5,801Chapter 4: Mind and Body
The world was green again. He fell forward and felt his toes digging slightly into grass and dirt, his hands reaching and holding him up. He had expected returning here to be harder, to require more effort than this. He stood and began to take stock of the damage.
The sky was still torn from the blackness, with thin dark cracks like unmoving lightning crossing the heavens. The corpse explosion had roughly dug into the sod, leaving a jagged crater. Even without the evil sludge, the crater felt rough and torn. Smaller piles of grass and earth had been tossed by the explosion, coating the ground and a few pieces had even dropped into his wood basement hall. But the worse part was the sky.
He frowned as he looked around. Before there had been a single pulsing dark cloud, but now there seemed to be many lighter clouds, creating a sort of storm. The existing white and fluffy memories were holding them together, apart from each other, but it didn't feel right.
Almost absently he stretched his right hand, and a light gray cloud etched in dark black was yanked from the heavens. It seemed to be a memory, but it felt tainted, twisted. Just trying to view it caused him to feel dirty. But he couldn't leave this here, especially if it felt so wrong. He formed a new glass bottle from his green threads and took a firm hold on the dark recollection. Twisting it like a towel, he squeezed the cloud. Black anger, rage, even cries of victory and defiance oozed into the bottle. As he finished, he used new cords of green light to cleanse his own threads of the goo, shoving it all into the bottle that was now labeled with the contained emotions, a date, a time, and a place. He sealed the bottle and set it aside, and examined the left over pieces of memory.
Before the thought had dripped with anger, as the dark man was punishing someone for some perceived slight. Now the cloud seemed dull and gray, like an old black and white silent film. The voices and actions were still recognizable, but the feelings and fear and terror had been separated and stored. That daemon baby must have released this cloud here on its death, or the original memory must have collapsed into smaller fragments now that the intelligence restraining it had died.
The memory had no real use for the green eyed child, so he compressed it into a gray sphere. Wrapping both sphere and glass bottle with his green threads, he climbed downstairs into the wood hall and passed through the metal door into the evil duck room. Waiving a hand of threads at one of the walls, he created a row of shelving marking time, place, and emotion and a small plaque labeled "Evil and Not Useful". Torture had no appeal to him, he did not really even want to hurt the horrible people who he suffered under. Just live and let live. Still, he found the place where this bottle of evil would rest and placed it on a stand. Glancing back at the stand with the duck, the boy gave another grin. He had a pattern going, right?
As he left the room, the bottle now had the gray memory (Now duck shaped) floating on the hatred that used to saturate it. He sighed as he exited upstairs, watching the sky that seemed filled with clouds again, many with black edges. Seeing no point in delaying, he grabbed a new memory and began creating more glass bottles. He had a sinking suspicion that he was going to have a LOT of new duck friends in the metal room.
~~~Core Threads~~~
It was seconds or years later. Time did not seem to move as expected in his mind. He tried to deal with all the dripping clouds first. After finding more than a small amount of torture, he quickly learned not to review them. Each got squeezed, ducked, an stored. After hearing a woman crying, he had looked more closely into another cloud.
He had vomited twice. Creating that bottle taught him to just store them and move on. Any that had a similar color he also shoved into a locked cabinet in the metal duck room, sealed and bound using his own memory cloud of WATCHING that memory, turned into a knot. He could not help her, no one could now, so he used the memory of him being horrified, disgusted, and angry as a warning to himself to not look within. He still could guess how many other women, or even children, had suffered under that monster. That cabinet was filling quickly, and that fact alone was scary to him.
In a way the torture was easier to watch. He had experience with pain, with degradation. He had come to terms with it in his own life already. But watching others forced to hurt loved ones, watching offenses to innocents, it was too much. He stored them away, categorized and locked with his own warning keeping him from growing curious about what was in the dark cabinet.
Eventually he ran out of those colored clouds, and his relief was almost spiritual. He was glad he had only let those things loose for a short time, it could have twisted his world and stained it with horrible sludge.
He did have some unpleasantness to handle though. He had found the companion memory of the Red Woman, from the killers point of view. He had been avoiding it, but the lightning told him clearly which one it was.
With only a slight hesitance and a shaky hand, he sent cables of green light around the cloud and began to drain it.
~~~Core Threads~~~
He had been sitting in the red room for a while now. He should probably do something. He would probably think about it later. The memory had been large, much larger than the shred he had. It had apparently been the last memory of a man who was called Voldemort.
It was also the last memory of James Potter and Lilly Potter. And apparently, one of the first memories of him, Harry Potter.
He stood staring at the new podium in the red room. He had managed to create two images from the memory, and painted them in color on the wall. A man with wild black hair, deep hazel eyes, and a thin body was standing with anger and defiance. He was a pillar of strength in a room filled with damage and the remains of a home. Hand outstretched, a wood stick flaring with light, and his shoulders held firm. It was just before he had been struck by the green light.
To his right was the Red Woman. Her hair was dark red and flaring, and almost blended into the painted walls of the room. Her body was wrapped around him, the "freak" Harry, the little babe who seemed so confused. Her crystal green eyes had defiance in them, and they glowed like his threads.
He had stared for a long time. Several dreams were now impossible. No, his parents did not die in a car crash. But they would also not be coming to take him home. They would not be able to save him.
After some time, he raised his shoulders. He had been alone till now, nothing had changed. No, that was not right. HE had changed. He had unknowingly hurt part of the creature that had assaulted his... his Dad. His Mom. His family. And they had not fallen apart, they did not give up just because there was no options. He was Harry Potter, son of James Potter and son of Lily Potter, and by God he was going to become someone they could be proud of.
