Chapter 5: Awakening
Several days after he'd buried his first and only friend, Harry sat upon his bed, his legs crossed, deep in thought. "I got lucky, those two don't seem to remember anything for some reason. My best guess is it was traumatic enough they're suppressing the memory of it but that doesn't seem quite right. They seemed oddly skittish of me at supper, they might vaguely remember the pain and associate it with me. Still, that fear will fade in time, and I need to be ready for when they try messing with me again," Harry thought determinedly.
He was done letting bullies rule his life. He wanted to be the one in control. If he wanted to gain that control, he needed a way to defend himself from them. He vividly recalled the feeling he'd felt when he'd thrown Derek and Michael into the wall somehow. The way that mysterious energy had seemed to flood his body, making him feel like he could do anything.
It wasn't quite identical to when he talked to Bo, it was far stronger, but it was definitely the same feeling at its core. He'd never forget the surge he felt, the way the power had coursed through him. All he had to do was learn to replicate it. He'd been trying daily, but so far he'd had absolutely nothing in the way of results. Well, unless you counted his extremely sore knees from sitting in a crisscross as a result.
Opening his eyes, he reached into his pocket, and retrieved a small pebble he'd found outside specifically with this in mind. Placing it in front of him, near the middle of his mattress, he focused on it intently, doing his best to call forth the same feeling he'd felt multiple times earlier that day, imagining it filling him. For several hours, he did nothing else, simply sitting on his bed, staring at the rock as he tried to conjure up the same feeling he'd felt during the other times he performed a miracle of sorts. Until, eventually, he gave up, having felt nothing but a growing sense of disappointment when nothing happened.
"If I can't even feel my powers, how can I use them? I need some way to sense what it is and call it forth, meditation perhaps?" Harry pondered to himself. If he was being honest, he felt rather ridiculous staring at a stone expecting it to move without even feeling the faintest buzz to hint at his mysterious power surfacing again. He closed his eyes, simply doing his best to relax and look inward, focusing only on the memory of the energy he'd felt before. Still, finding no success within another hour of trying, he decided to go to bed for the night. He didn't want to lose out on too much sleep if he wasn't even getting any results yet. It was better to try again the next night; he had to be up early in the morning if he wanted to avoid the others.
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Despite practicing every chance he got, for several weeks not a single thing happened even with the meditation, and Harry was beginning to worry. If he didn't find out how to use his power, and fast, he'd be the favorite punching bag of Derek and Michael within a few weeks or so, whenever their fear of him woreoff. While they acted as if the events in the basement hadn't happened at all, and instead just seemed oddly skittish around him, it wouldn't last forever. He was enjoying it in the meantime though, he planned to use it to his advantage. Ever since that day he'd simply ignored them as they headed to the basement to fold laundry, and he'd never once been called before the matron despite skiving off on the chore every day since the incident.
On the fourth night of Harry's third week meditating, something different happened. As Harry sat on his bed, he sensed it again. The faintest of sparks, a gentle faint buzz that filled his body. While it wasn't as powerful as it had been the first time, he'd recognize the feeling anywhere It was his power. Eyes snapping open thanks to his shock, the feeling faded quickly as he lost concentration. Still, this was huge! He'd felt the power intentionally for the first time. He hadn't been imagining the feeling, he was sure of that now. Meditation was definitely the key he needed in order for him to learn to harness this power he had.
Harry closed his eyes once more, focusing on the feeling he'd felt mere moments ago. The power it filled him with and the endless possibilities it granted him. He focused on the hope it represented to him, a chance to finally fix the hell that was his life. A chance to actually control his own fate. For hours, he sat on his bed, focusing exclusively on that feeling, and eventually, he felt it again, for the second time that night.
Struggling to control himself through his excitement, Harry continued focusing, desperate to feel it more, to understand it better. "Just what are you?" He asked mentally, focusing on memorizing the feeling of whatever it was he was trying to learn to use. Still, it was taxing to focus as hard as he was and the feeling didn't last forever, after several minutes it slowly faded away, but not before Harry had truly felt it in all its glory at last. The rush it filled him with to sense the power inside his body was indescribable. He'd learn to use it eventually, no matter how long it took.
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The next morning, alone in the old classroom that no-one but him used, Harry sat on the floor, once more trying to call upon what he'd begun to call mana. Each time he called it forth, it became easier and easier to sense for him. It still wasn't easy to accomplish by any means but it wasn't as ridiculously hard as it was before either. Within thirty minutes of him focusing exclusively on the feeling, he was able to call if forth. Concentrating intently, Harry slowly opened his eyes, planning to try to command the mana to raise the small pebble in front of him. However, he'd overestimated his focus. The moment he opened his eyes, the feeling faded, dropping away as if it was never there to begin with.
