Rising Powers

Chapter 4: The Way

Harry and Hermione were sitting in the tree two weeks after the day they watched Star Wars. As Hermione practiced her magic, which was rapidly improving beyond Harry's expectations, Harry was thinking of ideas that he had gotten from watching Hermione's movies. After Star Wars, he admitted that watching videos was just as good of a source of inspiration, if not better, as the books were.

As Hermione turned to Harry to ask him a question, Harry met her eyes and felt a wave of emotion come over him--depression, anticipation, a bit of happiness, and a strange sort of emptiness ran into him like a truck. He stood, staring at her, until he realized she was waiting for an answer to something.

"What?" Harry asked, shakily.

"I said, do you think it would be easier to make a jump go higher by using magic to push off the ground, or to lighten you so that you stay in the air longer?" Hermione practically yelled at him. Something was wrong with her, and it would start to affect her magic if it kept up.

"Well...that depends on the situation. Learn them both just in case. Pushing off the ground would look more natural," Harry calmly replied. He looked at her. "Are you okay?"

Hermione looked away. "I'm fine."

"Did you cast a spell on me?"

She looked back at him. "What? No. Never after that very first time. Why?"

"No reason, I guess." Hermione rolled her eyes, huffed, and went back to planning her spells.

"This is karma, Harry Potter," Nathair hissed directly into his ear as he slithered to Harry's level, hanging from the ceiling.

"I have told you before NOT TO DO THAT!" Harry hissed back, annoyed. Hermione was used to their friendly scuffles by now, and simply ignored them. "Now what are you talking about?"

"The way that can be shown is not the way. Telling you would defeat the purpose, and you would not learn how to read nature. You received a message; you're halfway there. Now you simply need to understand it," Nathair said

"You mean that weird feeling was a message?" Harry went into thought, but Nathair had one more bit of wisdom.

"You know this feeling as well. Use your memory, Harry Potter." With that, he disappeared back into the ceiling.

Harry began to think of something that he had in common with Hermione that would give us those emotions. "Okay, let's see. I'll start with the most specific: emptiness. Well, that describes most of my life. I never got anything until I became a sorcerer. She has her family, who obviously love her, and they don't seem like they need money for something. They're both dentists, after all. Maybe their licenses are expiring soon. That would explain the anticipation.

"But that seemed more like a good anticipation. We don't have anything coming up in school; I know she likes tests but panics every time. But that doesn't happen to me. In fact, time doesn't really have much of an impact on my life at all. Just Halloween, my personal bad-things-happening day, and Christmas, but I'm not with the Dursleys so I won't have to get up and cook. There's my birthday, but that's been completely ignored until this y--Of course! Her birthday must be coming up! Nathair said it was something I've gone through, too! That would explain some of the emotions, and she must not have had any friends to celebrate with, so that's what the negative feelings are."

"It's her birthday," he whisper-hissed to Nathair, looking up and around to find him. He wasn't there. "Nathair?" he hissed a bit louder.

"Yesss?" Nathair popped his head out of Harry's shirt, and Harry actually screamed.

"DON'T DO THAT! Just DON'T!" Harry rubbed his forehead where his scar was, trying to calm down. Hermione looked up at Harry's scream, figured out what was going on, and rolled her eyes again. "So. Her birthday's coming up, isn't it?" Harry asked.

"Good. For a while I wondered why I even bothered setting you on the right path, but here we are," Nathair joked. Harry rolled his eyes, knowing since they met that Nathair was compelled to insult him at every possible moment. "You didn't feel that information, though. You logically found the most likely possibility, using the fact that it is something you experienced yourself, yes?" Harry nodded. "You will need to feel what others need without thinking. This is the largest difference between humans and the rest of existence. You are capable of amazing things, but you cannot see what is in front of you. At one point, you did it subconsciously, as all humans do at some point, even the ones without magic. You, however, did it at a relatively late age."

"What? When did I do that?" Harry could not remember what he was talking about.

"When you would feed the animals in the tree. Now you have fruit growing that they may eat, but before, you knew that there were hungry things that did not want to starve. So you fed them. That is why they like you so much. Now, I want you to go around to individual creatures. Some of them have needs, and I want you to figure out what they are by speaking with their hearts. Try not to use any logic. You will know when you have helped enough of them. Enough to learn, at least."

