In one world the supernatural elements were not magic and so the Wizarding World never existed...
Four Sect Alliance (Harry Potter AU; Xianxia inspired)
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Part 1.1 - The Beginning
In one world the supernatural elements were not magic and so the Wizarding World never existed.
That doesn't mean that something more overt didn't take its place despite some familiar faces.
It could be said that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were quite normal. Indeed they would assure you that they were the last people ever to be involved in the profound mysteries, the great sects, or even cultivation at all and, indeed, any stranger who asked about such things would be assured that they didn't hold with such things at all.
Mr Vernon Dursley was a large and beefy man, sturdily built but not precisely fat. All too often there was a gleam of anger in his eyes at some petty annoyance or another, but nobody had known him to be violent. If he happened to have a habit of running a finger over his upper lip at such moments, as though playing with a mustache which was no longer there, then nobody really commented on it.
Mrs Petunia Dursley was, in contrast, a thin blonde woman who seemed years younger than her husband. It would have been a scandalous thing in Privet Drive, or perhaps further afield within the small English town of Little Whinging where they lived, if not for the fact that Petunia Dursley had a nose for scandal of any type. Those who had brought up the apparent disparity of ages had soon found their failings, imagined or otherwise, becoming common knowledge.
No, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Dursley were known to have any truck with the unusual. Like most of the other inhabitants of Little Whinging they had no truck with the unnatural.
"Just bloody well leave it to the sects and the cultivators." Vernon Dursley was known to say to his cohorts and co-workers at the company in which he worked. "They're the ones who know about such things. I pay my taxes and tithes so the government can damn well point them at the problem."
This was generally considered the wisest course of action, but the degree to which Vernon was vehement about it did cause a few to wonder about the cause. One salesman mused that perhaps Vernon had been traumatically attacked by a Spirit Beast while one of the supervisors of the metalworks held the opinion that obviously Vernon had been too curious as a child and run afoul of one of the formations protecting wherever he had grown up.
The wife of one had once inquired about this to Petunia.
Nobody else was quite sure what Petunia's response had actually been, but nobody desired to hear it enough to risk the shakes and nightmares which had plagued the overly quizzical woman for days afterwards.
Yet when Mr. and Mrs Dursley woke up on a dull grey day when our story starts they lay there, staring out the window at an overcast sky, and knew that the peace that they worked so hard to gain would soon be intruded upon.
"Do you want me to handle it by myself, pet?" Vernon asked in a shaky voice. "You don't have to… deal with it at all if you don't want to."
There was a long silence as Petunia seemed to consider the question before she steeled herself, depriving herself of the luxury of cowardice.
"No. I'm not going to abandon you about this." She told her husband as she rolled onto her side to look at him, clutching his hand as if trying to draw strength from it. "If someone comes then they won't respect you, not at all. 'Just another muggle.' That's what they'd think and then they'd ask questions."
Vernon turned to look at his wife then gently stroked his thumb over her hand in return.
"I'll deal with the freak though." He said firmly, the gleam which others took for anger flashing in his eyes, "You just have to be there to say what you need to say. Maybe they'll go away if we ask them too."
The two looked at each other then shared a hollow laugh.
"She died, Vernon." Petunia said, tears glimmering in her own eyes, "I loved her so much, more than anything else, and she left me behind then they killed her. Most days I can't bare to look at that… that thing or else I'm sure that I'd demand to know why it cost my sister her life and soul!"
Vernon said nothing in return, just rubbing her knuckles and steadfastly ignoring how his hand was turning white in her grip, but finally began to pull away. Petunia let him and watched as he stood, drinking in the sight of the muscled form which so many mistook for fat when he was clothed.
"We'll get through this, love," He told her as he began to dress, "Don't you worry. We'll get through this together and Dudley will be fine."
Vernon turned away, making a show of straightening his tie as the mention of their son in relation to this brought fear to his normally strong wife's eyes. He could never stand to see her cry.
There was silence in the bedroom as he finished dressing then Vernon flashed her a brief smile of reassurance before he left the room. The floorboards creaked slightly under his immaculately polished shoes as they took his weight and as he descended the stairs each footstep was a solid thump.
"Wake up!" He bellowed as the treads protested the impact of his weight. "Wake up you lazy freak! We've got to talk so get yourself dressed and ready, presentable like."
From the direction of Dudley Dursley's bedroom there was a muffled cry of protest ("For Heaven's sake, dad, it's half five!") at the yells, but they had their desired effect. Beneath the stairs, in the cupboard which should have housed brushes and brooms, twin emerald eyes opened blearily.
Vernon's hand hit the door to the cupboard, pounding on it and causing the individual inside to suddenly be quite awake, "I said get your arse up. Now!"
The eldest Dursley flicked up the latch on the door, a habit when both knew that the fourth member of the household had long since learned how to jiggle it open from the inside, then stormed through to the dining room.
In the Dursley household the kitchen was where chores were assigned and the lounge was where casual conversations, few that they were, took place. The dining room, however, indicated that something Formal and Important was going to be said and such things were Never Good.
Inside the cupboard a small child bit thier lip, not quite tasting blood, and hurried to get dressed before Uncle Vernon became too impatient. He wasn't the sort to hit a child, having once given a memorably rant about those who 'used their bloody fists instead of their brains', but there were other ways that he could express his anger.
"Freak!" The child heard Vernon below, his voice a deep and ominous rumble.
"Coming, Uncle Vernon!"
At the corner of Privet Drive something resembling a cat sat on the wall.
A cat was not such an unusual thing to see in Little Whinging as cats would go going where they wished and general do as they pleased. Even the way in which there seemed to be a gleam of intelligence in its eyes was not such a strange thing. After all Madam Figg. who lived on Privet Drive, was known to breed cats as pets and supposedly for other purposes.
Few people cared to ask the unaffiliated cultivator what those purposes supposedly were. This was likely due to how many had suffered through one of Figg's hours long 'explanations' about her 'darlings' and few could tolerate quite so many pictures of cats and cups of bitter tea.
The cat looked up abruptly, as though hearing something, and stared at a spot where nothing seemed to be. Several long seconds passed as nothing visible changed then a soft rumble seemed to pass through the area, shaking a few petals from roses in a nearby garden and causing the adjacent lamp post to sway slightly.
Then, with no more warning than that, a man was simply there so suddenly that it was as if he had popped out of the ground between one eyeblink and the next.
If this had been another man then an observer might have thought that he stepped from around lamp post, straightened from behind a wall, or otherwise have just been hidden from sight until that moment. However this was no lesser man who could be overlooked. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. This was no natural height and, despite the way that his thick black beard was tied into two bunches and his long hair was tied back into braids, there was a sense of wildness about him.
One hand which was large enough to engulf a grown man's head rested lightly against the wall as he seemed to try to steady himself. He shook his head once as if to clear it then spoke in a low grumbling voice.
"Heavens help me, I hate that bloody formation." He complained, "Can't manage a nice sensible way to travel, can't let me just run the damn distance, but they got the time to stuff me through that thing. An' I'll have to use it again tomorrow too."
Whatever weakness had seized the man passed quickly and, after a brief glance at the lamp post to confirm that the indentations left by his fingers weren't too noticeable, he straightened.
"Thanks fer anchoring this end, lady." He said to the cat, speaking to it as though it could truly understand his words, "I can make me own way back so if you want to head off yerself?"
The tabby looked back at the giant of a man, the markings around its eyes giving the impression of spectacles as it peered at him, then twitched and flicked its tail once.
"Hey, don't be goin' and bein' like that at me." He protested, "I'm not the one who got us going to all these ruddy places. You want to only have ta go in estates, Hogsmede, and places like that then you can get them who live there having more kids. Then we'd not have ta be chasin' down initiates with potential."
The cat continued to look unimpressed, but he just snorted back at her.
"I'da thought you'd not mind this one so much." He commented then, as she started to stand, added, "It's the Potter spawn we got here."
He chuckled when she froze in place then explained as she started to wash herself, "Yeah, thought that might make it different. Hope there's someun about this one to make up for what happened with Lily and James. Losing one of them was bad enough, but two Seventh degree cultivators in exchange for a kid who might not be anywhere as good? Real poor trade there even if they took 'Lord' Whatshisface with 'em."
There was a pause where a response to that could have been, but the giant man answered it as if he had heard someone speaking.
"Lots of people do want to see the little 'un though." He admitted grudgingly, "Like most of Ravenclaw'd want to get their claws on the tyke and diggin' around. Can't really blame 'em though. Not a lot of counters for the Forbidden Techniques around and one which'd protect someun' not yourself? Right rare."
The man frowned suddenly and irritably flicked a hand toward the cat. Its fur only ruffled for a moment, but something unseen silently scored the brickwork on which it sat and shredded a harmless bush in the garden beyond.
"Be off with ye!" He exclaimed, his expression darkening, "I know me duty to the sect, to Hogwarts, to Dumbledore! I ain't gonna hurt a hair on the brat's hard and I'll show 'em what they need to know. Lily and James paid the sponsorship in advance so, even if they ain't here, now, it's gonna be better than sink or swim."
"Well, a little better." He corrected himself a moment later, "Everyone has to put in the effort, don't they."
The cat, which had stilled when the man had become briefly enraged, visibly relaxed and whatever unheard words passed between them seemed to appease the man.
"Yeah, that's okay." He remarked as the last of his anger fading as quickly as it had appeared, "Just keep in mind that I'm as loyal as you. Ye might be the great Senior of Transfiguration, but I am still a Master of Beasts and you shouldn't be forgettin' that."
Another short silence and the man guffawed.
"I weren't meaning it that way, lady, you know that!" He said while trying, and failing to hold back further laughter, "And I know you weren't meaning it. Now, I can be handlin' the rest so be off with you. Get yerself a wee dram if you like and put that silly through out of yer head."
The cat remained just long enough to show that it wasn't really obeying his words, merely had happened to decide to do something similar, then walked along the wall with its tail raised high. His gaze followed it until it hopped down out of sight then continued to track its path for several long moments despite the intervening wall.
