Chapter 2
Disclaimer: If you the reader have not figured out that I am not JKR and therefore do not own Harry Potter, Then you must live in a world that has little contact with reality.
The next twenty months flew by with Harry spending every spare moment that he could in the library either at school or the local public library. He considered the two sisters to be his best friends, always there with a kind word and a new book for him to read. Harry found that he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He devoured books on every subject, from math and science, to mystery, science fiction and fantasy; nothing was out of his scope when it came to learning. Every time he entered one of the libraries, there would be one of the sisters with a new book or a question he needed to research and find the answers to. It was one of these research questions that revealed to Harry Just how different he was than others who were normal. The question that Ms. Prudence had given him was how long it takes for the human body to heal from debilitating injuries such as muscle tears and broken bones. According to the books he read, it usually took anywhere from two weeks to several months for proper healing to take place. Yet for Harry, the longest he had taken to heal from one of his Uncle's beatings was five days and that was one that he suspected that his family thought he would not recover from. At least, they seemed very surprised to see him cooking breakfast when they woke up and came into the kitchen and he heard his Uncle Vernon mutter to himself, wondering how you could actually get rid of the freak if he wouldn't die like a decent person would.
This revelation led Harry to question a few incidents that happened to him in the past. Things like turning a substitute teacher's hair blue, re-growing his hair overnight, unlocking his cupboard from the inside when he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and even speaking to a snake that lived in their garden. All of these things had gotten him called a freak and incited yet another beating from his Uncle. It was almost as if they knew what he was capable of and were determined to beat it out of him. While he had been reading about what the human body was capable of, he found a book about the power of the mind. This book talked about examples of super human strength, extremely heightened senses, perfect control of the body, and even being able to see into the future. It talked about spiritual leaders who could make themselves float through meditation, Martial Masters from the Far East who could make their bodies like iron with proper focus, and even ordinary people who had been able to call on abilities far above the human norm when their loved ones were in danger. The author posited that there were huge untapped wells of abilities in the human mind and body, and they could be reached and unlocked by meditation and self-awareness brought about by an organized mind. Harry became driven to find out what lay inside his own mind. He spent most days in class trying to open his mind. He learned about self-hypnosis, memorization techniques, the art of Zen meditation, and an obscure discipline of organization taught to him by a Tibetan monk named Tzu Zee that Lady Abigail brought in to talk to him and teach him. Master Zee not only trained him to utilize his mind, but his body as well. Master Zee was amazed at how dedicated Harry was to learning to discipline his mind and body, and also how fast this amazing young man picked up each mental and physical technique. One day shortly before he had to go back to his home, he decided to ask Harry why he was so determined to learn and master all the lessons he taught him. Harry's answer left him both astounded and puzzled at the simplicity and yet depth of character that was in his youngest disciple.
"I know that you are here to teach me for a short time," Harry told him earnestly. "And I also have seen that the techniques that you are teaching me for both my mental and physical wellbeing will allow me a head start on the road to reaching my full potential. This means that I must make the exercises and methods you are teaching me truly a part of my mindset so that even when you are gone, from me or from this plane of existence, I can continue to learn and improve myself and those around me." Master Zee was left in a humble frame of mind as he realized that just as the old proverb stated, 'The Master would truly benefit and be taught as much or more by his student, than the pupil he was teaching would gain from the Master.' It was a sad day for both Master and disciple when Master Zee had to leave, but he felt that he had helped the remarkable young man start on his journey to greatness.
Then the day came that changed everything for Harry. While doing his mental exercises in his cupboard before bed, Harry had a break through. He found himself in a huge room with orbs of light zipping to and fro at breakneck speeds with no sense of rhyme or reason. In the center of the room stood a gigantic pillar of solid light of which all else orbited. Harry was at first perplexed by the chaos around him, but then he decided to see what was there. One of the orbs was zipping past him and he reached out and grabbed it for examination. He became immersed in a memory about a red haired woman with green eyes tickling him on his naked belly while he giggled and a familiar dark haired man took a picture of the two playing. He let go and grabbed another, hoping for another memory of her and the sense of love he had when he saw her. Instead, he found himself reliving the first time Uncle Vernon broke his arm when he was three, pain and all. He cried out and dragged himself out of that memory, not wanting to experience it again. Harry now saw what he had not noticed before, that each orb had its own color. There was every color of the rainbow, with different hues for each. As he focused on them, the colors became even more distinct to his sight. Harry decided that he needed to create some order in here and so, being that he spent his best times in the order of a library; he imagined a book in his hands. Not at all surprised that one appeared in his hands, he then called all the red orbs down into the book, red being the color that the Uncle Vernon memory was in.
