Penned before a trip to a hookah lounge. Will probably finish afterwards.
Kaleidoscope
Albus Dumbledore was a man who was once a greater man.
"The old are but a shadow of their youth."
Still his words were precise and perfect, influential and with a sense of emphatic cadence that exuded his leadership.
It had never been the same since the Duel.
He pulled himself out of the high-backed wooden chair, far more uncomfortable than nearly anything that anyone in a position of power sat in, and straightened his midnight blue robes embossed with golden stars and walked over to a large, dusty cabinet.
He opened it with the wave of his hand and a basin full of silver liquid floated out.
He dipped a finger onto it and an exaggerated ripple bloomed from his fingertip.
He tapped his wand against his temple and a silver strand, a touch more iridescent that the liquid in the Pensieve in front of him curled itself around the tip of the wand.
Dumbledore siphoned the memory into the Pensieve and, with much regret, relived the moment when the world stopped.
Roll With the Changes
When he calmed down slightly, his vision turned back to normal and he was breathing heavily. He was nearly twenty long streets away from Privet Drive, with no intention to go back.
Harry sat on a curb, staring at the sun.
He loved magic. He loved being special. But he was safe at home, he could say that his cupboard under the stairs was his piece of the world that his family never approached. The spiders belonged to him, and he had killed all of them without a doubt.
Ending the life of a living thing didn't faze him quite as much as he thought - he thought he had grown beyond that. They weren't out to hurt him. No one was truly out to hurt him - they were scared of the things they didn't understand, so they speared them with pens, words, bullets, you name it.
But Vernon had been out to hurt him. He clearly knew about what this place was. Judging from his Aunt's reaction, his mother had been the same sort as him.
They were going to take him away, but Vernon had truly hated them so much that he wouldn't even provide them with this service.
He was resolved. He would use magic to protect himself, protect his letters, protect what was important to him.
Harry walked into a coffee shop and borrowed a pen from a woman sitting alone, then began to jot down everything he had ever done on a piece of paper.
He had grown gills on a snake. He had turned his writing utensils into homing skewers. He had grabbed things out of his reach. He had grown his hair out longer…
He quickly grabbed several more napkins and spent the rest of the afternoon grinning at the cashier and writing.
He finally got to his eyes. The sharp burning sensation he felt and how the world slowed. How he could see what could only be someone's lifeforce. How they seemed to slow everything down until he could perform superhuman calculations with his mind when it came to motion. How he read Dudley's intent as soon as the other boy had moved.
He thought back to the annoying snake from the morning, which seemed so very far away, though it had only been several hours.
You are far better at magic than you believe. That's all there is to it.
He wrote that down too.
Before his eyes had changed, he had always felt his magic as something within him, but now it was far more pronounced. He knew where it was, he could feel it leaving his core and powering everything - his motion, his sight, his hearing, his touch, everything.
There was a rhythm of some sort to the way it left him and he tried to use the meager knowledge from music classes in school to figure out what it was, but he was unsuccessful.
He stuffed the napkins into his pocket and walked out of the coffee shop. He aimlessly wandered around until he saw an abandoned playground with a funhouse mirror.
He approached it slowly and let all his magic flow upwards until it reached his eyes and willed them to change.
Nothing.
He breathed deeply, slightly angry at himself for failing.
Anger?
He thought about the torn letter, about the lost opportunities.
Nothing.
The anger drained away and he felt like crying. It was clearly more potent than whatever he had done before - he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something in his eyes that let him do more. But now it was gone and he couldn't use it. It was just like the gills, an impossible-
The world shifted into critical focus and a red glaze entered his vision.
He looked into the funhouse mirror and watched the way the rays of light refracted off of it, bouncing this way and that.
He saw bits and pieces of the intention behind it. The mirror was made to make kids happy. But he saw more. He saw kids hitting their heads on it. A young girl screaming because her long reflection scared her. A faceless worker whose wife had just died screwing it into place with a drill when the playground was built.
Panicked, he willed the vision to recede and it did.
But the pain didn't. He may not have felt it, but he remembered hitting his head. He remembered the abject fear of seeing himself in a way that he had never seen before. He remembered the light of his life dying.
