Prodigy

After finishing cleaning up the downstairs, Harry once again made his way to the second level of the house to see what he could do with it. He first stop was the nursery he had been in first. Taking another glance at the spots of blood that was on the walls and floor, he was hopeful that the magic would clean that up as well. There was a dresser in the corner, next to the crib that he hadn't taken notice of before, but looking from the amount of dust that had found a resting place on top of it, it had been there the entire time.

Without a second thought, Harry once again repeated the spell, and the room was rendered nearly spotless. Where the blood had been, only splotches of red remained. Sighing, Harry tried the spell again. This time, the final evidence of the violence that had taken place in the room disappeared.

Harry left the room and headed for the one across the hall. He hesitated when he realized that this must have been his parents room. Taking a deep breath, he finally opened the door to find that his guess had been correct.

It was a large bedroom with a large four post bed situated at one end with small bedside tables on either side. There was a rickety wooden wardrobe to the left and a rocking chair on the right. The chair conjured up images of a movie he had glimpsed once about mother rocking her son to sleep in such a chair. He wondered if his own mother had ever done such a thing. He hoped that she had.

Gaining more courage, Harry moved towards the bedside table on the right when he say there were a couple picture frames sitting on it. Would he be so lucky to find a picture with his parents? Sitting down on the bed, Harry picked up the first one and took a long look at it.

The picture was a four young men who looked to be quite mischievous enjoying a laugh. The picture was moving. Harry looked towards the bottom of the picture and found a caption written in the same handwriting as the note he had read earlier: his mothers. It read:

The Marauders: Remus “Moony” Lupin, Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew, Sirius “Padfoot” Black, and my love James “Prongs” Potter

Harry's eyes widened. The man with the jet black hair in the picture was his father! And these were his fathers friends. Harry wondered what the “Marauders” were. No doubt he would find more about them later, especially if his father was concerned. Hopefully some of them were still around, somewhere, and Harry would be able to contact them. Putting the frame down, Harry moved onto the other one.

This (moving) picture was of a women with dark red hair and bright green eyes that looked quite beautiful. She was holding hands with his father. Harry smiled.

'I have my mother's eyes,' he thought to himself. He took a final look at the capture before setting it back in its place. Getting up off the bed, Harry cast the spell, and the room was clean.

The next room was the bathroom that held absolutely nothing interesting except a weird looking painting of a wolf, a rat, a dog, and a stag. Harry cleaned the place without a second thought, and finally found himself back in the library.

Upon seeing the books, Harry had to restrain himself from immediately picking one up and reading it, though it took only another moment before this room was as clean as the rest of the house. Feeling his immediate task was completed, Harry returned to reading the book on ancient magic he had started the night before. Skipping over the overview that contained some of the basics about modern day magic he had read the night before, Harry looked at the second chapter: “The History of the Ancients.”After deciding it was going to be rather useless at this point, Harry was about to turn to the third chapter when a voice in his head stopped him.

It was the same voice as before, but held much more definition. Harry could now tell that who ever was speaking to him was a woman, a very old women.

“Read this chapter,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” Harry asked. “And how did you get in my mind.”

Only silence answered him. Harry shrugged. Maybe he was imagining it. Never-the-less, he decided to quickly skim over the history chapter.

As it turned out, not much was known about the ancients ones. They lived on a continent named Atlantis until one of their own had destroyed in. It was said that there was a lone survivor, a wizard named Prometheus. Not much was known about him either, except that he spent the rest of his life with muggles who apparently hated him, which Harry could identify with to a point. There was a mention about a muggle myth that concerned this survivor, but the contents of the myth were not given. The last page mentioned a book or journal that Prometheus had supposedly written and left for future wizards to discover. It had never been found.

It was interesting, after all, but harry didn't think that it was all that important at the moment. There was magic to be learned, and history did not help him in that manner.

Turning the page to the next chapter, Harry knew immediately he was in way over his head. The chapter title read “Ancient Projection versus Magical Focuses as a Means to Control Magic.” Harry couldn't even figure out what that meant. He sighed and laid the book back down on the table. Perhaps his parents had left some simpler magical books laying around. The other books on the table contained titles such as “Blood Magic as a means of Long Term Protection against the Dark Arts,” “Times Bane: Prophecies,” and “The Lost Druid Rituals.” None of those titles seemed to be very simple.

Harry finally found what he was looking for at the end of one of the book shelves. “Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1,” was the title. The binding was worn as though it had been used quite a bit, and several page corners were bent to mark a place. Going back to the table, Harry began to read.

