- - - - - - - - - 31 July - - - - - - -
Harry awoke at dawn on his birthday, fully, with no remnants of sleep making his mind fuzzy or body slow. He lay still on his mattress, watching the spider that made residence on his ceiling. She was creeping along toward the southern wall of the room, but stopped when Harry stood.
His sleep that night had been pure and unhindered by visions of the Dark Lord, or nightmares of his own imagining. He had experienced much, though, while he slept peacefully. Flashes of light, whispers on the wind, new scents washed over him, and a force, powerful and elusive, beautiful and passionate, light and dark, everywhere and in everything.
As he stood in the middle of his small bedroom, Harry now understood what the Shadow Watcher had meant by 'changes'. He could feel the magic in everything around him. In the air, in the wooden floorboards, in the cotton of the towel that was still wrapped around his waist from the night before, even in the small spider now hanging from the ceiling by a single silken thread. He could also distinguish scents, and sounds, even to the tiniest degree. He could hear a dog barking outside, and knew that it was exactly 54 feet from where he was standing, knew that it was a 3 year old Chihuahua named Fifi, and knew that he was barking at the injustice of having to wear pink toenail lacquer. He could smell the sharp essence of fear coming from the spider, and the various 'parfums de Dursley' permeating the house. After standing for at least 10 minutes, just letting his senses get used to the new clarity, he suddenly realized that he could see. He wasn't wearing his glasses, yet he could see everything in almost excruciating detail, right down to the separate particles of dust, resting on his bedroom doorframe.
Harry would remember that moment for the rest of his life. The moment when the reasoning behind things became clear to him. His head was no longer riddled with questions of "why," but was now void of this confusion, in order to make room for things to come. He now understood, as he heard his uncle marching noisily across the hall to his bedroom door, that Vernon feared him as he feared no other. He was still, after all of these years, trying to beat and belittle the magic out of Harry. He thought that perhaps if he were to cause his nephew enough pain, his magic would leave him. A futile mission, Harry knew, as the magic did not come from within him but around him. Vernon did not know this, though, nor did he care.
- - - - - - - 14 August - - - - - - - - - - -
It had been 2 weeks since Harry's birthday. Days filled with pain, sorrow, understanding and pity; nights a constant cycle of restless sleep and torturous visions. He had received no greetings on his birthday, unless you count the gory raid on a muggleborn wizard's household and the subsequent torture and murders. No reprieve had he been granted from his daily suffering, his uncle's beatings enhanced by his sharpened senses, each blow containing the pain of a miniature Cruciatus. The insults finding their mark deeper each time, and adding to the guilt that Harry already felt each day and night. The 'gift' of clarity wasn't exactly making him feel any better either, because it was a strictly academic sort of awareness. It didn't change the fact that he felt guilty over every murder committed by the Dark Lord, or for the death of Cedric Diggory or the near fatal encounters of his friends and godfather the previous school term. It simply took away his immaturity and youth. He felt about 100 years older than he should, and the constant abuse to his body wasn't making that number decrease in the least.
His workload at 'home' had increased steadily over time, as he would be going back to school in a matter of weeks and there were so many things that just had to be done before he left; and of course he still had to work at the gravel yard each day. His 'summer internship' there would be ending on August 27, so that he could have time to recover his sore muscles and pick up his supplies before leaving for school on September 1. All this meant to Harry was that he had less time and little energy left in the afternoons to complete the list of chores left for him by his uncle. It was due to this unavoidable time constraint that one Harry Potter was sited at 4:56 pm on Sunday August 14, by a Mrs. Vera Stamp of Number 12 Privet Drive, re-shingling the roof of the garden shed at Number 4 Privet Drive. She thought to herself that this was rather odd, as she could swear she had seen the boy doing the same task earlier that summer on June 28th, but with a shake of her head she dismissed the errant musing and went on down the street to Number 8, where she was greeted by the incessant yapping of Fifi the cross-dressing Chihuahua.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Harry wiped at a rivulet of sweat that was making it's way down his face and looked out onto the street from his vantage point at the top of the Dursley's garden shed. He saw the old lady from Number 12 glance at him before making her way on down the sidewalk, and wondered for a moment what it would be like to be so ordinary. The thought was quickly pushed from his mind however, by the intense ache that reasserted itself over his entire body as he moved to continue working on the shingling.
His enhanced senses were making life much more difficult for him. Every sound was 5 time louder than before, every sight sharper, every scent more repugnant and all of his nerve endings were practically on fire with every strain of muscle. Harry felt as if the gods were punishing him for living, like he could help that. He had even thought several times about letting them have their way, and had fallen into an even more advanced depression than he had been in before. He rarely spoke anymore, and went through his daily routine without emotion or complaint. He had no appetite and only ate enough to keep himself alive, the result of this being that he had absolutely no fat content on his body at all and his wiry muscles were feeling the strain of being overworked and drawn on for life-giving energy. As he continued into the evening, finishing his outdoor chores, he felt slightly lightheaded with a distinct pain originating behind and a bit below his left ear. He just passed it off as hunger though, and moved on with his evening, finally finishing the roof of the garden shed at around 8:45 pm and going inside the house to take a shower in peace while trying to ignore the headache he could feel building into a migraine.
