Chapter Name: Summer Holidays
Lilith's discovery about the 'Holy Magic' stench in Mrs Figgs house caused her to watch the house very carefully over the next few months in the hopes that whom ever left it would return but unfortunately they never did. The incident had however instilled a caution into Lilith, there was someone else out there that knew magic and they were not part of her fraction, worse yet they were most likely her direct enemies. She didn't believe that she was strong enough to take them on at her current power level and so had toned down her activities until she could find out exactly what she was currently facing.
Now trying to cut back on the sheer amount of carnage she made, Lilith continued to teach Harry 'Black Magic' as a way to distract herself. They slowly progressed into more complex spells rather than the simple yet destructive black magic flame spell harry started with. The progress was heavily slowed by the fact 'Black Magic' like most of the magics Lilith knew, requires an innate understanding of the forces you were dealing with.
Lilith would admit there and then that she was not the best at describing concepts, a fact made worse by the radical differences in how Harry and Lilith both viewed the world.
Humans viewed the world through five senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. They existed in a world of four dimensions and often had difficulties grasping concepts of scale and time as well as the simple laws of physics.
Mazoku were radically different, existing in the astral plane they could 'touch' and 'envelop' anything in the physical world and suddenly know its properties without seemingly interacting with said object. A Mazoku quantum physicist is a frightening concept. Talking about concepts, the concept of time for a Mazoku is also fundamentally different, thanks both to a Mazoku's technically eternal lifespan and the fact that they think much faster than a human.
Additional differences come from the fact that a Mazoku can easily change its apparently human body to bring in more sensory information than normal, the ability to see throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, super acute hearing and smell are not uncommon adaptations.
Then finally one must factor in that Mazoku are highly empathic creatures, capable of sensing the emotions of anyone around them. This brings a whole new level to social interaction as you could sense, 'taste', another persons emotions. Even if you can not directly see a person you can sense them from afar, ambushes are not something Mazoku are common to fall prey to unless distracted.
All in all, Lilith was having a small nightmare describing various concepts to Harry. So in true Mazoku style she decided to cheat and hence the pair began spending a lot more time out of the house, going to the library. The Dursleys were particularly pleased by this turn of events and even coughed up the money for a rail card so Harry could go to the library anytime he wanted, although one shouldn't mistake this for an act of charity or kindness. More it was an attempt to get Harry and that Demon of his away from them as long as possible without seeming to get rid of them, as more direct attempts ended in nothing less then total disasters.
So whenever Harry got out of school he would head down to the local library, sometimes with a raven, cat or a wolfish dog following him. Lilith initially directed Harry to study books on maths and science, slowly advancing in level as he began to master the concepts. Lilith's reasoning to this was revealed to Harry, a solid understanding of physics would better help him master the spells that break those very same laws, she likewise began to teach him small things about her people and the history of the world as she knew it.
Reluctant in the beginning as most school kids who had to learn out of school were, Harry dragged his feet much to Lilith annoyance but when he began seeing marked improvements in his attempts at 'Black Magic' he threw himself back into his studies. Getting away from the Dursleys was a great bonus as well and Harry began enjoying spending time at the library, often staying as long as he could. It wasn't just educational books that he read, he began scouring the library for interesting books. Some of the ones at the top of his list were fictional books about magic and he often pestered Lilith whether certain spells were possible or not with the magic he learned. More often the answer would be 'not possible', which really meant that Lilith wouldn't bother wasting power even letting him attempt them and Harry quickly learned that Lilith seemed much happier whenever they tried more 'naturalistic' or 'druid' type spells.
A slow and painful to reach curbstone was finally reached when Harry successfully managed to summon an animal back at his bedroom in the Dursleys house, it was only a small sparrow but was amongst the most difficult spells that he had attempted. The black flame spell he had learned at first whilst much more destructive was just a simple power burn, the bird summoning represented complex spell arrays and hence was a much more impressive show of how far he had progressed.
Harry was not the only one that was progressing in power, Lilith was on a continuous hunt for new magical items that she could drain for power as well as new books and trinkets to study. Over the months she had grown significantly, enough to start attempting non animal forms and so began her first foray into attempting a humanoid body. Mostly so she could blend in better, although opposable thumbs would be nice. They were not desperately urgent however as Lilith could easily use her magic as a form of 'telekinesis' in which to manipulate things.
Not unexpectedly most of the body forms that Lilith attempted tended to look somewhat animal like, only the more powerful Mazoku could transform into something that looked human thanks to the power requirements. Lilith was not left without options and one of her more favorite body forms was a gray grim reaper type cloak and hood, mostly thanks to the fear it inspired in others. She even had a rattling voice and scythe to go along with it... such fun.
Harry seemed to find the humanoid animal bodies that Lilith manifested amusing and began suggesting various different body types from these 'Manga' books that he was reading at the library. Lilith decided to humor him and tried out body forms similar to those in the books, surprisingly the results were not bad looking despite their inhuman appearance. Lilith discovered another favorite body form of hers which was a red furred humanoid werewolf type body similar to Lord Beastmasters monstrous form but without the wings and cats tail.