Only then did he turn his attention towards the houses of Privet Drive and, in particular, number four.
The light caught on a ring the man wore as he made a surprisingly subtle gesture with one of his great hands and suddenly fabric shrouded his hands as he abruptly held a great gown. With practiced ease he swirled it around his large body, sliding his arms through the sleeves effortlessly, and carefully settled it in place.
He ran his hands over it, touching the furs and hides which made it up as though each brought back a memory, then gave a firm nod and stood tall. An air of authority, of power, seemed to settle over him and when he stepped forward it was all too easy to imagine how the very ground would shake beneath his feet if he so choose.
When he reached the door to number four he rapped his knuckles against it three times, the wood and glass shaking with each carefully measured knock and the noise resounding throughout the house.
"Household, I seek entry," He said formally, his accent falling away as he spoke the well practiced words, "As I would have words with those within. I seek students for my sect and have heard tell that one of this place may be capable of Enlightenment."
From somewhere inside he heard a feminine whimper, a sharp intake of adult breath, and a young male voice demanding that 'the freak get the fuckin' door'.
He knocked again and this time his words were less polite.
"Open this soddin' door and let me in. It's not gonna keep me out and we all want to get this done with." He stated, the rumble of his voice causing crockery to rattle in sympathy.
He waited there patiently and listened to the whisper arguments, to the harsh words, which were spoken within the house. Silently he counted his heartbeats and let his irritation wash through him and down through his feet into the earth.
He remembered being a boy too large, too 'stupid', for his adoptive family to tolerate.
By the time that the door opened to reveal a slight figure, dressed in older cast off clothes and with eyes which gleamed an unnatural green as they stared up at him, he was calmer but feeling no less impatient to be done with this place.
"Yer comin' with me." He said then grabbed the child and left before he did something that he wouldn't regret.
Why did they call you a "freak"? (Pick one. No write-ins here.)
[ ] They had to cover up your freakish strength after you shattered several doors.
[ ] They have pulled you back from touching the normally intangible local Formations.
[ ] They have struggled to hide the unnatural way you change genders.
[ ] They saw how some Spirit Animals seem attracted and actually friendly towards you.
[ ] They were appalled by how you thrived on eating strange and unnatural things.
That doesn't mean that something more overt didn't take its place despite some familiar faces.
It could be said that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were quite normal. Indeed they would assure you that they were the last people ever to be involved in the profound mysteries, the great sects, or even cultivation at all and, indeed, any stranger who asked about such things would be assured that they didn't hold with such things at all.
Mr Vernon Dursley was a large and beefy man, sturdily built but not precisely fat. All too often there was a gleam of anger in his eyes at some petty annoyance or another, but nobody had known him to be violent. If he happened to have a habit of running a finger over his upper lip at such moments, as though playing with a mustache which was no longer there, then nobody really commented on it.
Mrs Petunia Dursley was, in contrast, a thin blonde woman who seemed years younger than her husband. It would have been a scandalous thing in Privet Drive, or perhaps further afield within the small English town of Little Whinging where they lived, if not for the fact that Petunia Dursley had a nose for scandal of any type. Those who had brought up the apparent disparity of ages had soon found their failings, imagined or otherwise, becoming common knowledge.
No, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Dursley were known to have any truck with the unusual. Like most of the other inhabitants of Little Whinging they had no truck with the unnatural.
"Just bloody well leave it to the sects and the cultivators." Vernon Dursley was known to say to his cohorts and co-workers at the company in which he worked. "They're the ones who know about such things. I pay my taxes and tithes so the government can damn well point them at the problem."
This was generally considered the wisest course of action, but the degree to which Vernon was vehement about it did cause a few to wonder about the cause. One salesman mused that perhaps Vernon had been traumatically attacked by a Spirit Beast while one of the supervisors of the metalworks held the opinion that obviously Vernon had been too curious as a child and run afoul of one of the formations protecting wherever he had grown up.
The wife of one had once inquired about this to Petunia.
Nobody else was quite sure what Petunia's response had actually been, but nobody desired to hear it enough to risk the shakes and nightmares which had plagued the overly quizzical woman for days afterwards.
Yet when Mr. and Mrs Dursley woke up on a dull grey day when our story starts they lay there, staring out the window at an overcast sky, and knew that the peace that they worked so hard to gain would soon be intruded upon.
"Do you want me to handle it by myself, pet?" Vernon asked in a shaky voice. "You don't have to… deal with it at all if you don't want to."
There was a long silence as Petunia seemed to consider the question before she steeled herself, depriving herself of the luxury of cowardice.
"No. I'm not going to abandon you about this." She told her husband as she rolled onto her side to look at him, clutching his hand as if trying to draw strength from it. "If someone comes then they won't respect you, not at all. 'Just another muggle.' That's what they'd think and then they'd ask questions."
Vernon turned to look at his wife then gently stroked his thumb over her hand in return.
"I'll deal with the freak though." He said firmly, the gleam which others took for anger flashing in his eyes, "You just have to be there to say what you need to say. Maybe they'll go away if we ask them too."
The two looked at each other then shared a hollow laugh.
"She died, Vernon." Petunia said, tears glimmering in her own eyes, "I loved her so much, more than anything else, and she left me behind then they killed her. Most days I can't bare to look at that… that thing or else I'm sure that I'd demand to know why it cost my sister her life and soul!"
Vernon said nothing in return, just rubbing her knuckles and steadfastly ignoring how his hand was turning white in her grip, but finally began to pull away. Petunia let him and watched as he stood, drinking in the sight of the muscled form which so many mistook for fat when he was clothed.
"We'll get through this, love," He told her as he began to dress, "Don't you worry. We'll get through this together and Dudley will be fine."
Vernon turned away, making a show of straightening his tie as the mention of their son in relation to this brought fear to his normally strong wife's eyes. He could never stand to see her cry.
There was silence in the bedroom as he finished dressing then Vernon flashed her a brief smile of reassurance before he left the room. The floorboards creaked slightly under his immaculately polished shoes as they took his weight and as he descended the stairs each footstep was a solid thump.
"Wake up!" He bellowed as the treads protested the impact of his weight. "Wake up you lazy freak! We've got to talk so get yourself dressed and ready, presentable like."
From the direction of Dudley Dursley's bedroom there was a muffled cry of protest ("For Heaven's sake, dad, it's half five!") at the yells, but they had their desired effect. Beneath the stairs, in the cupboard which should have housed brushes and brooms, twin emerald eyes opened blearily.
Vernon's hand hit the door to the cupboard, pounding on it and causing the individual inside to suddenly be quite awake, "I said get your arse up. Now!"
The eldest Dursley flicked up the latch on the door, a habit when both knew that the fourth member of the household had long since learned how to jiggle it open from the inside, then stormed through to the dining room.
In the Dursley household the kitchen was where chores were assigned and the lounge was where casual conversations, few that they were, took place. The dining room, however, indicated that something Formal and Important was going to be said and such things were Never Good.
Inside the cupboard a small child bit thier lip, not quite tasting blood, and hurried to get dressed before Uncle Vernon became too impatient. He wasn't the sort to hit a child, having once given a memorably rant about those who 'used their bloody fists instead of their brains', but there were other ways that he could express his anger.
"Freak!" The child heard Vernon below, his voice a deep and ominous rumble.
"Coming, Uncle Vernon!"
oOo
At the corner of Privet Drive something resembling a cat sat on the wall.
A cat was not such an unusual thing to see in Little Whinging as cats would go going where they wished and general do as they pleased. Even the way in which there seemed to be a gleam of intelligence in its eyes was not such a strange thing. After all Madam Figg. who lived on Privet Drive, was known to breed cats as pets and supposedly for other purposes.
Few people cared to ask the unaffiliated cultivator what those purposes supposedly were. This was likely due to how many had suffered through one of Figg's hours long 'explanations' about her 'darlings' and few could tolerate quite so many pictures of cats and cups of bitter tea.
The cat looked up abruptly, as though hearing something, and stared at a spot where nothing seemed to be. Several long seconds passed as nothing visible changed then a soft rumble seemed to pass through the area, shaking a few petals from roses in a nearby garden and causing the adjacent lamp post to sway slightly.
Then, with no more warning than that, a man was simply there so suddenly that it was as if he had popped out of the ground between one eyeblink and the next.
If this had been another man then an observer might have thought that he stepped from around lamp post, straightened from behind a wall, or otherwise have just been hidden from sight until that moment. However this was no lesser man who could be overlooked. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. This was no natural height and, despite the way that his thick black beard was tied into two bunches and his long hair was tied back into braids, there was a sense of wildness about him.
One hand which was large enough to engulf a grown man's head rested lightly against the wall as he seemed to try to steady himself. He shook his head once as if to clear it then spoke in a low grumbling voice.
"Heavens help me, I hate that bloody formation." He complained, "Can't manage a nice sensible way to travel, can't let me just run the damn distance, but they got the time to stuff me through that thing. An' I'll have to use it again tomorrow too."
Whatever weakness had seized the man passed quickly and, after a brief glance at the lamp post to confirm that the indentations left by his fingers weren't too noticeable, he straightened.
"Thanks fer anchoring this end, lady." He said to the cat, speaking to it as though it could truly understand his words, "I can make me own way back so if you want to head off yerself?"
The tabby looked back at the giant of a man, the markings around its eyes giving the impression of spectacles as it peered at him, then twitched and flicked its tail once.
"Hey, don't be goin' and bein' like that at me." He protested, "I'm not the one who got us going to all these ruddy places. You want to only have ta go in estates, Hogsmede, and places like that then you can get them who live there having more kids. Then we'd not have ta be chasin' down initiates with potential."
The cat continued to look unimpressed, but he just snorted back at her.
"I'da thought you'd not mind this one so much." He commented then, as she started to stand, added, "It's the Potter spawn we got here."
