Rising Powers

Prologue

Harry James Potter, age seven, was on the school roof. He did not know how he got there, nor did he know that this was perfectly normal (if not a bit premature) for the sort of person that he would have been had his parents been alive. Because Harry's parents were not unemployed, worthless alcoholics who got themselves wrapped around a tree ("And good riddance to bad rubbish!" as Harry's uncle Vernon frequently said). In fact, Harry's mother, Lily, was a witch and his father, James, was a wizard.

Harry Potter was also a wizard. He did not know this, but it is impossible for a wizard to change his nature. As much as his horrid relatives tried to stamp it out of him, he would always have his magic. Untrained, it would periodically take over when he did not mean to use it, such as in the very situation he was in at the moment.

"Okay, I'm on the roof. I must have..." Harry's thoughts trailed off as he realized there was no logical explanation as to how he got there. "Maybe the wind caught me. No, that's just stupid. I'm seven years old, right? I shouldn't think of any freaky explanations about this. There must be something..."

As Harry puzzled over his predicament, something in his mind hit another something in his mind, and his world changed forever. This happens to all magical children at some point in their lives. However, it almost always happens on September first after they turn eleven, in a controlled environment where magic is supposed to happen, with teachers that can undo any accidental damage that can happen. It is not supposed to happen on top of a grimy rooftop of a muggle building to someone who has not only never even heard of the existence of magic, but assured in the most forceful of manners that it specifically does not exist.

"Why do my relatives always blame me when 'freaky' things happen? Like the time my hair kept growing back, or when my teacher's hair--or the thing she called her hair--turned blue. Why do they always assume it was me? I know they hate me, and I give the feelings right back to them, not that they're ever gonna find that out, but it's a bit ridiculous.

"They always blame these freaky things on me--the freak. Maybe I am causing those things. I need to think about this. But first, how do I get off of this roof?"

Chapter 1: Sorcery

After Harry half-jumped, half-fell to the ground to meet an angry janitor, he was sent home and directly into the cupboard he lived in under the stairs.

"I think you'll be in here a while, boy!" Uncle Vernon was livid, and that usually made him look funny. His face would turn red, and his cheeks would swell up like a squirrel's. Harry always giggled a little bit after Vernon was gone and he was done being scared. "Climbing on roofs like a common hoodlum! If your parents weren't even bigger freaks than you, they'd probably be rolling around in their graves!"

"What do you mean, Uncle?" Harry asked as his uncle went from red to purple. He was beginning to have an idea what his uncle meant, but he figured he couldn't get in any more trouble today, but he could get some information while Vernon was in one of his Potter-insulting moods.

"Nothing, boy! Now shut up and stop asking pesky questions!" The small vent that let Harry see out snapped shut and Vernon walked away, muttering. "Damned freaks, they're dead and they still can't leave us good folk in peace. One of these days..."

Harry was not stupid, though he usually pretended to be in front of anyone that would have cared about that. He learned at an early age that Dinky Duddykins is the best person in the world, and he can do no wrong. After being accused many times of cheating off of Dudley (in fact, Dudley always got away with cheating off of Harry, or he would still be in first year of primary school), he decided to play dumb and let Dudley flounder his way through school. The Dursleys would not care about Harry's grades. The lower the better, they thought.

Deciding that this situation needed him to think, he cheated and stopped acting dumb.

"Okay, here's what I know for sure:

Harry frowned at this last point. Most of the things that Dudley was allowed to do, Harry wasn't, but he had a feeling that he was on the right track here. And it was this same feeling of being right that brought him to his illogical conclusion.

"Conclusion: My parents had magic powers, and so do I." Harry, having had a lifetime of crushed fantasies and dreams, was about to laugh this off, or rather, cry it off, because if he really had magic powers, he could make his life better and do something his parents both did. Harry felt now more than ever that the story the Dursleys told him about his parent's death was a lie.

As he sat in the dark, waiting for Vernon to come and tell him that he was thinking bad things, a single tear crept down his cheek.

"Magic. That would be nice. I wish it were real. But it's not, and there is another explanation for all of the weird things that happen to me." Harry was so well-trained by the Dursleys (not that it would ever be good enough for them) that he was lying to himself about what he knew to be true. Fortunately for Harry, a wizard can hide from his magic about as well as he could hide his tongue from his mouth. "Even if it is a mad fantasy... It can't hurt to try, can it?"

Harry closed his eyes in the dark cupboard and tried to remember the feeling he felt earlier that day. The feeling he felt when Petunia's hideous sweater shrunk to puppet-size within seconds. The feeling of having the bruises from being thrown into his cupboard healed instantly. The feeling of magic.

