Boy and the Begining

Harry had found a recurring theme within many of the fairy tales he had read in his box stories. This theme was of the Heroic Journey.

Basically, a young so and so sets out to make something of themselves, or to rescue or obtain such and such. Harry was not really interested in getting some prince or princess or becoming rich or ruling over a group of people. He rather liked the idea of journeying though, and taking on the present challenges as they arose.

The independent, aimless wanderer characters much appealed to him. No responsibilities beholden to anyone but himself and/or the present situation. For someone made responsible for the small minute of the Dursley's life, the bad and the good, this state was very much appealing.

He knew being a small boy in scruffy cloths no better than rags would not do him well in his wanderings through the world. The last thing he needed was to be carted off by local authorities, or attracting attention that were of the negative sort should he use his magic.

As such, he spent his daylight hours resting under bushes or on top of the occasional barn or farm house that dotted the land as he flew further and further east away from cities and avoiding bustling towns.

He eventually stumbled onto some luck when he flew over a nearby farm that had set out lines of cloths, and apparently had kids. He helped himself to a pair of Jean's that had sparkled hearts down the legs and a purple t-shirt with a blood drenched robot ridden by a magical unicorn.

He shrugged, and felt better with the new cloths on, like he had shed the last of his old life behind.

At night time, the sky became rich with the smell of something other than Normal's pollution. Hints of ozone, a storm's arrival for the next day (which he sheltered wherever he could) and the scents of growing things was stronger and wilder, and seemed, well, more natural than anything.

Harry rather approved of this, liking the sting of air that made his young lungs expand. He felt more alive than he ever had before, despite the trials that faced him along his travels.

Air not staled by the smell of his own sweat, dusty and tasting of himself and cleaning products and dead decaying spiders like he would face days at a time in his stuffy little cupboard.

Air without the tangling heat of overripe summer, dying grass and lawn mower exhaust of Privet Dr. when he was let out.

Air that was just perfectly, stunningly free!

Ooo ooo ooo

It was one week into his journey, and Harry had ventured onto his first challenge.

This, of course, centered on the basic necessities of life.

Harry would often make pit stops outside the occasional village or campsite, remaining carefully out of sight, often lifting food from the inattentive Normal. Harry also hung out on the tops of roofs above grocery stores and lifting the occasional bag of bread or canned good. Sensible foods that were relatively small and could be eaten with little preparation and stored snugly within the back pack he had stolen from Dudley's bedroom one evening.

He knew though, that if he headed into deeper wilderness, he would have to forage at some point. He knew a few things about edible plants from what he had scavenged in Privet Dr. and he figured that he could just as easily lift a fish from a river, or a rabbit from a bush, as he did a can of soup from a grocer's bag. Still, he reasoned, that he needed better information. Not to mention that he only knew how to prepare fish and not any other form of game. The warm months were all well and good, but he knew that when winter hit, he would be in definite trouble. He needed to acquire more skills.

By this point he realized that avoiding Normal habitations was not exactly feasible as he was still relatively young and inexperienced in the world, and towns and villages represented not only a food source and other potential supplies, but also potential knowledge bases in the way of libraries or mouth to mouth conversations he would listen in on discreetly, or overhearing radio and television broadcasts from peoples cars and windows.

His second problem was shelter.

He knew from his experiences so far that roofs, bushes and trees were obviously not going to cut it in the cold.

Sure, he rather liked the height and coverage from trees. He had a rolled up hammock that he had taken from number twelve's garbage can and repaired, as well as a rolled up blanket from a small towns church donation box with a few sweaters. This was not going to do forever, and he knew it. Trees were impractical bed places in the winter.

The third problem was weather friendly cloths.

What he filched from the farm was fine, along with the sweaters for now, but he needed an extra to wear while cleaning the other, not to mention something for the colder, badder weather.

No, that would not do at all.

It chaffed, that he still depended on something from the Normals, though he supposed that complete seclusion might be a bit of a pipe dream, and being honest with himself he was a naturally curious child, and was fascinated by a city as much as he was by the wilderness.

Harry also reflected that he had only so much space on him, another problem.

He couldn't always carry around clean cloths all the time. He only had enough room for his food and those sweaters. Then there was the necessity of more gear for the cold weather. His trainers were falling apart as it is.

Harry pace-floated somewhere above a bit of farm area between Salfords and Tonbridge, (having had the sense to acquire a map before he left).

He muttered to himself, ideally crunching on an apple as he pondered his conundrum.

Finding and obtaining the cloths wouldn't be a problem of course, he could just steal them after all with his lifting abilities right off of laundry lines or shop windows, it was just storage that was the issue.

He also needed those survival books to better handle himself in the world. He needed to have cloths that didn't make him look suspicious when going into said buildings like libraries, which would be much more difficult, if at all possible, to steal from at a distance.

Then suddenly, the solution to his problem becomes suddenly clear.

Obviously flying and lifting couldn't be the only thing his magic was capable of doing. His stories often spoke of great big things that had been stored inside tiny little things that would be perfect size for carrying on his person.

