Harry cracked open his eyes and maneuvered his arm so that he could catch a glance at the watch he had neglected to take off before going to bed the previous night. It was almost seven and he didn't feel like he would be able to fall back asleep. He slowly forced his body out of the comfort of the bed and teetered sleepily over towards the bathroom. His body was still sore from his non stop movement from the past days so he decided to take a warm bath to try and relax. He turned on the water to fill the bath, but when he looked around he realized there weren't any towels present.
"Dobby!" Harry waited one second and then the elf popped in front of him.
"What can Dobby be doing for Harry Potter?"
"I want to take a bath Dobby, but there aren't any towels. Do you think you could find some for me?"
Harry looked at the elf questioningly as he developed a very uncharacteristic grin on his face. "Don't worry Harry Potter sir, Dobby will be back quickly." The elf disappeared, but was back within a few seconds. His arms were full with as many towels as his little body were capable of holding. Harry looked closely at the towels and realized they looked very familiar.
"You don't mind if I ask where you got them from do you Dobby?" Harry was worried once again when the grin returned to the elf's face.
"Dobby is taking them from Hogwarts!" At this point the elf was hopping up and down in excitement. "He is taking them from you know who's bathroom," the elf squeaked. Harry just stood there staring dumbfounded at his little friend. Then he thought about it more, how when Voldy went to use the shower the next time he wouldn't have any towels and he knew the house elves wouldn't bring him anymore, he just broke down howling in laughter. It was possibly the dumbest thing ever to laugh at, but it just felt good thinking that a house elf had just pulled a prank on the dark lord. Harry just leaned back against the nearest wall and tried to get him self under control. It was hard seeing as Dobby looked like he was having spasms trying to keep him self from laughing in the presence of his master.
After getting in control, Harry thanked the elf for the laugh and the towels and dismissed him. He forgot that he had the water running and quickly turned it off to prevent an overflow. He pulled of his clothing and unceremoniously dumped them on the floor. He never even noticed his house elf popping back in and replacing them with fresh clothes. The warm water felt amazing to his body when he finally slid into the bath. He thought about just lounging around that way all day, but the thought of his friends back in England quickly squashed that idea.
A half an hour later, body relaxed and skin dried out, he exited the bathroom dressed in the clothes that Dobby had obviously left for him. He walked into the huge main room and noticed a plate of eggs and toast waiting for him. Harry thought he really needed to make sure he compensated Dobby a lot for the outstanding work he was doing. Sitting down at the table, he poured him self a glass of juice from the pitcher sitting by his plate and dug into his breakfast. It was extremely quiet sitting eating breakfast by him self. He saw Dobby's form moving around the room every once in a while straightening up, but otherwise no activity. He couldn't lie to him self, he was definitely lonely. It was pretty bad when his only company was two birds, technically one considering he had no idea where Fawkes was at the moment, and a hyperactive house elf who enjoyed stealing Dark Lords towels; God, how he missed his friends.
Trying to get away from his depression he hurried to finish eating and get back to productive activities. He felt bad just leaving the used dishes on the table, but knew Dobby would be upset if he cleaned up after himself. Walking into his office he saw Hedwig sitting on the perch next to his desk sleeping. He treaded as quietly as possible, trying not to wake her up. She had obviously found a way out of the shelter because lying on the ground beneath her perch was the grizzly remains of some small animal that was unrecognizable. Tearing his eyes away from the disgusting sight, he decided to grab the book and take it into the other room as to not disturb Hedwig. She wouldn't appreciate being awoken so soon after hunting. Taking the book from the spot he had left it he crept back out and found a space on the couch to lounge on. He turned to the next page from where he had left off yesterday.
The next bit of knowledge I wish to discuss is that of theory of magic. What is it that makes a user different from a person unable to use? Standing a magic wielder next to someone without the ability will show no physical difference at all. Is the difference something internal, something within the blood? It may be, but we may never know. What I do know is that there is magic everywhere. That is what the key is to using your powers. The magic that surrounds us is what allows for things to be manipulated as we see fit. The trouble is that the normal magic wielder refuses to see the magic around them. They think that they, themselves, are unique and special. They take for granted the gift that the source of magic saw fit to bestow upon them. You must not fall into that trap. When you embrace the knowledge that magic is everywhere you can use it to accomplish amazing feats. Once you have learned to see the magic, there will no longer be any need to memorize spells or charms. Just will the magic to do your bidding. To learn this you must focus and pay close attention every time you use magic. Watch the forces as they work to do what you command. There are limits to this power that you must know. It is limited to the things that exist around you and are tangible. You must still know the spells for conjuration and offensive and defensive magic. The real benefit of this type of magic is transfiguration and natural magic, using nature to your benefit.
