Harry ducked down into the alley, and practically dove behind the foul smelling garbage bins and unfortunately coating himself in a pulpy slimy mixture that he'd rather not think about. It was all in the hopes of getting some decent cover and hopefully hiding from his fat but unusually persistent cousin that was chasing him down.
Most of the time now-a-days he could get away from his cousin's cruel game of Harry Hunting that Dudley and his small gang engaged in. That is, if Harry could evade him for a solid twenty minutes, Dudley would usually get bored and wander off to play video games with his friends, or find other kids to bully on the neighborhood playgrounds, or torment cats, or whatever.
But some bug had crawled up Dudley's arse today, and he would just not give up, even after a solid 40 minutes.
"He's gotta be around here somewhere!" The high pitched tone of Malcolm's annoying voice came from the entrance of the alleyway. "Little shit didn't run past us."
Harry frowned in concern. His cousin Dudley, while not really smart, wasn't exactly stupid, but he was usually too lazy to engage in tactics like splitting his gang and sending them around to cut him off. They were usually in the mode of "see prey, immediately chase prey".
"I bet he's hunkered down somewhere close by." Gordon yelled from the direction Harry had just run from.
"Spread out and start searching." Dudley commanded in a breathless roar, being too fat to run for long without losing his wind. His corpulent physique was the result of hogging most of Harry's share of food every day in a petty attempt to show dominance. Vernon and Petunia were always so happy and proud of their manly son that they indulged him in all the little and annoying ways. "My dad said the little pimple cost him a promotion, so I'm gonna give him a beating to let him know where he stands!"
'Dammit!' Harry thought while grinding his teeth in frustration at hearing that little tidbit of information, since he now knew that even if he escaped the beating that Dudley and his gang would give him right now, his nominal Uncle would be hitting the booze and give him an even worse one when he arrived at their house.
And it was always "their house" in Harry's mind, since that hellish place bore no resemblance to a home that Harry had ever heard of. But good luck trying to convince any of his primary school teachers of that fact.
Along with Vernon's regular and completely unreasonable insistence on his lack of promotions being Harry's fault, there were just too many strange things that happened around him for him to not realize something was off.
At the very least the regular blaming of every random event on Harry had long since put him on notice where his supposed relatives were concerned. There was certainly no love lost between them.
TV on the fritz? It was the freak's fault, time to use the belt to let him know not to act up around the house!
Food that Petunia cooked while Harry wasn't even in the house didn't taste as good as normal? It was the boy's fault, throw him in his cupboard without food and let's see if he dared waste good food again!
Vernon didn't get a promotion or raise? It was the unlucky freak's fault, time for a beating to let him know how much he owed the Dursley's for their "care" over the years and that he shouldn't be ungrateful and interfere with Vernon's job!
Approaching footsteps on the asphalt made Harry's shoulder's hunch over even more where he was hiding behind the bins. If only it wasn't a dead end alley, he would have long since bolted. But his chances of running past Dudley and his gang without being tripped and piled on were slim to none.
Harry's fear and despair was rising up in him as he looked around the alley for something, anything that could help him in this situation.
"Hey! I think I see something!" Piers yelled out as he entered the alleyway.
Suddenly a loud crack sounded from behind the trash bins, startling Dudley and his four friends so much they jumped where they stood. They weren't the only ones, as a dirty alley cat yowled and ran from out behind some boxes piled next to the garbage bins.
The cat streaked between the legs of Piers and Gordon, causing them to jump aside for fear that the nasty, dirty cat would scratch them.
"It was just a cat, you idiot!" Dudley mocked his friends for their apparent timidity.
Piers straightened up and flipped off Dudley, causing the large boy to snicker. Piers walked into the alley and looked behind the bins, but saw that there was nothing there.
"No way, I could swear I saw…" Piers trailed off, unwilling to state that he had thought he saw the shoes of Dudley's runt of a cousin sticking out from the bins. Obviously the little rat wasn't there now, so he must have not seen what he thought.
"Saw what?" Malcolm demanded in his high pitched voice.
"Nothing! I guess I saw that damned cat." Piers mumbled at the end.
"Dammit. Keep looking for the little freak." Dudley ordered as the group departed, leaving behind an alleyway empty except for garbage bins and cardboard boxes.
A loud crack echoed through the empty library that Harry had left not even an hour ago. It had closed like usual at five on that Friday afternoon. Unfortunately for Harry, Dudley had spotted him leaving and started the hunt.