'Stupid changes. Couldn't just leave me the way I was before could they? Noooooo, that would be too easy wouldn't it. I just have to be Harry BLOODY Potter and have all the special important voodoo weird voicy stuff happen to me don't I. Stupid voices and their stupid changes making my life a living hell and they don't even come back to tell me what's going on. Just leave me in the dark why don't you! It's ok because he's just a little 'golden boy' with nothing else to worry about besides saving the entire world and killing evil bad guys and trying to finish school and live through the summer with his stupid muggle uncle and... Would you bloody well shut UP you whiney little bastard! Hey, I resent that. My parents were married thank you very much, and I'll have you know that I don't whine. I complain in a perfectly dignified, if slightly run-on manner. Right. And I'm a purple mooncalf. Are you really? You may want to get that looked at you know. I hear it's unhealthy to be a mooncalf capable of vocalization. Especially on Sundays. Or any day for that matter. Shut up. Ingrate. Did you never think that perhaps these changes had some purpose, in the long run? Not recently. And would you shut up, I have a headache.'
Harry continued to bicker with himself silently throughout his shower until he was safely dressed in a pair of boxer shorts (8 sizes too big) and in his bedroom, stroking Hedwig's feathers. He had begun to think again, about the value of his life, and whether or not his survival would be in any way helpful to anyone, because the pain was too much for him to bear much longer. He needed an out, but in the end always decided to put these thoughts aside in favor of making it through one more day. Although, the by now excruciating pain in his head was sort of pushing all conscious thought from his head. He had hoped that the shower would help, thinking (wrongly of course) that it might be a tension headache, but it hadn't and now the origination point just below/behind his left ear was throbbing. He could feel it with his fingertips when he pressed them to his head, and it was getting worse every minute. Harry began to panic slightly, thoughts of brain tumors and hemorrhages flashing through his mind. He could smell his own fear in the air around him, and could hear the rapid beating of his heart as his body reacted to his unease. At this point, about 10 minutes after he had come in from his shower, the intense pain was making him feel nauseous and lightheaded, and he fell from the spindly chair he had been seated on, landing on his hands and knees on the bare wood flooring, barely saving himself from cracking his skull on the boards. The room was spinning around him in a distorted pain-fogged whirl, and he lay himself down on the floor as gently as his unstable body would allow.
Just as he was preparing to succumb to the pain and the darkness that threatened to surround him, Harry felt a familiar cool touch brush up his spine and come to rest on the back of his neck, soothing him and dulling his pain temporarily; enough that he regained awareness of himself and his surroundings. As he gazed out into his bedroom from his position on the floor, he could vaguely make out the writhing darkness that he recognized as his shadow messenger. Once again, the mysterious but resonant female voice surrounded him.
"Do not fear the pain, for it will help you bear your burden in the end, but you must endure it until the change is complete. You have made it half way, but crueler things are to come. Believe in yourself and in your magic, be strong and do not take the easy path. Tonight you will be given great knowledge and memories from distant pasts. They will show you what you are."
Harry extended an arm toward the twisting shadows that danced around the room as the voice faded. He was confused, but knew not to question any information she gave him, as he would more than likely get a vague reply. He only had one small request, which he croaked out from a dry throat, quietly, as the cool hand had left his skin.
"Your name? Please!"
"I am called... Nerys."
And with that final piece of information, she was gone. Harry managed to stay conscious for another minute, seeing Hedwig looking at him quizzically and hooting softly before he allowed himself to fall into blissful darkness.
- - - - - - 15 August - - - - - -
It was several hours later, in the very early morning before dawn when Harry's eye flew open in shock as his body arched violently from the floor. Anyone peering through his window at that moment would have thought him possessed, but in reality he was in a sort of memory shock. Scenes of days long past flashed before his mind's eye so quickly that it was impossible to catch one scene or even time period for even a fraction of a second. His mind was going through such a serious influx of information that his body had sort of gone into sensory overload, and all of his muscles had flexed basically at the same time. This combined with a bit of wild magic from Harry was what made his body rise off the floor, back arched but limbs limp with his head lolled back like a discarded rag doll, except his eyes were wide open and moving back and forth at an incredible rate.
This continued for nearly an hour, Harry just hanging in the air 3 feet off the ground and rotating slowly, until suddenly at 4:33 am, his eyes snapped shut and his body dropped to the floor with a rather loud "THUMP", and he lie there, still as death but for the steady rise and fall of his chest. This is how his aunt found him when she came to bang rudely on his door at 7:02 am.