Apparently Jim thought geese were evil.
Still, he had practiced his skills over the last couple of years. Recycling took almost no thought thanks to practice, and Harry had gone back and practice the flame creation he had stumbled upon way back when. He had played with the ropes, rapid rotating more and more ropes in various patterns. In the process he had created many types of flames, although they were all the same bright green as his eyes.
The basic ones didn't create heat, only light. He could actually do it across his whole body by simply rubbing two ropes through each limb. The most complex one was four sets of two ropes, each one spiraling around each other clockwise while the pairs rubbed counter-clockwise. It had created a green beam that cut a hole through a tree and almost hit a house.
Aunty was not happy with that one. Most fire experimentation stopped after that.
He had seen other people with light blue cores like Aunty. Like hers, their body had tightly coiled the blue into a small ball, with some sort of covering around it. Well, hers USED to be like that. He had managed to free four threads for her, and she had learned how to actually pull and push stuff around. She really couldn't do it for long though before she got tired and had to take breaks.
She still hugged him once in a while for that though. His eyes drifted to the window again. He knew that if he WAS going to get the letter, it should show up today, or some time soon. School wasn't that long away.
After a few failures at finding contacts in the magical world, they had decided to wait. They didn't want to risk using his real name, in case Voldemort had any followers looking to finish the job he failed at, and apparently most wizards and witches were scared of spilling the secret of magic to random children... which Harry understood, really.
So he and "D" (as he liked calling Dudley) had gone to school and learned. After a few classes Harry had to stop reviewing course materials while sleeping or else he got too far ahead, so he began setting up study groups with classmates. It helped him and D make new friends, since D had always been self conscious and Harry was the "new kid".
He would take "new kid" over "freak" any day. For any celebration (or reason) he always tried to convince the family to go to a zoo. Most of the times the one that was closest, although for last year they had gone to the London Zoo. Harry had gained so many good memories that some of his memory clouds were chained together by sub-categories.
Jim thought the new design would help keep the training troops from being sunburned... although with no sun, Harry had never really bought that argument. Each cloud was a bit unstable, and if any duck touched one it would fill the sky as each cloud cascaded into the others... and Harry felt that Jim just liked stacking them up again like blocks.
Still, it kept the troops happy. There were worse reasons to do things.
Bloody owl, show up! Not like there was even a scheduled time for random creatures to visit houses in the first place. They had even celebrated his eleventh birthday earlier this month so they would have free time if they needed to do something with the letter.
Dudley was kind of having fun. Harry very rarely lost his cool, and he was squirming like a toddler who had to go potty. He would feel better though if the owl never showed. Having an older brother was awesome. Oh they knew they were cousins, but he was taller and stuck up for Dudley all the time. He had helped him make new friends who didn't keep asking him to do things like borrow money or whatever, and told the meaner and older boys to go away.
He wrinkled his nose. Harry still was too nice to girls though. They had cooties, he had heard it from someone, so it was probably true. He honestly didn't have a very strong theory of what exactly cooties WERE, but he knew girls had them and they were not supposed to be good.
Dudley knew Harry had checked him and saw he didn't have the right threads. It had bothered him for a few months, but Harry had helped him get used to the idea. Of course it didn't hurt that Harry had rebuilt his bedroom to look like outer-space and had helped him get more muscles... although that had felt weird. Like bending his arm the wrong way without the pain. They had to do that during the summer break so no one would freak out about how much he had change, and Mom got really huffy about us not asking first. Well, either that or body part replacement. Parents, honestly.
Petunia was more than slightly nervous herself. She didn't want to let her Harrykins go away to that school, not like Lily did. What if he never came back? Or got hurt? Would she even get to see him if he did? She tried to not think at all and went back to cleaning the living-room again. She knew it was already sparkling, but at least it kept her mind busy. Every once in a while she would rub Harry's hair and watch him try and fix it again, just to make sure he was still there. Vernon was reading the Daily Mail upside-down, but no one was willing to tell him. He never found it easy to show emotions, but he didn't want to let this boy go after only this short time. The kid seemed to radiate peacefulness, like a hug. Watching him smile made the room feel brighter. Out of everyone there, Vernon was the only one actively NOT looking at the windows.
They heard someone walking up to the door, but Harry didn't look. He heard Jim, it was a non-magical, apparently the postal man... wait. He looked at Petunia. "That is the post man. Any chance they would send it by regular mail?"
Petunia paused... theirs had been by owl, but it didn't mean they REQUIRED it to be by owl, right? As she went and collected the mail, Harry stood suddenly and followed. At her raised eyebrow he shrugged, "After the mailman left, a creature with brown threads landed on our mailbox. Seems too close to be a coincidence."
She didn't question him, by now everyone was used to Harry knowing what was happening around his home. They had even went out back and found a stone in the backyard that he said everything was tied into, and she had no real idea of how it worked. He had seemed happy repairing the stone, saying things like how much clearer everything was, but she couldn't tell heads nor tails of it.
As she reached the door she saw the mail, and as she picked it up she checked outside. An owl was there, maybe waiting for a response? She closed the door and handed the letter labeled "Mr. Harry Potter, the cupboard under the stairs" to the green-eyed boy beside her.
His eyes quickly memorized the letter, and he handed back. He walked into the other room and sat in a chair, going still. Petunia knew he was going to heavily review it in his mind, but she wasn't that adapt at getting to her mind world. Walking in the other room, she sat and read the letter.
.
.
.
👓☕️Consider supporting me and enhance your reading experience with the ready-to-read PDFs I have on my Ko-fi.☕️👓
🎯https://ko-fi.com/bstories🎯