A week passed, and Harry didn't dare open the book. He'd hidden it in an especially old shirt of Dudley's that almost fit him normally. It was one of his favorites, even though it was a mucus-green color and had more frays and rips than everything else he owned combined. He didn't have a lot of clothing that fit him normally, since the Dursleys just tossed a few of Dudley's shirts and trousers at him when he couldn't fit in them one day.
Of course, if the Dursleys found out he actually liked that shirt, they'd burn it just for the sake of it. Thus, he kept it safely under his cot, right next to the small collection of cobwebs his pet spider wove a few days before.
Harry kept the ring at all times, however, even though the Dursleys would undoubtedly hit him if they found it. The warmth it radiated soothed his tense muscles whenever Uncle Vernon raised his voice, fought down the budding irritation any time Aunt Petunia piled more work onto his already-heavy load.
It wasn't until October, however, when the gusting winds of autumn descended upon Surrey and hues of red and yellow highlighted every tree, that Harry tore the book from its secure wrappings and flipped it open.
Harry didn't know whether or not he threw the first punch. Lunch break that day had been especially harrowing; after more than two weeks of almost sluggishly tailing him, Dudley and his friends charged him down with all the ferocity of a tiger. In a fraction of a second, Harry was slammed against a stone wall.
The ring in his pocket practically burned, but he didn't bother pulling it out. Instead, with nigh-unbearable heat burrowing into his thigh and cool darkness spreading across his vision, he swung back with everything he had. The crackle of the fire in his pocket staved off the dark film over his eyes. He punched again, more softly this time.
Malcolm had just taken it, staring dumbly at him. Beside him, Piers was on the ground, clutching his face.
Uncle Vernon had been apoplectic.
Oh, he'd held it in well. Uncle Vernon was, despite all evidence to the contrary, skilled at keeping his rampant emotions in check. Harry had seen only a few of the emotions that were running through his head when he'd been told of the fight, and none of them were good. Fury, derision, confusion, a bit of fear—But then he was calm, his face a flat line. All he'd said was, "Come along, you two," and he was out of the building. Nobody said anything to stop him, though whether they thought he was going to administer punishment himself or they just didn't want to get close to his rapidly-whitening fists, Harry couldn't tell.
The three of them had been silent during the whole car ride home. Dudley tore away from his dad after a few whispered words, smiling widely and practically skipping down the street. Harry was ushered into the house, so tense even the ring's soothing heat failed to relax him.
Uncle Vernon, however, didn't do anything Harry expected him to. Harry expected him to yell, to roughly shove him in his cupboard and bolt the door, even assign hours upon hours of chores. Instead, he gestured for Harry to sit down.
He was so stunned he moved without complaint.
"Harry," Uncle Vernon said smoothly. There was a bit of disappointment there, though it was not aimed at him. Even though Uncle Vernon's voice was neutral, his eyes glinted with that complex mix that coalesced into rage. "You got in a fight with Dudley."
It wasn't a question. Harry merely nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
"And you didn't to any of that—that freakishness you do? Just your fists?"
Harry winced. Uncle Vernon didn't like being reminded of the weird things he could do. Thankfully, Aunt Petunia was the only one who'd seen his terrible haircut the night before he'd been given the ring and book, so he didn't get meals taken away for that. If anything, it was better that he only did his freaky things rarely. The Dursleys tried to ignore it, and a few weeks after each incident whatever he'd done was usually forgotten in the midst of one of Uncle Vernon's Grunnings deals.
Harry started, realizing that Uncle Vernon was still waiting for his answer. He nodded again, a bit more meekly than last time. It was always best to appease Uncle Vernon if he brought up freakishness.
Then, to his utter shock, Uncle Vernon began to deflate. "At least it was only fists," Harry heard him mutter. "Boy! You're to finish all of your chores before I come home from now on. If you don't, no dinner and half breakfast. When you're done with every, you only come back to the house to sleep or use the bathroom. I want you out."
Harry almost raised an eyebrow before thinking better of it. He did, however, open his mouth, and then dam burst forth. "You're not going to lock me in my cupboard?" he asked quickly. Getting the question out before Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia could stop him usually got it answered in one way or another.
"Don't ask questions, boy," Uncle Vernon grunted, this time tinged with bits of the storm still raging in his eyes and on his face. A vein pulsed on his neck. "It's become clear to me that you're doing more harm than good when you're in this house. You don't want to be here, and we don't want you here."
