Chapter 9: Wards
{After this, we'll need to have a look at the wards outside the house}, Voldemort said after Harry had eaten. He had worried about the wards for a while now, but the boy had been safe for years, and he had manifested magic before...
Harry walked around the perimeter of the house. Number 4, Privet Drive, like most of the houses in the neighbourhood had a garage, a medium-sized front lawn and a smaller patch of back garden. The house was separated from the neighbours by hedges. Aunt Petunia had also planted a flower garden at the front, full of flower pots and shrubs such as roses, petunias and some bougainvillea. Naturally, Harry had to be the gardener and maintain it.
{Now, Harry, send a pulse of your magic towards the perimeter. Remember, use a very, very small amount of magic, and think that you want only to observe it. The wards will detect your intent.}
"Like this?" Harry produced a small, marble-sized sphere of magic and directed it towards the edge of the hedge.
To his surprise, a wall of criss-crossing threads of lights materialized in front of him. It was really beautiful, like a spiderweb of colours; golden, silver, brown, blue, and red. It ran along the hedges, surrounding the house. Harry's sphere of magic merged with the wall of lights and suddenly Harry's chest briefly glowed golden in time with the pulse of the lights.
Following Voldemort's instruction, Harry searched around the perimeter for the ward anchors where the lights were most concentrated. He found the ward anchors at several places: warding stones carved with runes floating in a pocket of air, buried under the ground. The threads of lights seemed to merge around the stones while the stones feed pulses of magic directly to them.
{Now, the normal wards are there. Anti-apparition, anti-portkey, intent-based, and even an owl-redirection ward. But, the strangest is that one}, Voldemort indicated the golden threads {It was not anchored in the ward stones. Instead, it seems to tie directly to you}.
Indeed, the golden threads were the only one not fed by the pulses of magic from the stones, and they even went deeper into the ground than the rest of the threads.
"Was it the same one that glowed around me when the curse rebounded? And the same one that surrounds you now?" Harry referred to the golden dome around Voldemort that he had observed in the dreamscape.
{Apparently. So it seemed like the protection ritual done by your mother acted like wards here... Quite ingenious really...}
"Wonder how it works?" Harry observed it, sending another small pulse of magic to one of the golden thread, watching it and his chest glowed with it.
Suddenly there was a loud crash. A frightened scream of "Harry, what did you DO?!" was heard and Harry watched Aunt Petunia came running out to the front garden. One of her hand was clutching a ladle, the other clutching her chest which glowed brightly with the golden light.
{And that actually answers a lot of my questions} Voldemort said drily.
"Sorry, Aunt Petunia. I was just checking something. That won't happen again." The glow faded and Petunia sighed with relief. She was about to say something more to Harry when she remembered Harry's fit of rage and promptly shut up.
"Meeeow!"
Both Harry and Petunia turned towards the sound in surprise. They both saw a gray tabby cat near the rose bush. Aunt Petunia shouted, shooing the cat away with the ladle. The cat meowed loudly at Harry, and gave a lazy swish of its tail and turned around.
"That batty old lady! I've told her to keep her cats in cages! They're all over the place, what a nuisance!" Aunt Petunia ranted (raging at the old lady now, since she can no longer yell at Harry) and stormed back to the kitchen, most likely continuing the dinner preparation.
"That was one of Mrs Figg's cats. I can never remember their names, she had so many."
{Mrs. Figg?}
"The old lady two streets away. I stayed with her sometimes in the summer when the Dursleys went for holidays."
{An old lady? Hmm... What a coincidence...}
"What?"
{Harry, you really need to be more suspicious. The cat came right when we tested the wards. That might or might not be a normal cat. It might even be a wizard's familiar. Have you ever heard of them?}
"No, I just found out about magic a couple of days ago, remember?"
Total silence.
{Insolence is NEITHER appreciated NOR tolerated, Potter. Remember that before my patience run out or today will be the last day for your magic lessons.}
Harry gulped. He shouldn't have forgotten who was really teaching him.
{SO, as I was telling, familiars are wizards' or witches' pet that had bonded with them. The witches and wizards can understand their familiars easily and can communicate with them.}
"You think that Mrs Figg is a witch? But I've never saw her do any magic, and she can't be a witch just because she had lots of cats!" Harry frowned, thinking that was quite absurd.
{No, we can't assume that. She really might be just a batty old lady... But then again, we can't be too careful. Later we can pay her a visit to check that fact. I have been careless; I never thought that you already had a contact with another witch in this kind of neighbourhood... this change the lesson plan a bit...}
"What plan?" Harry walked back towards the house. It was getting dark.
{I planned to check if you had any metamorph or shape-shifting ability after you master controlling your magic. But never mind that now. I believe you need to be able to protect your mind first. No one must found out about us. And I need to check you for monitoring and tracking charms. Should've done that before...} Voldemort continued to mutter.
Harry was distracted seeing a pair of glowing eyes near the hedge, watching him. Another cat? He quickly went inside the house, closing the front door, sighing with relief.
Harry saw Aunt Petunia still preparing dinner in the kitchen and couldn't help but grin. He didn't mind having so little dinner by himself, as he had no longer needed to prepare the table, clean-up after dinner, all the while listening to snide comments from Uncle Vernon on having to spend money to feed him or keeping him clothed. It seemed now that Aunt Petunia had to do everything herself, fat chance of Uncle Vernon or Dudley helping. And that made him remember what he wanted to ask.
"Before, why did Aunt Petunia and I glow with that golden light?"
{Well, to explain that I need to tell you about that Halloween night. Your mother had employed some kind of charms or rituals to protect you. She willingly used her life force as a form of sacrifice. Sacrificing a person's life force can generate a huge source of magic, more so if the person is magically powerful. That was partly why people were used as sacrifices in Ancient or Dark rituals... Now, that huge amount of magic generated by your mother's sacrifice was used to protect you so that I, and my magic, cannot touch you. That's why the curse rebounded. That's why I cannot control you; you think that I am a threat.}
{Now, a curious thing. The protection continued long after your mother's death. Why? I believed, and this is based from what I've observed, that your mother's blood and yours were used in that ritual. As your Aunt share your mother's blood, the protection might be continuously re-generated, and continued to protect you long after your mother's death. You will be protected from being harmed by my magic, and I believe from my followers, those with my Marks, as well.}
{But there seemed to be more to the protection. Will it last forever? Is it affected by distance between you and your Aunt? What other factors affected it? What kind of threats does it recognize? So many questions...}
'Well, my mother's really something...' Harry thought. He had not remembered his mother well, and his only memories were that Halloween night, but she was the most amazing, cleverest person that he had ever known to be able to think of such protection. He was proud of her, but sad at the fact she had died for him to live...
{Now, before you went to sleep tonight, try to think of a place that made you happy or safe. It would be for practice to protect your mind.}
Harry couldn't think of one place that he would feel happy. He always had to look out for Dudley and his gang. And certainly not here where he was yelled or beaten. Well, he'd think of something. Today had been a great day and nothing could change that.
That night, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. It was the first time he slept without any worries, and he dreamed of his parents. They were smiling and laughing when he showed them his magical feats and praised him all the way...
A/N:
Next chapter, Harry's mind sanctuary, aka mind defence aka occlumency.
Yes, this story is progressing at a snail's pace, sorry about that. Thank you for reading and as always, reviews are appreciated.