He chuckled when she froze in place then explained as she started to wash herself, "Yeah, thought that might make it different. Hope there's someun about this one to make up for what happened with Lily and James. Losing one of them was bad enough, but two Seventh degree cultivators in exchange for a kid who might not be anywhere as good? Real poor trade there even if they took 'Lord' Whatshisface with 'em."
There was a pause where a response to that could have been, but the giant man answered it as if he had heard someone speaking.
"Lots of people do want to see the little 'un though." He admitted grudgingly, "Like most of Ravenclaw'd want to get their claws on the tyke and diggin' around. Can't really blame 'em though. Not a lot of counters for the Forbidden Techniques around and one which'd protect someun' not yourself? Right rare."
The man frowned suddenly and irritably flicked a hand toward the cat. Its fur only ruffled for a moment, but something unseen silently scored the brickwork on which it sat and shredded a harmless bush in the garden beyond.
"Be off with ye!" He exclaimed, his expression darkening, "I know me duty to the sect, to Hogwarts, to Dumbledore! I ain't gonna hurt a hair on the brat's hard and I'll show 'em what they need to know. Lily and James paid the sponsorship in advance so, even if they ain't here, now, it's gonna be better than sink or swim."
"Well, a little better." He corrected himself a moment later, "Everyone has to put in the effort, don't they."
The cat, which had stilled when the man had become briefly enraged, visibly relaxed and whatever unheard words passed between them seemed to appease the man.
"Yeah, that's okay." He remarked as the last of his anger fading as quickly as it had appeared, "Just keep in mind that I'm as loyal as you. Ye might be the great Senior of Transfiguration, but I am still a Master of Beasts and you shouldn't be forgettin' that."
Another short silence and the man guffawed.
"I weren't meaning it that way, lady, you know that!" He said while trying, and failing to hold back further laughter, "And I know you weren't meaning it. Now, I can be handlin' the rest so be off with you. Get yerself a wee dram if you like and put that silly through out of yer head."
The cat remained just long enough to show that it wasn't really obeying his words, merely had happened to decide to do something similar, then walked along the wall with its tail raised high. His gaze followed it until it hopped down out of sight then continued to track its path for several long moments despite the intervening wall.
Only then did he turn his attention towards the houses of Privet Drive and, in particular, number four.
The light caught on a ring the man wore as he made a surprisingly subtle gesture with one of his great hands and suddenly fabric shrouded his hands as he abruptly held a great gown. With practiced ease he swirled it around his large body, sliding his arms through the sleeves effortlessly, and carefully settled it in place.
He ran his hands over it, touching the furs and hides which made it up as though each brought back a memory, then gave a firm nod and stood tall. An air of authority, of power, seemed to settle over him and when he stepped forward it was all too easy to imagine how the very ground would shake beneath his feet if he so choose.
When he reached the door to number four he rapped his knuckles against it three times, the wood and glass shaking with each carefully measured knock and the noise resounding throughout the house.
"Household, I seek entry," He said formally, his accent falling away as he spoke the well practiced words, "As I would have words with those within. I seek students for my sect and have heard tell that one of this place may be capable of Enlightenment."
From somewhere inside he heard a feminine whimper, a sharp intake of adult breath, and a young male voice demanding that 'the freak get the fuckin' door'.
He knocked again and this time his words were less polite.
"Open this soddin' door and let me in. It's not gonna keep me out and we all want to get this done with." He stated, the rumble of his voice causing crockery to rattle in sympathy.
He waited there patiently and listened to the whisper arguments, to the harsh words, which were spoken within the house. Silently he counted his heartbeats and let his irritation wash through him and down through his feet into the earth.
He remembered being a boy too large, too 'stupid', for his adoptive family to tolerate.
By the time that the door opened to reveal a slight figure, dressed in older cast off clothes and with eyes which gleamed an unnatural green as they stared up at him, he was calmer but feeling no less impatient to be done with this place.
"Yer comin' with me." He said then grabbed the child and left before he did something that he wouldn't regret.
Why did they call you a "freak"? (Pick one. No write-ins here.)
[ ] They had to cover up your freakish strength after you shattered several doors.
You will find Physical Cultivation and learning Body Techniques easier.
You will have problems holding back or not giving your all and will have issues with most sparring partner..
You will have problems holding back or not giving your all and will have issues with most sparring partner..
[ ] They have pulled you back from touching the normally intangible local Formations.
You begin with the "Script Reader" Technique and find studying Formations easier.
Your curiosity in regards to Formations may make you act against your common sense or better judgement.
Your curiosity in regards to Formations may make you act against your common sense or better judgement.
[ ] They have struggled to hide the unnatural way you change genders.
Your affinity Paths may differ between your forms and you will have an easier time cultivating opposing elements.
You will initially lack control over the changes and in general have issues socially.
You will initially lack control over the changes and in general have issues socially.
[ ] They saw how some Spirit Animals seem attracted and actually friendly towards you.
You do better than expected when hunting or interacting with Spirit Animals.
You are attractive to all Spirit Beast, not just friendly or safe ones.
You are attractive to all Spirit Beast, not just friendly or safe ones.
[ ] They were appalled by how you thrived on eating strange and unnatural things.
You are more resistant to poison and have a knack for pill production.
While deprived of your odd diet you'll have issues progressing with your cultivation.
While deprived of your odd diet you'll have issues progressing with your cultivation.
General Quest Notes
General Points
Voting
- Background knowledge of the Xianxia genre may be useful, but not necessary. Expect things on both sides to be mangled into a different shape.
I aim to update roughly twice a week, but I'll attempt to give warning if I stray from this schedule.- Okay, 'aim' was the operative word. I'll try for twice a week, but I may end up settling for once per week instead.
- Various terms may be explained along the way as you (aka the Potter child) find out about them, but otherwise may need to be actively searched out ICly after they are referred to.
- Discussion is extremely welcome, and encourages me to stay interested in the Quest, but I may remain silent on some topics so as not to provide too many spoilers or bias voting.
Voting
- Italic lines bender a voting option are description or details and there is no need to include them in the vote.
- Unless stated otherwise if multiple choices, or multiple sets of choices, are presented in a single update then everything in you vote is taken as a single cohesive plan.
- Not putting in part of the vote may have your vote discarded as invalid.
- Opportunities for write-ins will be clearly labelled.
- Some votes (especially early ones) will define aspects about the world that the Quest takes place in rather than being IC actions.
- Please don't make me put in rules against tactical voting, negative voting, etc. Please?
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Character Sheet & Glossary
Character Sheet
Information about 'you' will go here.
General Info:
Affinities :
Known Skills:
Passive Technique:
Inspiration:
Glossary
As terms and concepts are encountered they will be listed here along with any details on them you have learned.
Information about 'you' will go here.
General Info:
Name: Harry Potter
Age: Thirteen years old
Nickname: "Freak"
Gender: Currently female.
Special Traits
Twin Natures: Each time you sleep a significant time you have a chance (based on how long since you last changed) to wake up as the other gender.
Age: Thirteen years old
Nickname: "Freak"
Gender: Currently female.
Special Traits
Twin Natures: Each time you sleep a significant time you have a chance (based on how long since you last changed) to wake up as the other gender.
Affinities :
Unknown.
Known Skills:
Cultivation: E
Your spirit has been awakened and you can begin to cultivate further. This seems to give you some awareness of your personal vis and if there is a particular concentration of vis around you. This skill acts as a multiplier for all techniques you cultivate.
Your spirit has been awakened and you can begin to cultivate further. This seems to give you some awareness of your personal vis and if there is a particular concentration of vis around you. This skill acts as a multiplier for all techniques you cultivate.
Passive Technique:
Ally Awareness (Basic): E
With a little concentration you can search for a particular and already known cultivator or other concentration of vis nearby. You need to actively check and only for one individual source at a time though.
With a little concentration you can search for a particular and already known cultivator or other concentration of vis nearby. You need to actively check and only for one individual source at a time though.
Inspiration:
- 50 Insight associated with Darkness, Earth, and Non-Visual Awareness.
Glossary
As terms and concepts are encountered they will be listed here along with any details on them you have learned.
- Insight: Effectively this is your XP. However it is not directly spent, but where appropriate it instead adds to cultivation attempts or other forms of learning. In a dramatically appropriate situation you may offered the change to make a roll using just applicable insight as everything you have learnt or experienced comes together.
- Vis: The metaphysical fuel used to power active techniques while most passive techniques require a certain ammount to be in your system in order to grant their benefits. At your stage of cultivation you condense a tiny trickle of vis from the world around you to refill your reserves.
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Part 1.2 - Moving Away
Some people looked at Rubeus Hagrid and assumed that he was a simple sort. There was often an assumption made that a man of his size must obviously be more brawn than brains and that he would have to be raw muscle rather than holding any degree of spiritual refinement. The worn and patched clothing that he habitually wore, covered with pockets holding the oddest thing, did nothing to dispel such an impression.
Rubeus Hagrid was a Master of Beasts and no one reached mastery of any path of cultivation without having a brain. He was not an eloquent or subtle man, but he had stood motionless for days until Wild Aurochs passed close enough to observe their smallest habits and had pitted himself in a battle of ambushes against a Great Tiger from which only he had emerged alive.
Hagrid had learned from the original sources both the Salmon Leap and Snatching Magpie Talons. He knew how creatures of dozens of varieties moved and so it only took him a single glance to notice how an important detail about the child he had been directed towards. Was different than he had been told.
"So," Hagrid said slowly, trying to moderate his voice into a kindly rumble, "Yer Harry Potter, right?"
Through the contact from his hand on the child's shoulder he felt every motion they made. There was no need to look down to actually see the nod nor to notice the continued worry that the tension in muscles spoke of to him.
"I'm Master Rubeus Hagrid, Hogwarts Keeper of the Keys," He continued then chuckled, "I could go all formal past that but, eh, it'd sound real silly with me doin' that eh?"
"Yes, sir?" The response was tentative and uncertain.
