Chapter 8- Another

Time slowly began to blur for Harry as his life fell into a routine. He practiced using his magic every chance he got, doing his best to improve his control as much as he could manage while also trying to discover just what else it was that his powers could let him do. School remained an unfortunate distraction, but Harry simply chose to use the time he was there to review his notes about previous experiments, as well as hypothesizing about new ideas to test. Once school ended for the day, he either headed to the abandoned classroom in the orphanage, or the clearing by the stream depending on how he wanted to spend his time that day.

As he devoted more and more of his free time to organizing his mind, something unexpected started happening to Harry, his memory, which had already been excellent before, improved even further. He was only halfway done with structuring his mind but even still, assuming it was from a memory he'd already sorted, he could recall the words on a page of a book almost verbatim. To Harry's delight, organizing his mind also gave him other benefits.

While it wasn't a drastic change, it was noticeably easier to sense magic around him, which helped him at improving the range of his abilities slightly as well as his control. More important though, was the improvement in his multitasking capabilities. He could split his attention a lot more easily, which helped him when it came to controlling multiple objects simultaneously with his telekinesis. Overall, Harry was pretty happy with his growth. Unfortunately, as he was unable to be found around the orphanage more and more outside of during meals due to the hours he dedicated to using his powers instead, even the matron, who was largely uncaring about the events around the orphanage, found the situation difficult to ignore.

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"Ah Harry, hold back a moment would you?" Harry heard the matron call after him as he was leaving lunch one day.

"Oh for the love of God, what does the hag want now? I thought we had a good arrangement, she hadn't spoken to me in months, and I didn't arrange her untimely demise," Harry thought in annoyance, freezing mid-step as he heard her words. He ignored the laughter of the children around him who assumed he was in trouble, their thoughts were inconsequential. Turning away from the doorway, he walked back toward where the matron was standing, looking at him with an odd emotion in her eyes, one Harry couldn't quite place.

"Yes, Miss Brenda? What can I help you with?" He said politely.

"Well Harry, I tried to be understanding when the laundry stopped getting done after Michael and Derek passed on, but you can't keep on not helping out around here. I want you to start helping out Nigel and Oliver doing laundry in the basement again," She said, shifting uncomfortably as she mentioned the two boys' deaths. Harry resisted the urge to laugh in the woman's face at her words.

"It had slipped my mind that I was supposed to be doing laundry all this time. I haven't done it at all aside from the first time she assigned it to me as a chore. I know Derek and Micheal were probably too scared to tattle but I'm surprised whoever took over for them didn't get me in trouble sooner. That said, she's dreaming if she thinks I'll go help with the laundry. Me, go down into that God-forsaken basement again? Over my dead corpse. Not to mention all the time I'd waste just by having to fold the laundry. How about instead, you just leave me alone for, well… forever," Harry thought to himself. Looking up at her, he hesitated slightly as he gazed into her eyes, debating how far he could meddle in her mind without risking damage.

"I wouldn't be too upset about it even if she does suffer some brain damage. With the amount of suffering she allowed me to go through growing up here, it would just be her karma finally evening out," He decided after a moment, diving into her mind. He first searched for her memory of their current conversation, doing his best to destroy any traces of it from her mind. Meanwhile, he imprinted one simple, basic, concept as much as he could onto her subconscious.

"Leave Harry Potter alone." He'd learned early on in his experimentations with mind reading that the more basic an idea he impressed on someone, the more easily it would stick. Still, the results of this little experiment would prove interesting, he hadn't seen how strong the commands he left on someone's mind were yet. His previous tests had been somewhat inconsistent in that regard. A toddler from the orphanage had been easily commanded to run around a room at his mental prompting but when he'd tried getting his teacher to throw a book at a student that was disrupting class, the teacher had simply frozen in place momentarily before looking extremely confused and continuing as normal. The matron seemed to freeze for a moment as his mental suggestion sank in, her eyes glazing over momentarily before she looked around the room in confusion, her gaze eventually settling on Harry as her eyes cleared.

"Harry? What are we doing here?" She said in alarm. Harry smiled up at the woman innocently.

"I was just leaving, lunch just finished," He replied, walking out of the room as he spoke. To his delight, the matron didn't say a word as he walked away.

