Tom reclined in his favorite chair considering the sleeping boy. He had now been awake for a week, and was becoming comfortable in his new existence. He surveyed Harry's small room under the stairs. To him the walls now had the appearance of stone. He had placed reliefs of dangerous magical animals highlighted with inlaid silver. It was much better than the simple muggle construction that was really there. It certainly helped him concentrate.

He needed to concentrate. It had now been a week. There was no doubt that Harry had inherited his parent's gift, but Tom could not identify anything that marked him as special. Given the environment he had been raised in, he was a scrawny boy, and until he and Sophia entered his life, totally ignorant of the magical world.

How then had Lord Voldemort lost to the infant Harry Potter?

--

Harry woke up. He was excited. It was a new sensation. Before Sophia had told him that he was a wizard, he had never been excited to wake up before. He wanted to get up and start exploring. He did not want to waste any time.

Sophia and Tom appeared. Both were wearing green robes. Upon seeing each other, Sophia's robe changed to blue and Tom's change to purple.

Sophia spoke, "Good morning Harry! How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine. What are we going to do today?"

Tom answered, "I have given that some more thought. I think you might be interested in learning about runes."

Sophia nodded slightly.

"What do runes do?" asked Harry.

"Runes are a form of writing system used some magic users. Many ancient magical texts are written in runic characters." Sophia responded.

Harry was starting to frown slightly.

Tom smiled and added. "Don't look so disappointed Harry. Most of the most important and powerful magical texts are written in runes. That by itself is reason enough to learn them. But runes can also be used. When properly constructed, a rune or string of runes can be magical in themselves. For this reason you will often find runes incorporated into magical artifacts."

Harry brightened a little at this.

"You really need to use a wand to properly invest a rune with power, but it is also possible that a rune may acquire some power from the materials it is constructed from. We may be able create some weakly magical runes if we construct them from the proper materials."

Harry nodded happily at this.

--

Harry was in a park near his home. He was sitting at a picnic table carefully writing in a composition notebook. He had spent a good portion of his carefully hoarded, yet meager savings to purchase the cheap notebook.

"That hitch looks much better now Harry." Spoke Sophia. "The hav character also has a runner. You don't have the first accession at the correct angle yet. It moves like this." Sophia traced her finger along the page of the notebook and a green line appeared following her touch.

"I am not sure how well I can do this. My penmanship is really bad."

"Don't worry about it Harry," said Tom. "Runes are not taught at Hogwarts until the 3rd year. Even if you don't pick up much now, you are still trying to learn something that most other wizards don't try to learn until they are much older, if ever."

Harry nodded his head again, but uncertainly.

Tom continued, "When you attempt to make a rune that has magical properties, the power of that rune is determined by its exact construction. The width of a line or the angle of the joining of two lines all becomes important. A wizard will only become a master of runes after years of experience and learning rather advanced theory."

"You are not encouraging me."

"Most witches and wizards are not encouraged. The benefits of learning runes are substantial, but most witches and wizards cannot see those rewards. Instead they see only the hard work, and effects that can much more easily recreated with a wand. But consider this Harry – it is exceptionally difficult to create a ward with a wand that does not lose strength over time. Long term wards are always anchored to another source of power so that they will be maintained. A person truly skilled at creating runes, and that had all of the correct materials from which to construct it, could create a ward that would never diminish with time and could repeal most spells."

Harry nodded again, but it was a rather mechanical nod.

Sophia smiled, and drew a new rune in the notebook. "This rune is an easy rune to write. It means food. Let's practice it a bit, and then we will try an experiment." Tom readily agreed.

--

It was early the next morning. Harry crouched low to see the page he had ripped out of the notebook and left in the backyard overnight. A single run written in ink was written on the paper. Over the ink lines he had carefully taped pieces of his own hair. About a dozen ants seemed to be examining the rune.

"It worked!"

Sophia smiled. "The rune is very weak. A human would never feel its effects. Even an ant is only lightly touched. In this case we are taking advantage of the ant's nature. Ants leave trails that other ants can follow to find food. Those ants are there now, not because of the influence of the rune, but because other ants have left markers that there is food there."

Tom laughed. "That should be another lesson Harry. Groups can be lead through shared emotion and outlook. Effects can linger and motivate long after the cause has ceased to be relevant."

Sophia gave Tom a dirty look. Harry look confused. But then sat done and brought out another page from his note book. This page had another rune written on it. Taped on top of the line were plant fibers. He placed it near the other rune, but placed a sugar cube on top.