"I came 'cause we had the name of 'Harry Potter', of that there number four Privet Drive, down as a potential student of cultivation." Hagrid forged on even as he felt the response beneath his hand, "Yeah, that's right. 'Coulda just said something like 'Yer a cultivator, Harry', but that's not quite true yet."
They reached the end of Privet Drive and Hagrid guided them towards the right as he speaking, still taking them further away from the house which had been the closest thing to a home that Harry had ever known.
"Yet." Hagrid stressed, "Ev'ry one's gotta go through the stages, work long and hard, and there's all the risks in being a cultivator. We do great things, great things but terrible ones. You could die doing 'em. You could die learnin' to do 'em."
Each step seemed to take the pair further and further along the roads. The streets that Harry knew best began to recede behind them and the boundary which definied the edge of Little Whinging's stifling normality drew closer.
Hagrid's hand left Harry's shoulder and the giant stepped across the invisible demarcation. A cryptic glowing symbol, part of the Formation which defined that boundary, passed between Harry and Hagrid but the large man ignored it. Crouching down he turned his gaze upon the child he had escorted here and truly looked. His eyes took in the hand-me-down clothes, the messy hair in a ragged cut, those eyes which gleamed like emeralds, and saw what those were a deliberately cultivated distraction from.
"Harry, mosta those who get noticed as havin' potential are have something weird about 'em." Hagrid said, his tone sympathetic, "Some see things that others don't. A couple are too big or strong. Beasts act like a few are catnip. All sorts of things. Maybe even not looking the same from one day to the next."
Harry Potter looked up at Master Hagrid, at the larger-than-life man who had effortlessly plucked her from the house which had seemed more like prison than a home, and tried to absorb what had been said.
"It doesn't mean that I'm a freak, or a changeling, that I sometimes change when wake up?" Harry asked and was surprised when Hagrid chuckled in response.
"I know a girl who changes whenever she darn well blinks wrong." Hagrid confided, "Yer gonna have to wait until you get some Transfiguration lessons under yer belt, but I ken see yer more stable than that. Like Janus o' myth, you flip flop right?"
Harry nodded, not quite trusting her voice.
"Might take a while fer ye to learn control, but it'd make you stronger for it." Hagrid stated then rubbed the back of his head, looking somewhat embarrassed, "Not 'xactly summut I know a lot 'bout, not like if it were you turnin' in ta a beast from time to time.."
The giant of a man shook his head, dismissing both his uncertainly and a few random musings, then took a step back away from Harry. Standing clearly outside the protective boundary, he stared at the young girl and she fidgeted awkwardly under his penetrating gaze.
Harry wasn't used to being the object of such attention from a stranger. In fact she had spent long hours under Aunt Petunia's critical gaze, trying on one set of Dudley's former clothes then another, with an eye to picking out those combinations which best concealed her gender. Despite that she had still found herself confined to the house as much as would not arouse pointed questions from neighbours about her health and wellbeing.
Being looked in such a way made her feel that Hagrid, despite his words, was about to call her a 'freak' as her Uncle Vernon did or strike her down as 'unnatural' as Aunt Petunia often warned her that others might.
Yet, despite those feelings, she couldn't suppress a spark of hope.
"You said that every one, every cultivator I mean, learns how to… cultivate." Harry began slowly. When Hagrid didn't respond she went on, "If I wanted to learn then what would I need to do?"
Hagrid gave her an encouraging smile, "You want to learn then?"
Harry thought back over the things she had read in Uncle Vernon's books, about the tales she had overheard Dudley and his friends had exchange. She thought of how supposedly, as she had never been out to see them for herself, cultivators and the students of the Great Sects were powerful. They ran like the wind, fought the Spirit Beasts that lurked in the wilds away from the town, and nobody saw them as freaks.
"I want to learn." Harry stated firmly, catching Hagrid's gaze with her own.
Hagrid pulled himself up to his full height and, without warning, Harry could feel the the strength emanating from the man. Here was a wild and terrible power yet one which was under careful control. This man who had smiled at her, who hadn't judged her badly despite guessing about her other face, was dangerous.
"Child," Hagrid said, speaking his words carefully in a manner unlike his previous speech, "I offer to you a chance and no more. In you I see the potential to learn our arts, to join my Sect, and I extend a hand towards you."
The man did exactly that, one hand held out towards Harry but still not far enough to cross the threshold again.
"If you would dedicate yourself to cultivating your body, mind, and soul, then step away from safety." Hagrid said, visibly struggling with what was obviously some sort of formal phrasing, "Take my hand and step beyond the mundane. I promise you danger. I promise you pain. I promise you duty. I promise you a chance to learn. If you would accept, step forward and take my hand."
There was a silence which drew out between the two, broken by the rustling of the wind across the long grass around Hagrid and the distant sound of cars behind Harry in Little Whinging.
Harry stepped forwards to take it, feeling a faint tingle as one of the symbols of the Formation passed through her, and Hagrid's hands engulf her fingers as he closed his hand around them. They shared a smile, tentative on Harry's side and bittersweet on Hagrid's, at this silent acceptance of the offer.
The moment was then ruined when Hagrid began to cough, sputtering even as he yanked a handkerchief the size of Harry's shirt from a pocket and covered his mouth.
"Eh, sorry 'bout that?" Hagrid said sheepishly, "Just talkin' fancy like that right does my throat in."
Harry couldn't help but laugh at the giant's expression, letting herself giggle at the contrast between how he was now and how deadly serious he had just been.
"Right, since yer not one of those scaredy cat types." Hagrid announced after letting Harry's laughter subside, "We can be off now. Today's gonna be an important day for you, the first one in ter proper life."
There was suddenly a twinkle in Hagrid's eyes and he beamed at Harry, "You won't always have a master to guide you, not less you been good enough to learn their time, but for today? You got me to help put yer feet on the path and get yer first steps going. Just like a mother bird needin' to push her fledgling from the nest afore it can learn ta fly!"
For some reason, when confronted by Hagrid's enthusiastic words, Harry was suddenly worried that staying at the Dursley's might not have been the better choice after all
Harry Potter had grown up rather sheltered compared to many other children in Little Whining.
That was not to say that Harry's childhood in the Dursley household had been easy, but instead that she had few of the small adventures which others her age indulged in. She had never gone near the boundary Formation before let alone set foot across it on a dare as some of the more adventurous others might have been. Privet Drive itself was closer to the center of the small town so even when peering out of the upstairs windows all Harry could see from them where more houses and streets.
Yet she had heard about the wilds and even been taught about them at school before her Uncle had declined to pay for either her Eleven Plus exam or an apprenticeship. Once, during a midmorning break between classes when she had been hiding from Dudley, he had snuck back into the school and gone all the way up to the roof. From there he had seen the stark dividing line beyond which were plains and woods and deceptively innocent looking hills of lush greenery.
It was quite different to see it as she was now with the surrounding trees mere blurs of green and brown as Hagrid carried her at a dizzying speed between them. It never occurred to her to be scared as he carried her effortlessly in his arms and, without thinking, she spoke.
"Can you go faster?" She asked, her bright eyes with joy. The idea of being to able to move like this, to be able to run like this, seemed to Harry to be the very essence of freedom.
Hagrid's answer was a low rumbling chuckle before he surged forwards and their surroundings became briefly became streaks of color as the wind made Harry's eyes blur.
"Just relax, Harry." Hagrid assured her, carrying her as easily as another man might carry a handful of change,"I got ya and we'll be there right quick enough. We're in the soft places but I know where I'm gonna be getting to."
There was a long moment of weightless as Hagrid burst between trees and leap over a gap then landed without breaking his stride.
"Gonna haveta make this a 'teaching moment'." Hagrid told her almost apologetically as he continued to run. "I told you that you'll gotta learn and that's true. Yer thirteen now, a time o' change and a real inauspicious number. Time is when kids like you start to grow up and prolly why yer Uncle kept you away from other people afore they noticed. Boys and girls start gettin' different about yer age."
Harry nodded as best she could despite the wind of their passage pressing her head against his chest. Pressed close in that way close Hagrid's scent was discernable her despite despite the attempts of the air to whip it away: a mixture of not unpleasant musk and the smell of pine needles.
It made Harry think of the cleaning fluid that Aunt Petunia favoured, but without the connotations of laborious work scrubbing the floors and aching hands.
"Ye'd think it was bad and it sorta is." Hagrid continued twisting for a moment so a branch struck his shoulder rather than Harry. The speed of their passage left the crack of shattering wood was left far behind though. "The Founders though, they realised that there's potential there. It's a bad time but it's got symbolism to be starting there and getting better. See?"
"I think so." Harry offered when the silence extended long enough that she realised the question hadn't been rhetorical.
"That's where yer startin'." He told her and, out of the corner of her eye, Harry glimpsed a flash of grey with ivory fangs which suddenly red before it passed out out sight. "The old old ways would have someun spendin' years, decades even, tryin' to awaken just through meditation. You being thirteen means we just got to give you the right sort of push, open you up to the paths, and we get ye around that bottleneck."
There was another silence but Harry couldn't think of what she was supposed to say. She didn't think that Hagrid had asked a question and she was feeling a lightheaded as the air buffeting around her seemed to be moving so fast that it wanted to pass by her mouth rather than allow her to breathe it.
"Still takes a master to do this right," Hagrid said finally, "Done it for dozens now and I'll do it for dozens more. Ain't had any of ye explode on me yet."
"Explode?" Harry echoed, her mouth suddenly dry and her stomach twisting. Hagrid didn't seem like he was joking.
"Like I said, not had it happen to any student yet fer me. Can't say the same fer Master Snape e'en if he does awaken more initiates." Hagrid grumbled as he continued his tireless stride. "Blames it on the cauldron bottoms being too thin, he does. Or the furnaces not burnin' right."
"You were telling the truth about cultivation being dangerous." Harry said, resisting an urge to huddle closer to the reassuringly solid warmth of Hagrid's chest.
"All of you kids seem to say something like that, but I tol' ye it'd be dangerous." Hagrid said, seeming not to quite understand her reaction. "Ain't everything worthwhile dangerous? It ain't like we got the great Mandate o' Heaven lettin' us have towns and cities everywhere."