"This is going to be a long process," Harry thought to himself with a sigh. Closing his eyes again, Harry repeated the process, concentrating silent as he focused on searching for the power inside himself. He didn't care how many times he had to repeat the same process, he was going to master his power.
Gradually, over the course of the next hour, Harry began to feel more as he kept the feeling in focus. The feeling grew stronger, becoming clearer and allowing him to finally get a clear picture of its source. The mental picture it painted was breathtaking. Running through his entire body, he could feel the power, running in vein-like lines everywhere in his body. But the most beautiful part was in his chest, where a concentrated ball of the power, a core of sorts, resided. However, the power didn't just seem to come from within him, he could feel it in the air and on his skin, it was fainter yet still present, a constant surrounding him that he could only feel when his concentration was at an all-time high like it was at that moment. As he focused on the core, he could feel an ever so slight decrease of the power in the air as his core seemed to slowly absorb it into him.
It needed a name, Harry decided. This power he felt inside himself and in the air around him, that seemed to pervade everything he could feel. The power that had presumably allowed him to talk to Bo. The power that had helped him protect himself when he needed it most. The power that he would hone until no one could ever harm him again. Thinking back to a novel he'd read recently, The Magic May Return, Harry recalled the mysterious wizards in it, with all their power.
"Mana," He said aloud softly, "I shall call it mana."
His decision made, Harry rose to his feet. He had chores to do and morons to avoid. Walking out of the room, there was a distinct skip in his step that hadn't been there when he'd entered the room that day. He'd made progress in understanding his power, and for the time being, that was enough.
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For the next several days Harry continued practicing with his magic, calling it forth repeatedly until he could call it forth in just a few minutes. From there, it was but another simple step to calling it forth even when he wasn't meditating. Granted, it was definitely noticeably harder with the distraction that his eyes being open provided, but he managed it nonetheless. The next step in Harry's plan to train his power though, was a little trickier. Despite his best efforts he had yet to find a way to influence the mana in the air, so he needed to somehow draw on the power inside of him to affect things around him.
Through a little experimentation he discovered it was easiest to draw magic from his core into his dominant hand, though he could force it down the veins anywhere if he really needed began by willing a small strand of the mana to leave his core, attempting to guide it down through the channels he could feel in his arm, only to fail as the mana slipped out of his control and started circulating through his body on its own. Trying again, he failed in the same manner another three times, with each attempt the mana getting closer and closer to where Harry was trying to direct it. On the fifth attempt though, he finally succeeded. He guided the magic through the mana veins in his arm and out of his body towards the stone. With the mana leaving his body, Harry felt a slight resistance from the foreign mana in the air, which caused the mana to resist his attempts to guide it far more strongly than it had previously. Still, he just barely managed to push past it, and, mentally reaching out with the mana, he tried to lift the stone. Slowly, so much so that it was almost painful, the stone rose into the air, shaking heavily as his control over it wavered.
Harry grinned openly as he saw the stone rise. He stared at it intently, willing it to move from its upward position to the left slightly instead. It did, albeit with a great amount of shaking involved due to his lack of control. Moments later it fell to the bed as he lost concentration. It didn't put a damper on Harry's spirits at all though. Focusing again, he guided his mana out of his body and towards the pebble again, smiling widely as it lifted into the air once again. It still shook heavily though, something he attributed to his admittedly rather poor control. "Still, I can work on that later, I have powers, I'm not crazy!" Harry thought ecstatically. He slowly lowered the stone back to the bed and released control of his mana. He'd finally done it! He'd actually used his power for something intentionally! The smile on his face certainly wasn't going away at any time in the near future.
Still, it was too early to celebrate. He needed to learn his limits: what he could do, what he couldn't do, and, more importantly, what he could learn to do if he practiced. Lifting a pebble wasn't exactly going to help him get revenge on Derek and Michael . "But what's the best way to find out what those limits are?" Harry wondered to himself. There wasn't much of a guide to go on, given that his power seemed to be straight out of a fantasy novel. Recalling a book he'd read on the process scientists used to set up experiments, he was inspired.
"Through trial and error, along with rigorous testing," Harry realized with a smile at the thought of repeatedly using his mysterious power. He'd grown to love the feeling it gave him. He drew on the power again, this time determined to see how long he could keep the pebble floating for. The two boys had fallen down after just a minute or so, but they were huge, did size affect his limits? How had he entered their minds like that to cause them pain? Guiding the mana through the veins in his arm was still difficult, but his little bit of previous experience let him accomplish it on the first try this time.