It took a while, but eventually some of the ants that were exploring the previous rune ran across the sugar cube on top of the new. The first rune was quickly abandoned and the ants began industrially claiming the sugar. Harry watched for a bit, and then stood up.

"If anything happens, it will take a while," said Tom.

--

Harry quickly did his chores and left the house before his family woke up and could give him more things to do. Soon he was roaming the streets of his neighborhood again on the lookout for any magical plants. He became excited whenever he saw a rose bush. The lover's berry that he had found was the first real magic he had ever seen. He had found another one a couple of days after the first and both were now hanging carefully in his closet, drying.

Harry stopped in front of a bush and asked, "Is this a hazel?"

Sophia nodded, and Harry asked, "So what should I do?"

Tom answered, "Cut off a forked branch. The two arms should be about a foot and a half long, the stem only needs to be about two inches. You can use a simple knife to do this."

Harry began to search through the bush, and presented several possibilities to his two friends, but each was rejected in turn.

"This one should work," stated Tom, "The fork has a decent angle, and there are not too many leaves to clean from it. Cut it here." Tom pointed to a point a little beneath the fork. Following Tom's directions and Sophia occasional bit of advice, Harry slowly and rather crudely given the dullness of the knife, cut the branch to size and removed the extra twigs and leaves. He then made his way back to the park.

"Well Harry," spoke Sophia, "let's make a good go at this."

Harry closed his eyes and started to spin around. After several revolutions he threw a small stone he held in his hand, and for good measure let himself spin around a couple of more times. He stopped and stumbled a bit as he struggled to regain his balance.

Sophia then spoke again. "I have never tried this before; I have only read the theory in passing." She paused and looked at Tom, but he shook his head. "Most wizards would not even bother, if you had a wand, you could with a simple spell call for that stone and have it fly into your hand."

"Its okay, Sophia, I want to try this."

"Okay. Hold the rod loosely in your hands. It needs to be balanced and free to move up and down." Harry nodded and with some experimentation held the rod to Sophia's satisfaction. "Now think of the stone. Do you remember the layers and the crack through the middle? I want you see it and every detail."

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated. "I think I have it."

"Now push the image down through your arms and into the rod, down the rod and past the point. Hold the image of the stone just beyond the point of the rod."

Tom watched Harry as the kid continued to concentrate. To his surprise he soon saw a faint image of the stone appear near the tip of the rod. This could be interesting. I had never thought to see magic from the inside. I might learn from this. Tom thought to himself, and then let a rueful half smile reach his lips.

Sophia spoke quietly, "Harry, I think you have done it. Now open your eyes."

Harry opened his eyes, and Tom saw the image fade away. Sophia spoke, "It looks like you have just lost it again, let's try again."

Harry spent most of the early morning practicing his concentration. He still had trouble concentrating and walking at the same time, but before he went home for a late lunch, he had been able to find the stone. He arrived home from his first dowsing lesson feeling content.

--

Harry carefully considered the sugar baited rune. There were now many ants swarming over the cube, but among the activity he found two that were not moving.

"Those two were probably already weak, or lingered the longest, or visited the most number of times. Or some combination thereof," spoke Tom. "Given the strength of the rune, I don't think it would be capable of killing most of those ants even if they lingered."

Harry looked at the dead ants with a disturbed look on his face. "This doesn't feel right."

Sophia spoke, "Magic is a powerful force. It can cause pain and death was well as comfort and elation. There is dark magic and it is alluring. With magic we can manipulate the world. Some witches and wizards stop seeing others as humans, but just other objects to be manipulated and used."

Harry responded, "My parents were killed with magic, right? By Voldemort."

Tom answered, "That's right Harry." He pointed towards the rune on the ground. " This rune, the Dav rune, represent death. There is a spell ,Avada Kedavra, which is the killing curse. It is not overly complex, it simply kills, it forceably separates the soul from the body. Voldemort targeted your father, your mother, and you, " Tom touched Harry's forehead, "with this spell."

"Why did I survive?"

Tom remained quiet.

After a moment of silence, Sophia answered, "Voldemort tried to kill you, but your mother wouldn't let him. She died trying to protect you. Her sacrifice protected you from the spell."

--

Tom raged. He took no satisfaction in destroying the trappings of his shadowy world. But he did anyway, destroying the furniture and decorations he had imagined for himself. Something so simple, something so old that it was not even really magic anymore had bested him. There was nothing special about the kid, it was his mother and her foolish sacrifice. How could he have forgotten something so simple, it was something on the order the hedge tricks and he and the witch had been teaching the kid.