Chapter 2: Light

"Urgh!"

The grunt came from a small boy, raven black hair still somewhat messy even under what might have been an entire bottle of hair gel adorning the top of his head, bent and scratched wire glasses on his face. The boy stood in the shadow of a small group of trees in the local park in Little Whinging, Surrey. His hands were held together, a grimace of focus on his young face. Harry Potter was trying to learn the Level 0 Evocation spell Light. In his hand he held a precious firefly, the material component recommended for the cantrip. It had taken a lot of effort to catch a firefly, and Harry was going to make good use of it. But the cantrip did not seem so easy to learn. In fact, Harry was beginning to wonder if he even was a sorcerer, or if he had simply imagined the whole thing. But to young Harry Potter, an enraged Uncle Vernon was the most terrifying thing he could imagine, and so he persevered.

Light, according to the book, had a verbal and a material component, and he had the material component. But there was no description of what the verbal component should be. So Harry had been ignoring it. But now, he felt there was no choice. So Harry decided he would just start shouting words, and hope one of them worked. Forcing himself to try to shove magic out through the hand holding the firefly, Harry let out a yell. "Light!" Nothing happened. He tried again. "Light!" Nothing. "Light, light, light, light!" he screamed. Still nothing. Harry groaned. "Let there be light!" A desperate attempt, but no result. "Light!" he tried one more time, one desperate time. A flicker, a tiny tingle in his arm. Nothing more than the light of the sun glancing off of a wristwatch, little enough that Harry checked his wrist instinctively despite not even owning a wristwatch. A moment later the young boy was dancing for joy, bouncing in and out between the trees. He had done it! Not well, to be fair, but Harry Potter was officially a sorcerer, and he could learn to control this previously uncontrollable and terrifying power.

After his initial success, Harry practiced every time he was out of the house. But he made no further progress other than the occasional flicker. He consulted the book again. There was nothing for it, he decided. The book said that sorcerers improved their skills in adversity, and so adversity it would be.

As long as he didn't make any noise or cause any trouble, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon gave Harry pretty much an entirely free rein. They would rather not think about him, and that suited Harry just fine. So they never checked where Harry was at night, and Harry never told them that he would walk to the local park, wander into the trees, and practice magic. He thought they'd probably rather not know. So Harry lost himself in the trees, and with creating light his only chance of finding his way out before morning, there was certainly adversity to be had. He only stayed out until morning once.

The following week he began to learn Ray of Frost. And before long, school started again. Harry continued to practice his magic, but with less urgency now, and with less free time to do so. And so the school year passed. And another, and soon it was the beginning of summer and almost at Dudley's birthday. Harry still had not mastered Ray of Frost, but he used Light from time to time when he stayed out too late, or on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But there had also not been any more incidents, and so Harry was happy.

Before too long it was June 23rd, Dudley's birthday. Harry woke with the sun and slowly got up and dressed, before going down to breakfast, observing Dudley's huge pile of gifts. He tuned out his cousin's whining about the quantity of gifts received, and served himself some bacon and toast, thinking about his own upcoming birthday, and wondering if he would get as good a gift as he had the previous year, when Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had gifted him a pair of brand new glasses, the best present he'd ever had. Even Dudley had given him something, although it was only a book left over from the chubby boy's own birthday five weeks previous. This year Harry was hoping for a new Stonewall High uniform, as he didn't want to wear Dudley's cast-off hand-me-downs dyed grey on his first day at his new school. After all, there was only one first day of high school, and he would have to attend for another seven years. A good first impression would be important.

Harry was startled out of his reverie by the ringing of the telephone. Uncle Vernon picked it up and made a few unintelligible grunts down the line, before putting the receiver back down. "Mrs. Figg broke her leg," the walrus-like man grunted in Harry's general direction. "I guess you're coming to the zoo with us and Piers." Harry smiled in response. He'd always wanted to go to the zoo.