"That's… true." Harry said slowly.
The loss of the Mandate, as well as what it had meant, was a lesson that her schooling had touched upon. Harry mostly recalled that class as being one in which Dudley's friend Pierce had got in trouble for dipping a girl's pigtail in ink and so she had missed exactly how it had happened, just remembering that it was something to do with the ancient Empire.
Without that Mandate, the teacher had explained using far too many terms where the capital letters were almost audible, the Authority of Man was limited. The more that the physical world was defined and pinned down, the more that the soft places and the wild would push back. Spirit Beasts would become more common, appearing from nowhere if need be, and disasters would occurring.
The teacher had shown them some old maps, three different ones from different times, and even Dudley could see how they differed. Harry most vivid memory about them was how all the older maps lacked the Surrey mountains and how the oldest one showed an island the size of Wales in the Northern Sea.
Harry had once liked gardening and thought about trying to become a farmer. Then he hadn't then thought about how the fields were outside of Little Whining and, without as strong a protective Formation encircling them, Spirit Beasts occasionally wandered through.
"Don't worry, Harry." Hagrid murmured, somehow finding the energy to begin moving faster, "I know the perfect place ta help awaken you. A nice new one, fresh and waiting just for you.I'm cert' it'll still be fine. It'll just be a little challenging..."
As it turned out Hagrid had quite the talent for understatement.
What sort of place will Hagrid take you? (Pick one, no write-in)
[ ] A campsite with a fire and waiting spit.
[ ] A dark cave which you'll need to traverse after he seals the entrance.
[ ] A pool at the base of a waterfall in which to float and mediate.
[ ] A sacred grove to eat the fresh and dripping heart of a Spirt Beast.
[ ] A huge tree in the middle of a clearing.
Rubeus Hagrid was a Master of Beasts and no one reached mastery of any path of cultivation without having a brain. He was not an eloquent or subtle man, but he had stood motionless for days until Wild Aurochs passed close enough to observe their smallest habits and had pitted himself in a battle of ambushes against a Great Tiger from which only he had emerged alive.
Hagrid had learned from the original sources both the Salmon Leap and Snatching Magpie Talons. He knew how creatures of dozens of varieties moved and so it only took him a single glance to notice how an important detail about the child he had been directed towards. Was different than he had been told.
"So," Hagrid said slowly, trying to moderate his voice into a kindly rumble, "Yer Harry Potter, right?"
Through the contact from his hand on the child's shoulder he felt every motion they made. There was no need to look down to actually see the nod nor to notice the continued worry that the tension in muscles spoke of to him.
"I'm Master Rubeus Hagrid, Hogwarts Keeper of the Keys," He continued then chuckled, "I could go all formal past that but, eh, it'd sound real silly with me doin' that eh?"
"Yes, sir?" The response was tentative and uncertain.
"I came 'cause we had the name of 'Harry Potter', of that there number four Privet Drive, down as a potential student of cultivation." Hagrid forged on even as he felt the response beneath his hand, "Yeah, that's right. 'Coulda just said something like 'Yer a cultivator, Harry', but that's not quite true yet."
They reached the end of Privet Drive and Hagrid guided them towards the right as he speaking, still taking them further away from the house which had been the closest thing to a home that Harry had ever known.
"Yet." Hagrid stressed, "Ev'ry one's gotta go through the stages, work long and hard, and there's all the risks in being a cultivator. We do great things, great things but terrible ones. You could die doing 'em. You could die learnin' to do 'em."
Each step seemed to take the pair further and further along the roads. The streets that Harry knew best began to recede behind them and the boundary which definied the edge of Little Whinging's stifling normality drew closer.
Hagrid's hand left Harry's shoulder and the giant stepped across the invisible demarcation. A cryptic glowing symbol, part of the Formation which defined that boundary, passed between Harry and Hagrid but the large man ignored it. Crouching down he turned his gaze upon the child he had escorted here and truly looked. His eyes took in the hand-me-down clothes, the messy hair in a ragged cut, those eyes which gleamed like emeralds, and saw what those were a deliberately cultivated distraction from.
"Harry, mosta those who get noticed as havin' potential are have something weird about 'em." Hagrid said, his tone sympathetic, "Some see things that others don't. A couple are too big or strong. Beasts act like a few are catnip. All sorts of things. Maybe even not looking the same from one day to the next."
Harry Potter looked up at Master Hagrid, at the larger-than-life man who had effortlessly plucked her from the house which had seemed more like prison than a home, and tried to absorb what had been said.
"It doesn't mean that I'm a freak, or a changeling, that I sometimes change when wake up?" Harry asked and was surprised when Hagrid chuckled in response.
"I know a girl who changes whenever she darn well blinks wrong." Hagrid confided, "Yer gonna have to wait until you get some Transfiguration lessons under yer belt, but I ken see yer more stable than that. Like Janus o' myth, you flip flop right?"
Harry nodded, not quite trusting her voice.
"Might take a while fer ye to learn control, but it'd make you stronger for it." Hagrid stated then rubbed the back of his head, looking somewhat embarrassed, "Not 'xactly summut I know a lot 'bout, not like if it were you turnin' in ta a beast from time to time.."
The giant of a man shook his head, dismissing both his uncertainly and a few random musings, then took a step back away from Harry. Standing clearly outside the protective boundary, he stared at the young girl and she fidgeted awkwardly under his penetrating gaze.
Harry wasn't used to being the object of such attention from a stranger. In fact she had spent long hours under Aunt Petunia's critical gaze, trying on one set of Dudley's former clothes then another, with an eye to picking out those combinations which best concealed her gender. Despite that she had still found herself confined to the house as much as would not arouse pointed questions from neighbours about her health and wellbeing.
Being looked in such a way made her feel that Hagrid, despite his words, was about to call her a 'freak' as her Uncle Vernon did or strike her down as 'unnatural' as Aunt Petunia often warned her that others might.
Yet, despite those feelings, she couldn't suppress a spark of hope.
"You said that every one, every cultivator I mean, learns how to… cultivate." Harry began slowly. When Hagrid didn't respond she went on, "If I wanted to learn then what would I need to do?"
Hagrid gave her an encouraging smile, "You want to learn then?"
Harry thought back over the things she had read in Uncle Vernon's books, about the tales she had overheard Dudley and his friends had exchange. She thought of how supposedly, as she had never been out to see them for herself, cultivators and the students of the Great Sects were powerful. They ran like the wind, fought the Spirit Beasts that lurked in the wilds away from the town, and nobody saw them as freaks.
"I want to learn." Harry stated firmly, catching Hagrid's gaze with her own.
Hagrid pulled himself up to his full height and, without warning, Harry could feel the the strength emanating from the man. Here was a wild and terrible power yet one which was under careful control. This man who had smiled at her, who hadn't judged her badly despite guessing about her other face, was dangerous.
"Child," Hagrid said, speaking his words carefully in a manner unlike his previous speech, "I offer to you a chance and no more. In you I see the potential to learn our arts, to join my Sect, and I extend a hand towards you."
The man did exactly that, one hand held out towards Harry but still not far enough to cross the threshold again.
"If you would dedicate yourself to cultivating your body, mind, and soul, then step away from safety." Hagrid said, visibly struggling with what was obviously some sort of formal phrasing, "Take my hand and step beyond the mundane. I promise you danger. I promise you pain. I promise you duty. I promise you a chance to learn. If you would accept, step forward and take my hand."
There was a silence which drew out between the two, broken by the rustling of the wind across the long grass around Hagrid and the distant sound of cars behind Harry in Little Whinging.
Harry stepped forwards to take it, feeling a faint tingle as one of the symbols of the Formation passed through her, and Hagrid's hands engulf her fingers as he closed his hand around them. They shared a smile, tentative on Harry's side and bittersweet on Hagrid's, at this silent acceptance of the offer.
The moment was then ruined when Hagrid began to cough, sputtering even as he yanked a handkerchief the size of Harry's shirt from a pocket and covered his mouth.
"Eh, sorry 'bout that?" Hagrid said sheepishly, "Just talkin' fancy like that right does my throat in."
Harry couldn't help but laugh at the giant's expression, letting herself giggle at the contrast between how he was now and how deadly serious he had just been.
"Right, since yer not one of those scaredy cat types." Hagrid announced after letting Harry's laughter subside, "We can be off now. Today's gonna be an important day for you, the first one in ter proper life."
There was suddenly a twinkle in Hagrid's eyes and he beamed at Harry, "You won't always have a master to guide you, not less you been good enough to learn their time, but for today? You got me to help put yer feet on the path and get yer first steps going. Just like a mother bird needin' to push her fledgling from the nest afore it can learn ta fly!"
For some reason, when confronted by Hagrid's enthusiastic words, Harry was suddenly worried that staying at the Dursley's might not have been the better choice after all
oOo
Harry Potter had grown up rather sheltered compared to many other children in Little Whining.
That was not to say that Harry's childhood in the Dursley household had been easy, but instead that she had few of the small adventures which others her age indulged in. She had never gone near the boundary Formation before let alone set foot across it on a dare as some of the more adventurous others might have been. Privet Drive itself was closer to the center of the small town so even when peering out of the upstairs windows all Harry could see from them where more houses and streets.
Yet she had heard about the wilds and even been taught about them at school before her Uncle had declined to pay for either her Eleven Plus exam or an apprenticeship. Once, during a midmorning break between classes when she had been hiding from Dudley, he had snuck back into the school and gone all the way up to the roof. From there he had seen the stark dividing line beyond which were plains and woods and deceptively innocent looking hills of lush greenery.
It was quite different to see it as she was now with the surrounding trees mere blurs of green and brown as Hagrid carried her at a dizzying speed between them. It never occurred to her to be scared as he carried her effortlessly in his arms and, without thinking, she spoke.
"Can you go faster?" She asked, her bright eyes with joy. The idea of being to able to move like this, to be able to run like this, seemed to Harry to be the very essence of freedom.