Looking around in bewilderment at the library stacks in the shadows, Harry tried to keep from puking. Not only was the reek from garbage bins still wafting from his overly large hand-me-downs from Dudley, but he had just experienced an incredibly uncomfortable squeezing sensation in the midst of that loud cracking noise.
"How did I get here?" Harry pondered aloud as he contemplated yet one more unexplained event happening around him. At least this one actually involved him, as opposed to the normal course of events where he got blamed for things that weren't remotely his fault of even related to him.
Shrugging off his confusion, since no answers were immediately evident in the empty library, Harry made his way to the bathroom. He was relieved that the librarians had already left for the day, since he had no desire to explain how he had gotten into the locked library after hours.
With his luck the police would be called, they would call Vernon, and then Vernon would accuse him of trying to rob the library. As if that would even make sense, that a 10 year old boy would be breaking into a library to burgle it.
"Not that that would stop Vernon, though." Harry muttered as he tried his best to wash the much out of his clothes. "Big fat bastard never let rationality guide his actions concerning me."
Harry had long since gotten used to the state of affairs with regards to the Dursleys, even if he didn't like it. He knew he still had several more years of putting up with them before he could escape from that hell hole.
He had several ideas of how to get out from under the Dursley's thumb the moment he turned 16. Right now the best bet he had was joining the Army. So he still had 6 more years of bearing with it before he could escape. And he often found that funny in a sad way, that joining the Army was becoming more and more his ideal of freedom, when most would see it as a huge step down.
After drinking some water from the faucet and drying himself off as best he could, Harry turned his attention to what he was going to do now. Sitting at one of the tables to think about the pros and cons of spending the night in the library as opposed to going back to the Dursley's for a beating and likely no dinner, Harry's attention was suddenly caught by a golden glowing book in front of him on the table.
Was that book even there a few moments ago? And why was it glowing?
"Great." Harry sarcastically muttered, unable to take his eyes from the book. "More weird and unexplainable things."
Despite his outwardly annoyed tone of voice, Harry was feeling a huge attraction to the book. He felt like he had to have it. He needed to pick it up.
After a brief internal struggle, Harry reached for the book. The moment he touched it, the golden glowing book shattered into a million pieces and swept into his hands, arms, and face, somehow entering his body and causing a rising sensation of warmth.
Jerking in shock, Harry fell over backwards in his chair, and soon blacked out from a combination of the inrushing of strange sensations, the fatigue of being hunted by his cousin, and a knock to the back of his head from hitting the floor.
He wasn't sure just how much time he had spent on the library floor when Harry came to, but judging by the aching knot on the back of his head, it wasn't that long. Harry climbed to his feet and looked around the Library.
There were various lights from the exit signs, some emergency lights that were always on, and light coming in from the windows, so he could mostly see around him, even if it was pretty dim. He spotted a clock on the wall that told him it was already nine, so he had been passed out for nearly three hours.
Looking around the table he had sat at, he confirmed that the strange glowing book wasn't anywhere around, and wondered if he had imagined seeing it explode into pieces and somehow go into his body.
He began pacing back and forth, swinging his arms back and forth to get some blood flowing. He was just passing the magazine rack when he saw the cover of one of those cooking magazines. There was a beef wellington centered on the cover.
Harry was suddenly entranced by the sight as he stared at the delectable looking food while his stomach rumbled, reminding that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and only some toast and purloined beans at the time. He almost felt like he could smell the dish as it sat on the cover of the magazine.
He was unable to look away from the glistening golden color of the flakey breading, but then his eyes drifted over to the succulent red of the beef. Drool was nearly dripping from his mouth. Unable to help himself, wishing that he had that food right now, he reached for the cover of the magazine.
And his arm sank into the cover. He really did smell the savory aroma of the beef, mushrooms, shallots and other herbs this time. He felt the solidness of the plating in his hand, and pulled it out from the magazine cover.
He immediately sat down on the floor cross legged with the plate on his legs, grabbed the fork and knife that came with the plate, and began stuffing his mouth with the best food he could remember tasting in his entire life.
It wasn't just the fact that the Dursley's only gave him the dregs of their meals, and that his food standards were very low. It was simply that the beef wellington he had pulled out of the magazine was the pinnacle of wellington's. He had smelled the wellington's that Petunia made before, and even though he never tasted them, he could unequivocally state that this one blew hers out of the water.