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To Harry's delight, his mental command to the matron proved to be even more effective than he'd expected it to be. The matron barely seemed to register his existence, only speaking to him when he was the one to start the conversation. He'd had some minor issues when someone had apparently once again tattled that he had not been doing the laundry. Another use of his mental abilities on the matron had solved the issue, finally getting him the peace and quiet he'd been seeking. Well, for the most part. His eighth birthday came and went without much fanfare, with him simply continuing to explore his magic whilst ensuring the world forgot about him as much as possible, until he was ready to be remembered at least. Of course, he still had his fellow orphans to deal with from time to time, including the occasional unlucky soul who decided he was a good target to pick on. Any potential bullies were easily handled with his powers though, rendering them a non-issue. A few others among the orphans just couldn't seem to understand he was best left alone.

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"I feel like I'm hitting a wall when it comes to mana reserves. My mana reserves are still increasing whenever I use my powers but it feels like that growth has slowed down to a crawl. Am I doing something wrong or am I just hitting a soft limit of some kind?" Harry pondered to himself, as he walked through the doors of the orphanage on his way back from the stream one day. However, unlike on most days when Harry was able to head up to his room without being disturbed, this time someone was waiting for him.

"Harry! Just the person I was looking for!" Harry heard just as he was stepping foot inside. His eyes flicked toward the source of the greeting. It was one of the orphanage's oldest kids, a girl who was a little on the short side who Harry hadn't ever bothered to interact much with. Thankfully, his memory was better than it used to be thanks to his organizing his mind.

"Penelope. What is it you need?" He said impatiently, eyeing the girl warily. She smiled widely, crouching down slightly so she was at eye level with him as she spoke.

"Well, you see, I've been really busy with school work and I barely have time to do the dishes anymore. But then I heard you don't have any chores and all my problems were solved! You can do the dishes for me!" She explained, the smile never leaving her face. Harry resisted the urge to send a telekinetically boosted punch at the girl.

"Why can't they just leave me alone? Why can't they do their own chores for that matter? None of them have mana like I do, I have more important things to do with my time," Harry thought in annoyance. Penelope continued to look at him, her smile becoming slightly strained as he looked at her in silence. Locking eyes with her, he imagined a gigantic spider taking his place in the hall and pushed the image into her mind, reinforcing the feelings of fear it brought up. Penelope flinched as he did so, stumbling away in terror.

"M-monster!" She yelled, backing up in a mad scramble before turning and running away. Harry couldn't help but chuckle at the sight.

"I guess you don't mind doing the dishes," Harry murmured to himself with a smile.

"Now then, where was I? Ah yes, my mana growth. It's not as if I don't have enough mana as it is, but the fact my growth there is slowing might be cause for concern," Harry thought to himself, furrowing his brow in thought. After a moment he did his best to shrug off the worry he felt, no matter what it meant, he'd get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, he'd keep pushing his abilities to higher limits in whatever ways he could think of.

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It was early one morning as Harry was on his way to breakfast when Harry paused partway down the stairs of the orphanage. He'd been practicing extending his mental senses as he always did when moving around, it helped him with increasing the range of his abilities, but it also helped him with sensing the beings around him and the mana in the air, a useful skill to improve, to say the least. Unlike every other time he'd practiced sensing mana when he'd only felt the odd disturbances in the natural mana in the air that living beings caused, he felt something else too, something that felt familiar to Harry.

"Is that…? No, it can't be. Surely not," Harry thought to himself in wonder, rushing down the remaining stairs. He slowed as he drew closer to the dining room where the source of the feeling was originating, focusing on extending his mana sense.

"It is, I wasn't going crazy after all," He realized in surprise, feeling the same thing once more. He walked into the dining room, looking toward the source, and found a young girl with platinum blonde hair who looked to be around his age that was standing in silence next to the matron.

"She has mana too, though not nearly as much as I have," Harry thought to himself in a stupor, staring at the girl in shock.

"If it's not just me, how many others are there? They can't be that rare if there are two in a town this small. Does she know I have mana too? Does she know SHE has mana? It took me a while to figure out how to use it," He pondered, his mind racing as he thought over what the appearance of someone else with mana could mean. He pulled himself from his thoughts just in time to catch the end of what Harry assumed was a small speech from the matron.

"Anyway, as I was saying, Ava will be living here with us from now on, do your best to make her feel welcome. Olivia, once breakfast is over, I want you to show her to Derek's old room, it'll be her room from now on," The matron instructed. The girl in question nodded at the command.

