Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling. This version of Aleister Crowley, along with 1,083,092,867 others, was created by Kamachi Kazuma.

Chapter 01: Getting to Know You

Part 3

"They say she can read minds."

…

"How did she find out about that?"

…

"I-I can't. If I help you, Sally will tell the nuns about…about…!"

…

A book, torn out of a pair of hands. "Astrology? You know the adults won't like you reading…"

"No, don't tell them! I'll do anything!"

~~[a]~~

"And with this, you can see that the area of a circle is less than four times its radius squared, but clearly more than two. Therefore…"

The teacher's voice droned on, accompanied by the scratching of the chalk on the blackboard, and Harry eyes glazed over.

Outside the window, the autumn wind blew, and the branches swayed in the wind. Elly didn't always respond when he wanted her to, so he was alone for now. Glancing around the classroom, he saw the faces of the other kids, some intently focused, others dozing off.

Sally Perks, on the other hand, held a similar look of boredom to him.

"And so, the ratio comes up to be about…? Potter?"

Harry jumped slightly at the sound of his name, and snapped out an automatic response. "Three point one four one five nine, miss."

The teacher raised an eyebrow, and some of the other kids were now looking at him strangely. "That is…not wrong. The answer is 'about three'." There was a moment, then usual reality asserted itself, and the lesson continued.

Ack. Harry looked down, fingering the frame of his square glasses. Now people were going to say his head was big, or something else stupid.

Worse still, Sally Perks was now looking at him strangely. Why, Harry thought, me? On his third day here he had been noticed by her, and then nearly every day since, things had been happening to him.

And she stole his lunch. It had been one of the special days, fish and chips, and half of his fish had been stolen.

At least he had liberated some of her chicken the very next day, at the cost of a few elbow jabs, but it had still hurt.

The lesson and the school day ended, and Harry packed his bag and ran out before he could be ambushed.

Truth be told, Harry was bored. Elly's personal lessons had put him ahead of any other student his age, especially in mathematics and science. You could only do so much reading a day, and there were no toys to be found indoor.

(Not as if something like a yo-yo or toy car would be sufficient to engross him.)

That left…the playground.

The territory of Sally Perks.

Harry gritted his teeth, and his hands shook.

He hated it. Hated his own weakness, hated that his first instinct to being touched was to recoil in fear. And he hated Sally for laying hands on him, and exposing that weakness which had been hastily buried.

But he would rather be outside, trembling, than be hiding inside out of fear, and bored.

He reached the monkey bars, currently unoccupied, and did a lap backwards and forwards, his hands going plonk-plonk-plonk as he shifted his grip rapidly.

"Don't neglect your body, Harry," Elly had said. "Someday, you might meet a problem that can only be solved by a straight right."

"A straight right what?" Harry had asked, and Elly had chuckled, both at her host's lack of knowledge and at some other hidden joke.

"It's a kind of punch." Elly jabbed the air with her right hand. "Like this, see?"

"–laughing to yourself, Bighead?"

Harry let go and dropped to the ground, grass and sand at his feet. He was surrounded. "You wanna fight, just come at me."

"Nah," the boy said. His name was Peter, one of Sally's left-ten…lieuten…one of the kids that always hung around Sally. "We'll just watch and laugh." He laughed, and the kids with him chuckled as well. "Not going to get into trouble this way, see?" There was another round of laughter.

He would not break down here. He would not cry. "Right, I've had enough." He made to walk away, but they moved to block his path.

"Where do you think you're going? We haven't seen you do anything yet."

"Yeah! Yeah!" came the chorus. To the back, he saw her, doing nothing but smirking, and he got angry.

"I said I'm leaving!" Harry made to push past, but a few others shoved him back.

"Not until you go another round."

Harry took a step back.

Don't rely on magic to solve your problems. Elly's voice resounded in his head again, one of the few times he remembered her being stern.

Not that the 'wizard magic' he knew would help here. Levitating anything more than small pebbles was nearly impossible for him.

It wasn't as if Spiritual Tripping, or the beginnings of which he had secretly learnt by going over his memories, would help too. A frying pan would leave a mark, and then Peter would go cry to the aunts with several kids backing him up.

