Chapter One: In which a scholar is born

Wit beyond measure? Ha! As if real wit could be measured at all! No, if anything the famous and pithy sayings we attribute to the Founders only go to show that political influence is both more strongly felt and more likely to effect real, lasting change in the world than intellectual understandings.
-From a wildly popular series of lectures posted in the Prophet by Simal Sideous, professor of Politics and Rhetoric at the Advanced Magical Institute, Salem, USA


Contrary to popular opinion, Charter magic is not a series of symbols inscribed in some ethereal space which produce effects when called into reality. Instead, the Charter is an agreement between all the people and animals and things of the world—an agreement that creates dependency between all the things that are on the most fundamental of levels, and that is called into effect through the use of Charter symbols. This means that the Charter mage does not seek to create, per se, but to call out that which already is.

Harry paused. Then blinked, and slowly began to pick his way through the page in front of him again. The day hadn't gone so well for him after last night's reading session.

Aunt Petunia had been suspicious of him when she saw that the leftovers from supper had been so neatly broken into, and only the fact that his cupboard door was locked from the outside had dissuaded her from punishing her 'thieving freak' of a nephew. After helping with breakfast and sneaking a few strips of bacon and some toast when his family wasn't looking the exhausted Harry had walked to school.

While for the most part uneventful, Harry's day had been marked by the fuzzy thinking of a boy suffering from sleep deprivation. He had been reprimanded twice in class for nearly falling asleep, and the one time the teacher saw fit to call on him his bleary mind and tired eyes had made a right mess of his basic reading assignment and he'd scored very poorly for the day. To top it all off, Dudley and a few of his friends had cornered Harry in a secluded spot at the playground after lunch and taken turns calling him names and occasionally hitting him. It was a tired, hungry, angry little boy who made it home to number four Privet Drive in time to set the table for supper before being reminded that he was grounded until further notice for having been too lazy while the Dursleys were out the night before.

After managing a little sleep in between the tinny pitch of an evening news report on television and the commotion of Dudley's demands to be taken to another movie that night (interspersed with the Dursleys' gradual weakening to his demands and the sounds of jackets being zipped up and boots treading up and down the stairs) Harry had awakened to the sound of a slamming door, alone again. With the book, again. Now he sat on his bed, the bulb above him brightly shining as he struggled to understand the magic tome that was already starting to change his life.

Literally. The book was beginning to change Harry's mind in ways that he was already able to notice. He had really started to like reading in the past year or so, having used the few story books Dudley received (and promptly discarded) to learn about what life was like in stories, where the Great Dursley Menace didn't exist and the world was bright and cheery. He had started with the story of a very hungry caterpillar, flipping through pictures and picking out words, and then moved on through progressively more involved tales until recently he'd finished Wind in the Willows all on his own. This book, however, felt different than his stories ever had. It was hard and complicated, and while he felt good whenever he understood bits of it, he was an observant enough boy to know that it was far above his level of comprehension. It almost felt as though new words were forcing themselves into his mind, and he was a little frightened of the not-entirely-pleasant feeling of unexpected understandings. Still, the book had proved useful, and the same chance to escape his less-than-pleasant life for new stories was offered in real-life here. He had to at least try.

And it seemed that when he concentrated the more complicated words in the book began to mean things, somehow, as though the book wanted to be read and understood. He was just about to start a section entitled "Pre-Charter History" when he heard a rapid tapping coming from just outside his closet. Switching the bulb off, Harry went still immediately and tried not to even think too loud.

The last time a neighbor had visited while the Dursleys were out he had answered the door. He had just stood there while Petunia's nosiest acquaintance (Mrs. Stephens will do, thank you dear) had relentlessly interrogated him with questions about where his guardians were and why he was alone in the house. Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon was just returning from work when Harry had started to answer. Harry's guardian had expertly sized up the situation, proclaimed the boy to be a runaway just now come back while everyone was looking for him, and chased off the for once well-meaning Mrs. Stephens. That was when Harry's family had started locking him in his cupboard when he was home alone, and he wasn't about to give them an excuse to come up with something nastier to do to him. Despite himself, however, Harry found his curiosity aroused when he heard his name.

"Harry! Harry, I know you're in there! Oh don't be like that, open the door already. Oh where is tha—ah ha!" The voice of Mrs. Figg, a batty old lady down the street who sometimes babysat him whenever the Dursleys decided that he wasn't grounded, filtered through a pair of doors to him most curiously. There was a clicking sound and, much to Harry's alarm, the front door swung open.

"There we are, and they say squibs can't do magic. I may not be able to wave a wand, but enchanted knives work just fine for my-Oh!" Spotting the locked cupboard, the matronly widow shuffled rather frantically across the entry to Harry's hiding place and, scarcely pausing to let the bolt, threw open the door.

"Harry! They didn't hurt you again, did they? I knew I should've checked in yesterday. Those horrid muggles are the worst sort I've ever had the displeasure of knowing! Why, in my day the Ministry would've already—" Without really stopping to consider her charge, his increasingly shocked state, or the no-doubt odd glances she might easily attract by leaving the front door wide open the rumpled Mrs. Figg had Harry out of bed in a trice. She drew from her tartan bag a strange wooden oblong which she passed over him in long, surprisingly steady swipes. Letting out her breath, she stepped back and seemed to first take notice of Harry's own rather rumpled state.

"How long've you been in there, anyway? I wouldn't put it past them to keep you locked up all day. And did you sleep in your clothes? Harry, dear! You might have it rough with these horrible people but that's no excuse to sleep so uncomfortably. Dreadfully unhealthy, and it rumples all your clothes!" She stared expectantly at him.