He waved his hand, filling the room with lily flowers. He changed the gray memory of their final hours into a tomb stone, with their names under each image on the wall. Harry would do them proud, and the first step was to become whole and healed.
Striding up the red carpeted stairs, he sealed the room. After he cleaned his world, he would search the oldest clouds. Maybe more memories existed. But for now, he had work to do.
~~~Core Threads~~~
The sky had been easiest to fix, if tiring. Harry laid on the green grass and stared into the blue sky, trying to ignore the holes and pits. Moving the broken sod and grass back had taken only a little time, but apparently the initial corpse explosion had evaporated a large section of earth. This type of damage was also resistant to change.
He had nearly cooled his body center too much. As it was he was shivering, and his threads could barely move. It had only healed a few inches of the pit. He thought about the sludge he had seen, the pure hatred. It had felt wrong to let that soak into this ground.
What about the opposite?
He reached out, feeling. The warmth filled him again, and he pressed his hand into the hole and imagined all that softness, the heat, the pure warmth flowing from his hand. His eyes slowly opened as he began to fall asleep, lulled by the feeling of that deep soft warmth. Something golden and clear was dripping from his right hand, slowly trickling into the pit. The liquid seemed to be softening the edges of the pit, and working its way downward.
Before he could really react, he fell asleep. The emotion stress, the mental stress of controlling the cords and threads, the highs of having a mostly safe place to sleep with food and water, it was forcing him to fall into an actual slumber instead of this mental world.
~~~Core Threads~~~
Soft winds brushed his hair as he woke. Still here in his mind, stretched with his hand dipped in... dipped?
His eyes opened wide as he stared with wonder at a golden pond. The bottom itself seemed to glitter with silver pebbles and tiny gold beads, the edges pulsed with curiosity and mirth. The actual liquid itself was crystal clear, and glowed softly back into the sky. The edges of soil had collapsed into the liquid, filling cracks along the bottom and creating a natural beach along the rim made of earth.
Harry was too entranced by the light to even smile. His hand dipped into the liquid. It was not oily, it was so light it barely felt like water at all. He felt warm all over, and his body was almost begging him to step into the pond. Cautiously extending a green thread, he dipped it in the pool.
WAMRTH, LOVE, KINDNESS, CHARITY
He was overwhelmed. It was not even associated with a memory, it just felt like the Red Woman... mother. It felt like her.
He couldn't help but smile as tears spilled. He smoothly stood and began walking into the pool. Even with it flowing around his body, Harry didn't feel the damp, pressing feeling of the ice baths he was forced to take. Every inch felt soft and warm, like an embrace. He had never felt a hug before, but he was sure this was close.
He dipped his face under, and the crystal gold liquid did not even splash. He felt no fear of breathing, and let the liquid flow almost like a dream down and into his lungs. His body relaxed more and more.
Deep inside, in his chest, he felt something loosen. Threads began flowing out of him, in every direction, from his hands, his feet, his skin. His eyes glowed green like his mothers, and the golden glow began increasing as each part of him began making odd noises. His ears heard singing, even as he could feel his skull popping and cracking. His tongue tasted sunshine as his back unbent and began stretching. But Harry's eyes were seeing blurs, people he knew without sight, as they held and surrounded him. His tears vanished as if kissed as he released more and more green light into the pond, causing the gold liquid to swell and deepen, the edges of the once crater expanding and absorbing more grass as the golden lake began expanding into the distance.
It could have been a lifetime and Harry did not care. This was something he never knew enough about to miss. This was love, deep and flowing. And he had accidentally made a place for it inside himself. His smile could have painted the sun.
~~~Core Threads~~~
Inside a cupboard a soft green glow was expanding. It seemed dark in places as the body it covered twisted and uncoiled. Horrific noises were just barely audible, with loud cracks of broken bones puncturing the night. Fragments were being dissolved, muscles being regrown and skin being repaired. Scars began sealing and small pieces of embedded glass and dirt were being expelled. As the twitching body seemed to absorb the green glow, the strangest part was the boys face, filled with peace and dripping with tears.
Another day was beginning, and thankfully Vernon Dursley was not planning on allowing the "Freak" out of his punishment. Every time he had looked at the child, something evil seemed to dwell inside of him, looking out from behind those eyes. Even Petunia could not explain it, but sometimes when that boy looked in his direction he could feel a second pair of eyes full of maliciousness. The worst was the blackouts. Once that devil child had looked into Vernon's eyes and everything had gone dark. Large red eyes laughed at him. When he had come to his senses, there had been blood on his hands and a pile of rags... no, the "Freak", on the floor. He had never been more scared in his life. He was just a regular man who worked directing others to make drills. Violence had never been an option before that THING appeared on the doorstep.
Petunia explained that those CHILDREN had flairs of magic. If that was magic, magic was evil. Even she had given up arguing for that thing after she also started blacking out. They had no one to talk to, no one to get help from. Who would help them against a child? Their only hope were those wizards, and they had been the ones to dump this hell spawn on them.
This last blackout was the worst. Petunia claimed he had not just beaten the child, but had stood in his own bedroom and ranted about "Mudbloods" to the wall. He didn't even remember SEEING the child that day. He was scared to even touch the locks.
He knew the guilt would get to him eventually. He couldn't just let that thing die in there. But surly he could wait a bit longer. As long as Petunia didn't find out what he had done.
He held his head in his hands and tried to calm down. He had things to do today, and that THING would not be an issue for at LEAST a couple more days, not if he had anything to say about it.