II. Change of Scenery

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The air in the cupboard was stale, and spider nests infested the walls. The only light inside was the one that came from underneath the little door, making for a poor environment for one to read.

Whenever Harry's uncle and aunt were out of ideas of how to punish him, they would lock him inside and call it a day.

It was far more agonizing than any possible beating they could dish out. There was nothing Harry could do or occupy his time with while in the cupboard, and couple that with the hunger he would suffer neglected - it simply was torture.

Days would pass along before he was allowed freedom, their excuse for his absence in school being a flimsy 'he was sick'.

He would do anything in the meantime to distract himself, be it from the neglect or the boredom. Usually, he resorted to imagining himself somewhere far away.

In the darkness of the cupboard, he would need to but close his eyes, and his imprisonment became nothing other than a distant concern.

In the cupboard, he was locked, but, inside his mind, he was free. There, he could do anything so long as he was capable of imagining it. So far, he even had built the foundation of a humble cottage. It sat on the top of a lone hill, distant from all of his worldly worries.

But even that had its limits. Boredom was an enemy that prevailed in attrition, and sooner or later, it always won.

He wished this was the current case, where he'd receive a punishment he already was used to. This situation, he feared, didn't look so simple.

"He's a freak, Petunia! A freak!" A loud, portly voice came from outside, putting a pause to his thoughts.

Vernon, his uncle, hadn't been behaving like himself that day. Up to that point, at least. After hearing from Dudley about the school's incident, he drove both boys home all the way from school in absolute silence. He had looked like he was in deep thought, which he rarely - if ever - did.

Harry preferred the screaming Vernon - that man was predictable, unlike the silent one.

Immediately upon arriving home, Harry was thrown into the cupboard and promptly locked inside. For a minute, the house went dead silent, and all that Harry could hear was his heartbeat.

Then, suddenly, his uncle uncorked the seal to his anger.

The man spoke so fast that he hadn't sounded even human. His breath came and went in loud exhales, like an angry, fat boar.

It made Harry wonder if the earlier incident was all there was to his uncle's anger. Of course, it was a fleeting curiosity, as he wouldn't be staying long to find out. He was leaving.

A tiny voice tried to dissuade him from doing so, but he paid it no mind.

"A curse he is! Had me lose my job today - he did!"

If Harry's stomach could drop any lower, it would fall out of his body. Desperation instantly set in, and a slew of gruesome images crossed his mind, one more sinister than the other.

He shouldn't have read those folktale books - the library lady did warn him they weren't for his age.

'Focus!' He slapped himself, shaking off the tremble in his limbs.

That wasn't the time to curse his imaginative mind - after all, he could be correct with his assumptions. He didn't doubt, for a mere second, that his uncle wasn't capable of committing a crime in the heat of the moment.

So, as fast as Harry could, he put everything in his possession in a roughed-up rucksack, dropping a few items in his hurry and anxiety. There was no plan here, no thought-out strategy, just a burst of panic and fear, and deservedly so.

Ironically, it wasn't the first time he thought of running away - not even close to it. He only never dared to follow through. Every time he had such thoughts, a small voice in his head would warn him of the risks of being a runaway.

He would have to acquire food, shelter, and safety. And do all that while being a child, one without any legal means of employment.

With his powers still in their infancy, he didn't trust them enough to solve most of the inherent problems that came with running away. In his naive mind, he thought the downsides of such a plan far overshadowed living with the Dursleys for the time being.

He believed it would be safer - more prudent - to wait until he had more confidence in leaving the Dursleys behind.

The present moment hit home the idea that he was far safer anywhere else but with the Dursleys. How he still hadn't noticed that to this very critical point, he didn't know.

Loud steps slammed outside.

They got closer and closer, muffling out all surrounding noise. Fear clouded Harry and pushed his adrenaline to its maximum. He closed his eyes, thinking back to when he had been running from Dudley earlier in the day.

He remembered the sensation of being squeezed inside a tiny tube, of everything fading away to black, and of suddenly being elsewhere. Finally, objective clear in mind, he pushed.

A second or two passed, and yet nothing gave way. Harry still stood rooted to the same spot.

The tiny voice spoke again - louder this time - reminding him of the risks of running away. It, however, was drowned by Harry's other more turbulent emotions.