The stone began floating into the air, held aloft by his mana. "One, two, three, four," Harry thought mentally as he counted. The orphanage was far too poor to afford clocks for every room. Mentally counting while focusing on maintaining his control of the mana was difficult, but he managed. Eventually though, he began feeling drained beyond anything he'd ever felt before from physical exertion. It wasn't a body related fatigue either, it was coming from something deeper. The stone dropped to the bed once more as Harry focused his attention on the source of the fatigue he felt. It took him only a few more moments to realize what it was. His mana, previously seemingly vibrant and bright in his body, seemed dull and weak by comparison now. It seemed he did have limits to his power after all, his mana could run out.
"I'm going to need some heavier weights than just this pebble," He decided, grimacing slightly as he looked around his room. Despite his eagerness to continue practicing, there wasn't exactly a great amount of varying weights in his room. He'd need to wait until tomorrow when he could go outside his room.
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Harry sat on the floor of the study after lunch the next morning, as he had been for the past several days. However, today was different. Sitting in front of him were five weights. The first four were stacks of books, with the number of books doubling each time starting from the two , then going to four, eight, sixteen, with the last weight being a desk from the classroom, it was the heaviest thing he could find. It would help him narrow down the amount of strength he could control effectively if nothing else.
Harry took a deep breath, steadying himself and preparing to draw on his mana. Slowly sensing its presence in his body once more, he began guiding the mana through his body, struggling slightly as the mana left his body's prebuilt veins and entered the air. Powering through the slight resistance in the air, he guided it towards the weight in the middle, the one with eight books. Harry frowned as the books refused to rise into the air, despite him being able to feel the mana pushing the books upwards. It was acting as if the weight was too much, but he hadn't even come close to the weight of the two boys that he'd thrown into a wall with the same power.
"Perhaps I need more?" Harry realized. He stopped the trail of mana flowing from his body, letting the remainder dissipate into the air. Trying again, he called on his mana once more, this time focusing on taking more of the magic from his core than before. It worked, he could sense a distinctly thicker stream of magic flowing through the channels in his body, although it was far harder to control and it was draining him rapidly. As the mana left his body, entering the air, the tendril whipped around wildly, his control over it lost for a moment as he struggled to regain control. Still, he fought against it, regaining control and guiding it towards the books in the middle stack again. Willing them to lift, and controlling the mana so that it attempted to move them into the books shot into the air effortlessly, rising so quickly that they fell from the stack and hit the floor with heavy thuds.
"I overestimated the weight of the books," Harry realized, feeling how easily his mana was lifting the previously immobile books into the air. He shifted targets, controlling the tendril of mana so that it instead went over to the fourth weight, the final pile of books, instead. Carefully, he used the mana to lift the pile of books, straining for a moment as the mana struggled to lift the books. The books slowly rose into the air under his control; albeit barely. They hovered in place for around thirty minutes, the clock on the wall slowly ticking away as he monitored his progress. Slight shakes in the pile's hovering were the only sign that Harry was struggling to control it.
He started to sweat from the effort, beginning to feel the same type of tired he had been the previous night when he'd drained too much mana. The stack of books shook heavily as he strained to keep them in the air and the top books fell from the pile. He cut off the trail of mana, letting the remaining books fall to the floor as well once he noticed the significantly lightened weight He sensed the mana in his core. It wasn't nearly as bad as the night before but his core seemed far dimmer than it had been when he'd started.
The books definitely took more mana to keep aloft than the mere pebble he'd been levitating last night. His core needed to recharge before he did further testing though. He stared at the clock on the wall, waiting as he felt his core slowly restore itself. He barely managed to feel it, however, he could vaguely feel it as his core seemed to absorb mana in the air to restore itself. By the time twenty minutes had passed, he felt up to about normal levels of mana. Assuming he'd drained it all the way, he could probably expect about a twenty-five minute recovery time for future reference.
Harry grimaced slightly, twenty-five minutes was a long time to wait to recharge for actual use situations, although it was fine for his testing and practicing such as he was now. Still, he didn't have much time left that he could waste in the study today, he needed to hurry. Shifting his focus to the heaviest object, he willed the mana to come out in as thick a stream as he could control, about twice as much as the tendril he'd used to lift the last stack of books. Trying to lift the desk though, the tendril couldn't manage it, he felt the strain of trying to lift it mentally, but the mana just wasn't up to the job. He had more in his core still, but he couldn't control enough mana to lift the desk.
"In the end, it all comes down to getting better control huh? I guess I should've known. Either way, to protect myself I need to learn to call on my mana faster too. If I got into a fight and asked someone to give me five minutes to summon my magical powers, I'd be lucky not to be a bruised mess by the time I was able to use my magic," Harry pondered to himself, reflecting on what he'd learned.
He sighed slightly, realizing he still had a long way to go if he ever wanted his revenge. Still, he had a path now, and it was one he could follow to the very top if he practiced enough. He rose to his feet, quickly putting the books back onto their respective shelves. Slowly opening the door to the small classroom, Harry glanced around and quickly left the room. He would have time to practice later; for the moment pretenses had to be maintained.