"Of course Miss Brenda, I'd be happy to," She replied. The matron smiled warmly at the girl in response.

"Excellent, now then, let's eat," She announced, gesturing for the new girl to take a seat at the table. As the children scrambled to sit down and get to their plates, Harry continued to eye the girl who'd sent his world spinning simply through her existence.

"I suppose I'll wait and see for now. She doesn't seem like she notices I'm different from the others at least. She seems as nervous as most other newcomers to the orphanage are," He thought to himself, watching as the girl's eyes darted around the room cautiously. One of the older boys started yelling at one of the toddlers for biting him before he was reprimanded by the matron for being too loud. The girl flinched slightly at the noise, a detail Harry didn't miss.

"Shitty parents huh? You're not the only one here with those, that's for sure," Harry thought, doing his best not to be bitter as he joined the others at the table. More than one child had come to the orphanage acting jumpier than normal at loud noises or too close of contact. It was something he'd noticed even as a younger child. He hadn't known what the reason for it was until he could read their minds though. Some of the memories he'd seen, well…

"Makes me almost glad I never met my parents," He thought with a shudder. The thought immediately sent him into an even worse mood as his thoughts turned to the unanswered question of exactly how he'd ended up in an orphanage. No one seemed to know who his parents were and his research into his last name hadn't led to any promising results. Harry forced himself to shrug it off as he started eating his breakfast.

"It doesn't matter in the end. I have mana and it makes me better than them. Now I just need to see how you handle the orphanage," Harry thought, eyeing the girl once more.

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Over the coming weeks, Harry did his best to keep an eye on Ava. To his surprise, the girl seemed entirely oblivious to her power, never once using it to his knowledge. If he hadn't been able to sense the mana hidden away in her, he would've thought she no different than any of the other girls the orphanage had. Despite that though, Harry didn't feel the time he spent observing her from a distance was wasted. Having someone else with mana he could observe was extremely helpful for his notes. He'd discovered that even without using her mana, her mana reservoir seemed to still be growing, albeit even more slowly than Harry's was.

It wasn't until a couple of months later when he was reading a book on a park bench while observing her at a nearby playground, that something finally happened. She'd been playing with a flower she'd picked nearby, twirling it in her hand absentmindedly while on the swings, when Harry had sensed a change in her mana. He looked up from his book just in time as suddenly the flower in her hand had changed colors to blue from the red it had been previously.

"Oh? I haven't been able to do anything like that. Changing objects' colors? Can she change their shape too? Could I if I tried?" Harry thought, momentarily impressed. When he noticed that Ava looked surprised as well, he nodded slightly in understanding.

"Ah I see, it was accidental, like the first time I used my powers," He realized. Unfortunately for Ava, he wasn't the only one who had seen her change the flower's colors. Two of the local boys who had been skateboarding nearby came running over excitedly.

"Hey! What was that? How'd you make that flower change colors!" One of the boys yelled as he drew closer. The girl slowly came to a stop on the swings, looking at the two boys nervously.

"It just happened! I don't know," Ava explained as the two boys approached.

"Oh come on! Flowers don't just change colors on their own! What did you do?" The other boy said, the two finally reaching Ava on the swings.

"I really don't know! I swear it wasn't on purpose," She said defensively.

"Odd. She didn't really deny that she did it, just that it wasn't on purpose. Does she know she has powers?" Harry considered, watching the situation with interest. The two boys advanced on her again.

"You did it once right?! Do it again! Show us!" The first boy yelled, advancing on Ava until he was yelling right in her face. She scrambled to get off the swing, doing her best to back up.

"I- I don't know how," She told them, speaking so quietly Harry barely managed to hear her words.

"Yes, you do! You did it a second ago! Do it again you little freak!" The other boy spoke up again, yelling at her in anger.

"I swear I don't know how, I'm sorry. Please leave me alone," Ava cried, backing away in a panic. Both boys laughed slightly at her words.

"Show us your magic trick, then we'll leave you alone!" One of the boys yelled, pushing her over as he finished speaking. As Harry watched the scene unfolding before him, a scene so reminiscent of the bullying he'd experienced throughout his childhood, to someone who had mana just like him, he finally understood what the word empathy meant on a level he hadn't ever before.