Harry looked around for something that he thought needed help. "No. You're using logic already. Just find something you know needs help," Harry thought to himself. "I just sort of need to...reach out." Harry looked around and saw a cat laying in the corner, which was unusual. Typically, the largest animals in the tree were mice, and they didn't like to hang around because of the risk of being eaten by Harry's friends. It was not unheard of, though. Once, in fact, there was a large black dog that stayed for a few hours, then left somehow, like a ghost. Harry had no idea how the animals came and went, except for the ones that belonged in trees, but it happened from time to time.

Nathair and Hermione separately watched Harry approach the cat, and Harry looked at it. As the cat looked up with fear at Harry, he cringed. The cat only had one eye; the other was covered with an angry red slash that must have been caused by another cat.

"Ouch. That looks bad, but it should be pretty simple to heal. Just need to calm this cat down a bit." Harry reached out to pet it, and it shrank from back from him. Harry cast a light spell to distract the cat while he healed its eye. The cat looked up at him and calmed down. Harry frowned. He could still feel bad feelings coming from the cat. "But the eye is healed. What's wrong with it now?"

"Do not use logic. Just use your feelings, Harry Potter." Nathair was tangled on the side of the wall, watching them.

"Feelings. Right." As Harry pet the cat, he cleared his mind and just let it come naturally. "The injury was a symptom, not the problem itself. This cat gets in many fights because there is no safe place for it." Harry picked up the cat gently and started to pet it.

"Good, Harry Potter. You're beginning to develop an aptitude for this. Continue practicing this and you will have a skill that no human has had for a long time, as far as I know. I believe this is because you have a caring for all things that not many do. But don't forget what started this in the first place." Harry gave him a blank look, and Nathair sighed. "Your human's birthday."

"Oh. Right," Harry hissed, feeling guilty for forgetting about Hermione while he was learning a new bit of magic. "I'll take care of it."

Meanwhile, Hermione was watching him as he healed and began to play with the cat. "Don't worry, you can live here for as long as you like," he said to the cat as he conjured a bit of fish and fed it to him. She suddenly felt bad about being snippy with him today. He didn't know it was almost her birthday. She didn't tell him for the same reason she never told anyone else--she was sure that one day she would see him with a group of people, laughing at her when they didn't think she could hear them. Harry would never do anything to hurt her on purpose (at least, now that she was in control of her magic). He was a completely selfless person, and would help anything that was alive. As Harry played with the softly mewing cat, she noticed something.

"Harry, what's that?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"It looks like there's something growing out of the tree. What do you think it is?"

Harry looked and saw the small growth coming out of the least-used part of the tree floor. "Oh, that. I don't know, but it must be something very complex or important, because it's been growing since I started teaching you magic, and it's hardly gotten bigger. I'm actually kind of worried about it. What if it's some kind of tree disease? We'll just have to keep an eye on it," Harry said.

"He's even concerned about the tree. As a...creature, not because it's his house. I should never have doubted him," Hermione thought, and went back to her spell-making.

Harry, however, would not rest so easily. "What could that be? I'm going to try and talk to the tree. I think I have enough of an emotional connection and history with it." He sat down and closed his eyes as he continued to pet the cat. As he tried to push his worry into the tree, he felt a gentle response. "I've got it! Wow, that was pretty easy. The tree feels incredible. Old, and wise, like it knows everything but just doesn't care." Harry suddenly saw himself as he saw an ant: small, insignificant, and one of a group so numerous that nothing he could do could possibly change the world. The tree could feel him right back, and sent Harry an impression that everything was alright, that the weird growth was something fantastic. Harry felt the tree's feelings about him and was overwhelmed. The tree saw him like a son, with the tree as his mother. Harry felt something that he had only seen at Hermione's house, something that he had only heard about, something that he was too young to remember having before. It was something that he once thought Dudley had so much of, but he now realized that Dudley had nothing but broken junk and an attitude that would have him dead or in jail before he was thirty. What Harry felt was love. It was beautiful, and Harry started to cry in happiness.

Hermione heard a sniffle and looked up. Harry was sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, petting a cat, crying, and smiling as if he had won the lottery.

"Harry, are you okay?" she asked, rushing up to him to see if he was hurt.

Harry looked at her and felt the same love, to a lesser extent, mixed with worry for Harry and the fear of rejection that she always seemed to carry.

"I've never felt better, Hermione," Harry said, smiling at her.