He remembered the story of A Sprig of Rosemary where a maiden had received 3 nuts, one each from the sun, moon and wind. They had held clothing that appeared when the nuts were cracked open, and the maiden had used it to bribe the bride of her errant love interest who had lost all memory of her. (1)

He reasoned that the tiny storage spaces must have contained clothing and such by way of being shrunken down, and then enlarged when they were taken out. It was perfect for him, though he wasn't planning on whipping out any dresses any time soon to get some rich bloke to marry him, it still was a useful bit of fiction that lead him to an idea of a solution.

Shrinking and the obvious to follow necessity of enlarging it back to normal size, or even to something bigger, was a thing he would assume would take a lot of practice, that was for sure.

Luckily, he still had a few months left of good weather. He could go as he was, and practice in some secluded spot for an evening or two, rest, and then travel a bit and repeat the process, breaking it up with lifting food and such.

Harry nodded his head, rather pleased with his reasoning.

Ooo ooo ooo

Harry eventually settled into a thicket about a mile between a small village called Goldspawn (2), and a spattering of farms. A close grouping of oaks became his temporary home for the next several days as he set up camp. Here would be the first in a long line of similar stops that was to be his new training for the next few weeks. He just hoped that it didn't take him long to figure out how to do it.

He started on a stone first, usually about the size of his hand. He figured that he should first try to figure out how to make things small first, before he worried about going in the other direction.

This was indeed harder then he realized.

He at first, didn't get anywhere, and often ended up deforming, and sometimes outright exploding his rocks, which left him frustrated and covered in cuts. He quickly learned to put a bit of distance and cover between himself and his experiments.

It was on the outskirts of Cranbrook (3), by a lovely bit of pond under a large willow, that Harry finally realized were he had gone wrong.

He was still caught up in the notions of Normals, this time in regards to size and change, similar to how he was caught up in the notions of size and weight when he was learning Lifting. He realized that instead of imagining the rock to shrink, or imagining it as a smaller rock, he had to simply acknowledge that the rock merely existed at its current size at his whim. He had to simply believe that the rock could be any size at all and want it to be whatever he wanted it to be.

This was a novel change of perception again, and Harry patted himself on the back for figuring it out all on his own without the aid of a movie this time.

So when he looked at the rock he merely desired it to be smaller and knew that it was in fact the size that he wanted. His magic filled him with warmth and tingles and sure enough, after a brief wobble, the pink and grey stone sitting before him shrank to the size of a pebble.

The same trick he figured out for shrinking was applied to enlarging. Sizing, as he came to call it, was ridiculously easy, once he mastered the thought, feel and will of it. When he practiced for the first time on one of his valuable sweaters, the material sat, small and tiny in his palm, to small for even a Barbie doll.

He had fun experimenting with the sweater, and found that enlarging it to the size of a tent would definitely come in handy.

Pleased with himself, he made a brief stopover in Cranbrook to lift a few decent things from a local clothing shop, and stayed within the modest town, ducking away at night time to return to his willow tree and pond.

He stayed there for a week or so, the longest he had stayed in any one place really. With his new cloths, and his pack hidden in the willow tree out of sight, Harry looked like any Normal boy, even if his hair was a bit wilder than other boys hair. He was careful to not be on the streets during school time though, so as not to attract attention.

As he studied his books in the library, discreetly pocketing a few that looked helpful, he also took the time in playing tourist, a novel experience that he had never had. The Dursleys vacationed, but he was never allowed to go. He decided to take advantage of this opportunity.

It was as he was taking a lunch break, studying the various water and wind mills that clustered near the river Bout, rather liking the structures, that his eyes drifted by a small shop.

In the shop's window were a number of various quaint bird houses, many in the shape of wind mills.

Harry looked at them and was reminded of a story.

This fairy tale was of a prince that decided to observe a battle for ruler-ship among the animals. During this battle, there were only two contestants left, a snake and a bird. The snake, ready to strike, was foiled by the watching prince when he lopped its head off. In gratitude, he was gifted by the Bird king with a bundle which contained a surprise. He was commanded not to open this gift until he was in a place he wanted to be. Later, after a bit of a kerfuffle with an irate giant, the prince opened his gift and pulled out a castle from within the bag. The castle, once out of the packaging, quickly grew into a large, real life one, and inside it was a maiden that he later married, and they then both lived in the castle together (4).

Harry smiled. While again, the whole maiden thing was somewhat useless to him, beyond the notion that if he were that girl he'd be rather cross by the whole thing, and the story in general was kinda sick (though many of the old fairytales were really, in Harry's opinion, though he supposed it was because they were old, and adults had weird notions), it nevertheless suggested that people could probably be shrunk, though he wasnt sure that he was keen to try it on himself or another person. 

He also wouldn't have been keen on a castle, it was a bit much, but...he eyed the shop window, change out castle for, say, a small wooden bird house...it occurred to him that he now had a solution to his shelter problem as well.

Ooo ooo ooo

A/N: review and let me know what you think.

1: A Sprig of Rosemary is a Spanish fairy tale collected by Dr. D. Francisco de S. Maspons y Labros in Cuentos Populars Catalans. Andrew Lang included it in The Pink Fairy Book. 2: Goldspawn is made up from my head. 3: Cranbrook is a small town in Kent in South East England. 4: The Battle of the Birds is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in his Popular Tales of the West Highlands.