But, Elly, this time is too much!

In his old life, if Dudley's gang had him surrounded like this, he would have just crouched down and not done anything. But in this life…

Harry crouched down, sinking his hand into the dirt.

"You going to crawl in the dust for us, Scarface?" More laughter. Same, old, stupid, tired.

No, but I'll make you eat it!

In a single motion his hand whipped up, carrying its payload with it. Dirt scattered everywhere, and as one, the group flinched.

Harry broke through and ran for his life.

"After him!" He heard voices cry out.

He ran for the building's back entrance where he saw trucks delivering food and other stuff, and scrambled for the roof.

Better a scolding from the 'aunts' than to be caught!

The shelter of the loading/unloading bay had a height between one and two floors above ground. In a quick look around he saw no adults around, only trucks left unattended, and he stared down at his pursuers from above.

"Come up here if you dare!" He shouted a challenge, and he saw many faces flinch in fear.

"We'll tell the Aunts about this!" A kid shouted.

"Yeah, go ahead! But we'll all know that you're still kittens and babies, because I'm up here, and you're not!" Harry hollered back. A ripple of susurration spread, and then–

Sally pushed through the group. Her hand reached behind her, flicking out her short brown hair in an irate motion, where it fluttered out before returning to rest on her shoulders. "Really? None of you dare go up? Useless, all of you!"

"Y-you go then, if you're so brave!" Peter retorted. Sally shot him a look, and he quailed, as he suddenly realised who he was talking to.

"What do you think I'm doing, you fatherless idiot?" She followed Harry's route, climbing up the stacks of dustbins, large rectangular containers of plastic, until she took a great leap, pulling herself up over the roof's rim.

The roof had a slight slope, and the both of them were half-crouched, a hand to the ground to keep their balance. A few tiles behind Sally loosened from her movement, and slid down a few inches.

"So," Harry remarked. "What now?"

"Now I teach you a lesson." She advanced slowly towards him, still being careful not to fall, and Harry stared back defiantly. "You're a freak," she said. "You're not like the others. So quiet, so smart, always watching, always judging. For you, I'll do something special." The last word twisted with malicious intent.

On the ground, everyone held their breaths. They couldn't hear Sally's words, but they could see her moving forward like a predator. Harry was the Other, the enemy, and now he was going to be broken by someone who was one of Them.

Freak. Harry took a step back.

It wasn't fair. Elly had arrived, and he had escaped the Dursleys, but even after all that, he was still…

In his mind's eye he saw Uncle Vernon, looming over him. Dudley and his gang, chasing after him, cornering him. There was a flash of fear, then shame at the fear. Then finally came anger, at the sheer hopelessness of his situation, but also to try to cover up the shame.

Small golden numbers scattered like sparks from his hands, and Harry pushed with his mind and his nascent magic, pushed past Sally's resistance, willing the image of a wooden cane into her consciousness. Remembering what Aunt Petunia usually did, he smacked the cane against the tiles, and it made a snap only two people could hear.

He didn't notice Sally's flinch, or how her features contorted more from her already angry face.

"Harry!" Elly's voice of warning rang loud, and Harry's attempt at Spiritual Tripping vanished, the clarity born from his anger broken.

Sally's face quirked in surprise, as if she had seen Harry make a wooden rod suddenly appear and disappear. She stopped advancing.

"WHAT ARE YOU CHILDREN DOING UP ON THE ROOF!"

Then the voice of God came from below, and the incident ended.

~~[a]~~

Solitary confinement for three days. Officially it was called self-reflection, but everyone knew what it entailed – being by yourself in a small room, with nothing more than a Bible to read.

A severe punishment that avoided the use of corporal punishment.

Harry looked up from his worn mattress. The only window in the room was high above, and had bars on it to prevent one from climbing out. The moon cast shadows where it shone through, and the striped patch of moonlight fell on the cross that was hung above the cell–above the room's metal door, forming an eerie image. Somewhere, he heard someone crying, a low whine of sound.

Harry hoped it was Sally.

As it stood, unfortunately for the staff of St. Ursula's, Harry was never alone.