"If this doesn't work, I'll stop right now and never think about such nonsense ever again." The magic in Harry's blood could feel the resolution in his statement, and knew that if it didn't give him what he asked, his magic would waste away in Harry's depression. Or even worse, when he eventually learned how to use his magic, it would not be used for good. It was, after all, a true miracle that Harry had the kindness and optimism he did after living with the Dursleys for as long as he could remember. After wishing for a bit of light, Harry opened his eyes.

The cupboard was filled with an unearthly glow that seemed to come right out of the walls. Harry had never seen such wonderful, warm light in his life, except for that which came directly from the sun itself. He looked around in astonishment and bathed in the light. He could see parts of his cupboard that he had never seen before and watched as spiders fled from the light and into cracks in the floor. The feeling of magical light on his skin gave him a feeling he had not had in a long time: Happiness.

"I can do magic!" Harry said out loud. Too loud.

"NO YOU CAN'T, BOY! THERE'S NO SUCH THING!" Vernon ran up to the cupboard and shouted directly into the vent. He was beyond purple and well into blue. Harry shrunk back from his uncle's ready-to-explode face and into the now-darkened cupboard as his happiness faded quickly into something that was all-too-familiar: fear and sadness.

"Yes, uncle," Harry replied obligingly. He sighed in relief as Vernon once again wandered off in anger, muttering obscenities about freaks and their worthless runts.

The instant Vernon closed the vent Harry closed his eyes and wished hard for the light again. Laying onto his hard cot and basking in his light, he slowly smiled. Things were going to be better for him. He could feel it.

* * *

Several hundred miles away, an old man with a long gray beard looked with hope at a quickly spinning metal contraption that only he could understand. It began to emit a low whistle, and the bearded man smiled.
"It appears that young Harry's accidental magic is quite impressive for his age, wouldn't you agree?" His only response was a pleasant trilling from the bird that the man thought of as his friend.

* * *

That night, Harry had one of his least favorite nightmares. Of course, he didn't have a favorite nightmare, because they were all bad. Occasionally he would have a nice dream about something that the Dursleys would undoubtedly hate, like riding on a flying motorcycle. But most of the time they were scary. Why did this have to happen on such a nice day? Sure, he got yelled at three times by two different people and spent the entire day locked in his cupboard, but he figured out the he was a real, live...ermm... whatever he was!

Last night he had a dream that, while not very scary, always gave him a horrible feeling in his stomach. There really wasn't much to the dream--darkness, a flash of green light, and horrible laughter. The kind of laughter that he knew was not at a joke or a funny situation, but the kind that he always heard from his uncle. The kind of laugh that meant someone else was in pain. But even worse was the new addition to this dream--a horrible scream that Harry felt was someone he knew. Of course, he didn't know many people, few girls, and he hadn't heard any of them scream. Except Aunt Petunia, but she had more of a banshee's shriek. Harry was very familiar with that scream.

"Boy, get out of bed and make breakfast! You've slept in long enough today, thank you very much!"

"Speak of the devil..." Harry thought. He sighed and crawled out of his cupboard and prepared to make enough food for six people. Not that he would get a reasonable amount for one person, of course. Harry thought about that. "I wonder what kinds of things I could do...maybe I could make food out of thin air. That would be nice. As soon as I'm done with my chores today I'll go find a place away from here to see what I can do. The park past Magnolia Road, maybe. Yes, that sounds good."

Harry knew that once he had finished his chores for the day, he could pretty much do anything as long as it wasn't happening in Four Privet Drive and the Dursleys didn't know that it was causing him fun. In fact, the farther away from the house, the better. Perhaps the Dursleys hoped that he would be kidnapped and never seen again.

After he washed the dishes, mowed the lawn, put two coats of paint on the rear shed, and fixed the toys that Dudley had broke that day, he waited for the Dursleys to leave the kitchen and surreptitiously snuck out the back door and made his way to the park.

* * *

Harry expected to be caught by Vernon on his way out. He expected to be stopped by a policeman and asked why he was alone. He expected all sorts of problems that would prevent him from getting to the park and his powers. He did not, however, expect the park to be filled with dozens of children.

They were everywhere. Despite his furious attempts to find a place where he could practice his magic out of sight, he could not find one. He leaned up against a tree in thought.

"Great. Everything went by my plan, and now that I'm here there's not a place in sight. Or rather, everywhere is in sight. Why does God hate me?" He sighed and laid on the ground, staring into the sky.

Perhaps in order to prove that Harry was not hated by any omnipotent deities, his solution appeared right in front of him. Well, not in front, but straight up. Harry stood up and looked for the tallest tree in the park. He was not disappointed. Across the park was one of the largest trees that Harry had ever seen. How could he not have noticed this? In Harry's seven-year-old mind, this tree was the oldest, most ancient thing on the planet, capable of reaching into the heavens and rooted into the center of the Earth. He got to his feet and walked over to the tree.