Harry put the book down and tried to understand the words. He had really never given a thought to how magic worked. His ancestor was right, most people just do magic and never give it another thought. It would be so much simpler if you could just think about what you wanted to happen and it would happen. Even when you cast a spell without speaking, you still had to use an incantation to make it work correctly. He picked up his wand and levitated one of the chairs that were close to him. He made sure to keep his arm steady and keep the spell going, and then concentrated on the space around the chair. There was definitely some type of presence around the chair, but it was hard to discern. He kept his eyes locked onto the space and after several minutes he saw something! It was unbelievably hard to see, but it was definitely there. If he had to call it something he would say it sort of looked like some type of dust or mist. There wasn't really any way he could describe the color, it wasn't clear, but it wasn't a very pronounced color either. He focused further and was amazed when the dusting had spread from just the immediate space around the chair to everywhere. It was surrounding everything and just floating in the air. Looking down he watched it as it swirled around his body. He moved his free hand out as if to grab the substance and watched as it passed directly through his palm and fingers. Waving his hand, he watched as the mist swirled around in the wind created by the movement. Looking down again, he sat fascinated as he saw the mist pass through his chest and the rest of his body. He finally dropped the spell he had been holding and flinched as heard the chair thump back onto the ground. The thing that amazed him now was that the mist was still there, even after he released the spell. Harry let his mind wander again, switching his focus and after a blink of his eyes the mist disappeared. Now the test was to see if he could get it to come back.
He concentrated again, but this time without doing any magic. Clearing his mind he saw the mist start to appear in random patches around the entire room. It took only a few seconds before every corner of the room was filled with magic. He decided to test out this new way of doing magic and pulled pointed his wand at the same chair once again. This time however, instead of thinking of the spell to levitate the chair, he simply wished for it to float in the air. He thought it happened in slow motion, but in reality it was within a few seconds. The mist around the chair condensed almost into something that looked solid and slowly lifted all four legs of the chair off of the floor. He moved his wand and the magic moved the chair along in the same direction. Pleased and finished with his experiment, he thought about having the chair on the floor and the mist slowly lowered it back down. He sat back and let out a breath and waited for the mist to disappear again. This was definitely going to work in his favor, he just wished he would have known it five years earlier. It would have made classes a hell of a lot easier. It couldn't be used for everything though; he still needed to learn the ways to defend himself and how to duel.
The thing about the natural magic really had him curious. There really wasn't any source of nature around the shelter. However, an idea popped into his head. Since the first time he arrived he had thought about how the lights and fire had been on and how he was supposed to turn them off. Fire was something that could be considered natural. Not really considering what he was doing, he focused on the surrounding magic again. He didn't realize his mistake until it was too late. Intending to raze the flame, he thought about the flame, except he thought about all of the flames in the room instead of just one. Apparently that took too much control for a first try because every flame in the room went from small and restricted to complete inferno in a matter of seconds. Harry stared wide eyed as he watched the flames from the oil lamps lick the ceiling. His attention was quickly averted when he realized that he was standing directly across from the fireplace. The magical mist had made its way to the fire and a jet of flame shot directly towards his chest. He dropped to his knees and felt as the flames singed the back of his neck; luckily none of his clothing was ignited. Thinking quickly he willed all of the fire in the room to contract. His actions were rewarded when the whole room plunged into total darkness. It would seem that he had unintentionally extinguished all of the lights instead of just minimizing them. The trouble now was that he had met the limitations of the magic in the mist. He couldn't conjure a flame and he needed a spell to do it. Unfortunately it was pitch black and he couldn't find where to throw the spell. Just when he was putting his plan in motion to crawl around the room helplessly his savior showed himself.
"Where is you Harry Potter sir? Dobby cannot find you!" Harry thought the elf sounded like he was about to have a panic attack.
"I'm alright Dobby, I just accidentally turned the lights out. Do you think you could light them again?" Harry heard what must have been a snap of the elf's fingers and everything was visible once again.
"Well, now I know how to control the lights; just have Dobby snap his fingers," he muttered so only he could hear. "Thanks Dobby, I'm fine now."
"You is welcome sir," the elf bowed and scrambled back towards the kitchen.
Harry pulled his body up off of the hard floor and settled back onto the couch, glad that he hadn't burnt the whole place down. He vowed to start slower next time instead of jumping right into a new technique. That said, he decided to start working on the animal transformation. He found a piece of parchment and quill and started work on a list of things that angered him.