Suddenly, the door to his cupboard opened, and a now drunken Vernon peered from outside. The desperation drove him further, and Harry dived deeper into his memories. He thought back to when he had commanded Omen to stop - the sensation of something crawling underneath his skin.

Vernon made to pull on his hair but was too late. Emerald green eyes suddenly stared back at him.

A snapping sound exploded within the small cupboard, blasting Vernon along its waves.

For a brief moment, Vernon flew detached from the ground, his heavy body unchained from gravity. Then, at the end of his flight, he bashed against the corridor's drywall with an audible crunch. His fat, blubbering body indented the wall alongside his choppy head, which lolled to the side as he fell unconscious.

A second or two passed as Petunia stared dumbly at the scene from the kitchen. She paled instantly, and her eyes rolled up her skull. Pans and pots went up in the air as she dropped on top of the kitchen's countertop.

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Cold, wet cobblestone met his feet, and a frigid wind instantly bashed against his face as he 'popped' on the stairs leading up to his school's library.

Immediately on arrival, his knees met the cold ground, his body doubling over as a splitting headache assaulted his mind. His body ached, weak, and a writhing nausea permeated his being. It was only with sheer will - and an empty stomach - that he didn't throw up.

The sun had already dipped below the horizon, and no one was still around the school. That left him alone, now homeless, with nothing but the rucksack on his back as belongings.

No money. No food. No winter clothes. As if to mock him, the clouds in the skies rumbled, warning a fierce storm was about to come.

His day was already a complete disaster, and now he had to find shelter to ward off the elements.

'Great, it's locked,' he frowned, wondering if there was a God somewhere and if he had pissed it off somehow. Briefly, he entertained 'popping' inside the library but quickly discarded the idea, not wanting to split his skull any more open.

'There must be another way,' eyeing the lock, he paced back and fro, thinking.

"Open!" Nothing, as he'd expected.

'Of course, it wouldn't be that simple,' it started raining, and a few droplets splattered on the floor near him. Thankfully, the library's roof had him slightly covered.

'What did all of those incidents have in common?'

Surely, magic couldn't be much more complicated than math. So, perhaps, he could employ the same line of reasoning he did when solving problems for homework. He hoped, at least.

After all, Mathematics did come easy for him - Harry was quite earnest in his studies, regardless of how angry his family was whenever he earned perfect grades. He refused to purposefully lower his school grades to match Dudley. It was one of the few hills he would gladly die on.

'Something in common... something in common-' Suddenly, a spark lit inside him. Harry even forgot about the droplets splashing onto his torn shoes.

It was a sensation that he remembered. A tingling under his skin. It was like a water spring was hidden within his body, waiting to flow. Giving it a try, he found it all too easy to call forth.

His skin prickled, and 'something' settled in the air.

The problem came immediately after, however. What was Harry supposed to do with this 'something'? Throw it against the locked door? Splash it?

In that brief moment of hesitation, the 'feeling' disappeared, and his head was hit with yet another headache. He suddenly felt tired, as if it wasn't worth the effort.

A familiar voice whispered he should go back home. That he shouldn't be out on the streets. Harry shook his head, however, persevering through the brief moment of weakness.

'Right, there must be limits to how much I can use it,' he thought with a grimace.

'Though I need it now!'

He ignored his migraine, focusing again instead. He needed to, somehow, magically open the door. Popping inside was a no-go - he didn't trust himself enough to not pass out after doing that. What he needed was a key.

'A key! Of course!'

He closed his eyes, imagining a skeleton key in his head. Having done a lot of visualization previously - during his locked sentences in the cupboard - Harry found no difficulty envisioning a key.

Opening his eyes slowly, he almost did a double-take. An ethereal key flowed into an unseen wind in front of his very eyes.

Before it could disappear, he quickly envisioned the key entering the lock to the library's door. As he rotated it, it unlocked the door with an audible click.

After a moment of anticipation, he tested the door handle. He almost screamed in delight as it opened inwards.

'Wicked!' All worries fleeted far away for a short second, and he was nothing but a child with stars for eyes.

Then, he promptly threw up. All water and acids in his stomach burbled up like a rising tide, exiting through his coughing mouth. A deep migraine surged, and all of his will left as if on vacation. If he could, he would curse.

Alas, he couldn't.