Disclaimer: Harry Potter and such affiliated characters and concepts belong solely to JKR. I am not making any money from this. The ideas and take on Elemental magic are my own however. Enjoy.
Harry Potter and the Power of Perspective
Perspective. Perspective is not taught, rather, perspective is built. A person's perspective is constructed from the threads of who they are; who they are being an elaborate tapestry woven from the threads of their experiences and choices. It is perspective that determines the road down which a person will travel during their life. It is the same for the elements. Perspective is what opens us to an element. Perspective is the doorway through which we walk in order to understand the elements.
- From the first page of the Elemental Codex
Slowly, Harry opened his eyes, or at least he thought he had. It was so dark that he could barely tell the difference. His eyes felt heavy, as if he had just awoken from a deep sleep. Dozing off in front of the common room fire was his last memory. Seemingly as if the thought of fire could summon it, a flicker of light caught his attention. Harry abandoning his prone position on the cold stone floor in favour of one with a better vantage point, stood up to take a better look at his surroundings.
At first, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Harry wasn't able to make out much of anything. Scanning the darkness for the brief flicker of light, Harry let his gaze swivel as he took in his surroundings. Eyes gradually growing accustomed to the shadows Harry began discern some details of the environment. Looking forward Harry could see a glimmer of light down at the end of what appeared to be a stone hallway. Squinting revealed the beginnings of that hallway, and the smooth stone that it seemed to be carved from. Glancing to his left or right revealed the same sight and a look shot behind him showed yet another hallway, and yet another glimmer.
"Where am I?" Harry asked softly.
The words came out and immediately caught on the smooth stone of the walls. Countless whispers of those words drifted through the air around him. Harry straightened his gazed landed once more on the forward facing hallway. A flicker of reddish light, brighter this time, caught his attention. Instinctively Harry stepped forward and there was a sudden sensation of rushing movement. It was almost as if the small step he had taken had been off the brink of a sharply dropping precipice. Wind swept through his hair, the sheer velocity of it pressing against his skin. Then, just as suddenly, the sensation vanished and Harry blinked. No more than six feet in front of him, revealed at the end of the hallway was a door.
The door didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, rather it seemed as plain as any door you could imagine. Harry was no expert when it came to woodwork but even his inexpert eye could see how the grain ran vertically to the doorframe, and the polished gold handle seemed flow into the door rather than simply be attached to it. Even at a distance the door seemed solid. The wood itself seemed to radiate immovability. Unless Harry missed his guess Harry thought that even if he were to throw all his weight at it, the door would not budge in the slightest. Something about the solidity of the door told Harry a different approach was needed to open it.
Harry's scrutiny of the door had been so intent that at first, he failed to notice the glow that seemed to suffuse the area around the door. Looking down he could see tendrils of pale red light wrapping themselves around his ankles. The light felt warm, he could feel the heat of it through the fabric of his trousers and he found himself relaxing. The light seemed to loosen previously unknown aches. As the aches faded, they were replaced by an odd sensation. The feeling seemed to travel slowly up his legs before fanning outwards into his chest. Harry felt warmth pass through his heart, trace the path of his spine up his neck and finally come to a stop somewhere behind his eyes. As the tendrils of light wound lazily further up his legs Harry a sudden compulsion to step forward. Harry moved towards the door and felt a brief twinge of something inside his head that seemed centered behind his eyes. Harry paid it little mind as he crossed the intervening distance to stand in front of the door.
Without thinking Harry's hand came up and pressed palm forwards against the wood in the center of the door. The wood was smooth and touching it brought the same soothing sensation as the light wrapped around his calves; and then there was the heat. As soon as Harry became aware of the heat, the unnaturally smooth surface of the door rapidly faded from his thoughts. As if becoming cognizant of his undivided attention the heat of the door began to seep into his palm in the same way the tendrils of light worked their way into his legs. Once more he felt the heat trace a path through him. It crept along his arm, into his shoulder, up along his neck until it coming to rest somewhere behind his eyes. The creeping heat left a feeling of something more in its wake. A sense of strength pervaded the affected areas. Harry's other hand came up to press against the door with its twin, and more heat leached into him. The sense of new strength threatened to overwhelm his senses and his vision fuzzed as he struggled with a sudden feeling of dizziness.