Voldemort murdered my parents
Pettigrew gave up the location of my parents to Voldemort
Sirius was falsely imprisoned without a trial
I was forced to live with family members who hated everything about me
My relatives told me that my parents died in a car crash
I have a permanent reminder of Voldemort on my forehead
The wizarding world looks at me half the time as their savior and the other half like I'm mental
Pettigrew killed Cedric
Voldemort used my blood to resurrect himself
Umbridge made me write lines into my hand
Dumbledore kept Sirius locked up in the childhood home he hated
Snape tried to destroy my mind during occlumency lessons
Voldemort tricked me into coming to the ministry
BELLATRIX KILLED SIRIUS
DUMBLEDORE WAITED TO TELL ME ABOUT THE PROPEHCY
VOLDEMORT KILLED DUMBLEDORE AND TOOK OVER MOST PARTS OF THE WORLD
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE EITHER DEAD OR IMPRISONED
THE FATE OF THE FUCKING WORLD DEPENDS ON ME
He didn't even realized that he had started capitalizing as he reached further down the list, but he did know he was pretty damn well angry. He had been angry before, there was no doubt about it, but usually he only had room in his mind to be angry at one thing at a time. This was probably the first time he actually considered how many things about his life were unfair and sucked. He read the list once and then again, no longer trying to hold in his emotions like he usually did. He thought about what it would have been like growing up with loving parents, how they would have been there to see all of his accomplishments. Everything good about his life had been crushed and taken away. Harry felt his heart beat speed up and his hands start to shake. People are often said to become blind with rage and that is exactly what was happening to him because he was suddenly unable to see anything. At this point he began to calm down because he was a little freaked out, but then he realized this must have been what the book had been talking about, a sort of out of body experience. His consciousness must have withdrawn into his own mind. He sort of laughed to himself as he looked around and saw that his mind looked rather empty, only darkness. Harry realized that he was actually able to move around as he normally could. Moving in the direction he was facing, he finally noticed something flickering in the distance. Willing himself further forward, the flickering started to take shape and become a solid figure. As he got closer the first thing that invaded his vision were a set of long, sharp, branched antlers. He stopped short as he looked into the creature's eyes, the same color he saw every time he gazed into a mirror. He looked at the animal standing proudly on its four legs in front of him. It was something he had seen many a time. Usually it would burst out of his wand ready to defend against a dementor, but now it was standing right in front of him; it wasn't the translucent form he was accustomed to, but a tangible version. The stag stood before him, staring at him without blinking its familiar eyes. He longed to go and stroke the smooth coat of hair on the animal, but remembered that he would turn into the animal right away if he focused his attention on it. Reluctantly turning away, his breath caught when he saw five more figures in the distance. The first one he reached was a bird. Examining closer he saw it was some form of an eagle. Its body was a combination of dark brown and black while its crown and beak were scattered with bit of gold; the eyes were the same brilliant shade of green. It didn't look very large, but as it spread its wings to take flight they spread with a span of over five feet. The most intimidating feature though, were the talons that looked like they could separate flesh and muscle from bone with ease.
He turned to the next figure in line and was instantly impressed. Standing before him was a pure white stallion with the green eyes like the creatures before him. Harry felt there was something odd about this stallion though, mostly because there was steam escaping from its mouth as it would breathe. Then his eyes went wide as a burst of flame shot out of its mouth. That was definitely not supposed to happen with a normal horse. The next animal in line sent him reminiscing back to his first year and his first transfiguration class with Professor McGonagall; this cat was just a little bit bigger. As it stretched its long body out, the black spots of the leopard stood out among its gold and white fur. It yawned and the razor sharp teeth were displayed. Harry would say it was cute if it weren't for the menacing claws and teeth waiting to rip into something.
The second to last animal had wondering how he could mess with Hedwig. He could imagine just showing up in front of her and having her attack him for invading her territory. The owl in front of him was spotted all over its light brown feathers and was probably twice the size of Ron's owl Pigwidgeon. The owl's eyes weren't quite the same as the others. It had great black eyes with just specks of green glittering inside. Normally an owl would be classified as a predator, but it seemed to be looking warily at the leopard that was a few mere feet away.
Moving on to the last in line he recoiled immediately when he had horrible flashbacks to a trapdoor in the third floor corridor of Hogwarts. He groaned and looked in front of him at the strange creature; it was the return of Fluffy, the three headed dog. He seriously doubted that he would ever try to turn himself into this thing, because all three heads were going absolutely crazy barking at one another. As soon as they started trying to bite Harry took a few steps back and tried to decide what he wanted to try first. He felt a pull to turn into the animal that represented his father, but instead the memory of McGonagall and the cat led him back in front of the leopard. Not really knowing what he was doing, he walked closer and reached out as if to pat the feline on the head. His hand never made contact before he was suddenly back in the shelter and out from the depths of his mind. The only thing that was different now was that his whole body felt extremely strange. He realized he was down on all fours so he looked down saw the unmistakable front set of paws right underneath his head. Obviously the transformation had been successful so he tried to take a few steps. It was definitely awkward at first, but eventually he grew comfortable with walking. His attention was drawn by a disturbance he heard coming from the kitchen. He noticed that his senses had improved largely. Every sound was picked up by his ears, and after living his whole life wearing glasses, having perfect vision was a unique experience. Deciding to go and check on Dobby, he walked silently into the kitchen and saw the elf picking up some pots that must have fallen on the floor. He forgot that he wasn't able to speak correctly, and his attempt came out more as a growl. The unknowing elf quickly spun around and his eyes went as wide as saucers.
"AAAHHHHHHH!"
Harry doubted he had ever seen something move as fast as that little elf did. It took less than a second for Dobby to hurl his body into the pantry. Harry closed his eyes as he heard more things crash to the floor that Dobby obviously had run into. Concentrating on, and then reverting back into human form, Harry sighed and went to find where his house elf had burrowed himself.