Hagrid's answer was a low rumbling chuckle before he surged forwards and their surroundings became briefly became streaks of color as the wind made Harry's eyes blur.
"Just relax, Harry." Hagrid assured her, carrying her as easily as another man might carry a handful of change,"I got ya and we'll be there right quick enough. We're in the soft places but I know where I'm gonna be getting to."
There was a long moment of weightless as Hagrid burst between trees and leap over a gap then landed without breaking his stride.
"Gonna haveta make this a 'teaching moment'." Hagrid told her almost apologetically as he continued to run. "I told you that you'll gotta learn and that's true. Yer thirteen now, a time o' change and a real inauspicious number. Time is when kids like you start to grow up and prolly why yer Uncle kept you away from other people afore they noticed. Boys and girls start gettin' different about yer age."
Harry nodded as best she could despite the wind of their passage pressing her head against his chest. Pressed close in that way close Hagrid's scent was discernable her despite despite the attempts of the air to whip it away: a mixture of not unpleasant musk and the smell of pine needles.
It made Harry think of the cleaning fluid that Aunt Petunia favoured, but without the connotations of laborious work scrubbing the floors and aching hands.
"Ye'd think it was bad and it sorta is." Hagrid continued twisting for a moment so a branch struck his shoulder rather than Harry. The speed of their passage left the crack of shattering wood was left far behind though. "The Founders though, they realised that there's potential there. It's a bad time but it's got symbolism to be starting there and getting better. See?"
"I think so." Harry offered when the silence extended long enough that she realised the question hadn't been rhetorical.
"That's where yer startin'." He told her and, out of the corner of her eye, Harry glimpsed a flash of grey with ivory fangs which suddenly red before it passed out out sight. "The old old ways would have someun spendin' years, decades even, tryin' to awaken just through meditation. You being thirteen means we just got to give you the right sort of push, open you up to the paths, and we get ye around that bottleneck."
There was another silence but Harry couldn't think of what she was supposed to say. She didn't think that Hagrid had asked a question and she was feeling a lightheaded as the air buffeting around her seemed to be moving so fast that it wanted to pass by her mouth rather than allow her to breathe it.
"Still takes a master to do this right," Hagrid said finally, "Done it for dozens now and I'll do it for dozens more. Ain't had any of ye explode on me yet."
"Explode?" Harry echoed, her mouth suddenly dry and her stomach twisting. Hagrid didn't seem like he was joking.
"Like I said, not had it happen to any student yet fer me. Can't say the same fer Master Snape e'en if he does awaken more initiates." Hagrid grumbled as he continued his tireless stride. "Blames it on the cauldron bottoms being too thin, he does. Or the furnaces not burnin' right."
"You were telling the truth about cultivation being dangerous." Harry said, resisting an urge to huddle closer to the reassuringly solid warmth of Hagrid's chest.
"All of you kids seem to say something like that, but I tol' ye it'd be dangerous." Hagrid said, seeming not to quite understand her reaction. "Ain't everything worthwhile dangerous? It ain't like we got the great Mandate o' Heaven lettin' us have towns and cities everywhere."
"That's… true." Harry said slowly.
The loss of the Mandate, as well as what it had meant, was a lesson that her schooling had touched upon. Harry mostly recalled that class as being one in which Dudley's friend Pierce had got in trouble for dipping a girl's pigtail in ink and so she had missed exactly how it had happened, just remembering that it was something to do with the ancient Empire.
Without that Mandate, the teacher had explained using far too many terms where the capital letters were almost audible, the Authority of Man was limited. The more that the physical world was defined and pinned down, the more that the soft places and the wild would push back. Spirit Beasts would become more common, appearing from nowhere if need be, and disasters would occurring.
The teacher had shown them some old maps, three different ones from different times, and even Dudley could see how they differed. Harry most vivid memory about them was how all the older maps lacked the Surrey mountains and how the oldest one showed an island the size of Wales in the Northern Sea.
Harry had once liked gardening and thought about trying to become a farmer. Then he hadn't then thought about how the fields were outside of Little Whining and, without as strong a protective Formation encircling them, Spirit Beasts occasionally wandered through.
"Don't worry, Harry." Hagrid murmured, somehow finding the energy to begin moving faster, "I know the perfect place ta help awaken you. A nice new one, fresh and waiting just for you.I'm cert' it'll still be fine. It'll just be a little challenging..."
As it turned out Hagrid had quite the talent for understatement.
What sort of place will Hagrid take you? (Pick one, no write-in)
The circumstances of your awakening provide a one-off bonus of Insight usable to develop in any of the specified areas.
[ ] A campsite with a fire and waiting spit.
"Not gonna grind yer bones to make bread, but I'm right hungry and yer an orphan..."
Associated Insight: Escape, Fire, Willpower.
Associated Insight: Escape, Fire, Willpower.
[ ] A dark cave which you'll need to traverse after he seals the entrance.
You're sure that there is a way out... somewhere.
Associated Insight: Darkness, Earth, Non-Visual Awareness.
Associated Insight: Darkness, Earth, Non-Visual Awareness.
[ ] A pool at the base of a waterfall in which to float and mediate.
He'll work out that you're drowning, not waving, right?
Associated Insight: Breath, Stamina, Water.
Associated Insight: Breath, Stamina, Water.
[ ] A sacred grove to eat the fresh and dripping heart of a Spirt Beast.
Hagrid will leave you 'briefly' to hunt the beast.
Associated Insight: Reserves, Striking, Toughness.
Associated Insight: Reserves, Striking, Toughness.
[ ] A huge tree in the middle of a clearing.
Hitting it with a stick a few times doesn't sound too hard a task...
Associated Insight: Air, Multiple Opponents, Speed.
Associated Insight: Air, Multiple Opponents, Speed.
Part 1.3 - A Test of Worthiness?
The short time since Harry met Hagrid had seemed almost dream-like to her. Despite her doubts, despite her worries, and despite being her being the 'freak' he had offered her something else. He had seen her horrible secret and, despite it, offered her the chance to be be something more. Hagrid had told her of Hogwarts where she could learn to be a cultivator and taken her away from the stifling Dursley household.
As dreams went it had been one of the better ones that Harry had ever had, even better than the one about flying amidst shooting stars, and so she had tried to enjoy it as best that she could.
Unfortunately, whether this was reality or merely a dream, Harry found herself faced by evidence that she couldn't simply have something good happen to her.
"You want me to go down into there?" Harry asked, turning her gaze away from the crack in the ground and back towards Hagrid.
"Yeah." The comparatively giant man said, "Would be a mite small fer me, but yer a skinny little 'un. You'll be right as rain."
The giant cultivator had seemed solid and reliable to Harry before this but, as she looked back at the dubious hole, she wondered if he was really entirely sane.
The opening itself certainly was too narrow for someone of Hagrid's size to fit into. Even a more normal sized adult would have had problems fitting into the space in question, but it seemed more reasonable for a girl of Harry's size. Having slept in a cupboard for as long as she could remember she didn't find the idea of such a confined space frightening, but her common sense still objected.
"Yer gonna have ta face yer fears as a cultivator." Hagrid told her, crouching down to something a little closer to her own height, "They're just another sorta impurity, ones of the spirit, and so they get dealt with one way or 'nother."
Harry wasn't sure what Hagrid meant by impurity, all it brought to mind was one of Uncle Vernon's rants about criminals who were 'stains on society', but she nodded anyway. His hand was a warm weight as it rested on her shoulder and she found the rare experience of such a gentle contact heartening.
"Can you do it?" Hagrid asked.
"Yes." She said firmly, pushing down her own doubts.
"Thata good girl! Keep that up and ye'll become a Gryffindor for sure." He praised her warmly then looked embarrassed for some reason and straightened up.
"So, it's meant to be a challenge." Hagrid told her as he returned what looked like a dog biscuit, something that Harry hadn't noticed him pulling out, to his pocket. "Yer not the first to go this way and ye'll not be the last. It ain't really a maze in there, just a little confusin', but you just need ta get yerself to the other end afore sunset. Quicker done, the more time we got fer me to be teaching you some techniques. Maybe a drill or kata or two."
Harry paid attention to the words, ignoring the way that her stomach twisted at the idea that it would take all day to find her way through whatever passages the opening lead to, and made a note to ask Hagrid later on what the foreign word he had used meant.
"That doesn't sound too hard," Harry said, more to persuade herself than anything else, "I don't need to do anything else in there though? Find something, pick up proof, slay a Beast, or anything like that?"
A few of her cousin Dudley's tales, the ones he'd sometimes told her when they were alone in the house waiting for his parents to return from doing adult things, had included Quests which sounded like this. Harry had always found the stories fascinating even when Dudley's memory of the details had failed him and he had improvised.
Hagrid gave a snort at that, "Naw. Wouldn't expect you to do that, not without being taught. Maybe if ye had a little more meat on yer bones, but cultivation takes all sorts. Could prolly find someut interestin' fer you though..."
The growing enthusiasm in Hagrid's tone, and especially the way that the giant glanced around the surrounding woods as though considering where to find such a Spirit Beast, left Harry suddenly very thankful that she lacked the stocky build of Dudley and Uncle Vernon.
"No, that's alright." Harry said quickly, "I'm sure I'll do fine with this and there's no need to go to any trouble because of me."
She gave Hagrid a pleading look, trying for the one which occasionally got Dudley to share one or two of his sweets, and breathed an inward sigh of relief when Hagrid looked disappointed.
"If yer sure…?"He said slowly. "There's a wolf about and you'd do great against one, I'm sure."
"It'll be fine." Harry replied, trying not to think of the illustration she had seen in a schoolbook of a low ranked Spirit Wolf.
The fact that the Wolf had been pictured biting the leg off of someone had her imagination providing some rather vivid ideas about how a fight between her and such a Beast would go. Most of those were along the lines of a crunch, a choked off scream from her, and eventually a satisfied burp from a well-fed Wolf.
