Chapter 3

Harry didn't have a huge amount of experience with the world outside of Little Whinging, but after the beating he had received for talking to the snake in their garden and being caught by Dudley, he knew that talking to a book was probably one of those things that just made him either more of a freak, or just plain insane. Harry was sure that his friends were probably leaning toward insane, but his curiosity won out and he felt that he should go ahead and have the conversation he seemed to be about to have with the book, before Ms. Prudence or Lady Abigail called the men with the tight white jackets to come and take him away, all for his own good of course.

A deep and friendly laugh filled his mind and slowed the thoughts he was having that he was being overwhelmed with, and then the book answered him. "I am the spirit of this book, embedded here by my master, Duke Emryss, to reveal knowledge to those worthy of his teachings. For over five hundred years I have sat gathering dust behind lesser books, waiting to be found by one worthy of being taught the secrets of the universe itself. Then about a week ago, your friend Lady Abigail came into my library with the intent of helping to preserve the knowledge it contained. Though I knew that she did not meet the criteria that my master had set for me to judge a worthwhile student, I sensed that she had contact with the one that would be Duke Emryss's next successor. It took me a week of manipulating the people around me, but I was able to arrange for my vessel to be sent to Lady Abigail as a thank you gift for all her help. I know that you are thinking that these two kind ladies will turn on you because you are talking to me, but fear not for while they are not able to discern what is happening between us because they only have a small part of themselves that is in tune with the unseen, the hearts of these two women could not contain more love for you if you were their own son. Fear not young Mr. Potter, for these friends of yours will always put your welfare first, and will never turn on you. Now before I begin to teach you, I must be granted access to your mind for your protection and enlightenment."

Harry seemed to feel instant trust for the voice from the book, but still felt guarded about letting it in to his mind unfettered. "I will let you in, but do not presume that you can master me, for I will burn you to cinders if you attempt to cause me harm." Harry thought at the book.

Harry suddenly felt a tendril of energy poking at the entrance to his mindscape, and with a slight hesitation about guarding his mind, he let it in. In his mindscape, he saw the representation of a tall man wearing funny clothes looking around his village. Surrounding the representation was six of the biggest rugby players Harry had ever seen, all carrying cricket bats with guns holstered at their sides.

"Very good young Mr. Potter. You have passed the first test, and that is to never let anyone in your mind unless you have absolute trust in them. Even if you do trust them, always restrict their access as from in here, they can attempt to control you using your mind against you. They can implant ideas, direct you into danger, and even block your natural power so as to defeat you in battle. By the way, you may address me as Elric if you so choose, I feel that having a name makes me more accessible to you, though I might be wrong." With that Elric chuckled and began to look around Harry's Mindscape. "Very impressive for one so young, and to have done all this in less than a day is even more so." Elric chuckled again and assured Harry that, though it felt like he had spent days in his mindscape, mere minutes had passed in the outside world.

"Mr. Potter, I need to have free access to your mind in order to prepare you for the knowledge I am to impart. I can give you an oath on all that is good and holy that I shall not cause you harm, nor shall I through inaction allow anyone else to cause you harm while you are under my care. I just need to see where we are to start. Will you allow me to do that which I am designed to do?"

Before Harry could respond, there came a loud explosion from the bank and one of the weasel's boys came running out and straight to Harry. "Sir, Simon says to tell you that we got the vault open, but you ain't gonna like what's in it."

Harry began running towards the bank only to be brought up short by Elric. "Mr. Potter, Harry please let me go look first. I sense darkness not of you in there, and since I gave my oath to you, I must protect you from any harm caused by someone else." Harry, feeling a sense of dread and darkness coming from the bank, nodded his assent for Elric to proceed. With a dramatic flourish, Elric raised his hands above his head, and then a slashing motion, brought them down to his sides while an expanding wall of energy spread in every direction.

Suddenly a cry of horror escaped from his lips before he cried out, "EVIL!" Elric clapped his hands and then waved them in a complex dance before speaking a word of power and encasing the bank in a sphere of pure energy. He turned to Harry and said, "What was in there was a fragment of another's evil soul. I can remove it, though it will take some time to do without damaging your mind. When done, you will have access to the knowledge and power contained in its memories, without the taint of evil that fills it to the brim. I also sense that another has tampered with your memories on a regular basis and will try to remove any useful skills you develop, though I do not yet know why. I propose that for now, you allow me to mask your mindscape with a false front to protect you while I try to rid you of this evil. If you find this acceptable, then I will proceed with the merging of my knowledge with yours and will begin teaching you of the unseen, but only once I have finally rid you of the evil contained in that bank."

Harry was curious about a few things before giving his consent to this book, or being, or person, or whatever doing anything to his mind. "Elric, you said that you have found that my memories have been tampered with. How do you know that they have, and will I ever regain access to them? Also, when you say merge with my memories, what do you mean by that since you are a book, and what happens to your book when your knowledge merges with mine?"