The increasing power of Lilith did have its own side effects, the aura of coldness that Harry gave out began to get more powerful, to the point that you could feel a chill whenever you approached Harry and it was beginning to having an unnerving effect on the other kids at school. You could literately see how far the aura extended during break times as the other kids would circle around Harry whenever possible, leaving an empty space about ten foot in size around him.
The increasing alienation by everyone around him left him feeling bitter and began pushing Harry even firmer to the one person who still listened to him, Lilith.
It was during his dreams that Lilith showed him the wonders of some of the locations that she had been to or memories of places that her progenitor had been to. Harry could close his eyes and picture the heart wrenchingly beautiful golden statues of Azathoth, the great creator and one of the few things in existence that seemed to truly scare Lilith. Lilith had whispered secrets of the universe and magic to him during those dreams and by the time the summer holidays Harry's eyes had been opened to a much vaster world that often left him stunned by the scale and power of some of the entities out there.
The summer holidays came and the Dursleys left for a long summer holiday, having 'accidentally' forgotten to book a seat on the plane for Harry. On principle Lilith scared the living shit out of them for their rather obvious tactics but in the end left them to go off on their holiday. Harry was vaguely tempted to call a social worker but realized it wasn't worth the hassle to get the Dursleys in trouble for and it would be more comfortable to just hang around the house without the Dursleys. They spent the first week of the holidays in the house, Lilith had gotten a new game for the computer which she found to be particularly amusing.
Harry could see why, Dungeon Keeper was one of the games were you got to play as the bad guy, killing all the self righteous heroes. It seemed to be the sort of thing that was right up Lilith's street, although it was somewhat disturbing to see her constantly torturing any dragons that made the mistake of stepping into her dungeons, whether they be her own or enemy.
Not much else interesting happened until a week before Harry's birthday, he had been coming down the stairs for breakfast when he stepped on the half devoured corpse of an owl. Wincing in pure disgust, he lifted his foot and tried to wipe the bottom of it clean of the blood and gore.
Stepping into the kitchen he saw Lilith in her classic wolf body with a bloodied muzzle, he scowled at her. "That. Was. Disgusting," he pronounced clearly and with the full flavor of his disgust as he headed to the tap to wash his hands.
Lilith gave him a wolfish grin and then motioned her head towards the table. 'A letter came for you...'
Harry paused in using wet kitchen towel to wipe the soles of his feet and looked up at her. "A letter?" he questioned curious, wondering who would be sending him a letter. It wasn't like he usually got mail.
'Parchment with green ink, magical, came with the owl,' Lilith mental reply came into his head sounding somewhat curious herself, the magic wasn't holy but it wasn't something she was entirely familiar with either.
Harry tossed the wet kitchen towel in the bin and padded over to the table. "What the..." he muttered as he looked the letter over, Lilith was correct it was written in emerald green ink on some yellowish envelope.
Mr H. Potter
Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
Harry was more than a little disturbed that they knew where he slept but opened the letter and read the content carefully.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)
Dear Mr Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Harry flipped to the other piece of paper which was indeed a list including cauldrons and robes.
Harry stared at the pieces of paper for a long moment as he struggled to put his thoughts together, after several minutes he finally had something deep and meaningful to say besides 'blah..'. Various emotions like elation and confusion rushed through him in short order.
"What. The. Fuck?" Harry stated each word singularly and with emphasis as he stared at the paper before turning back to Lilith. "Is this for real?"
'There is real magic involved in the creation of the letter and I didn't do it, if thats what you asking' Lilith commented somewhat bored, the owl had come early this morning, so she'd had a few hours to examine and think about the letter.
"Wow..." Hurry impressed by the fact their was a school for magic somewhere, he knew Lilith had been searching high and low for magical stuff so it must be pretty well hidden where it was. Harry looked all the letter over for contact details which there were none.
"How are we supposed to get in contact with the school?" Harry asked plainly as he stood confused with the letter in his hands. "'We await your owl' what on earth does that mea...".
Harry paused as something came to him, he padded out into the corridor and looked at the half devoured owl. "Do you think they mean that owl?" he asked Lilith theoretically as he pointed to the dead owl, "how are we supposed to send that owl back?".
Lilith thought for a moment 'We could mail it back to them,' she suggested with a dark amused sub tone.
Harry dropped his head and sighed in defeat before padding back into the kitchen.
Lilith tilted her head at him from her position on the floor 'What are you going to do now?' she asked curious.
Harry pulled a box out from one of the cupboards. "I'm going to do the only thing I can do. I'm going to have my frosted shreddies," he stated firmly as he set a bowl down on the table, "if they can't be bothered to put a return address in, then I can't be bothered trying to send a reply."
He headed to the fridge to get some milk, stopping to point at Lilith. "You on the other hand are going to get rid of that owl, because that is frankly disgusting and don't pretend you didn't do it deliberately," he stated firmly as he glared accusingly at Lilith.
Lilith gave another wolfish grin but faded out of existence to dispose of the owl whilst Harry collapsed into his seat and began making himself some cereal. Perhaps he was tired or something but he wasn't feeling as overwhelmed by this magical school as he thought he would be.
What sort of school had no contact details?
And what should he do next? Wait?
Hmmm... frosties...