Unfortunately for Harry, he would dearly preferred to have been alone, instead of being reprimanded by Elly, as he was at the current moment, back in Elly's study.

"I thought you would know better than this, Harry. Using magic that you know next to nothing about…you could have died, Harry. Especially since it's my magic."

Harry's eyes was full of tears. "But you used it without any side effects when dealing with Uncle Vernon!"

"None that you could see." Elly rebuffed instantly. "In fact, I would never have used it if you weren't in a life-threatening situation."

"But I was in a life-threatening situation!" Harry couldn't understand. Hadn't he the right to fight back? Wasn't he supposed to defend himself?

"You could have ran away to higher ground. You could have distracted her with talk. If you absolutely had to use magic, you could have attempted to levitate the loose tiles at her feet to trip her." Elly said sternly.

Harry looked downwards, abashed.

"I know why the impulse came to you. She called you a freak, you were reminded of your relatives and your past, and then, in a highly stressful situation, you used the first solution you could think of that solved the problem previously." Elly calmly dissected Harry's thought processes. It wasn't difficult – Harry was a child, and he was straightforward, a bolt of lightning, a comet on its unbending path.

Harry said nothing. He couldn't defend himself, not from the truth.

Meanwhile, Elly was conflicted. He had–she had never been one to reprimand children herself (or persons of any age, for that matter), and she found that she disliked it. It was also a stretch to say that she loved her host. But it was in her interest for him to grow up strong, and well-adjusted, and stable and quick.

A prophecy is present, she thought. Greater powers are at play, and Harry needs to survive all of them. Sparks and spray…the thought came into her mind, the beginnings of an idea, and she dismissed it.

"My magic," said Elly gently, filing her thoughts away for later, "is dangerous. It uses life force to create a supernatural effect, and when it isn't properly prepared, may harm the user." She crouched down, look at Harry's tear-streaked face. "I just don't want you to get hurt, okay?"

When I view a person as a tool, I am able to coldly use them. But if I see them as a human being, I become emotional if they get hurt, huh? Elly thought silently, mildly disgusted at herself for the hypocrisy, and surprised that she was disgusted in the first place. Do what thou wilt, indeed.

Harry, not knowing of Elly's inner turmoil, assumed she was waiting for an apology. "Sorry, Elly. I won't do it again."

"No," Elly said, straightening. "You might have to. But from now, when you do, you know the full risks involved, and you will do what you need to with full knowledge."

Her ward looked up hopefully. "Does that mean you're going to teach me your magic?"

"We shall see. The road ahead will be long and hard, in any case."

That was the second incident between Harry and Sally.

~~[a]~~

The first notable incident came two months before, at the parking lot at the east wing of St. Ursula's. It (the parking lot, not the incident) was utterly unremarkable, except for one thing: the presence of the Donation Bins.

The bins were where strangers left what they didn't need, where the less fortunate could use them: old clothes, old mattresses, old toys. The workers at St Ursula's would sort them, clean them, and either resell them to raise funds or place them in a playroom for the children to play with. However, due to the lack of staff in this department, the area was usually unsupervised, and items were only cleared less than once a week.

People sometimes treated the donation bins as a dumping ground, offloading things that were obviously broken, but the children didn't care, most of the time. Many a child had stolen items from the Bins. It was almost an unspoken rite of passage at this point.

On that day, Harry was at the bins to find, believe it or not, electronic parts. He had an idea for a project: a glove that would sting anyone he touched, and Elly had encouraged him.

"You don't get good at anything without experience," she said. "This will be a good exercise in scientific and engineering principles – at least, for a boy your age."

So far he had liberated a pair of old leather gloves, now safely stuck in his wardrobe. That had been simple: the gloves were not shiny or interesting, and thus not very desirable to the other children.

Harry was looking over a remote-controlled car with three wheels missing when it was rudely snatched out of his hands. "Hey!"

"Mine now, fart-eater!" The boy blew a raspberry and tried to run off, but Harry was faster, darting forward and snatching it back.

"You–"

Harry didn't hesitate, or bother waiting. He ran like hell. After all, he was highly familiar with this pattern of events.

"Catch him!" There was a cry, and the heads of several boys and girls turned as one, a pack of wolves.