It took some time for Harry to work past his surprise and speak, and when he did it was with eyes as wide saucers and in the faint, stammering voice of the terribly surprised: "E-excuse me, Mrs. Figg, but w-why are you here?"

"Oh! Right. How silly of me," with a little chuckle the progressively odder-seeming neighbor drew what appeared to be a penlight torch, pointed it straight at Harry's forehead, and clicked it once. Memory flooded through Harry's mind, of conversations held in the lonely times when the Dursleys left him home, crying and scared, of laughter and tears shared between two people similarly isolated by life's own horrible circumstances. Mrs. Figg became Aunty Arabella, no longer (in the words of Uncle Vernon) "a batty old woman with more cats than sense" but now a poor old lady whose husband and son were dead, and who doted on Harry whenever she was sure they weren't being observed. The little penlight became an ominous, powerful tool for protection or destruction, and its frumpy wielder a guardian in every sense of the term. She had been caught in number four a few times with Harry, and through skillful memory-locking and guile avoided worsening either of their situations—leaving the Dursleys rather worse for wear.

After having his memory locked and unlocked so many times over the last few years Harry's reaction was dulled by experience, but he still felt his eyes mist over a little and with a sniffle launched himself toward the surprisingly solid Auntie Arabella.

"Oof! You've been getting bigger, lad. How's this week been then?"

"They've been getting worse Aunty, I've had to steal leftovers while nobody was looking. But I'll manage, I always do." Arabella hugged him closer, then, a little wistfully, released him.

"I'll have to see about getting you a few more nutrition potions, but in the meantime take this." She pressed a stoppered vial of some nasty-looking orange sludge into his hands and watched expectantly until he'd uncorked the cap, shuddered, and downed the lot in one go. "This'll keep your insides growing the way they should be, love, and—Oh!"

With a decidedly undignified squeak she began to root through her bag, producing with another exclamation what looked like surely the oddest book of children's stickers to ever exist. She hesitated in that way she had whenever she was preparing to do some magic and didn't know how much of it Harry should know about.

"Harry, dear? Do you remember when I said that it was possible to make a field of magic that made people do things" As Harry remembered it, he had been just struggling with his reading a few months ago when Mrs. Figg had come by for one of her visits to unlock his memory and chat a little and he had been so frustrated that in what was very nearly a tantrum he had expressed a little of his jealousy that Dudley had help with reading the words in easier books than the one he was trying to get through, and how he wished the Dursleys would at least help him a little.

Aunty had gone a little still at this, then, choosing her words carefully, had explained that if he really wanted more to do with the Dursleys she could probably manage to get them to help a bit. The following information-pump had eventually gotten her to reveal the existence of things called wards, which charged the air around them with magic and made certain things happen. Harry eyed the book of weird stickers with new found respect.

"Yeah, Aunty?"

"Well, I saved up a little and bought this set of runes, and I can make a bit of a ward up here for keeping the Dursleys in-line." Harry's face lit up like a thousand-watt bulb and if Aunty grumbled under her breath a little about "Albus-bloody-Dumbledore" and how he had neglected his duties in setting up protections he was sure he didn't notice. Over the next hour he was able to watch as Mrs. Figg placed the oddest marks about the house—behind the lounge couch, at the threshold, and on the underside of the refrigerator, all the while chattering on about her's and Harry's weeks.

As they usually did, though, the visit from Aunty Arabella ended soon with the growling of the family's returning car. The smiling older neighbor looked in through Harry's cupboard door, penlight in hand, and bid him good night:

"Now, dear, those horrid Dursleys oughtn't be so bad to you. And don't mind if they're a little forgetful over the next few weeks, it's a side effect of the mood-magic I just installed about the house. I'll just be going then, good night!" She clicked the penlight and ambled merrily out the back of the house leaving a very confused Harry in her wake.

He remembered. That very minute, surrounded by the late-evening Dursley clan and its rush to bed, in the aftermath of Arabella Figg's departure when every other time he had felt a muggy, clammy sensation work its way from temple to temple as he forgot the details of her visits to him, he remembered everything with stunning clarity. He remembered when first, as a four-year-old, he had encountered the older lady whose carpet slippers had made no noise at all as she sneaked through the back garden to help him trim rose bushes. He remembered her on-and-off visits over the next few years, her little improvements to his health (Now drink this, I know it tastes bad but it'll help you past that nasty cough), and her frantic actions rushing him to a strange hospital where everybody wore dresses that one time Uncle Vernon had accidentally broken his arm while tossing him into his cupboard. Most importantly of all, he remembered a faint tingling on his forehead right just where the Mark sat, and the sound of an almost-voice, proclaiming its defiance. Like a single strain, pulled from the chorus of the night before, this chime argued passionately for freedom and flight. Though Harry was the only one who could hear it (else Aunty Arabella would most certainly have some back), it would not be silenced. It rang clearly through his skull, somehow managing to push back the fuzzy feeling the penlight had left behind. The two magics fought for control, each pushing against the other fiercely, and each grounded in Harry's very soul. Ultimately it was Harry who tipped the scales.

With a grunt, the last of the Potters screwed up his face and pushed.

"No. I will remember!"

The magics broke apart suddenly, one dissipating entirely, and the other singing faintly through his mind, lapsing back into peaceful quiet with a few last energetic chimes.

"What was that, Boy? You saying something and disturbing our evening rest?" Harry jumped, heart pounding, and managed to get out a fitful "No, Uncle Vernon, sorry sir" before his uncle stomped over, wrenched the door open, and begun the bedtime routine prior to shutting him in for the night.

It was time, Harry resolved, to give that book a very careful read-through.


A/N: Short chapter this time. So many directions to go in, so few legs.