A veritable storm of red swept at him, and began to overwhelm him with pain as the book no longer was absorbing the orbs. In an act of desperation and pure self-preservation, Harry created an entire set of bookshelves full of books and sent the different reds to different books. There were a lot of different hues, from blood red to a darkish pink color, and they all contained echoes of pain and anger. When this had been accomplished, it became clear to him that there were not a whole lot of the other colors left to sort. Most of his memories seemed to be full of pain and misery, and that realization made Harry begin to see that it was not himself, but his family that were the true freakish ones. Feeling rather tired, he called the rest of the orbs down into books, separated from the red books by walls and shelves of their own. When all that was left was the glowing column in the middle, he imagined walls going up around everything and then he formed his mental library, with the column being the center support hidden behind four walls. Looking at his handy work, Harry smiled and then allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
One thing that Harry had learned but not fully grasped was that the mind has powerful tools that it can access even while you sleep. If Harry had remained in his mental landscape, he would have seen some truly astounding things taking place. First there was a pulse of light that expanded outward from his core, and then he would have begun to hear a pervasive whisper filling every corner of his mental library. Rooms began to form and then separate into entire wings of shelves and catalogues. Then the books all jumped from their shelves and laid out in lines, one for each color, and the orbs began jumping out and back into other books, like dancing water fountains, seemingly at random. As a book would fill, it would jump up and go to a bookshelf, with each color having its own wing. If Harry had examined these books, he would have instantly realized that they were being sorted chronologically, with the front of each book containing the dates it held in its pages, and chapter lists for each incident that was held. When Harry's subconscious mind was done, there were only two things left for Harry to do. One was an entire group of orbs that were hidden by a haze, not allowing Harry or his subconscious to see the colors of the orbs it contained, and the other was the fact that if one looked closely at his central core, he would have seen a web of black lines holding it in check and stopping it from expanding or growing.
When Harry woke, it was to find that his mind seemed to be running at a much increased speed, memories jumping to the front with no discernible waiting. He was able to recall passages from books that he had read as if he were rereading them again. Harry couldn't wait to get started on his chores so that he could head to the library and explore this new found talent. With a brief pause, he remembered the time he opened the cupboard lock from the inside, and with a look of concentration, he focused himself and willed it to happen again. A quiet click and he was free from his cell and could begin his day. Harry felt full of energy and was ready to go, wondering why his Aunt Petunia was not up and yelling at him yet. When he wandered into the kitchen to get breakfast started, he realized why he was the only one up; it was 04:00 am. Harry briefly wondered why he was awake and so full of energy, but he decided not to question his luck, choosing to enjoy this time of peace without the yelling and abuse that he suffered through every morning.
Harry used his talent as he began to call it, to open the lock on the pantry so that he could eat his fill for once. Harry imagined a pulse of energy leaving his hand and becoming a key that fit itself into the lock and matching up to the tumblers inside before turning to release the lock. With an audible click, the lock sprang open and Harry was one step closer to being able to subvert the treatment that he was forced to endure from his family. He figured that if there was no way that a lock would stop him, then as long as he was frugal about what he took and didn't get greedy, they would not be able to starve him again. All that was required of him was practice and patience so he could learn to control his gifts for when he really needed them.
Aunt Petunia had as usual, bought some breakfast pastries for Dudley that were supposed to be for breakfast, and since there was really no way that Harry could get into the pantry without his Aunt unlocking it, he he he, she would hopefully think that Dudley had grabbed a box or two of them. With his subterfuge done, Harry relocked the pantry, put the two boxes of pastries in his cupboard, and then cleaned the kitchen and then swept and polished the floors. He then grabbed the carpet sweeper, thankful for the first time that it had no motor unlike his Aunt's Hoover, and finished with the rest of the downstairs. After he deemed everything was up to his Aunt Petunia's meticulous standard, Harry went back to his cupboard and crawled into the very end where he had long ago found a space behind a board that the builder had left unfastened. It was where Harry hid all his treasures, from books given him, to candies he had filched from Dudley's stash, to a blanket that he had had for as long as he could remember. The great thing about his space was that it was so far back that only Petunia could have found it, and she would never crawl in there, and no matter what he put in there, he never seemed to run out of space to store more.