"Right." Hagrid said as he clapped his hands together with a sound like a small thunderclap, "I'm not gonna just shove you in there though. That'd be right dumb o' me. Yer gonna need something to make this challenge more interestin'."
He grinned at Harry then, with a twist and a flourish, was suddenly holding a pill which Harry was certain had not been in his hand a moment before.
"Tada!" Hagrid announced, "This right here? This is any Emptying Surge Pill. Got a lot more ta the name, but I reckon it'd mean a whole pile o' nothin' if I told you. You swallow this and it'll start stirring up all yer inner energies, makin' move an' givin' ye more energy to work with."
To Harry's eyes the smooth and hard looking exterior of the Pill made it seem like nothing more than one of Dudley's more exotic candies. Yet as she looked at it more closely there was a iridescent gleam to it that brought to mind the pearls that Madame Figg favoured.
"Go on then." Hagrid said encouragingly. "Take it."
Harry pushed down her sudden doubts, the ones which came from the warnings that every child heard about taking strange medicines offered for 'free', and took the pill from where it lay on Hagrid's palm. It had seemed such a small thing, tiny there in comparison to the giant's hand, but in reality it was only the size of the first joint of her littlest finger.
Feeling that it would be better to get this over with she was about to toss it into her mouth when Hagrid spoke up again.
"Oh, one warning though, " Hagrid said and Harry almost fumbled the pill as she aborted her motion. "Swallow it whole or yer not gonna like what happens."
"It'd be… bad?" Harry asked as visions of strange things, terrible things, happening to her as a result of the pill filled her head.
Hagrid looked at her for a moment then gave a laugh, "Not like I guess yer like as thinking, lass. It's got some prize ingredients in there and if you bite down it'd be like gettin' a nose fulla pepper or a mouthful o' chillis."
"I'll keep that in mind, sir." Harry said, wincing at the thought of how that would be but also relieved that it wasn't something far more dire that she was being warned off.
Hagrid gave her an expectant look and, with no other options rather than to kick up a tantrum like Dudley used to to, she popped the pill into her mouth. Whatever coating was on it prevented the pill from tasting of anything in particular as it rested on Harry's tongue and, without water at hand, she simply tilted her head back then swallowed a few times, until she finally managed to get it down.
"That wasn't so bad?" Harry offered tentatively then blinked as a wave of strange sensations hit her.
"Good to hear it, lass, real good to hear it." Hagrid said soothly, one hand taking hold of Harry's shoulder and guiding her suddenly unsteady path towards the hole.
That supportive hand was the only thing which ensured that Harry stayed upright as something inside of her stirred. There was a churning sensation which came from somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, yet somehow both lower and deeper inside of her, which was accompanied by a sense of pressure rushing out from that point. Her skin tingled and she could suddenly feel the small motions of her clothes against her body as well as the faintest of breezes on her exposed skin.
"I feel like I could run forever or lift a mountain." Harry murmured without thinking.
"Not yet, student." Hagrid said and, despite speaking no louder than before, she felt his voice in her very bones. "You might, in the fullness of time, but not yet."
With the fizzing energy filling Harry's head the words felt like a promise and she laughed. With her senses heightened and her body bursting with energy the world seemed to be such a clear and wonderful place to her that she couldn't but give voice to her joy.
The laughter trailed off awkwardly as Harry realised that Hagrid had gently pushed her forward until she was almost at the stone opening which was to be her challenge.
The opening no longer appeared quite so innocent.
There was no single detail that Harry could pin down as different about the hole. It had not suddenly changed shape or somehow shrunk, but where it previously had seemed no worse than her cupboard it now came across as being confining and suffocatingly narrow.
Harry noticed an odd sensation from her feet and looked down only to discover that she had stopped walking but now was being pushed by Hagrid towards the gap. She looked towards him in confusion, wondering what Hagrid was doing, yet she had no chance to object before he literally shoved her into the cave entrance.
"Hagrid?" She asked weakly, trying to regain enough coordination to move the few steps back out again. Somehow the surging energy that Harry felt had suddenly deserted her. Her body seemed someone empty, hollow was perhaps the better term, and the sensation was made all the worse by her still heightened senses.
The walls around Harry were close, the space narrow enough that she wouldn't be able to raise her arms far before they touched both sides, but the truth of its size didn't matter. She could feel the unmoving stone near her, above her and under her, as a suffocating presence and she struggled to breath.
Hagrid's body was large enough to eclipse most of the daylight which tried to enter the cave and left his face in shadow from Harry's point of view. Yet Harry could make out his actions as he reached the side, seizing something that she had missed seeing before and dragged it sideways with a loud scrape of stone upon stone.
"Hagrid?!" Harry exclaimed again, stumbling forward a half step as the slab of rock began to block what meager light reached her, "What are you doing?"
"Student, this challenge is to demonstrate your worth." Hagrid said, his tone suddenly as formal as he had heard him use when he pounded on the door to her uncle's house and demanded her as a student, "Show your spirit or else prove that you should be discarded. At sunset the exit shall be sealed."
Rock met rock with an air of finality and the last of the light vanished from Harry's sight.
How do you feel about this? (Pick one, no write-in.)
[ ] Even if you have to crawl through the cave you're intent on surviving.
[ ] Everyone hurts you, but you need to shrug it off and just keep moving.
[ ] It hurts so much to have your hopes betrayed that you're inwardly numb.
[ ] This can't be happening. You can't believe it. There has to be an explaination!
[ ] Your anger at Hagrid's betrayal fuels your efforts to escape.
As dreams went it had been one of the better ones that Harry had ever had, even better than the one about flying amidst shooting stars, and so she had tried to enjoy it as best that she could.
Unfortunately, whether this was reality or merely a dream, Harry found herself faced by evidence that she couldn't simply have something good happen to her.
"You want me to go down into there?" Harry asked, turning her gaze away from the crack in the ground and back towards Hagrid.
"Yeah." The comparatively giant man said, "Would be a mite small fer me, but yer a skinny little 'un. You'll be right as rain."
The giant cultivator had seemed solid and reliable to Harry before this but, as she looked back at the dubious hole, she wondered if he was really entirely sane.
The opening itself certainly was too narrow for someone of Hagrid's size to fit into. Even a more normal sized adult would have had problems fitting into the space in question, but it seemed more reasonable for a girl of Harry's size. Having slept in a cupboard for as long as she could remember she didn't find the idea of such a confined space frightening, but her common sense still objected.
"Yer gonna have ta face yer fears as a cultivator." Hagrid told her, crouching down to something a little closer to her own height, "They're just another sorta impurity, ones of the spirit, and so they get dealt with one way or 'nother."
Harry wasn't sure what Hagrid meant by impurity, all it brought to mind was one of Uncle Vernon's rants about criminals who were 'stains on society', but she nodded anyway. His hand was a warm weight as it rested on her shoulder and she found the rare experience of such a gentle contact heartening.
"Can you do it?" Hagrid asked.
"Yes." She said firmly, pushing down her own doubts.
"Thata good girl! Keep that up and ye'll become a Gryffindor for sure." He praised her warmly then looked embarrassed for some reason and straightened up.
"So, it's meant to be a challenge." Hagrid told her as he returned what looked like a dog biscuit, something that Harry hadn't noticed him pulling out, to his pocket. "Yer not the first to go this way and ye'll not be the last. It ain't really a maze in there, just a little confusin', but you just need ta get yerself to the other end afore sunset. Quicker done, the more time we got fer me to be teaching you some techniques. Maybe a drill or kata or two."
Harry paid attention to the words, ignoring the way that her stomach twisted at the idea that it would take all day to find her way through whatever passages the opening lead to, and made a note to ask Hagrid later on what the foreign word he had used meant.
"That doesn't sound too hard," Harry said, more to persuade herself than anything else, "I don't need to do anything else in there though? Find something, pick up proof, slay a Beast, or anything like that?"
A few of her cousin Dudley's tales, the ones he'd sometimes told her when they were alone in the house waiting for his parents to return from doing adult things, had included Quests which sounded like this. Harry had always found the stories fascinating even when Dudley's memory of the details had failed him and he had improvised.
Hagrid gave a snort at that, "Naw. Wouldn't expect you to do that, not without being taught. Maybe if ye had a little more meat on yer bones, but cultivation takes all sorts. Could prolly find someut interestin' fer you though..."
The growing enthusiasm in Hagrid's tone, and especially the way that the giant glanced around the surrounding woods as though considering where to find such a Spirit Beast, left Harry suddenly very thankful that she lacked the stocky build of Dudley and Uncle Vernon.
"No, that's alright." Harry said quickly, "I'm sure I'll do fine with this and there's no need to go to any trouble because of me."
She gave Hagrid a pleading look, trying for the one which occasionally got Dudley to share one or two of his sweets, and breathed an inward sigh of relief when Hagrid looked disappointed.
"If yer sure…?"He said slowly. "There's a wolf about and you'd do great against one, I'm sure."
"It'll be fine." Harry replied, trying not to think of the illustration she had seen in a schoolbook of a low ranked Spirit Wolf.
The fact that the Wolf had been pictured biting the leg off of someone had her imagination providing some rather vivid ideas about how a fight between her and such a Beast would go. Most of those were along the lines of a crunch, a choked off scream from her, and eventually a satisfied burp from a well-fed Wolf.
"Right." Hagrid said as he clapped his hands together with a sound like a small thunderclap, "I'm not gonna just shove you in there though. That'd be right dumb o' me. Yer gonna need something to make this challenge more interestin'."
He grinned at Harry then, with a twist and a flourish, was suddenly holding a pill which Harry was certain had not been in his hand a moment before.
"Tada!" Hagrid announced, "This right here? This is any Emptying Surge Pill. Got a lot more ta the name, but I reckon it'd mean a whole pile o' nothin' if I told you. You swallow this and it'll start stirring up all yer inner energies, makin' move an' givin' ye more energy to work with."
To Harry's eyes the smooth and hard looking exterior of the Pill made it seem like nothing more than one of Dudley's more exotic candies. Yet as she looked at it more closely there was a iridescent gleam to it that brought to mind the pearls that Madame Figg favoured.