The reading was long a difficult, especially for a seven year old. While it explained the basic principals of magic, it did so in a way meant for eleven year old, not someone four years old younger. After having to skip several of the bigger words, Harry decided to try to locate a dictionary, or anything that might be able to help him. Once again, he turned to the shelf, and was able to find “Websters Unabridged Dictionary for Magical and Muggle Terms.” The book was nearly a foot thick, but surprisingly, was as light as a feather. Harry guessed it was charmed in some manner.

Returning to the table, he opened the dictionary up to the first term. Locating it, he grabbed a notebook and pen that was laying on the table beside his mother's journal, and began to take down notes.

That was how he spent the next couple of days: sleeping, taking notes, eating, repeat. He had taken to sleeping in his parents bed as it made feel some sort of connection to them. Other than that, however, his only focus was learning this new and wonderful thing called magic. He had finished the grade 1 book after a few days, and moved on to the grade two book. As he used the dictionary more and more, he was able to begin to understand some of the words in the more advanced books, although the end meaning was still beyond him.

Harry had been at his new location for exactly a week when he first noticed the foul stench that had began to invade his lovely home. Harry looked everywhere for the source, but was unable to locate it. In fact, it seemed to be following him around! Harry tried the basic revealing charms that he had learned, and even some of the household cleaning charms, but nothing gave him any information about what was causing the oder.

One of the things he had taken the time to do was set up the rat traps around the house. It was a difficult charm to cast, but soon, he felt the house was totally cut off from the vermin and he could relax. While he was at it, he put up the charms against spiders, bees, mice, frogs, and a few other animals.

The only one that he had tried to cast, but found himself unable to do so, was the snake spell, which confused him. It seemed to be one of the easier spells to cast, but it just never worked for him. Harry suspected it might have something to do with the amount of power, because every time he attempted the incantation, there was a sharp pain in his head, and it was difficult to concentrate. Soon he gave up, decided to keep practicing and try it again later.

One day, he thought he glimpsed an old man walking around, looking for something, but the image disappeared as soon as he saw it. The man wore a pointed blue hat, and had a long gray beard; it was an image that would stay in his mind for several years.

Harry woke up the next morning feeling well rested. He was so happy where he was now. There was nothing for him to worry about except learning his magic, and that suited him just fine. There was no more getting up early to cook for his relatives, or chases down alleyways as he tried to escape the bully-of-the-minutes. There was no laying in a cupboard late a night, wishing for something to eat, or waking up to a face full of dust falling from the ceiling over his head. It was quiet, and peaceful.

“Ah, this is the life,” Harry tried to say, but it came out as a raspy croak, and made him begin to cough. As he wheezed, he felt his throat begin to clear, and he realized what had happened. He hadn't spoken out loud for over a week. Not even for his spells, because saying the words out loud felt a bit awkward, and stupid. He didn't need to tell anyone which spell he was going to do. He knew it, and that is all that mattered.

Finally, he quit coughing and tried to speak again.

“ah la la,” he said, not able to think of any phrase that would fit particularly well. The sound rattled in his throat, tickling it pleasantly, and making him laugh at the stupidity of the randomness of his speech and the reaction his body had to it. The experience did highlight something important he hadn't thought of yet, though. He definitely needed to figure out some way to keep them in shape.

So it came to pass that Harry Potter would spend his time reading to himself aloud, talking to himself all the time, and singing in the shower.

Amazingly, once he began to take showers again, the smell that had been following him around disappeared.

END CHAPTER

A/N: Well, it took a while to get out, but this is about the sixth version of this chapter I've written. I was hoping to make it longer, but since it took so long to get this out, I'm going ahead and releasing it.

Thanks to everyone that has reviewed - it's extremely helpful. Nearly a hundred reviews already!

To repeat: the house is still under the fidelius - which is why the only prints in the house was that of a rat (hmm, i wonder who that could be.) I bet the rat was there looking for his masters wand, which he knew he would need in a few years, right? Ok, not going to give you any more hints about that.

No pets yet, but I'm considering bringing either a snake, hedwig, or both in soon. Don't worry, I have a good explanation for the early appearance of the lovely white owl.

Next chapter will include the (drum roll please)......... Potions laboratory! Right now Harry's learning how to methodically learn, which is really going to help him master potions, so I'm pushing that off a little ways.

Any guesses who the old women is? It's not the obvious choice, but it's a hundred points to whoever can guess it. I highly doubt that anyone will, although there are some clues present (Rowling might call them anvil sized, but they're pretty well hidden.). It's not a canon character, that's for sure, so you have your work cut out for you.

Oh, I've finally finished HBP, and may be using the stuff that evolved about Voldmort, but I solemnly swear that the other story lines will not be used. Hermione will be back to her lovely book worm self in this story.

Well, let me know what you all think about it!