As he sat enjoying his overly sweet treat, Harry came to the sudden realization that his plan was not conceived very well. While his Aunt might be pleased about the cleanliness of the house, he forgot that he had unlocked his cupboard and that would bring punishment down upon him. While he was deliberating on his mistake, the distinct sound of his Aunt's alarm went off and then he heard the sound of her footsteps as she made her way to the lavatory to get ready for the day. Harry disposed of the wrapper left from his breakfast, and then felt the dread of his coming punishment creep up on him. The fear of what might come left him shaking with fear, pale as a ghost, when His cupboard door was yanked open and the angry visage of Petunia Dursley filled his sight.
"What have you done boy? Did you use your freakishness to open your cupboard again? I will go get your Uncle so that he can teach you proper behavior in my house." Petunia hissed.
With fear came an icy calmness and Harry found himself telling a lie to his Aunt, the first lie he every told to her that he knew he would get away with. "Aunt Petunia, I woke up and my cupboard was open. I thought that you had unlocked it for me to get to work on my chores early, so I got up and cleaned the entire downstairs. Once I was done, I came back here to wait for you to get up so I could start on breakfast. After all, I know I am not allowed to wander around the house if I am not doing my chores." Harry said all this with his head down between his knees, not making any kind of eye contact or motion that Petunia could view as disrespect. He continued, "Do you want me to start breakfast now? I can finish it quickly and then I can start on the garden while Uncle Vernon and Dudley are eating."
Petunia was at first stunned at what Harry had said, but then she decided that they must have finally beaten the freakishness and stubbornness out of him. "Get going with breakfast while I wake up my family, and when you are done with the garden, I don't want to see you again until after dinnertime. Maybe there will be some left over for you to have." With that statement, Petunia headed back upstairs to wake her husband and her darling Dudders, thinking that this might be a good schedule from now on so that she didn't have to interact with the boy except for morning and night. After all, if he didn't get enough sleep that was his problem, being the son of her freak sister. By the time the family came down, Harry was already halfway done with the garden as he had left the cooked breakfast warming in the oven. When Vernon pulled out of their driveway to go to work, Harry was finishing up and preparing to head to the library which he called his fortress of solitude after reading a book about Superman a few months before. Even though the library didn't open till 9:00 am, it had a wonderful little garden area in the back, with benches and a gazebo that Harry liked to use to meditate.
A surprise awaited Harry when he entered his mind scape. Instead of a large room with book shelves, he found an entire village of buildings, from a grocery to a cinema. Harry had never been in a cinema before, but he had read books about the great ones in Great Britain and America from the Golden Age of Hollywood and had always wanted to see a movie in one. Feeling his curiosity surge to an overwhelming level, he ran to the doors and threw them open. What lay before him was a hodgepodge of different styles from the pictures he had seen in the book he read. There were gilt cherubic statues surrounded by neon. Modern ticket booths with vaudevillian chalk board marquees. Circular stairways that led to blank walls and an elevator that had a rickety steel cage door closing it off. Harry was fascinated and horrified at the same time; there were just too many different concepts here that made no sense stuck together. He decided that he really liked the style of the Fox Theater in Westwood, CA and with a shimmer of light, everything changed to fit what he thought it looked like from the pictures. He went into the theater to watch what was on, but only scenes from the movies he had caught a glimpse of on the Dursley's television were playing, and since he had not seen more than ten minutes of any of them, this seemed to be a waste.
Harry walked back out, grabbing a box of gummy bears on his way, and headed to the library. On his way, he passed a bank and decided to go in and look around. Entering the bank, he found teller desks, a manager's office, and in the back of the bank, a massive safe that was locked. Harry tried every way he could think of, but there didn't seem to be any way for him to open it. 'What I need is a team of bank robbers to get this open. After all, that was what that show Uncle Vernon likes showed when the millionaire needed leverage on those politicians.'
No sooner had Harry finished that thought, than a noise came from the front of the bank and a small weasel like man came around the corner, and in a thick Cockney accent said to Harry, "A'right Guvna. Gets out of the way and me an my boys will have you in there in two shakes" Harry laughed out loud and told the strange little man to come find him when they got in.