He remembered he spinning black commas in the pool of blood red that told him the stark truth of things.
And they scared him, but they entranced him more. This was powerful. This was magical.
He didn't enjoy the pain of others, but something bloomed in him, something that wanted to know. Something that wanted to gaze upon them and connect himself to them.
Pain was the key.
He thought of the death he had experienced with the worker and the glaze poured over his vision again.
"Son."
Harry didn't need to turn around to know that it was a policeman.
"Where are your parents?"
He was a man trying to do his job. He was concerned that there was a child who seemed to be in a playground without supervision.
Harry turned to him.
"I think I'll be fine for now."
"No you won't. Tell me where your parents are." A command. A little bit of frustration.
Harry turned. He was too far away for the man to be able to see his eyes, but Harry could very easily see the man's.
Harry saw little strands of it leaving the man, saw his emotions as they poured out of his speech, out of his speech.
"No, I am pretty sure that I will be fine."
His speech twisted around the other man's and entered the man's ears.
The policeman smiled. "When, then I suppose you will! Don't let me keep you, son!" He walked away merrily.
Harry's eyes widened as he let his the red haze slide away comfortably.
Suddenly the man turned back around, consternation on his face. He marched back over quickly. "I need to find your parents," he insisted.
Harry frowned, letting his vision change again.
The policeman was closer this time and he saw.
"Oh my god." The fear was visible now.
"There's nothing to see here, officer. You don't see anything abnormal. They're just strangely colored eyes."
He calmed down immediately. "I need to find your parents."
The strands were looser now, as if the man didn't quite know what he was doing. It was so instinctive to Harry all of a sudden.
"There's nothing to see here, officer. I am pretty sure that I will be fine."
The man walked away again, but Harry walked towards him quickly and tapped him on the shoulder.
The policeman turned around.
"There's nothing to see here, officer. I am pretty sure that I will be fine."
"Just watching out for the community!" The policeman said jovially and immediately walked out into the street, into the traffic. The strands were now waving in time to the man's emotions, fluctuating this way and that, completely untangled.
The policeman walked into the street.
"No!" Harry shouted in horror, as the policeman walked directly into the path of a car, but the crisis was averted by the attentive driver, who braked immediately and honked very, very loudly.
The policeman stared at the car placidly as the driver unfastened his seatbelt and opened the car door.
"What in the Queen's name-" the man shouted at the policeman.
"Oh, there's nothing to see here. I am pretty sure that I will be fine," the policeman said.
The policeman walked forward yet again into the next lane, but the driver quickly pulled him back.
"Have you taken something?" the man shouted at the policeman, who stared with the same expression throughout the entire proceeding, his strands waving loosely.
Harry walked away quickly.
The Sound of the Song Would Define Her
Daphne approached the thought of school with no small amount of dread. She had always been sheltered compared to the children of the families in which she ran with. While they played games and waved practice wands, she, like every Greengrass heir before herself, read the texts that taught her the way of the world.
She felt quite out of place at parties. And she didn't know how to deal with Draco Malfoy.
"… of course I, of all people, would be given the Malfoy tomes at such a young age. My father says that I might be the most magically gifted Malfoy in many, many generations."
Daphne frowned at the groups of children that encircled him as if he were the second coming of Merlin.
"When I arrive at Hogwarts, Harry Potter with be with me or against me."
Daphne frowned more. Harry Potter, the name of the boy whispered about every dinner table in her world, the name of the boy who stood against the greatest threat to their way of life since Grindelwald, the name of the boy who defied Fate and struck a blow against the dark.
Would he be powerful? Her mother had said, once upon a time, that Harry Potter had disappeared, that all the well wishes she sent had never received him. He was behind wards crafted with such skill that Dumbledore must have enlisted help from forces that the old man was aligned with from a more desperate time.
"And if he is against me, I will surpass him in every way."
Neville Longbottom let out a harsh laugh. "Don't fool yourself, Malfoy. Harry Potter was hidden…"
Neville was charismatic, came from a powerful line, and hated the Malfoys on principle.