This was bad. It was open ground, and there were some fast runners. Spotting a gap in the bushes that lined the side, he darted in–

"Gotcha."

–and collided promptly with Sally, who ripped the car out of his hands with unnatural force.

"Oi! You idiots!" She waved it in the air, then made to toss it to the boy. "Roger! Catch!"

But Harry, who had recovered from being dazed, snatched it out of the air, and made to run, before Sally extended a foot and tripped him, planting him face-first into the ground. Picking up the fallen car, she handed it to Roger.

"S-sally–"

"You owe me, Roger."

"Can't do anything on your own, huh, Roger?" Harry slowly turned over to face him, now properly angry. "Need big bad Sally to cover for you, huh?"

The boy flinched. "He-hehe. Yeah. She's the biggest and baddest. You'll see." He ran off, and most of the kids began walking away, murmuring in disappointment at the lack of a fight.

Sally sighed. "Peter, for that statement, go hit Roger. Franny, make sure she does it."

"What?" Peter was nonplussed, but the other girl just nodded. "Come on…" They left.

Meanwhile, Harry had gotten to his feet. "What," he demanded, "was that for?" If he knew any expletives, he would have inserted them into his question.

"I told you, Potter." Sally turned to him. "To never cross me."

"I didn't–"

"You made me look bad today. That counts." She strode towards him, and her arm whipped up in a blur of motion.

Harry blocked the slap with his own arm, but it still hurt.

"Harry Potter. Born 31st July, 1980." Sally spoke. "Birth Mother: Lily Potter nee Evans; Birth Father: James Potter. Former guardian: Petunia Dursley nee Evans. Reason for transfer…" she paused, and Harry simply stared at her. "…child abuse," she completed. "Looks like your aunt and uncle didn't want you."

Harry took a step back. "How did you sneak into the filing room?" The jibe about his aunt and uncle didn't bother him the slightest; it wasn't as if he wanted them as well. "Look, I…I didn't mean to make you angry. I just wanted to–"

"Shut up, Scarhead." Sally cut across him. "You're weird, you know? How are you doing so well in class? Are you cheating? You are, aren't you?"

"What–"

"I'll be watching you, you freak." She hopped away, leaving Harry dumbfounded, the slur barely registering as he struggled to process the barrage of questions.

"Elly, what was that?"

"Sounds like she's determined to be your enemy. Watch out for her–even more so, if you haven't already since what happened your first week."

"Yeah, I know that much. But–"

"Like I said, it's your problem to solve, Harry. You won't learn or get stronger if I tell you the answers all the time!"

Harry grit his teeth, but said nothing more. Fine. My homework, he thought. Stupid Elly won't help me, I'll solve it myself!

In Harry's inner world, Elly lounged in her chair, looking up at the ceiling. "They grow up so fast," she said to herself sardonically. "Still, no growth without adversity. And of course Harry would attract the attention of the ringleader of their little social group. One that rules by fear, and has a few little secrets of her own, if I'm not mistaken."

She sighed. "And here I am, reduced to examining the games of children." And finding it not altogether unpleasant. She switched to thinking and stared at the screen, where she saw that Harry was attempting to scavenge items yet again. Academy City, a city of schools built to camouflage a temple for Thelema, and I myself in the guise of an educator…but that camouflage itself became something real in the end, didn't it? As above, so below, indeed.

Well, she supposed she would watch the child for a little while longer. Freedom of action also meant freedom to lay back and do nothing, didn't it? They were past the boundaries of Crowley's plan, now.

That was the first incident between Harry and Sally, that would lead to two months of constant conflict and mutual torment–of stolen food, of name-calling, of shoving in the hallways when the adults were out of sight, of exclusion and ostracization.

~~[a]~~

The third incident, or the events that would lead up to it, began very shortly after the second, on the second night of Harry's punishment.

Harry's learnt ability to fall asleep even in the most uncomfortable of places had not diminished even with the comforts (that is, his own room and a proper bed) that the orphanage provided. But even so, hearing a low, insistent sobbing in the background was annoying.