It wasn't until Harry had finished off the entire dish, and was laying back on the ground with his belly filled to bursting, that he came back to himself with a bit of embarrassment. He had never, ever, had the chance to stuff his face like Dudley, and he didn't like to think that he and his cousin had anything in common, no matter how trivial it was.
But he soon cast the embarrassment he felt away, because there was a far more demanding question burning in his mind.
"How did I pull something out of a magazine?" Harry asked aloud. "And even more importantly, can I do it again? Because, if I can…"
The small boy pushed himself to a sitting position, pushed up his large lensed glasses on his nose, ran his hand through his messy black hair, and stared first at the plate and utensils that were still sitting on the ground next to him, before turning his intense green eyes towards the magazine rack.
He noticed that the magazine he had pulled the wellington from still had a picture of the dish on the cover, but something else was different. The four corners of the magazine looked like they had been charred by a fire. The sight caused him to narrow his eyes, because he was sure the magazine had been pristine before he magically pulled food out of it.
While he was staring at the cooking magazine, he felt a strange little sensation in his eyes, and his vision seemed to do a little shiver. He then saw that the magazine no longer looked charred by fire.
A moment later, his vision seemed to jiggle again, and the charring was once more on the magazine. Reaching out, he tentatively touched the corners of the magazine while examining the charring.
"Weird. It doesn't feel like the magazine is burnt, even though I can see the charring. So is the burnt looking thing a magical effect of pulling out the food?" Harry felt the need to talk out loud to himself, since what he had run into was so perplexing he felt some comfort at the sound of his voice breaking the silence.
Ruefully rubbing his overly full stomach, Harry decided not to try to pull out more food just at the moment. Moving over to a home decorating magazine, Harry began leafing through the pages to see if there was something he needed at the moment that he could test this strange ability on, when a bedroom setup attracted his gaze.
He really liked the look of the large fluffy pillows and blankets. They looked incredibly comfortable, unlike the thin and ragged bedding that he had in his cupboard.
Feeling an interesting sensation and tingle in his hands, Harry reached into the magazine and grabbed a hold of a pillow and pulled it out of the magazine. Strangely enough, it felt like the pillow dragged against the edges of the magazine as he pulled it out.
After playing with the pillow for a bit, Harry put it down and examined the magazine. Sure enough, there was a bit of charring on the edges of the magazine that suddenly appeared. Reaching back into the magazine, he next grabbed a blanket from the bed and began pulling it out.
With the length of the blanket, it was even more noticeable that it was dragging against the edges of the rectangle shape of the magazine; he had to readjust his grip several times as he pulled more and more blanket through the magazine, before he finally pulled it free.
Harry figured that the magazine was acting as a sort of doorway to the place the items existed, that he could grab them from, which meant he couldn't pull out anything that wouldn't fit through the shape of the doorway.
He felt a bit disappointed at that, since after he finally accepted the reality of his new powers, he had been thinking of many the presents that Dudley had gotten over the years and taunted him with, trying to make him jealous and aware of his lack of good fortune. Like nice mountain bike, for example.
But if Harry was limited to the size and shape of a magazine, then he wouldn't even be able to pull a tire out of the magazine, let alone the whole bike.
"But…is this power only limited to magazines? What about posters?" Harry's eye had been caught by some of the poster pictures on the wall. "Could I pull things out of posters?"
Immediately putting action to thought, he moved over to a poster he saw of a library scene, with words at the top encouraging kids to read. In the poster was a library desk with piles of books on top, and there was a chair sitting in front of the table.
Harry found that he had no problem reaching into the poster and grabbing the chair. Carefully adjusting its position, he tried to maneuver it out of the poster. Harry felt a sense of triumph as he soon had the chair out of the poster, and was sitting on it with a huge grin on his face.
"Awesome, I can pull stuff out of things bigger than a magazine." Harry mumbled as he eyed the very charred looking poster. "The poster looks even more burnt than the magazine, I wonder why that is. Is it because the chair is bigger? Or something else?"
While sitting on the chair he had just pulled out of a poster, Harry began to think about how he could use this newfound magic skill to make his life better. And more importantly, could he use it to break free from the Dursleys?
"I can pull food out of magazines, so there's that taken care of."
While still thinking deeply, Harry went over to the scrap paper bin that the library set out for people to write the book titles and dewey decimal codes to find books after looking them up. With a stubby pencil, he began making a list of what he needed to survive.