"He was hidden because he needed to be powerful. My father says that Voldemort isn't gone. He says that Lily Potter did something that night and no one knows what, not even Dumbledore. He says that when Harry Potter arrives, he will be the brightest star in our generation and it'll be a struggle just to get out of his shadow."
"What do you know, Longbottom?" Malfoy spat. "The Potter vaults are sealed, untouched, the Goblins said it themselves. Ollivander hasn't sold a wand to him. No one's seen him but Dumbledore and I'm starting to think that he might not even show for school. He could have died from some strange effects of the Killing Curse."
"Then we best prepare for war, once more," Daphne said quietly. The entire room turned to stare at her and saw a girl that seemed far too old to just be eleven.
There were whispers about her, whispers about her mother. The older woman had been a very skilled witch who had, by obligation to the debts of her family, fought for causes that very few wizards in Britain had ever needed to. One morning, she had left for faraway lands and never returned.
"The Dark Lord will be on the rise again," she finished.
Neville glared. "Call him Voldemort. Fear of a name…" he began, quoting Dumbledore at the trial of Bellatrix Lestrange for the attempted murder of his grandmother, but Malfoy cut him off.
"That's a load of bollocks. He's dead, he's gone and we live in a different world now. This is what Wizarding society would have been like had the great war not occurred and that madman hadn't put my father under the Imperius."
"Putting your father under the Imperius seems pretty counterintuitive to me," Neville said. Everyone laughed and Malfoy's cheeks tinged pink.
"Please, we are here to make friends, friends that will support us through Hogwarts and through the chambers of the Wizengamot," said the soft-spoken Theodore Nott.
That wasn't how Daphne saw it. They were all here, in the sitting room of Bones manor in memoriam of old alliances, friendships that were already made and they were here to make enemies.
Daphne looked from one face to another. Draco Malfoy had the trademark pale face, blond hair and the aristocratic tilt of his chin that reminded Daphne of ferrets. Neville Longbottom had a stocky build with a strong jaw and brown eyes with a sort of stillness to them. Theodore Nott looked like a projection of his voice - soft, intelligent eyes and a frail body. In short, each of them could be recognized for being part of their families by how they looked.
This was true of nearly everyone there. She had the bright blue eyes, the immaculate straight blonde hair and the passive stare. Pansy Parkinson had the pug nose and the deep black hair. They were dominant traits, just like their magic.
Malfoy's glare intensified and Neville's jaw clenched.
In a smooth motion, the former drew his wand. Neville grinned savagely and in the blink of an eye, batted his hand out of the way and drew his own, pointing it at the other's neck.
"Give it up, you're hopelessly outclassed," Neville spat out. "Death. Eater. Scum."
Malfoy gave a roar of fury and mirrored Neville's earlier motion, opting to also kick the larger boy in the chest. "Reducto!" he cried, snapping his wand in imitation of his father. It only worked too well. The bright red spell formed on the edge of the hawthorne wand and built, then released.
Daphne drew her own wand and blasted Neville out of the way. "Your enemy is me, Draco."
Malfoy snarled, but Daphne's wand, Oak and Phoenix Feather had drawn a curve in the air. She didn't know any real spells, but she had been coached on all of the wand motions. She just forced magic through her wand and the magic responded. It was beautiful, it was exhilarating. It was an extremely bad time to be Draco Malfoy.
The air shimmered in its displacement as an unseen force picked up Malfoy and threw him across the room and slammed him against the wall with a sickening crack.
He returned fire with a deeper red disarming charm.
Daphne ducked and repeated the motion but this time it just pushed him against the wall.
Draco's face twisted into a sneer as he brought his wand up. The sneer grew into a smirk. "Avada Kedavra!" he cried.
Daphne froze, unwilling to believe he would be that stupid and a pitifully small jet of green light left his wand, going wide. It hit a table and did absolutely nothing.
Everyone stared contemptuously at him and Susan Bones found her courage. "Get out, Draco Malfoy. You are no l-longer welcome in my home," she declared.
A long tunnel formed between the walls and for the third time, magic picked Malfoy up and threw him out of the manor through the chute.
"What a bloody idiot," Neville groaned from the side. Theodore Nott simply looked pensive.