Harry got up and walked towards the door. "Alohomora." Tracing an 'S' in the air, he landed his finger on the door's lock, which opened with a click. Cautiously, he opened the door, and stepped through after double-checking that nobody was there.

Now, to find who's crying like a baby.

On tiptoe he could, with difficulty, peek through the barred windows in the doors. Most of the rooms were empty, but he did see a few older children sleeping; a boy was shifting under his blanket.

But when he reached the source of the noise, he found somebody completely unexpected.

(Unexpected, but only to him. To Elly, and to the rest of us who know how these stories go, there could only be one conclusion.)

Startled, his arm jerked and banged against the metal door. It made a quiet thud, audible in the dead silence of the night.

Instantly Sally became silent, her eyes fearful and alert. But Harry saw no more as he withdrew and made his way back, his heart hammering.

The image of the sobbing girl curled up on the mattress, her pale brown hair wet with tears, was one that would linger in his head for the next few weeks, and was another pebble that set the stream flowing.

"What's the matter, Harry? Don't you want to fight?" Sally came up to him, barely a day after they both were released. He was reading quietly in his room, and Sally had barged in (rules stated that doors were to be open at all times if you were in the room) and punched him in the arm without warning.

"Sally..." Harry snapped shut the copy of Physics, published by Dorling Kindersley, which he had borrowed from the library and was working through with Elly, and turned to the girl. "I don't want to fight you." The heavy, hardcovered encyclopedia landed on the table with a loud thud. He noticed a boy and a girl by the doorway, standing guard.

"What's with those eyes, you freak? Why are you looking at me like I'm some pitiable small animal?"

Harry couldn't quite respond.

Sally seemed to take offence, and her hand shot out for the encyclopedia, no doubt to try and inflict harm, but Harry's own hand snapped out and seized her wrist.

She glared at him, and tore her hand out of his grasp.

"How did you get into the filing cabinets, Sally?" Harry asked a question of his own. A strange suspicion was beginning to form in Harry's mind, which had been there ever since he had unlocked his own door and snuck out during confinement.

"Have you really been wondering about that ever since that time? That's quite sad, you know?" she said smugly. "I told you already. I didn't sneak in. I just know–"

"–all my secrets, yeah." Harry finished. "But I think it's more likely that you did a little magic to help get you into the office."

At the m-word, her expression changed, a suppressed recoil. "You're very brave, aren't you? Not scared of the adults?"

"I'm not the one sneaking around at night." Though that could be a good idea, if he ever could find a way to make himself invisible. "And I'm not the one doing witchcraft."

Both were false statements, but Harry had learnt how to lie at this point. Deny deny deny, that had been Dudley's motto, and after Elly had pointed it out to him, he started to use it as well.

"You're playing with fire, Harry." Sally took a step back, the only signs of her anger being her tense expression. "I'll make you regret it."

"Do it, then." Harry stood up from his chair, green eyes meeting green as the two children, equally short, stared each other down. "I'm not scared of you. You can't do anything to me. You don't know anything about me. You've already hurt me enough."

Though Harry could not see it, a small group had begun to gather at Harry's door, the children waiting in anticipation. The last confrontation had ended prematurely, with adult intervention, but this time, there would finally be a show.

"I know self-reflection hurts you more than me, Sally." Neither child moved an inch, and Harry continued. "You can't win."

Only the slightest quiver–

I know that she knows that I know.

"Tomorrow, Harry. At the carpark, the donation bins. After lessons. Oh, and if an adult comes, I'll know you called them there, which makes you the loser by default."

Green on green, emerald on emerald.

"Fine by me." Harry was sick and tired of all this, as well. Sally may have been hurting deep down, but she still had been his tormentor ever since he had began his new life, and Harry was not kind (or stupid) enough just to forgive a person just because they cried.

"Let's end this."

Let it be known that I have never met any actual nine-year-olds in my life. Then again, Harry has Elly in his head, and Sally is…well, Sally. Let's just say that Ender's Game isn't a good reference, and go with that.

I had a children's encyclopedia published by Dorling Kindersley when I was young, long before the publisher rebranded itself as just DK. It weighed a ton.

The orphanage may or may not have been partially inspired by St. Lucia's Academy as depicted in Higurashi Gou.

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