"Food, water, money, somewhere to live, clothes so I don't look like I'm homeless and get the police called on me." Harry paused as his gaze darted around the empty library that was only dimly lit by some emergency lights and lamps. "And I definitely need magazines or posters to pull all this out of."
Suddenly a thought hit Harry over the head. Did he really need something with a picture in order to pull an item out? Or could he use a book? He was in a library when he encountered that magical golden glowing book, so Harry thought it made sense that he could use books as well.
And books would greatly expand what kind of items he could pull out, which would make his life so much better.
Making his way over to the book shelves, Harry began looking at titles, pondering what he was going to try to pull out of the books. He had listed money as one of the big things he needed, so he soon found a little crime drama book.
Impatiently flipping through the pages with what he wanted in mind, he soon felt that tingle in his hands, so he paused on that particular page. Scanning the pages he landed on, he saw that the book mentioned bundles of 100 pound notes resting in an open briefcase, just before a shady drug deal went down.
Looking at the size of the paperback that he was holding, Harry mentally compared it to Vernon's briefcase and didn't think he would be able to pull out the entire briefcase through the small book size. With the idea of grabbing only a couple straps of 100s, he reached into the book and soon pulled out cash!
Getting excited at the sight of the two neatly wrapped straps of 100 pound notes, Harry spent several minutes counting it. He soon realized that each strap had 100 notes, which meant that he now had 20,000 pounds in his hands.
The shock of that realization really hit him. He had never held so much money in all his life. The potentially unending amounts of cash that he could grab from books represented freedom in Harry's mind. He could live a life free from the Dursleys.
Looking at the book with charred edges in one hand, and the money in his other, Harry struggled and soon calmed himself down in order to think about his situation and what he could learn from his experiments and how he was going to use this to live.
First off, the monetary value of the item being pulled out didn't seem to affect the degree of charring of the book, magazine, or poster. If it did, then the book should be much more charred than the magazine or the poster, since he doubted that beef wellington or a simple library chair could be worth more than 20,000 pounds.
Secondly, he had to be very careful about who he told about his power. He now had enough cash on him that many people would cheerfully murder him for it. Or just as bad, imprison him as a virtual slave to produce things for them.
He had already experienced chore servitude at the Dursleys over the past several years, doing their lawn, painting the house and fences, and cleaning and cooking daily. He had no desire to experience real slavery with even crueler taskmasters.
So he had to keep this magical power secret in order to keep himself safe.
Going back to the Dursleys and trying to hide this ability from them was a very bad idea. He was already going to be beaten up if he went back there, and for something that wasn't his fault. The moment that Vernon caught wind of any kind of "freakishness" on his part by doing something unreasonable like trying to keep himself well fed, he would absolutely lose it.
And the very thought of not using this amazing magical ability for the next six years was absolutely intolerable to the young ten year old. This was his opportunity to be free from his horrid relatives. He would not give this opportunity up in order to cower from the Dursleys for the next six years.
So Harry made the decision that he would figure out how to live on his own. And he was never going back.
Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, there lies a large and ancient castle. It was saturated in magic from over a thousand years serving as a magical school for young and emotionally charged hormonal teenagers as they grew into adults and learned how to harness their magic.
In one particular tower there was a suite of rooms that had served as the Headmaster of the School's office and living quarters for more than three centuries. In the Headmaster's office, there were a large number of portrait frames of the previous Headmasters.
It was currently late at night, and the portraits were all sleeping. The previous headmasters preferred to sleep close to their frame, being on call so that in case of emergency they can give prompt advice to the current Headmaster. Even if the current Headmaster rarely listened to their advice, it was still the former Headmaster's portrait's duty to give that advice.
Along one wall near the Headmaster's large and ornate desk, there were shelves that held quite a few odd magical trinkets. One of the trinkets was a series of concentric brass hoops on a wooden base. The hoops were spinning around each other with no visible means of propulsion while creating a low whirling sound.
One of the items was an odd looking hourglass that was shaped like two pyramids that were placed on top of each other, both with the top pointed up. Green colored sand was currently flowing up from the bottom pyramid, through the floor of the top one, and pilling out at the top inside of the upper pyramid, to spill down in an arc around the central hole.