"Excellent questions Mr. Potter, concise and to the point. I believe that your guardian of knowledge that you spoke to told you of clouded memories that were in the basement of your library. These memories were hidden from you using two techniques, legilimency and obliviation. Neither technique can completely remove memories from a strong mind, but they can occlude or destroy the paths by which you access those memories. The answer to your second question is that while you saw the true title of my tome, your friends see a book on the customs of the courts of ancient kings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the court of King Arthur of Camelot. When I transfer the knowledge to you, the totality of all that I contain will be in you until it is time for you to pass me on. I then will go back into a book until the next worthy student comes along and has need of the knowledge that my master imparted to me. Now, if you are willing to go ahead, I can only hold back the evil for so long without having access to all of my knowledge in total and I have need to complete the merge so that I may destroy that which poisons you from within."

Although he was still nervous about letting Elric merge with him, Harry knew instinctually that he could not hold off the evil in the vault without his help since he had broken the barriers it was held behind and let it free. So grudgingly, Harry gave the approval for Elric to complete the merger of Elric's knowledge with Harry's mind. With a feeling of pressure, like water being forced into an already full container, Harry staggered back from the book and collapsed into a nearby chair. While it seemed to take an eternity for everything to transfer, in reality everything had only taken seconds. As Harry tried to assimilate the knowledge available to him, Lady Abigail and Ms. Prudence both turned to look at him with concern, as it was unusual for Harry not to be interested in a new book, especially if it was rare. Their concern became even more urgent after a glance at Harry.

Lady Abigail said in a shocked tone, "Harry, your scar is bleeding. Are you okay? Do we need to take you to hospital? What happened?" She knelt down in front of Harry and when she saw how pale he was, her training from the war coming forward after so much time. "Pru, go and get Harry some tea and I will clean his forehead up and see if there is any damage that needs a doctor's attention." She ducked into the back room where they kept an emergency kit while Prudence headed to the break room to make tea. When Lady Abigail came back in, hints of black were mixed with the blood running down Harry's face. Not wanting to scare this precious little boy, she calmly got an absorbent pad and rubbing alcohol and thoroughly cleaned the blood and taint from his face and forehead. She felt as if she was cleaning away something horrible with the black ichor that was around the surface of Harry's scar. 'It must be a left over pocket of infected blood from when he got his scar.' She thought to herself. After doing it again, she noticed that even though Harry's scar was still red and angry, it seemed to have faded just a bit. Ms. Prudence hurried in with tea for them all and the two sisters discussed the new book while they waited for Harry to finish his tea. When he seemed to be a bit more collected, they both looked at him for answers. Harry knew not to tell them about Elric, but he decided to tell about his breakthrough in his meditation technique.

"Last night while meditating before bed, I entered a huge room in my mind. It was filled with glowing orbs that where flying around like demented fairies, with no discernible pattern to their movement. I grabbed one, and it was a memory of a woman with red hair and green eyes that was tickling me on my belly while a man took pictures. I released that first one and then grabbed a different orb. That orb contained a memory of the first time Uncle Vernon broke my arm, and I experienced all the pain that happened in the memory. I noticed then that all the orbs were different colors and hues, ranging from bright neon down to pastels and earth tones. I decided to sort them into books and build a library to better organize them, not wanting to experience anymore of the pain in my past." Harry paused to make sure they were following along before he continued. "I made a lot of progress and decided to go to bed, figuring I would pick it up in the morning. I ended up sleeping for a little more than four hours and woke up full of energy. I decided to do as many of my chores as possible before my family woke and came down stairs so that I could come here early. When I got to the garden in back and slipped back into my mindscape, it had finished organizing and Ms. Perkins was at the information desk ready to tell me the rules. She told me that with my new organizational skills I could flip through the pages of a book, glancing at each page, and then read it later inside my mindscape. I am very anxious to try out this technique as it will greatly increase my ability to attain knowledge. I was already able to reread every book I have ever seen or read in the space of about an hour while I was doing my focusing exercises. Of course, it felt like I had been in there for days when I resurfaced in the real world."

Both Lady Abigail and Ms. Prudence were excited about Harry's new talent. If it was true and he was able to fully grasp and internalize books and data at a glance, then they would move up their plans to take him to London for a week or two to spend in the Royal Library. With a will born of the pursuit of knowledge, the two sisters split up and began to bring Harry stacks of books for him to assimilate. As the day wore on, they approached the end of the books held in the library that Harry had not previously read in the last seven months, and they were excitedly looking forward to seeing the results of this experiment. Lady Abigail told Harry to meet her at the park down the street from his house in the morning, and they would take him over to their house since the library was closed the next day for cleaning. Before they took him home, the sisters took Harry out to a little café for dinner as they knew he would get very little food once he was home.

