AN I own absolutely nothing, which is exactly how much money I am making from this. Zero zilch nadda. Enjoy!
Many ideas were impressed upon Harry Potter, in Number 4 Private Drive, by his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. He was a complete waste of space that is why he was kept in the cupboard under the stairs instead of one of the two free bedrooms in the house. He should be grateful that his aunt and uncle took him into their wonderful house, hence why he had to do all the chores to maintain said house. He was lucky to get any food at all, which is why he had to cook all their meals which were correspondingly huge due Uncle Vernon and his Cousin Dudley being the size of a grown and baby seal respectively.
But there was one more idea that they forced down his throat more than any other. It was that there was no such thing as magic. Even saying the word was enough to get Harry locked in his cupboard for a week with no meals. It was even worse if something unnatural occurred around Harry. He and his "freakishness" were often blamed even though he did not understand how those strange things happened let alone how he could have done it. For a long time he did not realized the contradiction between these two trains of thought. However that all changed however one April morning when he was nine.
It was the Saturday before Easter and Harry had escaped his cousin Dudley and his gang by hiding in the bushes in the park. Dudley's friend Peirce, after giving up on their game of Harry Hunting began relating a movie he had seen on tv recently.
"So then the guy puts his stick on the ground and in turns into a snake that eats the other to snakes the court wizards had made out of their sticks."
His description of the scene was met by many remarks of "cool" and "wicked". Harry from his hiding point could only imagine what Uncle Vernon's reaction would be if he related such a story. Honestly it was like he thought Harry would go about turning sticks into snakes. Harry chuckled silently to himself at the thought. After all one could not simply turn sticks into snakes. That sort of thing just didn't happen.
Ah a little voice said in his head. But teachers wigs do not suddenly turn blue. Sweaters don't just suddenly shrink. Hair doesn't grow back overnight, and six year olds don't randomly end up on the top of buildings two stories high.
Harry frowned as he considered this. All those things had happened to him. And besides the sweater he had been punished for them even though it was impossible that he could have caused them. But they always insisted it was his fault like he had caused those things to happen by… by magic.
Harry sat frozen in his hiding place as his tried to comes to grips with what he had reasoned out. The rational part of his mind wanted to deny the existence of magic but another side wanted it desperately to be real, if only to allow him to understand why the Dursleys treated him so horribly. But how could he be sure which was right? He needed a test. But what?
Suddenly the scene from the movie Piers had relayed came to mind and Harry quickly picked up a stick that was lying on the ground. He stared at it for a minute before realizing he had no idea how to change it into a snake. He had certainly never done anything of the sort before. Biting his lip in concentration stared at the stick, imagining it slowly changing into a snake and slithering to the ground. Then stick changed in his hand. The rough bark became smooth scales, and its once rigid form turned to look at Harry.
'Unhand me human" it hissed at Harry who put it down with a quick 'Sorry.'
The snake slithered away from him coiling up into a circle looking at him. Harry was in a shock. First off he had actually managed to turn the stick into a snake. Now he had a live snake in front of him and had no idea how to handle a snake.
'Easy there I don't want to hurt you. I'm just going to get up. Just don't move and you won't get hurt.'
The snake nodded its head like it understood. Harry got up and slipped out the back of the bushes, creeping quietly to avoid Dudley and his gang. When he finally felt he was safe from other boys it stuck him that the snake had talked to him and he had talked back.
A whole new world opened for Harry that day. The fact that he got to hide it from the Dursleys only made it sweeter. He began looking up books in the school library on magic, esp, and snakes. He found that his ability to talk to snakes was not only limited to ones he transformed. They were all deferential to him as he was a speaker. As such he felt a bit more confident in transforming sticks into snakes.
But that was not the extent of his experiment of his power. One afternoon in the summer he hid once again in that little opening in the bushes in the park with a bundle of leaves he had picked. By the time He had to go back to make dinner he had succeeded in picking one up without touching it. At the end of summer he could levitate stones the size of his fist.
Harry turned next to trying to predict the future. It was frustrating as there was very little consensus on methods on how to do so. In the end he came up with his own test. He tried to predict the next card to come out of a deck of cards but found the whole exercise to be frustrating and gave up on any form of prediction being part of his abilities. Telepathy was also disappointing. He felt he could sometimes get surface emotions when he looked people in the eye but it was confusing and nowhere near what mind reading was like in the books and comics he managed to read.