Shaking his head to clear it Harry muttered to himself "Merlin, what is this?" This question went unanswered as Harry pondered over the circumstances. Shrugging, Harry turned his attention back to the door.
The heat pouring from the door felt fantastic. It seemed to suffuse him with a strength and vigor that he had never known before. Harry felt as if he had a limitless amount of energy unexpectedly at his disposal; and with it came a creeping compulsion to use it. The moment he became fully aware of this odd compulsion, the urge to use this newfound energy rapidly intensified. Suddenly a thousand times the energy he had felt initially blazed through him and Harry's eyes went wide with surprise.
Harry felt fantastic! He was charged! It was electric, addictive; he could feel the power coursing through him! Never before had he felt so alive! He simply burned with energy and interlaced amongst it all was an incredible urge to make use of it. He could feel it, like fire beneath his skin and it was searing him for his inaction. It was almost as if the blood in his veins and been replaced with liquid fire. Harry looked down at his arm, fully expecting to see his skin aglow with bright light of fiery blood but it seemed normal. Abruptly, the spot behind his eyes roared into life and his vision went blurry. As the sensation behind his eyes faded into the background his vision cleared, and then blurred again as he focused through the lenses of his glasses. Taking them off to better see what was blurring hi sight Harry immediately noticed his vision clear as soon as the glasses were free from his face.
Now Harry really knew something was different. The obvious first being the fact that he could see clearly without his glasses; a feat he had been unable to accomplish since he was young. Secondly, his vision was clearer than he could ever remember it being. Harry looked at the door in front of him and he noticed there were several things about this door that had completely escaped his awareness before. Lining the door was what Harry had previously taken as the grain"of the wood. Harry could see now that this "grain" was in fact an intricately worked script. Loopy and flowing, the script was a mesmerizing sight. The whorls of the script seemed to dance, and flicker as his gazed passed over them. The meaning of these whorls completely escaped Harry, but they were beautiful. A truly fine edge would have been needed to engrave them in such a way. Harry saw other things as well. The gold-wrought handle of the door did in fact "flow" into the door. Even with his acute vision he couldn't see line of where one blended into the other.
Energy still blazed through Harry and he found himself revelling in the feeling. Caught up by the feeling of power, Harry found himself abruptly on the brink of losing himself. Teetering on the razor edge of what was surely oblivion, Harry checked himself before he fell to either side. All at once rationality came crashing down like a bucket of the coldest water and Harry's mind was abruptly clear. The feeling behind his eyes hissed like a red hot iron, suddenly thrust into the quenching barrel and Harry could feel it's rage at the injustice. Harry was shocked, but he now possessed a more keen awareness of what was going on and used that to fight as hard as he could for control. Inch by inch Harry battled the blaze inside his mind back, and it receded to a dull roar.
Stepping back from the door Harry attempted to gather his scattered thoughts. He was sweating he realized, a thick sheen of sweat drenched him from head to toe. Despite this, Harry could not help but feel as if he had been purged of something. He was exhausted, but somehow that ache was satisfying. I was akin to the feeling of accomplishment after a long day of hard work. Resolving to contemplate that later he turned his attention back to the matters at hand.
The fire behind his eyes still blazed, occasionally lashing out, vying against him for control, but he was able to keep it in check. Thus distracted Harry failed to notice his hand moving slowly towards the handle of the door, seemingly of its own accord. By the time the realization that his hand was on the handle it was too late. His hand tightened, twisted, and heat like he had never felt before swept through him. Just before he lost himself completely to the fire Harry could recall throwing the door open and stepping through into a brilliantly flickering orange light. The light seared him to his bones and after that, he remembered nothing.