When Harry got home, he went directly to his cupboard after saying hello to his Aunt and Uncle. He prepared himself and then lowered himself into Seiza style, a comfortable form that meant proper sitting in Japanese, that was used as a sitting or meditation pose designed for long periods of little to no movement. He submerged himself into his mindscape, but extended his awareness to his surroundings so his family could not sneak up on him and harm him while he was playing in his mind. The first thing that he noticed when he entered his internal library was that it had expanded with all the new books he had read. The second was that Ms. Perkins was no longer at the information desk. Instead, there was a humanoid female that seemed to have the body of a lion with the face and beak and giant wings of an eagle. She was standing there holding a book and wearing a pair of spectacles known the world over as librarian glasses. Behind her on the wall was a huge tapestry that portrayed a magnificent twelve point stag and a graceful doe standing next to him. To the right of the stag was a huge wolf with old, sad eyes and to the left of the doe stood a massive black dog that had an air of playful mischievousness about itself. Harry liked the new look, but wondered why the scene seemed so familiar. No matter how he wracked his now prodigious memory, he could not place where he had seen any of these new additions to his mindscape. He decided that this was a mystery to pursue at a different time, for now he had new books to read.

After what seemed like weeks of digesting his new knowledge, he began to realize how much bigger the world was than Little Whinging. Harry began a mental list of things that he was determined to try once he got the chance by escaping from Number 4 Privet Hell. His list included skate boarding, skiing, hang gliding, skydiving, mountain biking, kayaking, swimming, flying on a broom ... wait where did that come from? Well if it was possible, and contained speed and risk, he definitely wanted to do it. Someday he would head out and do what he wanted, without the pressure of not outshining his idiot whale of a cousin Dudley 'Diddykums' Dursley. Harry went out and checked on Elric when he had finished reading, and after seeing that he was engaged with whatever was in the vault decided that it was time for him to go back to the real world. When Harry opened his eyes, he realized that no one had come to lock his cupboard, and that there was no hint of light though he could see as if it was midday. Without turning on the lights, Harry got to work on his chores with a determination to finish up before anyone was awake. Since today was Sunday, he knew that he did not have to cook breakfast and so he was able to go once he was done. Harry finished in record time and then, after grabbing one of his hidden pastry packages, headed out to the park at the end of Privet Drive.

It was only after he reached the park that Harry noticed there was no hint of sun in the dark sky. All he could see was stars, though not a lot because of all the light pollution from the suburbs and London itself, yet he could see everything around him as if it were midday. Wondering what time it was, he had only to focus and knowledge instantly leapt to the front of his mind and knowing the date, longitude, and latitude of where he was; Harry was able to ascertain that it was between 3:25 am and 3:39 am, though he could have been more accurate in his prediction if he had a compass and sextant. Harry was amazed at the knowledge that he had access to at the mere hint of a thought or desire. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, wondering if this was real, or just in his head, when he felt that something was very wrong. It wasn't that someone was near, nor did he sense danger; it was just a lack of something that should be here. He strained his eyes, searching back and forth in an effort to figure out what it was. Then he rubbed his eyes and with a start noticed that he had forgot to put on his glasses, and apparently no longer had need of them. While he didn't know why he was free of his glasses, Harry knew that he would never regret losing his dependence on them.

Since it was so early Harry wondered what he should do since he began realizing that he had a lot of time to kill before he was picked up. Not wanting to lose awareness of his surroundings, and since it was a bit colder than was comfortable outside at this time of morning with oversized, threadbare clothes, Harry began going through the martial texts that he had read and began to work on learning the techniques for movement, balance, speed, defense and attack. The more he did the motions, the more fluid he became as each movement transitioned into another. By the time the sun began to rise and the neighborhood began to stir, Harry was moving at a pace that made most of his motions a blur had anyone been watching. Had there been any observers around, they would have believed that Harry had been trained in multiple physical disciplines for most of his life.

Suddenly Harry came to a stop, as if his feet had become glued to the ground in a cartoonish trap. He knew that someone was approaching where he stood, and he also sensed that they did not have his best interests in mind though that was a new thing to him. He looked around and determined the best place for him to hide and still be able to observe whoever was coming was inside the hedge that separated the park from the adjacent houses. Harry was no sooner ensconced in his hiding place than an extremely old man with outdated clothes and a long white beard, and a woman who Harry recognized as Mrs. Figg came into the park. While Harry was too far away to hear what they were saying, they appeared to be in quite a serious argument about something. Mrs. Figg gestured wildly, acting as if she was hitting something, and then imitated a whip cracking out over something only she could see. When she had run down, the old man looked at her with what Harry felt was complete condescension and seemed to be trying to calm her with empty platitudes. As Harry watched, the old man seemed to realize that Mrs. Figg was not buying what he was telling her. With a speed that belied his extreme age Whiskers, as Harry decided to think of him, whipped out a piece of wood and pointed it between her eyes. With Harry's new knowledge, he knew how he could slip inside the guard of Whiskers and take his stick while putting him on the ground, but sadly Mrs. Figg did not. A beam of energy leapt from the end of the stick and hit her in the head, and then the old man was saying something to her and she seemed to agree with him and look at him as if he were her favorite person in the world. The sight of the stick firing light stirred something in Harry's memories, but unlike everything else, this memory or feeling seemed to be placed just out of his reach though he seemed to think the beam should be green. Harry resolved to look into it more when he was once again free to enter into his mindscape, for now though he needed to be alert as he felt that he was in even more danger than before.