As the year progressed he started experiment with trying to transfigure food. He was never really given enough food even when he wasn't being punished for his abilities. He found he was not able to transfigure sticks or other things into food. However one evening when he was eating in the kitchen he found he was able to increase the amount of food so long as he had some. So for the first time since he arrived at the Dursleys he got proper sized meals.
That was not the full extent of his exploration of his newfound power to change things into other things. He found that it was easier to change thing into things that resembled them. For instance it was easier to change a stick into a snake and a rock into a tortoise than to change an acorn into a pencil. Also the bigger the object the more tired he felt when he tried to change it.
Not only that but one day after his uncle had told him yet again to comb his hair Harry got an idea. He went into the lavatory and looked in the mirror at his messy hair. It had resisted every attempt to tame it. Even when Aunt Petunia tried to shave it all off it had grown back the next day. It seemed strange to think that somehow his powers were keeping his hair messy, but if that was true did that mean that the power to tame it also rested with his abilities. Concentrating on his hair Harry sent his mind through the visualization that he use when changing items. Only this time he saw his hair flattening out and parted on the right to show off the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead.
Uncle Vernon was shocked when he saw Harry. When he asked what happened Harry simply told him that he combed his hair like he had been told. Uncle Vernon could only grunt in confusion and go back to his paper. It was the beginning in a subtle change in Harry's relationship with the Dursleys. The verbal put downs did not come as often and Harry did not have to use his food multiplication trick as much. Not only that but as he started practicing using his powers they had stopped slipping out at unexpected times. As such he had not been locked in his cupboard with no meals for months. Even so he was still painfully thin.
The school year went by. He really made little progress in finding more avenues for his abilities. He had managed to create a fire, but it ran out of control and he only just managed to put it out by moving a drift of snow onto it. After that incident, he decided it was too dangerous to explore that avenue for the time being.
The next discovery he made was about his ability to speak to snakes. It was his Cousin Dudley's birthday. By coincidence Mrs. Figg, who would often look after him when the Dursleys went on outings, had broken her leg. As such she was not able to take care of him. So Harry found himself at the zoo with Peirs and Dudley. After Dudley left a large python Harry came up and began talking to it about Brazil. Then Dudley pushed Harry to the side so he could ogle the snake which was much more animated. If it had happened a year ago Harry suspected a bit of his power would have slipped through. But as it was, he just glared up at his cousin.
After a few minutes of Dudley and Peirs gawking at the confused and annoyed snake Peirs surprised Harry by turning to him and saying.
"Hey Potter try hissing at the other snakes here to try to get them to move.
"Sorry?" Harry said confused.
"You were hissing at the snake before it started moving so go do it to the others so they will start moving."
Harry got up slowly, aware that Uncle Vernon was looking at him with narrow eyes. He walked up a window that went up to the glass that had a king cobra behind it. He wasn't sure what to do. He just remembered talking English to the snake but Peirs said that he had hissed at it. Could it be possible that when he talked to snakes he was speaking a different language?
Deciding that the best course of action was to repeat what he did with the python Harry started up a conversation with the cobra about India. Occasionally Dudley and Peirs tried to imitate Harry but only produced hissing sounds but occasionally Harry would hear a random word like "stick" or "rabbit".
When he was back in his cupboard that evening he tried to go over what he had just learned about his ability to talk to snakes. He was not speaking English even thought that was what it sounded like to him. Not only that but other people could accidently speak words in this language by hissing. Though it was clear that neither Dudley nor his friend new they were speaking a different language, but still it was food for thought.
The end of the school year came soon after that. Normally Harry made sure to score lower on tests than Dudley. But in a fit of confidence, partly due to the change in treatment he got from adults now that his hair was neatly combed and partly due to the fact that this was the last time he would be going up against Dudley in grades as his cousin was going off to Smeltings while Harry would be attending Stonewall High, Harry decided to give his all to the test. While he did not get the highest score on the test he did impress several of his teachers. So on the last day of school they praised him and by extension the Dursley's for "the amazing turn around in his attitude".
Though they did not know it, Harry was very grateful for the way his teachers worded his sudden upswing in grades. By implying it had something to do with the Dursley's "parenting" it allowed them a way to take credit for it and thus he went unpunished for "showing up Dudley". Instead Uncle Vernon just took the compliment.
"Oh it was nothing… Just a firm hand was needed. You know how it is with these… troubled types after all."
All in all he could not believe how much his life had changed in the last year. He had no idea that it would pale in comparison to the changes that fate had in store for him in the coming one.
AN So there it is. Please review and tell me what you think. I have some idea about where I want this story to go but I am open to suggestions.