Uncle Vernon sighed, then, glaring at the fireplace as if it were a sedan that had just crashed into the house. "I am not a bad person." Harry wanted sorely to refute that, but Uncle Vernon continued before he could make the mistake of opening his mouth. "You'll be allowed to sleep here, eat meals, and wash yourself. You'll do the chores in exchange. However, consider us done with you. You're on your own as soon as you can leave."
That was… unexpected. So unexpected that Harry could only nod dumbly and step back when Uncle Vernon told him to get out of the house until nightfall. He didn't comment on the fact that he definitely wouldn't be able to get all of the chores done before Uncle Vernon would return from work each day. He didn't ask where to go, or what he should do. He simply slipped into his cupboard, pulled the book free of its wrapping, whispered a quick goodbye to Robin the spider, and ran out of the house.
It was still the middle of the day, and though clouds covered the sun he could tell from the rumbling in his stomach that lunch had barely passed. The playground sitting at the junction between Privet Drive, Wisteria Walk, and Riverstone Copse was absolutely deserted.
Harry sat down and opened the book, pulling the ring from his pocket.
Some of the entries in the book were written in a language he couldn't understand, several others in a weird script that was barely legible. The last, though, was written in picture-perfect English, by a hand as neat as any. Noct's. It was the story of Noctis Lucis Caelum, 114th king of the kingdom of Lucis. Harry devoured every word.
The whole story didn't even take an hour to read, but there were a lot of references to things he didn't understand. Noct's story was so much like the one he'd told about the Prince. Differences rang abound, as well as specifics, but overall he could easily see the black-haired Noct as a rude, arrogant prince.
With a click so profound it was almost audible, everything slid into place.
"It was true!" he shouted to the deserted playground. More softly, almost to the ring, he whispered, "Everything he told me was true. About the Prince and his friends, about the Princess, about you. All of it was real."
And yet Insomnia didn't appear on any maps. There weren't any empires taking over the entire world, nor were there monsters and daemons that came out at night. The story of Prince Noctis' adventures across Leide, Duscae, and Cleigne were fascinating, but they simply weren't possible. Altissia was supposed to be beautiful, with glistening waterfalls and stunning arches set against the sea. There was nothing in the world like that; if there was, he would have heard of it in school.
But there was still too much of a coincidence. Noct, Noctis. The Prince, the King. The journey and the end, hastily scribbled out in a scrawl much more rushed than the previous paragraphs. All of it was too close. After sitting and staring, thinking and pondering, Harry came to a conclusion that he should have come to years ago.
It was magic.
Magic ran unbound in the world of Eos that Noctis described in his story. The royal family of Lucis could use it, the Oracles of Tenebrae could use it, even the daemons could use it. Magic could do things in the story that he barely even knew could happen. It could throw lightning bolts, create explosions with just a thought, freeze people solid.
But he'd seen more magic than that. Even if the Dursleys didn't let him watch television, he still managed to sneak a few glimpses from the corners of his eye when he made dinner. Dudley Dursley's favorite show, The Great Humberto, showed a lot more magic than just shooting elemental blasts at robotic soldiers.
Then again, nothing Humberto did was anywhere near as destructive as what Noctis could pull off.
But he'd seen magic in both cases. Maybe Noct came from some part of the world that was hidden by a magical veil? Maybe he was from a different planet entirely, and he used magic to teleport to this one?
'Hah,' Harry thought snidely. 'Like that'll ever happen.'
Still, he had irrefutable, undeniable proof that magic was real, and it was probably magic that did whatever it did to make Noct appear in the library. Harry flicked through the book again, reading through the last few pages of Noctis' story before glancing back at the older entries. Some of them—the ones he could read, anyway—mentioned magic, but more often than not the entries wrote about some sort of crystal that did the magic.
"Maybe the ring?" he asked softly. The twinkling gem in the center certainly seemed to be some sort of crystal. The band was a bit big for his hands, but he slipped it on his thumb, trying to get it to fit just right.
Fire.
