After bringing a note home (Harry wouldn't have bothered if the headmistress hadn't required it to be signed and returned the next day) saying that he'd been climbing school buildings, the would-be Jedi was condemned to his cupboard for the entire weekend, save restroom breaks. ("You're filth enough without adding a pile of excrement to your surroundings!" Such love to be felt in the house. Lily and Dumbledore would be proud.) This gave him ample opportunity to practice what the bell had interrupted.
He settled into what he thought to be a meditative state ten minutes faster this time, the words of Yoda ringing through his head. "Its energy surrounds us, and binds us...You must feel the Force around you. Between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere."
After five hours of attempting to blow his own mind, he began to feel a tingle on the edge of his awareness, which he hoped was not wishful thinking. He focused on that, and the sock that was sitting on the cot in front of his crossed legs flew into his hand. Harry restrained a cheer, and loudly knocked on the cupboard door so his aunt would let him relieve his bladder.
Another week passed, and Harry could call up that tingling within seconds. His practicing had the unfortunate effect of slowing down his reading pace. He'd have only another fortnight to learn how Han was rescued from Jabba and then to finish the book, for it was a library book, and would have to be returned then.
This led to him meditating at slightly inconvenient times, like when the teacher was going over the basics of arithmetic with his class. Unfortunately, she had a habit of calling on people she believed (quite correctly in this case) were not paying attention.
"Luminous beings are we, not this crude-" "Harry!"
This caused Harry's internal tingle to focus on his teacher as his attention shifted...leading to another note home about the sudden color change of her wig.
On the positive side, time spent unmolested in his cupboard was more time he could spend reading.
The Empire was dead.
Long live the alliance.
what a weekend!
Harry had managed the color-change trick on a patch of one of the stair's undersides, leading to a Star Wars logo staring at him from an angle that his relatives couldn't see. He could hold the tingle for increasingly longer periods of time, and even managed to stay conscious of his surroundings while doing it, leading to no further incidents like his teacher's wig. On his way to the library during recess to return the book, Dudley's gang decided to engage in another round of Harry-Hunting. A few small rocks summoned to the back of Dudley's head, however, and the whiny lardbucket was sufficiently distracted for Harry to slip inside the library. Unfortunately, this was four years before 1991, so Heir to the Empire hadn't yet been written. From this point on, as far as Force use went, Harry was on his own.