"I've seen enough," Harry decided, setting his book down on the bench as he rose to his feet.

"You're not leaving until you show us your trick!" The first boy yelled again, kicking Ava from her position on the ground in anger. Before his foot could make contact with her though, both of the two boys were lifted into the air, hovering a few feet above the ground as Harry walked over towards them, with Ava watching on in awe from her position on the ground.

"That's quite enough," Harry said calmly, reaching the swingset where the two boys were.

"What's going on? What's happening?! Let us down you little brat!" The two yelled, flailing helplessly in the air. Harry smiled savagely, lifting the two higher and simply dropping them, enjoying the thump they made as they hit the ground. As they scrambled to get back to their feet, he looked down into their eyes, rewriting their memories of the past few minutes, up until before they saw Ava's little flower trick.

"Nothing that either of you will remember, now off you go," He told them happily, enjoying the moment as both of their faces went blank as the new memories took hold, including his mental command to find somewhere else to be. The two promptly wandered away, looking deeply confused as to how they found themselves at the playground. Ava climbed to her feet as they walked away, looking at Harry, her eyes wide.

"I know you! You're one of the boys from the orphanage! Thank you for helping me. How did you do that?" She asked quietly after staring at him for a moment. Harry offered her a small smile.

"I have powers Ava, just like you do," He told her quietly, gauging her reaction. Her eyes widened again momentarily before her face settled into a guarded expression.

"I-I d-don't know what you're talking about," She said defensively, backing away a step. Harry raised his hands into the air placatingly.

"Easy there, I'm not going to hurt you. Like I said I have powers too," He told her, levitating his book over from the bench as proof. Her expression turned into one of surprise as she saw the book flying toward them.

"This isn't some trick. You're really like me?" She asked hesitantly, her guarded expression dropping slightly. Harry nodded at her question.

"I am. We both have the same power Ava," He explained calmly, watching her carefully. She flinched once more as he mentioned her having powers, though she didn't try to deny that she had them again.

"How can I get rid of it?" She asked, looking at him desperately. Harry mentally reeled at her question, having never expected it.

"Get rid of her mana? Why would anyone ever want to give it up? It's the most magical feeling in the world to use our power," Harry thought to himself, unable to even imagine the idea of losing his mana. He voiced the question aloud.
"Why do you want to get rid of it so badly Ava? Our power is a gift. It's something to be treasured," He returned. She shook her head emphatically at his words.

"No, it's not. It's the work of the devil!" She insisted desperately. Harry looked at her in confusion.

"Who told you that Ava?" He asked softly, looking into her eyes. He'd been hesitant to read her mind but given that she seemed oblivious to her power, he judged it safe to read her surfaced thoughts.

"My father," She replied in a mumble, the words drawing a memory to the front of her mind. Harry had to fight to keep from flinching as the small snippet of the memory played in his head, making him watch as the girl's father screamed at her, calling her the work of the devil before proceeding to hit her in a way that reminded Harry of his time with John.

"It isn't true Ava. Your father lied to you. Probably because he was jealous of you for having such an amazing gift. Our power is called mana, and I promise you, it's perfectly safe," Harry told her reassuringly. She looked at him hesitantly for a moment before replying.

"You promise it's safe?" She asked quietly. Harry nodded once more.

"I swear. Would you like me to teach you how to use it?" He asked with a smile. Slowly, Ava nodded her head, returning his wide smile with a small one of her one.

"Yes please," She answered in a small voice. Harry had to resist the urge to grin as she accepted his offer. He could teach someone all of the wonders he'd learned, and in return, he could get someone to help him push his experiments with his powers even further. And if it helped him to satiate that small part of himself that was tired of being alone? Well, that was just a bonus.

AN: I know this chapter is later than normal, I apologize for that but on the bright side it's also fairly long. Anyways, I'm really happy that I finally reached this point of the story in Hunger, it's an important chapter. One of the main OCs of the story has arrived in the form of Ava which means the plot is finally moving forward once more. I've tried to make it clear without being blindingly obvious but Harry's gaining an increasing disdain for people without magic, one that will shape his opinions in the future. The addition of another magical being bullied is only going to shape his opinions more. Anyway, unsubtle AN foreshadowing aside, be sure to leave a review and tell me your thoughts, reading reviews of my stories always makes my day.