Arcs of blue raced along his fingers, bringing with them intense, ringing agony. The world faded to white, then blue, then black, but all Harry could think was how much it hurt and how much he wanted the ring off and it wouldn't come off and—
Suddenly, the world came back into crystalline focus. Heat bled into his hand, eliciting a groan and a mental yowl. Dry, cracked chunks of mulch filled his vision. He rose, trying to ignore the simultaneous scent of cooked bacon and dirty wood. "Wazza smell?" he grunted, flailing his arms. Another tremor spasmed through his fingers, though it quickly faded into a dull throb. Had he spilled some of the bacon drippings on his shirt in the morning?
Harry glanced down and paled. 'Definitely not bacon drippings.'
Strangely enough, his first notion was that human arms burned significantly weaker than he thought they did. A tracery of bluish arcs crossed the skin, almost crystalline, highlighting new canyons and grooves formed from bloody, oozing flesh. He shook his fingers experimentally. The wince that came along with the stab of pain was little more than an annoyance, rather than the incredible, fiery heat he'd felt when putting on the ring.
The ring!
Harry scrambled back and searched his fingers. The ring wasn't on his thumb. Then again, he wasn't where he was before. He pushed himself to his feet, hissing indignantly at the twinges it coaxed from his still-scalding hand. The book sat innocuously on the ground a fair ways away, right next to the swing-set he loved to use when the playground was deserted. Right next to it was a semicircle of scorched wood chips, all radiating away from a glinting object on the ground.
Harry stepped closer to it. He scowled, daring it to make a move. 'Stupid ring,' he thought harshly. It gleamed back. Somehow, Harry got the feeling it was calling him stupid as well.
Harry grabbed the book, but before he could turn to pick up the ring another hand had already grabbed it. A pale, familiar hand, beginning to bud with blond fuzz on the back. Harry's heart sank.
"What are you doing with something like this, Potter?" Dudley said cheerily, turning the ring in his fingers. Harry tried to grab for the ring, but the air rushing across his knuckles only sent another fitful stab into his skin. Thankfully, Dudley was alone, though Piers' parents' car trudged idly along the road towards Privet Drive.
"That's wicked!" Harry swore—something he'd promised Aunt Petunia he wouldn't do again when she took away meals for two days after he heard it on the television—and tried to jerk his hand away, but Dudley was strong. Pudgy fingers snapped tight around his aching wrist. "What happened to make it look like that?"
A trail of clear liquid dribbled down Harry's arm. The blood flow reduced to a sluggish crawl, but a puddle still formed on Dudley's hand. Harry felt a brief spike of terror as Dudley's other hand came up, the ring dancing wildly between three fingers—
The sapphire cracks in his skin flared, and Dudley flew back. The ring flickered in the air, knocked free of Dudley's grasp. Harry lunged. His fingers clasped tightly around the black filigree, oddly absent of pain. A tremendous warmth, overbearing and soothing and intense all at once, suffused the metal.
"What did you just do?" Dudley snarled. Harry turned; his cousin's shirt was ripped down the middle from the blast, but there wasn't a hint of damage on his otherwise flabby body. Dudley's eyes, however, flashed with the same combination of rage and confusion that Uncle Vernon's had not two hours before.
There was a hint of something else there, something approaching awe, but before he could get a closer look Dudley gnashed his teeth. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, freak," he grunted, voice rasping and low. Harry ignored him. His hand practically glowed with light that was somehow warm despite the encroaching chill that spread from his fingertips.
"Listen to me!" Dudley launched a blazing fast punch at him. He bolted to the side, dipped down to grab the book once more, and ran. Fire boiled in his hand—the ring or his burns, he didn't know—etching the burns even further into his skin. The bluish veins, more jagged now, began to glow.
"Potter!" If Dudley had time to scream, then so did Harry, and if he had the lungs to scream he had the lungs to run. He made a sharp turn past a dividing wall bordering Riverstone Copse and into Wisteria Walk. His mind raced, eyes flicking between buildings for a way out. Wisteria Walk ended in a grove of its namesake. Could he hide there?
The idea was discarded a moment later. The wisteria plants had all shriveled with the coming winter, and Dudley could easily find him in a small maze of trunks and no boughs. The ring could be an option, but only if there was nothing else. Whatever it had done to his hand hurt. None of the neighbors except for Mrs. Figg would let him into their houses, but Mrs. Figg was on vacation at Gibraltar that week.
That left the book. Even as he ran he opened it, his stride becoming an unsteady lope. Most of the pages whistled ominously in the wind, and he winced when the introduction to the third story ripped slightly. Still, he flipped through the pages, not quite sure what he was looking for. "Come on," he hissed. "Please!"
