seven lights are more trouble than they're worth – you could have snuck down with five lights, and no one would have been able to catch you. Seven lights, though, and on purpose this time. You've never felt more alive. The darkness - now held at bay only by a small night-lamp, and a dim glow from the crack under the door - settles tentatively around your sleeping form.
Far in the distance, so far that even if you'd been looking, they wouldn't be visible, seven lights swirl around a man at maddening speeds. He cannot see them, but he knows they're there, what they are, what they do. His lights bring to him scraps of paper from out of thin air, each one covered in the man's looping scribble. After a moment of scrutiny, he pins each to a map on the wall. In a flash, pin and paper both disappear.
The map is full of lights of its own: five layers, three patterns of seven each. As the pairs of pins and papers blink away, dots and names appear on it. The lights flare, nearest the surface first and then working deeper through the layers, each pair creating three patterns of five. One letter to the ministry, one letter to Hogwarts, and one for records here in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
In an office to the north, three patterns of seven flare. Three conjurings peter out, their lights snuffed. A silver instrument whirs on a shelf, and a phoenix croons softly.