After a bit more wandering, Harry arrived at the library and found that not only was everything much larger and better organized, but he had a copy of Miss Perkins, Lady Abigail's assistant, manning the information desk. This surprised Harry as he thought that it would be Ms. Prudence or Lady Abigail here, but he realized that if he had copies of them in his head, they would be his organizers and managers. He asked Ms. Perkins what the rules of the Library were, just like he had in real life, but her answers were very different in the library in his mind.
"Any book you look at in the real world, you can read in here in a fraction of the time. That means that glancing at a book page by page will put a copy of it in here." Harry was stunned at this news, as Ms. Perkins continued. "Memories can be accessed by book or in the theater, depending on whether or not you want to relive the experience or just peruse it. Each category of memory is listed in chronological order, earliest to latest, and there is also a chronological series of books that is a copy of all of your memories except for the locked ones in the vault and the one occluded by fog in the basement. Both of those sets of memories will have to be accessed by you, as I cannot get to them to sort. There is also a card catalogue and reference system that can allow you to look at all the compiled data that you have on a subject for easier integration into your thought processes."
Harry was stunned at what she was telling him. If it was true, then he could read a whole library worth of books in days, just by flipping through the pages. He couldn't wait to try it as this would open up so many avenues of knowledge for him. Harry was so excited that he forgot that he had wanted to search out memories of the woman with red hair and green eyes that he saw the night before in the first orb he grabbed. He also forgot to ask about the clouded memories that Ms. Perkins had said were in the basement. If he had, then many things would have changed in Harry's future, most likely with more memories ending up behind that fog. For the next few days, Harry wandered through the shelves of his mental library rereading every book he had ever read, from the primers he learned to read with, all the way on up to the advanced Anatomy and Physiology text he had read yesterday. When he was done, he decided that he had better head home as he would probably receive a beating for being gone so long.
Opening his eyes, Harry looked around and saw that Ms. Prudence was sitting on the bench across from him, doing her own focus and meditation exercises. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement and saw that Lady Abigail was opening the back door of the library. Harry wondered why they hadn't woken him out of his trance in the last few days, they knew what life was like at the Dursley's and had always helped him as much as possible to avoid trouble at home. With a snort, Ms. Prudence opened her eyes and stood up and looked at Harry expectantly while stretching out her arms and legs. When Harry remained silent, she decided to open the conversation.
"Did you have a nice nap Harry? I came over to talk to you, but you were apparently asleep sitting up so I left you alone and did my meditation while waiting for Abby to get here and open the library. I hate to see you so exhausted, but you know that at this moment there is nothing more we can do about your home life without breaking the law ourselves. I cry and pray for your safety every night, but with Vernon's friends on the council, school board, and in Health and Welfare and the Constabulary, the best we can achieve is a stalemate." She seemed about to cry as she looked with sadness at what she considered her and her sister's child. She only wished that one of them could really adopt him, but every time they tried to adopt him, the paperwork would mysteriously disappear or just come back denied for no reason. A couple of times, she or her sister spotted an old man in out of date clothes who stood out front of their house and seemed very frustrated about something, but since he didn't come in the yard and they didn't like the look of him, they never found out why he was around.
Harry was nonplused at what Ms. Prudence was saying, hadn't he been here for days? He decided to just bite the bullet and ask her what day it was. Before he could, Lady Abigail called for them to come quickly as she had something to show them. Harry and Prudence rushed into the library and found Lady Abigail hunched over a tome that looked as if it were a thousand years old. The binding was leather, cracked with age and with dust embedded deep within. It was also huge, easily the biggest book Harry had ever seen. On the cover in an ancient English script was the title, Minde Magycs and Other Worth Wylle Persoutes by Duke Emryss. Harry stood still as a statue while Lady Abigail and Ms. Prudence fussed over this rare treasure. The reason Harry had stopped was that the book had said hello to him. Though Harry knew that that was impossible, and that he must have lost his sanity at some point, he was still curious what his insanity had cooked up. Harry spoke out loud for the first time since waking from his trance.
"Hello book. What are you and how are you talking to me?" Harry kept his gaze locked on the book lest he see the pitying looks on his only friend's faces.