Piers arrived not much later and he, Harry and the Dursleys crammed into Uncle Vernon's car, with Harry naturally in the middle seat. The journey to the zoo passed quickly, especially as Uncle Vernon seemed to consider it his civic duty to exceed the posted speed limit by at least ten miles per hour at all times. By the zoo entrance there was an ice cream truck, and Petunia bought ice creams for the boys, even allowing Harry a cheap but delicious ice lolly.

Once they entered the zoo, Piers and Dudley ran off to cause trouble immediately, and Uncle Vernon rushed to the nearest bench to sit down, Petunia following. Harry was left on his own, just as he liked it.

It was a hot day and it didn't take long for Harry to gravitate to the only indoor space in the zoo, the reptile house. Harry let his eyes adjust to the dim light, and then went to see what he could see. He checked out a few exhibits before his attention was captured by a magnificent, huge snake. "Wow," he breathed, "what a beauty you are!" To his shock, the snake replied.

"Thankssss," said the snake. Harry jumped. That was odd. He supposed it was part of being a sorcerer. He glanced around the reptile house quickly. He knew Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia wouldn't like this. But they weren't there, and neither we're Dudley and Piers, so guiltily, Harry returned his attention to the snake. "I really shouldn't talk to you," he said, "Uncle Vernon would get quite upset. But he's not here, and wow, a talking snake! Can you talk to anyone, or ist it just me?"

"Jusssst you," the snake replied. "Do you have a mousssse? I'm hungry."

"No, I'm sorry," Harry whispered back sadly. "I wish I did, I know what it's like to be hungry. Do you not like it here?"

As the boa constrictor was about to reply, Harry was roughly barged to the ground. Collecting his wits, he saw Dudley and Piers staring at the huge constrictor. "Cool!" Dudley said.

"Yeah!" replied his sidekick.

Harry stood up, watching as Dudley banged his fist against the glass. He felt sorry for the majestic beast, trapped in a cage, forced to endure the stares of rude and cruel children like Dudley and Piers. All of a sudden Harry felt a change in the feeling of the air around him, and he watched as the glass vanished beneath Dudley's hand and his pudgy cousin fell forward into the enclosure. Chaos erupted as the fat boy's screams attracted passersby and zookeepers, horrified by the escape of a huge predator into the outside world. As the boa constrictor slithered out, Harry could have sworn it turned and winked at him. "Ssseee ya, amigo."

Uncle Vernon barely looked Harry's direction on the way home, and nobody spoke a word. Even Dudley could tell it wasn't a good time to demand his parents' attention. Harry knew this was his fault. He didn't doubt that his control over his magic had slipped, and he knew why. When he had been practicing Light, his greatest successes and breakthroughs had been at times of high emotion and high need, and this was no different. He had let his magic slip because he had been upset about the treatment of his new friend. But fortunately Uncle Vernon had no proof, and so while Harry was sent to bed without supper, and Vernon and Petunia's earlier pleasant moods had evaporated, there were no further punishments.

Harry woke up early the next morning to Aunt Petunia rapping her knuckles against his bedroom door, and once he announced his consciousness her shrill voice penetrated through the wood into his room. "Get up, get dressed, quickly now, do your chores and then out of the house until dinner, you understand? Chop chop!" Harry sighed and picked up yesterday's clothes off the bedroom floor. Dudley's hand-me-downs were no worse today than any other day, he supposed. And if he got downstairs quickly maybe he could get some breakfast before Vernon woke up.

Harry snuck a quick breakfast and got straight to work on his chores, finishing the dishes, the dusting and the weeding in record time before heading straight to the library. Usually he might have gone to the park, or wandered the neighborhood, but today he had research to do.

Harry eventually decided that the Player's Handbook was just wrong. Speak with Animals wasn't even a Sorcerer spell, and while maybe it could have been Tongues that allowed him to speak to the snake, he wasn't sure that snakes actually had a language. Even so, Tongues was 3rd level, and Harry was pretty sure that he wasn't 3rd level, given that he could barely manage to cast a single cantrip. This was pretty hard for Harry to take, as the Player's Handbook had so far been his best source of information. He made a mental note of the cantrips he still wanted to learn, and walked out of the library, head down, into the June sunshine.

