Chapter Two

The Mirror on the Walls

The Boy made a mad dash towards the exit of the schoolhouse. Kicking up clouds of dust behind him, he barreled through the door, and scampered off towards the east side of the village, the side of town he lived in. Running through the marketplace and past the various stalls, he skidded to a stop at the edge of town, and ventured into the Great Forest.

The Boy, after a short stroll along the thin path leading into the woods, came to the clearing he had stopped in the day before. He went to the other side of the small space, and stepped on to the felled log lying on its side. Reaching up, he grabbed ahold of one of the lower branches, and swung himself up. He crawled up the tree much like a squirrel would have, and sat on one of the higher branches. Reaching into his shirt and pulling out The Book, he opened it to the marked page, and started reading.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Harry had discovered on the first day of summer that he, and every other magical minor over age thirteen had had their Underage Magic Restrictions removed, due to the open declaration of War against the Dark Lord Voldemort. Taking advantage of this, he had practiced using magic throughout the summer, and had progressed exponentially. Harry found that he worked better alone, and discovered many things about his magic and nature that were previously unexplained or otherwise ignored. For one, he had discovered, after reading a particularly interesting text (regarding magical theory) from the Black Family Library, (pilfered from Number 12 Grimmauld Place before being locked in at Privet Drive) that magic was absolutely ALL about intent.

At first Harry hadn't believed this. But then he cast a simple levitation charm, and after several attempts, managed to produce the effects of a summoning charm when directed towards a spare quill. He then figured that his wish that the quill come to him was strong enough that it disregarded the desire shown when uttering the levitation charm. As a result, the quill had come to him, and had he not been wearing glasses, would have poked his eye out with the bit.

From then on, Harry had practiced using different incantations to produce different spell effects than intended. This required an incredible amount of focus, something he possessed now in vast quantities, his wit and intelligence coming into play. While doing so, he had conjured teacups with the Reductor curse, transfigured Dudley's old socks into several mice with a tickling charm, and even charmed Vernon's neon-pink with the Imperius Curse (causing much disrest and agitation within the Dursley family). It was hard work, but he knew it had the potential to save his life someday.

But this was not the only thing he had practiced. After pondering over the prophecy after its revelation at Dumbledore's Office, Harry had often thought over the possibility that him, a schoolboy fifteen, barely sixteen years of age defeating the most powerful Dark Lord in several hundred years in a one-on-one duel.

Nope. Nada. Not happening.

So he had had to practice magic over the summer, much like he was doing now. However, this was virtually useless if he didn't have anything useful to replace the common charms with. This was where the Black Family Library came in handy yet again. Books and volumes full of powerful curses, hexes, and enchantments, whether Dark or Light, were present there. He had, along with the magical theory tome, taken the lot (close to nearly eighty books) from Grimmauld via a bottomless bag purchased at Zonko's on the last Hogsmeade trip.

Harry had started to use minor Dark curses and some of the more violent Light ones at the beginning of the summer, aiming at an encanted muggle dartboard. Then it fell apart due to the strain it was put under, and he had purchased a magic nullifier , which, as its name suggests, nullified magic. It served its purpose sitting on the wall, a four foot by four foot square of magically immune poster board he could aim spells at. It was strong enough to handle anything but the Killing Curse, which he couldn't cast anyway, due to the inherent evil needed to cast it. So, with a target to practice on, he had proceeded into the next level of power, with nasty spells like the gruesome Disembowlment Hex, and the painful Blood-Boiling Curse.

Harry found that with every complex enchantment, his magical control increased slightly, and with him casting over several hundred spells a day, by the time of his birthday, he had surpassed most trainee Aurors' control wise.

After the first night of casting, Harry could physically feel the magical depletion he had put his body through, and was thoroughly exhausted. By the end of the first week, however, it appeared that his magical core had expanded, and he could manage on average about one-hundred and fifty consecutive curses greater than when he first started. By the end of his brief training period (lasting until his birthday), his core had been able to expand so much that he managed a mean of three thousand magical depletion level equivalents of a Reductor Curse daily; three times greater than what he could at the end of his Fifth Year.

Armed with a hefty knowledge of offensive spells and curses, significantly increased magical control, and an exponential increase in magic levels, Harry was now ready to head out of Privet Drive, and cut open his own destiny.

The guards around his house were always there, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the whole of the summer vacation. No gaps were present in the guards shift schedule, so escaping in between watches was out of the question.

