Harry stared at the wallpaper. He had memorized everything about this room. This was section 218. It had mistake. The 34th dot from the bottom was lighter than the rest of the dots. He wasn't exactly sure why but it bothered him.
A lot.
A lot a lot.
He didn't know why.
He had tried smudging it about 2 years ago to darken it but by morning it was back to being lighter than the rest. He had tried it again the next morning but it had gone back to being lighter.
It was frustrating.
He had tried again for the next week straight before realizing it was a losing battle. No matter if he stayed up all night and stared. At exactly 7 in the morning it would return to its original state. At exactly 7 the wards would reset and anything he did to the room would return to its original state. He should know, he had trashed it several times.
Harry turned to the slot in the 'door' and watched as a food tray materialized. It was 7:30. Food was always served at 7:30 and taken away at 8:30. He looked down at the full English breakfast. 6 years ago his mouth would have watered at the sight. Now. Now it tasted like cardboard.
The menu never changed.
He wolfed it down quickly. It might have tasted like nothing but it kept him alive.
He turned back to the dot. Something about it bothered him. Something nagged at this mind about it and he didn't know why. He had spent months staring at it. He distracted himself sometimes with exercise but, his thoughts always returned to the dot.
The dot.
There was something about that dot that wasn't right. Everything about this room was perfect. A light never flickered and illuminated at the same brightness. Every other dot was the same shade. The roof's stucco was even to a degree that Harry knew was not humanly possible. Even the fucking carpet was perfectly white. Perfectly white. Perfectly.
So why was this dot different?
Why wasn't it the same?
Why?
Harry growled and turned away from the dot. Every time he looked at it he felt like he was close to solving...something. He didn't know what but something about that dot seemed important. Then again he had been stuck in this room for 10 years. So for all he knew it could be nothing but something that his mind had came up with just to occupy the time.
The tray disappeared.
He turned to the shower. He didn't feel like showering. What was he going to scrub off? His skin? He hadn't worked out yet and the room never even had a speck of dust. There was literally was nothing he could dirty himself with other than his sweat.
He started doing push-ups.
He got bored.
If they would just give him some new books or something else to hear on the wireless! He had read every book. Ten times. And the wireless was on a closed circuit. He was sick of the Weird Sisters. If he ever ran into them (highly unlikely given his current predicament) he would kill them. Probably. Kiss them first because that would mean he was out of this Merlin forsaken room but, then kill them.
Probably.
He really just didn't want to be in this room anymore. He would have given his left leg to get out of this room. He had done the pros and cons of both his legs and he had come to the conclusion that his right leg was worth 2.67 times his left. So. If it came to it, the left would go.
Maybe he could get a metal leg like Moody had.
He would rock a metal leg.
Harry was pretty sure he was crazy. Isolation would do that to a person. Humans are social creatures. They aren't meant to be isolated. Page 987. The Human Anthology. Great book. Mostly. The last 200 years had been a shit show.
He suddenly dropped into a lotus position. Page 3. Yoga, The Path to Inner Peace. Took him a week to be able to do this without feeling pain.
He had exactly an hour to flex his magic. He had learned that the hard way. He had tried every day and been on the receiving end of more than one punishment. However they miscalculated. They took away meals. The Dursely's had taken away meals for weeks on end. Missing a couple meals was nothing.
Trial and error had procured the knowledge that whoever was watching him would have lunch between 10 and 11. Or there was a rotation of guards.
He didn't care.
The flexing of his magic had been slow going. It was like trying to move a boulder over Mt. Everest. Improbable but not impossible as many would believe. It just took an immense amount of effort and smart working.
He had worked dumb.
For a VERY long time.
So long.
He wished he had the capability to punch his younger self in the face.
Technically if he punched himself this very moment, in the next he would have punched his younger self...
Nah, that was stupid.
Harry breathed deeply as he began to push his magic out of his body. He had hopped he would find a way to push it so far that the wards would collapse. He had read that in the right circumstances wards could collapse if you could somehow push too much magic into the wards. Kind of an overload. Page 76 of Temples of Magic.
It had been a very dry read.
There.
He felt the wards now.
They were layered and weaved. Weaved was good. It meant that if you collapsed one aspect of the ward, the rest would fall. Kind of like pulling the thread at the end of your shirt and unraveling the entire thing. Harry had unraveled a shirt this way before. Shame. He liked that shirt.
Harry frowned.
Something was wrong.
Or more correctly, something wasn't right.
There was a mistake in the fabric of wards.
Harry's frown deepened. That couldn't be right. The wards were perfect. This room was perf-
Harry suddenly darted from his kneeling position and returned to section 218. He placed is finger on the 34th dot from the bottom and then pushed a negligible amount of magic while expanding his magic once again to feel the wards.
He felt the ripple.
Harry smiled.
He loved this dot.
A lot.
A lot a lot.
And he knew exactly why...
Let me know what you guys think. I've had this idea for years now and I've scrapped it and redone it dozens of times but this was the one that I liked the most. REVIEW!