Harry paid little attention to where he was going, but when he did look up, he realized he'd made a mistake. Usually at home Dudley was indifferent to Harry, or kind in the condescending way one could only be when they had everything and you had nothing, but Harry had just come across Dudley with his entire prepubescent gang. Usually Harry spotted them from a few blocks away and turned down a different street to steer clear. But today he had been too distracted. He had seven more years to go living with the Dursleys, and his most reliable source to prevent accidental magic had just proven to be not so reliable. So he had wandered up almost directly to Dudley's group. And Dudley's day had been ruined yesterday at the zoo. When Harry had been there.

Piers, Gordon, Timmy and the rest began jeering and leering as Dudley strode over to Harry. "Potter!" he yelled. "You think it's funny to ruin my birthday, huh?" Harry's stuttered attempts to deny his involvement fell on deaf ears as Dudley squared up to his cousin and planted a meaty fist in the smaller boy's face. Harry fell to the ground, blood pouring from his nose. "That'll teach you," Dudley crowed, before picking up his bicycle from where it rested on the curb and riding off. His gang picked up their own bikes and followed, though Piers made sure to kick Harry's foetal form on his way.

Eventually Harry recovered from the shock, but to his horror, he realized that his glasses were broken. He knew that getting new ones was not an option, as Petunia and Vernon would be unlikely to pay for anything for him at the best of times, but right now he was on thin ice. But at the same time, Harry was incapable of doing anything without them. He was as blind as the proverbial bat, surely one of the reasons that he had been gifted the glasses to begin with. You can't pull up weeds if you can't see them, that's for sure.

Fortunately, Harry had been planning to try to learn a new cantrip today, although he had not yet decided which one. It looked like it would be Mending.

Five hours later the sun was beginning to hasten its descent from its zenith. Harry knew he would have to get back to number four soon, or miss dinner, but he still had not figured it out. By luck and memory as much as by sight, Harry had navigated the neighborhood to Mrs. Figg's house on Wisteria Walk. The older lady had gasped at the sight of him, but had hobbled on her one good leg to let him in, and allowed him to clean up in the downstairs bathroom, before declaring that she was going to take a nap, and to let himself out when he was ready. Harry was certainly ready to leave the musty, cat-odored house almost as soon as he entered, but he had decided to make use of the privacy, not guaranteed anywhere else in Little Whinging, to work on the cantrip.

The Book said that there was no material component for Mending, for which Harry was very grateful. So he decided to use 'mend' as the verbal component and got to work trying to force magic through his body into the shattered glasses. Over and over he tried, yelling "Mend!" as loudly as he dared without waking Mrs. Figg or causing the cats to panic, but again and again it failed to work. Almost in tears, desperate for some kind of breakthrough, he changed tack "Repair!" he yelled. "Repair, oh repair!" Instantly the glasses were whole again. Harry let himself out Mrs. Figg's front door not two moments later.

The evening meal was uncomfortable and silent, but within a few days the Dursley household returned to normal, and Harry's birthday was fast approaching when one day his uncle sent him to bring in the mail as the Dursleys were sat at breakfast. Harry thought nothing of it, but his heart rate spiked as he saw the letter on top of the pile, a brown envelope inscribed with glittering emerald ink:

Mr. Harry Potter,

The Smallest Bedroom,

Number Four, Privet Drive,

Little Whinging

Surrey

He heard Uncle Vernon lever himself up from the kitchen table, and quick as a flash the strange letter was shoved into the oversized pocket of Dudley's hand-me-down tracksuit bottoms. And Harry walked into the kitchen to hand Uncle Vernon the rest of the mail.


A/N: All recognizable aspects of character and plot belong to J.K. Rowling. Again, a great debt is owed to the story which most influenced this one, Noodlehammer's For Love of Magic. But anything not recognizable is my own. Please feel free to read my much longer Forgotten Realms fic, Thirdboy. I think it's quite good.