Considering that fact, Harry had long since decided that he would disappear on Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody's watch. Of course, the fact that he could see through things (even Invisibility Cloaks) made it noticably harder to escape on say, Arthur Weasley's watch, but there was one advantage to having him as a watchman. When Mad-Eye Moody was guarding the house, there was no one in the back yard, or behind Number 4 at all. The ability to see through things let Moody work alone, as he usually prefered; after all, if there was trouble, he could call on the rest of the Order of the Pheonix to help via Order pendant. That meant that if Harry could somehow disable Moody's eye, or distract him, there was ample time to escape through the back yard, and not be found until he wished to.

Since there was no foolproof magical way of doing it, Harry had decided to rely on logic and muggle science to thwart Moody's eye. His reasoning was thus: if Moody's eye could see through things, then it must have had some magical equivalent of an X-ray charmed onto it. Therefore, since the X-ray was in essence just a beam of light, the Eye must have been sending out and receiving some light signals in order to see through the objects he needed to see through. From this conclusion, Harry figured that a mirror could be used to turn Moody's eye back onto him. The problem was, was there a mirror large enough that could disable Moody's eye?

And there was his answer, plain as daylight. He would transfigure the house's external features and the whole front yard to become highly reflective and silverish like a mirror, and in the several short minutes between the confusion his 'change of house' would bring and the arrival of reinforcements from the Order of the Pheonix, disappear amongst the many houses in Surrey's neighborhood, and call the Knight Bus. Apparating was out of the question, Floo was impossible, and a Portkey was Very illegal, with a capital V just in case. Thus leaving his last choice for instantaneous transportation, the Knight Bus. From there, it was just him cutting his own way open, with only his own head for guidance.

------------------------------------------------

Harry awoke to the morning of July 31st, 1996 with a very annoying and loud alarmclock (thank god for the silencing charms placed between the room and the rest of Number 4). Slamming his palm down onto the 'Alarm Off' button, he drowsily pulled off his covers, and stripped down to his boxers. Walking over to the magnificent mahogany cabinet that now resided in his room, he pulled out a new pair of boxers, two black socks, a pair of casual jeans, a black t-shirt (sporting the heading, 'I H8 Voldemort'), and a short sleeved collared shirt. Rolling the clothes up into a ball, he stumbled out of his room sleepily, and went into the bathroom. He locked the door, took off his underwear, and stepped in the shower, turning the hot water faucet as he did so.

After several minutes of an extremely relaxing shower, he clambered out, dried himself off with a charm, and pulled his clothes on. Walking back to his room, he opened the door, and went in. Moody's shift was not for another seven hours, at five o'clock, and he had to wait for the cover of dusk to safely run away, and call the Knight Bus. Since practicing magic was out of hand (unless he really wanted to pass out while on the run) , he decided on amusing himself by continuing the magical theory book.

Opening to page one thousand and ninety three, he started reading the section concerning the legendary skill of wandless magic.

The Art of Wandless Magic is an impossible feat for wizards. This was proven by the renown magical theorist and Dark Wizard Jason McBourney (1586-1668), when his numerous attempts to conduct wandless magic through his body and into the form of a rather powerful Killing Curse. He managed to correctly cast it, but the magical backlash proved so great that his entire manor and the surrounding territories of around fifteen square kilometers, was incinerated by a supposedly emerald green inferno, the same color as the deadly curse. The reasoning behind his untimely demise where discovered over two centuries later, by Albus Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel during their study of dragon's blood in 1879. Albus Dumbledore had also attempted wandless magic before, but smartly stuck to small things such as levitation, and minor transfigurations. In doing so, he managed to at maximum, pass out for three days at a time, and did not suffer any long-lasting damage, aside from a strong addiction to a muggle sweet he claimed to have been named 'lemon-drop'. From this, he concluded, among other things, that the human body had openings to let magic out of the body, much like sweat evaporating from the body. This emission of magic was so small, that forcing a spell of focused magic through any of these would result in the immediate magical overload in the body, and shutting down of magical energies, ergo resulting nauseousness, unconciousness, or death. Any use of accidental wandless magic, or wandless magic out of desperation, is of an uncontrollable surge of magic through emotion, or any other various reasons not of our control.

However, during one of his attempts to cast a summoning spell for his research on dragon's blood, he had forgotten to wash his hands of undiluted Antipodean Opaleye blood, and also to pick up his wand. The result was that the blood conducted the magic from his magical channels, (see page 567 on the Magical Anatomy of a Wizard) and enabled him to cast the first ever successful attempt of wandless magic, and prompting the discovery of the widely unknown 13th Use of Dragon's Blood (Class-Omega Restricted Unspeakable Information).