"If I climbed even a small way up, nobody would see me unless they knew I was there." He looked for a branch to climb up on. Unfortunately, being a massive tree, there were no holds until about ten feet up. "Hmm... Okay. I did it on the roof yesterday; I can do it today too."

Harry looked up, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the feeling that he was beginning to associate with magic. "Take me up to the tree, take me up to the tree..." he chanted to himself, and felt a weird feeling, like being in two places at once. He opened his eyes, and he was standing thirty feet up, on a web of branches that looked almost like a chair. He sat down and smiled. Living with the Dursleys gave him no place to call his own except the tiny cupboard that he didn't really want to be his own. This tree felt like a place that only he could get to, unless somebody brought a ladder. That wasn't very likely, as there were no power lines nearby that the tree might get tangled with. People would leave this tree alone, as they probably had for decades. Little did he know, almost ten years earlier, the very spot he sat in at that moment was used by another green-eyed, muggle-raised magician that wanted to get away from someone named Petunia.

"Okay, now that I'm all settled in, I can start doing some magic." Harry paused. "Ermm...so what exactly do you do with magic?"

Living with the Dursleys and not being named Dudley, Harry had no idea what one could do with magic, just that you certainly couldn't do it at Number Four, Privet Drive. He supposed you could do things that were quite unDursleyish, and that gave Harry many options.

"Well, if I can make myself move by magic, I wonder if I could do the same with something else..." Harry picked a leaf from the tree. "Sorry, tree."

Closing his eyes and recalling the feeling of magic, he opened his hand and tried to make the leaf float. "Make the leaf float, make the leaf float..." he chanted, and opened his eyes. The leaf was not moving with the wind like it should have, but was hanging in mid-air a few inches above his hand. "Great! So I can make things float! That was much easier than making myself move. I wonder if I have a certain amount of magic that I can use up or something. I'll have to experiment with that as well."

Harry spent the rest of his day seeing what was possible with his floating spell. By the time it started to get dark, he was able to control where it went very well, and he was beginning to get better control of his magic. Casting the spell with his eyes open, and without begging for the leaves to move was now second nature to him, and he was well on his way to controlling a leaf with each hand. Deciding that that was more than enough for one day, he checked to make sure that nobody was around--this late, the park was abandoned--and moved himself to the ground. "I'm getting better at that," Harry thought.

* * *

"Albus, really, you're making a buffoon out of yourself." A high-pitched whining filled the room, but the owner of the room was the one person that didn't seem to mind.

"He's using magic, Minerva! Without a wand!" Dumbledore stopped his jig and turned to face his guest, his expression calm but his eyes twinkling even harder than before. "I was half afraid he would have an almost... allergic reaction to magic, but this...this is beyond everything I expected at this point. If I had any doubt before, it is gone now. He is without a doubt the one to end this war."

"Or start the next one. You remember the last...person... to have this much control over his magic at such an age..." She trailed off, not wanting to remind her mentor of the mistakes of the past.

"Yes, well..." Dumbledore's smile and twinkle faded into an expression of sadness and regret. "Harry Potter has been performing what seems to be a modified levitation charm and something that seems to be of his own creation, but is certainly a light spell. Nothing harmful. He is simply finding his gift."

"And when he starts to find his 'gift' for starting fires and killing animals?"

"It won't happen, Minerva. I am paying close attention to the monitors."

"Paying close attention?! Have you not noticed that incessant screeching? Or were you too busy dancing on your desk to notice?"

"Yes, isn't it wonderful?" He smiled as the whine grew even more persistent. "Ooh, he did something new!"

McGonagall sighed and stood up to leave. "Perhaps you should check in on him, Albus." With that she left.

"I'm sure he's fine," he said to the now-empty office.

* * *

"And what are you so happy about, boy?" Vernon asked, before shoving a forkful of food into his mouth. More than a forkful should be, really.

"I... I had a good dream." Harry replied simply. He watched the gears in Vernon's head turn as he tried to find something that could put Harry at fault through that statement.

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped. Now wipe that freaky smile off your face."

Years of practice meant that Harry could put on a serious expression at will, and that is exactly what he did. It was no good getting in trouble on the weekend, when he could practice his magic if he was ignored. Better to just go along like he usually did.

After clearing the plates and doing his chores, Harry decided that he was going to try to make spells that would help him do his chores faster. A cleaning spell for the dishes would certainly be easy, and he might be able to fix Dudley's broken things faster using magic. Quickly but thoroughly, he went through his chores and set out for the park, a few of the broken toy soldiers he salvaged from Dudley years ago in his pocket.