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Harry sat on his bed, gazing around his room. Gentle moonlight shone through his window, reminding him of the time. The entire orphanage was eerily quiet, all the children were safely in bed, their fear of the matron's punishment if they were caught outside their rooms keeping them there, Harry though, was wide awake, a small smile present on his face as he thought over his progress.
Over the past two weeks, he'd taken any chance he had gotten to practice his control over his mana. Each night he sat up in his room, diligently practicing his control over his mana, fine tuning it more and more. Still, despite his best efforts he couldn't quite seem to lift the desk into the air as of yet. However, his practice hadn't been for nothing. It was slow, so slow that he'd barely noticed it, but the constant draining of his mana seemed to be increasing his core's size. Granted it wasn't a massive difference yet, it was a ten percent increase in size at best, but it was more than he'd had in his core previously. His control had improved by leaps and bounds too, he'd managed to steady most of the shaking his levitations had been experiencing, and he had managed to cut down the time it took him to sense and call on his mana to a mere minute.
"But it's still not enough," Harry muttered to himself bitterly. He'd gotten better at controlling his mana, but he wasn't even close to good enough at wielding it to get revenge on his bullies. Well, at least in the way he wanted to. He could certainly arrange for mysterious accidents, such as things falling on the ones who'd hurt him if he wanted to. However, that wasn't what he wanted for his revenge. To make matters worse, Derek and Michael were rapidly becoming bolder, seemingly no longer afraid of him to the same extent they had been. It wasn't that they'd been openly aggressive or anything, but they seemed less and less afraid of him by the day and he was pretty confident that if he didn't start helping out with the laundry again, they were going to snitch on him to the matron. Within a month or two after that, the bullying would probably be back in full force. He had until then to get a proper grip on the power he was beginning to learn to wield. He had to be able to protect himself at bare minimum before they lost their fear. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he didn't just want to protect himself. He wanted to make them pay for what they did to Bo. He wanted revenge.
In order for that to happen, even if he couldn't lift anything super heavy, he needed to be able to call on his mana almost instantly and he needed to be able to do it while multitasking. He'd been working on trying to lift two objects in his freetime as well, but it was a struggle. He was able to focus on the two various streams at once but he hadn't managed to get them to exit his body simultaneously without losing control due to the split focus. Still he was making progress. He'd get there eventually, and once he did, he'd keep learning more until he'd learnt everything about his power that there was to know.
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Alone in the study, stood Harry in front of the desk as he eyed the three books in front of him. With a simple thought, he was able to feel his mana, eager to respond to his call. Harry guided the mana through the channels in his body, slowing as he neared the end of his arm. From there, he carefully split the mana, splitting it into three separate strands as he pushed it from his body simultaneously. The mana resisted leaving, as it always did, but he pushed through it, making sure he maintained strong control over all three of the mana streams. Ever so slowly, the strands exited his body as they reached towards the books before him.
They shook heavily as they exited, his mental grip slipping as he fought to keep them under control. Still, despite their shaking, he managed to slowly guide them towards the books. He began wrapping the strands of mana around the books, preparing to lift them. Under his control, the three books began to rise into the air, floating in a small orbit around his head. Harry smiled in satisfaction, gently setting the books back down onto the floor.
He'd done it, for the first time he'd maintained full control over three objects! He'd gotten to two strands of mana being actively controlled about a week ago, a full month since he'd learned to consciously use his power. Still, three different mana tendrils was far harder, pushing his control to even greater heights as he pushed the limits of his control. He was slowly getting better and better at controlling his power. His control over his magic was far more precise than it was previously, he could even call on his magic within a reasonable time frame for actual protection. Harry smiled a bit as he realized what his progress meant. With a decent ability to multitask with his magic and the ability to call on it nearly instantly, he could protect himself. He'd done it, he'd managed to learn to wield his power well enough that he was ready for anything. Derek and Michael wouldn't stand a chance.
AN: Some of you might recognize a few similarities between the magic system in this chapter and chapters two and three of Alter Forte. That's because, while they don't take place in the same universe or anything, these two stories use similar magic systems, so both protagonists have to progress through it in fairly similar ways, at least at the beginning. That being said, unlike Brian, Harry here is naturally gifted and it shows. Harry's supposed to be scary intelligent in this story and he has an instinctual grasp of magic that allows him to learn faster than most others could ever hope to. Harry's on track to become a magical titan, a Mage for those of you that've been paying attention to the terminology thus far. This story is pretty heavily AU, obviously given that Harry's at an orphanage, but to be a Mage's well, it's out of reach of an average wizard to say the least. Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed the chapter, whether you did or not, please leave a review, it means alot to me.