With this discovery, Flamel had engineered, with his impressive alchemical abilities, a stone which enabled the user to channel magic through it successfuly, and more efficiently than any wand would. The exact mixture is unknown, but Flamel is rumored to have purchased large amounts of Horned Archimedes dragon blood, powdered basilisk fang, and crushed unicorn femur, amongst other both rare and standard alchemical components. It is also worthy to note that Albus Dumbledore has been seen wearing a golden ring with a blood-red stone on both hands starting soon after the official documentation of the 12 Uses of Dragons Blood research paper.

Since the exact process is lost, the reconstruction and replication of such a stone is impossible, and as there have ben only three of these ever made, it is impossible to obtain one. Dumbledore having possessing two of these stones, and the last donated to the Department of Mysteries for research.

---------------------------------------------

Harry continued to read, entranced at the prospect of finding such a stone. Although it was clearly impossible, he continued to fantasize about the possibilties of wandless magic.

This certainly explained the blatant use of Dumbledore's wandless magic. Come to think of it, he remembered seeing his Headmaster wearing golden rings with rubies set in them, although he now knew these to be an alchemical compound of dragon's blood. So, wandless magic was definitely NOT an option in a magical fight, he would have to get another wand crafted for him, in case he somehow was robbed of his current phoenix feathered wand. This would have to be one of the first stops in his shopping spree he would have to make in the near future.

Looking at the clock, he found that it was past five o'clock, and was nearing seven. Harry quickly shrunk his packed trunk, placed a unbreakable charm on it, and slipped it into his pocket. Grabbing his Invisibility Cloak, he sent Hedwig out to hunt with orders to come and find him later, and to not fall into Order hands. Pulling his wand out of its holster on the back of his hip, he quickly muttered,

"Transfigure the Estate of Number 4 Privet Drive into having a mirror surface!"

-----------------------------------------

Alastor was clearly not enjoying his shift as Order Guard to Harry Potter. Taking a deep swig of Firewhiskey from his hip-flask, he sighed. The boy had been sitting on his bed for quite some time now, reading a book (it was too far for him to identify what it was).

Boring.

But then, Potter had abruptly gotten up, shrunk the trunk, let his owl out, pulled out an Invisibility Cloak, drew his wand, and grinned madly.

Wait.

DREW HIS WAND?

The kind of preparation this kid was showing in packing up, getting any unknown factors out of the way, and securing undetection was alerting his paranoia like hell, and when he pulled out his wand, Alastor just knew something was going to happen. Something bad.

With a flourish, Potter muttered under his breath. And suddenly, all Alastor could see was the setting sun reflected in the now reflective surface of the whole building, and surrounding properties. Lights flickering before his normal eye, and with his magical, electric blue eye whizzing about in confusion, he could barely reach under his robes to pull out the Order pendant.

"ALBUS! POTTER EMERGENCY! COME NOW! I REPEAT: POTTER EMERGENCY! COME NOW!"

He practically yelled into the pendant, causing many windows to open up, and the many irate women of the residences of Privet Drive started screaming at the lunatic old disfigured old man yelling into a pendant.

Alastor passed from sensory overload a few seconds later.

---------------------------------------------------------

Harry pulled on his cloak and dashed out of the back door as soon he had cast the spell. After all, intent was everything right? The spell didn't matter, as long he had enough will power to persuade his magic to respond to his touch. Of course, his magic levels were almost two-thirds depleted, so after running a few blocks down, called the Knight Bus.

A few seconds of silence later, the Knight Bus appeared with a loud BANG!. The ever-recognizable face of Stan Shunpike popped out, and hollered,

"Good Evenin' sir, you gettin' on?"

"Well, why else would I call the bleedin' bus you moron?"

Stan was visibly annoyed at the blatant insult, but then asked,

"Where to sir?"

"Kings Cross Station."

------------------------------------------------------

Exactly one hour later at 7:29, Harry payed 15 sickles and 4 knuts, and got off the bus. With another loud BANG, the Knight Bus disappeared into the streets of London, and Harry walked into the station.

Strolling into the coffee stand, he bought a medium sized Blue Mountain, mixed in some milk and two sugar cubes, and sat down. Sipping the coffee, he stayed there for another five minutes, and then walked out.

Harry walked over to the regular muggle bus stop of Kings Cross, got on the next bus, and rode off into the city.

----------------------------------------------------

The Boy closed the Book, sitting pensively. The mental images the book sent him were certainly detailed; he could now identify a muggle, their buses, several spells, and that Mad-Eye character. Shaking his head clear of Harry and his tale, he put the Book into his shirt again, climbed down the tree, and walked home.