* * *

"Okay, so I need all of the parts to fix something. That means fixing things like glass will be hard, or at least make the glass weaker than it was before. Better than completely useless though, I guess." Harry took almost no time at all to figure out how to clean things. Really, it was just a matter of levitating everything but the object being cleaned and throwing it to the side. Repairing things, on the other hand, gave him a bit of a challenge. He had to not only remember the feeling of his magic (which was quickly becoming almost a reflex to him) but also focus on the object and picture what the object was originally like in his mind.

After getting the hang of his two new spells, Harry decided to take a risk. Every instinct that he had was telling him not to do it. If the Dursleys found out, he'd be in his cupboard for weeks. Not that anything that simple would stop him anymore, but it was better to keep his new skills a secret for as long as possible. No, this was worth it. Harry was about to combine two things the Dursleys liked to pretend didn't exist: Magic and books. He was going to go to the library.

Although he got his new spells working easily, he knew that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life cleaning the house and fixing broken, unappreciated toys. Although, if he were paid well, and if it was a different family...no, he was going to find out what sorcerers (as he decided to call himself, which he thought sounded much more realistic than magician) were supposed to be able to do, and he would learn how to do that. And he would stop playing dumb in school, no matter what was done to him. Harry Potter was going to have a life and a future if he died trying. Little did he know, that thought was one of the most important decisions he ever made, and it would be truer than he ever imagined.

* * *

"Can I help you, young man?"

"Y--Yes, sir. I'd like to get a library card." Even though he knew they would die before setting foot in the place, Harry expected the Dursleys to pop out from a corner of the library and ask what sort of freaky thing he was up to.

"Of course, my boy. Just fill in this form and it will only take a few minutes after that." Harry took the form the man at the desk gave him, and looked it over.

"It says I need my parents' permission..." Harry looked at the man uncertainly.

"Well, yes. Until you are of age, you need your parents' permission for most things like this," the man said. "Are they here now?"

"Well, no sir, they're dead." Harry did not have much experience with people in the non-Dursley world, but he knew that playing the poor orphan card worked wonders.

"Oh. Well. I'm sorry to hear that," the librarian said as he took in Harry's six-sizes-too-large clothes and his ripped up shoes and decided that he would Do Something Nice For A Poor Orphan. "Well, you don't look like the type to return your books too late, am I right?"

Harry nodded.

"Well that's good. You go on and fill that form out. Leave the parent signature blank and I'll sign it for you. Make sure you return your books on time, okay?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Harry filled out the form and gave it to the librarian.

"I'll be back in a few minutes with your card." He smiled at Harry as he walked away.

* * *

Half an hour later, Harry left the library with a small stack of books. He went around the corner where nobody would see him and made an attempt to shrink the books so they could fit into his pocket. It wouldn't do any good to have them taken away the second he walked through the door. The Dursleys would probably burn his books instead of return them.

Never having had any exposure to any sort of popular culture outside of what he learned in school, Harry naturally had no idea what sort of books to get, so he looked at the books that the other students' favorite movies were based on. Only about half of them were actually based on books, and the other half did not seem to have anything that could be considered magic.

"I can't believe some parents let their kids watch these kinds of things. When I have kids, they'll have none of this junk. Of course, to have kids, I have to get married, buy a house, and get settled in first. Who's gonna marry me, stupid Harry Potter? And how am I supposed to buy a house? I don't even have my own clothes." Harry was quickly becoming depressed before he brought his mind back on track. "That movie about the evil doll sounded cool, though. Not the evil part, the moving doll part. Maybe I'll try to do that. Only I'll have to find a way to make sure it's not evil. Hey, maybe I can change the way people think about me with magic. That sounds like something a sorcerer could do."

Growing up with the Dursleys gave Harry an appreciation for free will that not many his age did. In fact, his was probably greater than most adults his parents' age. "I don't think that making people do whatever I want would be very nice. That's something the Dursleys would do. But maybe I can get them to forget about me or ignore me more." With that thought, Harry added more ideas to his mental spell book.

Since he only actually found a few useful books out of the ones he looked up, he decided to look into the non-fiction section. He knew that some people still claimed they could do different kinds of magic, even though Harry didn't think it was the same kind he could do. He got books on Voodoo, Celtic and Norse mythology, and even Shinto.

"They might not be completely real, but everything is based on a little bit of truth," Harry thought.

He put the shrunken items in his pockets and vanished into thin air.

* * *

The mysterious device that monitored Harry's magic output reached a level of volume and annoyance that even Albus Dumbledore could not stand.

"Silencio!" he said. The room was suddenly quieter than it had been in several days. He sighed. "I believe that sound has become more annoying than useful at this point, wouldn't you agree?"

Fawkes stared at him without making a sound.

"Right." Dumbledore fell into his special headmaster's chair. He had a headache from the sound of that infernal machine.