There was another trinket that looked very much like a circular vanity mirror on a stand with two mirrored surfaces. The mirror on one side glowed a very calm looking green, while the mirror on the other side glowed a very sullen looking red. If one were to read the words printed on the frame, they would notice that the calm looking green side had written "Body and Health", while the sullen green side had inscribed "Emotional Wellbeing".
There were several other trinkets alongside that seemed inert at the moment, but would send out an audible alarm when certain conditions were met. As well as certain trinkets that would begin tracking their target when those same conditions were met.
And that condition seemed to have been met at that very moment, as those several trinkets suddenly seemed to come alive and begin to make an extremely loud amount of noise. The caterwauling woke up the only inhabitants of the office, namely the former Headmaster's portraits and one little fiery red colored baby phoenix, who had just gone through his burning day the previous day.
"I say! What is that Merlin-awful racket?!" One old looking lady in curlers was blearily looking around from her portrait.
"Who is making that noise?!" A stern looking old man with a short grey beard was likewise trying to look around the edges of his portrait frame.
"Silence! Whoever is doing that, silence I say!" A man with long black and grey hair with grey eyes demanded while pounding on the edges of his frame.
The chorus of yells, demands, and questions being thrown out by the former Headmaster portraits only added to the volume of noise in the office. This caused a great deal of annoyance to the only living being currently in the office, the phoenix Fawkes.
Unfortunately, he was unable to flash away from the noise to seek a peaceful place for his sleep, since he was currently only a baby phoenix. So with some rather displeased chirps that seemed to go unnoticed in the din, he firmly stuck his head under his undersized wing and tried his best to ignore all the noise and go back to sleep. He was a growing bird who needed his rest!
But there was one being that heard the displeased chirp amidst the din. Hogwarts, the castle herself, has been steeped in a great deal of magic for over a millennia, as well as being exposed to many of the greatest minds of the wizarding world as they passed through her halls. This gave her the necessary catalysts needed to awaken her own rudimentary sentience and awareness, thus making the castle alive.
Unfortunately, she was also exposed to some of the worst and most dense minds as well, since not only the smart but the dumb also went to school. This caused her quickening to be delayed by a few centuries, but she got there in the end, thankfully.
She hadn't been awake for a great deal of time, but she still remembered all that had happened in her halls since the first time her primary ward stone had been connected to the ley lines that passed under her and her ward schema had been charged. As such, she remembered that Fawkes was one of her constant companions over the many centuries.
Despite the impression that the wizarding world now had, Fawkes was most certainly not Albus Dumbledore's Phoenix familiar. He was linked with Hogwarts herself, from the time she was created.
It was just that since the Headmasters of the school had access to so much information concerning the students and the wizarding world in general, Fawkes usually hung around the Headmasters when he wasn't traveling around. So people over the years have been calling him the "Headmaster's Phoenix" for so many years, it was easy for them to get the mistaken impression that he was Dumbledore's familiar. A mistaken impression that Albus found quite useful and never corrected.
Hogwarts herself heard Fawkes' displeased chirping and decided that she would do something about it. With a simple flexing of the great magical power at her command, silence descended on the Headmaster's office.
The alarms were still blaring behind the silencing charms, the former Headmasters were still yelling in their portrait frames, but blessed silence had once more prevailed.
Fawkes, knowing exactly who had blessed him with silence, pulled his head out from under his wing and chirped gratefully. Hogwarts and Fawkes exchanged a short mental conversation, before the small baby Phoenix once more went back to his sleep, and Hogwarts did whatever a practically immortal living building did in the wee hours of the night.
Albus Dumbledore, asleep in the Headmaster's bed in the Headmaster's quarters snorted at the brief disturbance to his sleep from the caterwauling alarms that were silenced in the adjoining Headmaster's office before rolling over and snuggling into his very comfortable Headmaster's bed, Headmaster's quilt, and Headmaster's pillow.
Briefly lifting one cheek, he released a long wheezing fart, before settling back in and falling fully asleep once more, as comfortable as a baby in their mother's arms. A baby that wasn't suffering from colic and unable to sleep, but was resting as peacefully Headmaster Dumbledore was in his Headmaster's bed.
He always had such restful sleep, which was only appropriate for someone who was in the positions of authority that he was; with how much good he did in the wizarding world, of course he deserved such restful sleep!
After all, in this world if Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore couldn't sleep the sleep of the just, just who could?
In the county of Surrey in England, there was a lovely town by the name of Little Whinging. In one corner of Little Whinging was Privet Drive, home to a great many perfectly normal and respectable people.
