Time moved on, as it is ought to do, and Harry learned and grew. He discovered many new rules centered around his magic.
Rule M-1. Magic is a form of energy. Using it expends energy, which is translated into physical exhaustion.
His Aunt and Uncle were not amused when he discovered this one night and was unable to gather the energy to complete his chore list the next day. Still, his magic was able to heal him that night despite the previous exhaustion. This rule, he quickly found, was countered by another.
Rule M-2. The more magic is used, the easier it is to use the next time.
Harry couldn't decide if his magic was more like a muscle, that grew stronger after consecutive workouts, or more like a nerve pathway, wherein the more it was used, the faster the connections could be accessed the next time. In the end, he decided to go with the nerve pathway. He used this idea as the basis of his mental image of his magic.
The source of his magic, his core, was like the brain, the control center. It is where his magic was stored. From there, "nerves" connected his core to the output source. At the moment, it was his hand, but he had plans to change that. When he first started, his magic was sluggish, barely moving through these pathways to his hand where he could then direct it as wished. The more he practiced, though, the quicker his magic responded and he could feel the difference in speed as it raced from his core to his hand.
He worked hard with this mental image to envision these pathways traveling to both hands, equally mirrored on either side of his body. Why rely on only one hand when he could use both?
As for what he could do with his magic, it seemed limitless as long as he had the necessary amount to accomplish his goal. He of course, started off with what he determined to be easy tasks – creating a small ball of light, lifting the lighter objects in his cupboard – before he moved onto the slightly more complex. He found he could undo the lock on his cupboard and cut blades of grass or other weeds in half.
Despite this, he still found another rule that he was not content with.
Rule M-3. Instinctive acts of magic are more powerful than conscious acts of magic.
He spent many weeks, months even, pondering on this rule. He was able to achieve small tasks with his magic, but anything more lead to exhaustion. However, unconsciously he would heal himself over night or even teleport to a safe location. He could not attain either of these with conscious effort. It led to exhaustion every time before anything truly happened. And yet, he was capable of it. Rule M-3 seemed to break M-1. It was rule M-2 that gave him the answers he was seeking.
The more magic is used, the easier it is to use the next time.
He had been healing himself for a long time, for as long as he could remember. It was also true that the injuries that had to be healed increased over time. His magic did not have to heal broken bones or concussions for the first several years of life within this house. No, his pain started with bruises, sprained ligaments, and small abrasions. Then it had moved into burns and torn muscles before finally escalating to broken bones and internal injuries. His magic had time to grow into the tasks. Somewhere, in his body were those pathways for his magic connecting to what had to be every part of his body for it to be able to heal him. It was simply that he was not aware of them yet. All he had to do was find them.
Harry spent the next year of his life searching for these pathways. He had already unconsciously made a network of pathways through his whole body, there was no reason to recreate them as he had planned on doing.
Despite these discoveries, life moved on in the Dursley household as it always had. In general, the rest of the residents accepted that Harry was silent. Occasionally his Uncle would punish him for not responding. Harry knew that if he did speak the punishment would not change and so kept his silence. Other times, when his Uncle was especially drunk or had an especially bad day, he went out of his way to try to make his nephew scream and break the pervasive silence, only giving into defeat when the boy was unconscious or his arm grew tired.
At school he continued to be advanced for his age. Several teachers tried to get him to speak as well. However, after two years of silence the entire school accepted that the Potter boy did not speak. After that each new teacher left him alone, allowing him to turn in all required work but not bothering to ask him questions in class. Harry enjoyed this system. It gave him plenty of time to work on his own interests. He spent a great deal of free time in the library. For a while he looked at anatomy texts, very interested in his ideas of magic being like muscles or nerves. He used the diagrams to increase his mental image of his body as his magic ran through it. This of course led to another rule.
Rule M-4. Visualization is the key to magic.
He had to visualize the magic running through his body, see it move through the pathways he created as it left his body to then go on and enact the change that he wanted.
Finally, after many years of studying and practice, ten-year-old Harry Potter accessed the network of pathways throughout his body that his magic had built up over the course of his life. The sheer number of possibilities this opened up was astonishing. However, one idea caught and held his attention above all others.
Pain is as much a fact of life as breathing. There is no point in trying to fight it. No point in trying to escape. Both will only lead to greater pain.
This was one of his golden rules. He knew that it was pointless to try and escape the pain with the use of his magic. Even if his Uncle could not punish him physically, Harry understood that there were plenty of other ways he could be punished. Even the effort would inevitably lead to more pain. What if, instead of completely stopping it, he could buffer the pain? Reduce its impact?
His very first idea was a bubble of magic that surrounded him and kept other things out. This was quickly discarded. Uncle Vernon would not be pleased if he could not reach Harry. His next idea was more devious, or more logical as Harry insisted. His Aunt and Uncle were already used to the fact that Harry would be healed of his worst injuries from a beating by the next morning. He was sure the only reason he wasn't punished for these instances of 'freakishness' was because it allowed him to complete the endless list of chores despite how badly he was punished the day before. What if he could circumvent the middle process?
Was it possible to give the appearance of being injured yet not take the full brunt of the punishment? In this way he would not need to heal any major injuries over night and hopefully not have his Uncle punish him worse for any use of magic.
The answer came from an engineering book on cars. A shock absorber, something that would take and dissipate part of the incoming energy but wouldn't block it completely. That was what he needed his magic to emulate. So, like every other project he set his mind to, Harry focused on this one task; meditated and visualized what he needed.
Carefully he pooled a thin layer of his magic across hiss body, making it slightly thicker at critical points such as his neck, spine, kidneys, and liver. He imagined this layer of magic to be a layer of padding that would absorb some of the energy from each punch, kick, or lash his Uncle threw his way, so that his body underneath only took a small amount of the damage. He was still bruised. He was still in pain. And most importantly, his Uncle was still satisfied.
As with the rest of his magic, he found this layer to be quite tiring. Initially, he could only put it up for the duration of the punishment. Each day he practiced more and more until he could hold up his shock absorber for the entire day.
In this way life continued on. He woke up early, made breakfast for the rest of the household, cleaned the kitchen, and went to school. He worked in silence, only interacting with the teacher when he had assignments to turn in. He returned to the house and was punished for whatever supposed slight Dudley came up with that day before being given his chore list. He mechanically completed the chores in silence before cooking the evening meal and receiving whatever sustenance his Aunt decided to give him. After the meal and final cleanup of the kitchen his Uncle would punish him for any failures throughout the day, whether they belonged to Harry, Dudley, or Vernon was inconsequential. If Harry was conscious by the end, he would clean whatever mess his punishment caused, be it spilled blood on the kitchen floor or the table and chairs moved from their rightful place. With the daily rituals completed Harry would be sent to his cupboard where he was free to practice his magic before he fell asleep to rest for another day in the Dursley household.
And so life continued on and days blurred together in their uniformity. Until, one day, they did not.