He stopped on a page, glancing through it. 'There!' a little blurb written by the CVth king, Clovis, detailed a spell that made someone hard to spot when they were standing still. He glanced around, wincing at the overcast light. The book mentioned the spell worked better on the night of a full moon, when complete darkness encroached on the land. Greying daylight would have to do. Still, he was a little worried by the mention that daemons could see through the glamour. Did Dudley count as a daemon?
Harry cut a sharp left just before the end of the Walk, diving behind Number 22. Dudley's frustrated shout was just a few seconds behind. He raced through the passage.
"What does that mean?" he groaned. Something about fractals and Crystal shards and a meteor. "I just need to be invisible!"
Dudley turned the corner, and Harry sucked in a sharp breath.
He stowed the ring in his pocket and clutched the book in his unhurt hand. It was bound in heavy leather; if all else failed, it wouldn't be half-bad as a weapon. All one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of Dudley charged down the alley, perfectly aimed at him. He dove to the side. His shoulder smacked painfully against the fence, but he kept his eyes on Dudley even when his head twisted too far.
Dudley simply ran past him, sweat beading on his brow. As soon as he turned the corner, Harry stood and readied himself for a surprise attack. He kept the ring between two of his knuckles, just in case he needed something hard to punch with.
After the first minute, Harry began to relax a little. After five, he backed away from the alley, eyes darting and thoroughly confused. The sun peeked out from a cloud, shedding a bit of much-needed heat on his skin. He rubbed at his arms, idly glancing at the ring.
He almost dropped it when he realized it was floating a good four meter above the ground.
"It worked?" he gasped. Almost cautiously, he brushed his fingers against the vinyl siding of a nearby house. The smooth, patterned surface tingled against his fingers. A bubble of uncomfortable heat still pulsed and toiled inside his right hand, but his left relished in the coolness brought out by a gentle breeze.
He couldn't see any of it.
No, that wasn't right. Whenever he flexed the fingers of his left hand, or took another step towards the wisteria grove, a faint image of pasty flesh superimposed itself over the environment before fading entirely. The glitter of his right hand caught his attention for just a moment. The glow from the crystalline streaks embedded in his burns remained, originating from seemingly empty air.
"This is weird," he grunted. "Cool, but weird. I want to be seen again."
A hazy flicker of his arms and legs, but nothing else. It vanished when he gnashed his teeth. "Come on!"
A spike of anger, another flicker. Harry snarled and pushed at the tingle in his right hand. It was quickly becoming annoying, having to cradle the burns in his pocket.
His image solidified for a brief instant.
He was gone again before he could get a proper look at himself in a window, but it was enough. Harry grinned savagely and brought back that feeling of impotent irritation. He shoved at the rising bubble in his hand, willing it to stop.
The tingle dwindled, and with it came his static-laden form. The fizzing bubble in his right hand fractured, rather than popped, but Harry pushed the metaphysical pieces away as hard as he could. With a sound akin to a sizzle and the smell of burning rock, he solidified once more.
Harry stared at himself in the nearest window. Shards of something glassy rained down around him, evaporating into clouds of glittering dust the moment they touched earth. With them came embers of bluish flame, both frigidly cold and unbearably hot. They winked out on his skin, but he couldn't help but feel something electrical inside them, almost magical.
He thumped his head. Of course it was going to feel magical.
Movement caught his attention past the window. His gaze refocused into the living room window of Number 18. The single lawyer in that house, a thirty-something brunette that Harry had seen walking a dog around the neighborhood every so often, must have left the television on while she cooked dinner. An old woman waved and nodded to masses of people, a smile so well-practiced that Harry knew it was fake immediately on her lips.
Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon flicked out of existence a second later, replaced by a handsome weatherman gesticulating wildly at a map. The ring suddenly felt extremely hot in his pocket, burning with such intensity that Harry was worried his pants would singe.
"That's who I'm supposed to give it to?" he whispered, horrified. "Sod off!"
The ring's heat simply flared once before returning to its steady warmth. Harry sighed. Getting a magical ring to a queen that was bound to be in a palace surrounded by guards at all hours of the day, all the while without any money or supplies to do it. And he was eight.
"Right," Harry breathed, a shaky gasp already on his lips. "Easy."