One particular two floor house had a perfectly manicured and lovely green lawn in front of it, with perfectly grown rose bushes on one side of it. There was a single car parked in the garage, owned by the husband and man of the house. This house, Number 8 Privet Drive, was home to the Dursl…
[AN: Wait a sec, that's not the right number…Dammit, I'm at the wrong house. All these fugly cookie cutter houses look the damned same, especially this late at night. *cough* *cough* Sorry 'bout that.]
[A few houses over, a few moments later.]
This house, Number 4 Privet Drive, was home to the Dursleys.
And unknown to the Dursleys, at this very moment, Harry Potter had determined that he was no longer a resident of their perfectly "normal" house and lives. As such, the Blood Wards that had been present ever since a young 15 month old Harry had been taken in by the Dursley family was beginning to unravel.
Also unknown to the Dursleys was the fact that these Blood Wards had been created by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore piggybacking his Ward Schema onto Lily Potter's Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual for her darling baby boy. The Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual was the very thing that kept young Harry alive when he was blasted by a killing curse by the very powerful Dark Lord Voldemort.
Not to mention that the weakened Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual also kept a very disgusting slice of soul of the aforementioned Dark Lord Voldemort from infecting and taking over the young and unable to protect himself Harry Potter. In fact, the Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual kept young Harry from even becoming a Horcrux vessel for the Dark Lord Voldemort.
And it would have only taken a few days to a week for young Harry's very powerful for any age magic to re-power the Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual's power, due to the very powerful bond between Harry and his mother's Ritual. It would have been a matter of days before that disgusting sliver of soul from the Dark Lord Voldemort was blasted apart by the Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual.
At least that was the case until Headmaster Dumbledore decided, in his majestic wisdom, that he would throw an entire Warding Schema meant to protect the Dursley household on top of the Ritual and use the Ritual's magic to power his Ward Schema.
Magic in general was directed by the caster's intent. Especially powerful magics were certainly no exception. So while powerful spells and rituals were not exactly sentient, they certainly had a bit of programming to them, in order that they could carry out the caster's intent.
And much like the Patronus was inexorably linked with the positive emotions associated with happiness and the desire to protect, or the Killing Curse was mired in waves of the caster's hate, Lily's Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual was naturally (as the name implied) linked with the emotion of Love, Protection, and Hope for the survival of the loved one.
Such emotions were, unsurprising to anyone who knew them, lacking in the Dursley home. Especially when directed at young Harry Potter, the magical freak that the Dursleys were forced to take in by Headmaster Dumbledore.
So the Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual found itself under a devastating triple attack.
First was the abundant environment of hatred from the Dursleys, an emotion that undermined the Ritual since it came from blood relatives who should have been nurturing it and young Harry with an environment of love.
This was actually a two prong attack, since the lack of a loving environment over time caused young Harry to no longer really feel the emotion of love that was so prevalent in his first 15 months of life.
This lack of the emotion of love from young Harry made it hard for the Ritual to utilize young Harry's magical power to charge its power reserves, which meant that the drain on Harry's magic was much greater than should have been the case in order to fill up the Ritual's magical power.
The hatred of the Dark Lord Voldemort's soul sliver, as well as the power used by the Ritual to keep it from infecting young Harry was the second attack.
And the third attack was the power drain from Headmaster Dumbledore's Ward Schema that was meant to protect the Dursley household. A household that had nothing but hate for the Ritual's young charge, Harry.
So that night, if a Ritual could feel glee, then Lily Potter's Motherly Love and Self Sacrifice Ritual would have experienced that emotion as it suddenly found that two of the attacks on it that were so draining and kept it from fulfilling its purpose were suddenly gone.
The environment of hate, while not suddenly turning into an environment of love, was suddenly missing. And hope was a closely related emotion to the Ritual, so it was good enough that young Harry was feeling a great deal of hope for his life and future ever since he found his new ability to pull items out of books.
And the Ward Schema of Headmaster Dumbledore no longer drew power from the Ritual's power source.
Thus, the Ritual's Intent / Programming was quite determined that in a short amount of time, it would soon have a full charge of power and be able to absolutely shred and destroy the soul sliver of the Dark Lord Voldemort with a Motherly Loving vengeance, thus expelling it from young Harry's presence.
The Ritual's Intent couldn't wait to finally fulfill its purpose after all these years. And it would do all in its considerable power to make sure that no one interfered!