"Go on then." Hagrid said encouragingly. "Take it."
Harry pushed down her sudden doubts, the ones which came from the warnings that every child heard about taking strange medicines offered for 'free', and took the pill from where it lay on Hagrid's palm. It had seemed such a small thing, tiny there in comparison to the giant's hand, but in reality it was only the size of the first joint of her littlest finger.
Feeling that it would be better to get this over with she was about to toss it into her mouth when Hagrid spoke up again.
"Oh, one warning though, " Hagrid said and Harry almost fumbled the pill as she aborted her motion. "Swallow it whole or yer not gonna like what happens."
"It'd be… bad?" Harry asked as visions of strange things, terrible things, happening to her as a result of the pill filled her head.
Hagrid looked at her for a moment then gave a laugh, "Not like I guess yer like as thinking, lass. It's got some prize ingredients in there and if you bite down it'd be like gettin' a nose fulla pepper or a mouthful o' chillis."
"I'll keep that in mind, sir." Harry said, wincing at the thought of how that would be but also relieved that it wasn't something far more dire that she was being warned off.
Hagrid gave her an expectant look and, with no other options rather than to kick up a tantrum like Dudley used to to, she popped the pill into her mouth. Whatever coating was on it prevented the pill from tasting of anything in particular as it rested on Harry's tongue and, without water at hand, she simply tilted her head back then swallowed a few times, until she finally managed to get it down.
"That wasn't so bad?" Harry offered tentatively then blinked as a wave of strange sensations hit her.
"Good to hear it, lass, real good to hear it." Hagrid said soothly, one hand taking hold of Harry's shoulder and guiding her suddenly unsteady path towards the hole.
That supportive hand was the only thing which ensured that Harry stayed upright as something inside of her stirred. There was a churning sensation which came from somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, yet somehow both lower and deeper inside of her, which was accompanied by a sense of pressure rushing out from that point. Her skin tingled and she could suddenly feel the small motions of her clothes against her body as well as the faintest of breezes on her exposed skin.
"I feel like I could run forever or lift a mountain." Harry murmured without thinking.
"Not yet, student." Hagrid said and, despite speaking no louder than before, she felt his voice in her very bones. "You might, in the fullness of time, but not yet."
With the fizzing energy filling Harry's head the words felt like a promise and she laughed. With her senses heightened and her body bursting with energy the world seemed to be such a clear and wonderful place to her that she couldn't but give voice to her joy.
The laughter trailed off awkwardly as Harry realised that Hagrid had gently pushed her forward until she was almost at the stone opening which was to be her challenge.
The opening no longer appeared quite so innocent.
There was no single detail that Harry could pin down as different about the hole. It had not suddenly changed shape or somehow shrunk, but where it previously had seemed no worse than her cupboard it now came across as being confining and suffocatingly narrow.
Harry noticed an odd sensation from her feet and looked down only to discover that she had stopped walking but now was being pushed by Hagrid towards the gap. She looked towards him in confusion, wondering what Hagrid was doing, yet she had no chance to object before he literally shoved her into the cave entrance.
"Hagrid?" She asked weakly, trying to regain enough coordination to move the few steps back out again. Somehow the surging energy that Harry felt had suddenly deserted her. Her body seemed someone empty, hollow was perhaps the better term, and the sensation was made all the worse by her still heightened senses.
The walls around Harry were close, the space narrow enough that she wouldn't be able to raise her arms far before they touched both sides, but the truth of its size didn't matter. She could feel the unmoving stone near her, above her and under her, as a suffocating presence and she struggled to breath.
Hagrid's body was large enough to eclipse most of the daylight which tried to enter the cave and left his face in shadow from Harry's point of view. Yet Harry could make out his actions as he reached the side, seizing something that she had missed seeing before and dragged it sideways with a loud scrape of stone upon stone.
"Hagrid?!" Harry exclaimed again, stumbling forward a half step as the slab of rock began to block what meager light reached her, "What are you doing?"
"Student, this challenge is to demonstrate your worth." Hagrid said, his tone suddenly as formal as he had heard him use when he pounded on the door to her uncle's house and demanded her as a student, "Show your spirit or else prove that you should be discarded. At sunset the exit shall be sealed."
Rock met rock with an air of finality and the last of the light vanished from Harry's sight.
How do you feel about this? (Pick one, no write-in.)
[ ] Even if you have to crawl through the cave you're intent on surviving.
Escape with time to get taught an Earth technique today.
[ ] Everyone hurts you, but you need to shrug it off and just keep moving.
Escape with time to get taught a Darkness technique today.
[ ] It hurts so much to have your hopes betrayed that you're inwardly numb.
Escape barely before the time limit.
Gain increased Insight from the experience.
Gain increased Insight from the experience.
[ ] This can't be happening. You can't believe it. There has to be an explaination!
Escape with time to get taught the technique "Ally Awareness (Basic)".
Increased trust in Hagrid.
Increased trust in Hagrid.
[ ] Your anger at Hagrid's betrayal fuels your efforts to escape.
Escape quickly and get double instruction today.
Sours your attitude towards Hagrid in future.
Sours your attitude towards Hagrid in future.
Part 1.4 - Through the Darkness
For as long as Harry could remember darkness and tight spaces had meant safety to her. The cupboard beneath the stairs had been dark when the door was closed, only a little light filtering through the cracks when the door was closed, and it had been her private place.
It was when Aunt Petunia, or Uncle Vernon, had wanted to yell at Harry that she had been dragged out from the cupboard but while inside with the door shut she had felt safe. She remembered the Christmas when she had been given the upstairs spare bedroom to sleep in, the windows finally fixed so that it was no longer unlivable in the winter months, and how she had ended up retreating to her cupboard after barely a week.
She still didn't know what it was about the New Year's fireworks which had triggered them, but sudden her nightmares had driven Harry to retreat to the cupboard. To her cupboard.
Harry had never been afraid of the dark.
As Hagrid sealed the cave, cutting off the last of the light and leaving her in the narrow passage, the young girl found herself mouthing protests which she couldn't manage to give voice to. Hagrid had been warm and Hagrid had been reassuring, but now he had fed her that pill and left her to potentially die?
"This can't be happening," She finally began to mutter, eyes staring blindly into the utter blackness, "I can't believe it. There has to be an explanation!"
Her voice grew louder as she spoke and her last exclamation held a hint of hysteria.
"Hagrid?" Harry called, reaching out towards the wall of the tunnel to support herself, and she struggled to ignore how lacking in energy her body felt, "This is a joke, right?"
There was no answer and she couldn't tell if it was because Hagrid chose not to respond, if the stone muffled her voice too much for him to hear, or if he had already left.
"HAGRID!" Harry tried again as loudly as she was able.
There was still no response and, despite the stone walls of the tunnel, the darkness around her seemed to almost swallow the sound of voice rather than echo it. If Harry had paid attention to only what she could hear and what her eyes were showing her then she would have thought herself somehow lost in an endless void. However the feel of the stone wall beneath her hand reassured her that was not the case.
Harry moved her hand from the wall to the slab blocking the entrance. There was a different texture to the two types of stone, the first rough and the second as smooth as glass, but as she tried to feel around for some way to shift the slab out of the way her fingers began to tingle.
At first the sensation was not too intrusive but soon enough, as she continued to check for seams or handles or anything that would let her out, the tingle in Harry's hands progressed to the level of an unpleasant buzz. Harry grit her teeth and stubbornly tried to continued searching, but when she felt her fingers prickling like the brush of nettles she was forced to pull away.
"He… said that there was another way out," Harry reminded herself as she shook her hands, trying to return proper sensation to them. "Hagrid wouldn't lie about that. He's a cultivator and they're supposed to keep their word."
Harry clung onto that idea, and her memories of stories about cultivators keeping their word despite the troubles that it had caused them, for reassurance. It was just that most of those tales had concerned promises of vengeance for wrongs, or insults, given to them.
Reaching out with both hands Harry let her fingertips brush against the walls either side of her then slowly and carefully began to walk along the tunnel. The solid contact was reassuring in more ways than one but her mind kept playing tricks on her, trying to convince her that the tunnel was closing in on her, even though she knew that it couldn't really be doing that.
No matter how much it felt like it was about to. No matter that she could almost feel the presence and mass of all the rock, earth, and soil above her head. A mass which was just waiting to collapse down on top of her.
Harry's already hesitant steps began to falter and the soles of her shoes scraping against the soil beneath her as the sensation of weight made raising her feet to take the next step harder.
"What was that pill?" Harry muttered as she forced herself to go on rather than stop to catch her breath. While she lacked the usual aches which would normally indicate exhaustion the sheer lack of energy made her body feel like a hollow shell. "He said it'd give me more energy."
The sound of her own voice, despite how the words were swallowed as soon as she spoke them, was encouraging and she thought over the question as a distraction from the growing need to just stop.
Hagrid hadn't actually, Harry realised as she thought back, said that it would give her more energy. He'd said that it would give her more energy 'to work with' and she had certainly felt that for a brief time after swallow the pill.
Distracted by the thought Harry almost stumbled on her next step as her foot almost caught on an irregularity on the tunnel floor. Her hands broke contact with the walls as Harry reflexively moved them to catch herself but when she failed to fall she immediately moved both back out again.
She hesitated before taking her next step. Were the walls just a little closer than they had been a moment ago? Surely not.
That stumble was the first sign that things were to become harder as the further along the tunnel that Harry went the more uneven its floor seemed to become. What had been relatively smooth dirt path was becoming littered with stones of increasing sizes until Harry found herself carefully stepping around a rock which reached up to her knee.
Harry consoled herself with the thought that the passage couldn't be that long, that she just had to keep going for a little longer.
And a little further than that.
Then a little further again.
With the encompassing darkness surrounding Harry soon had no clue as to how long it had been since she set out along the tunnel. The apparent narrowing of the passageway which had seemed at first to just be her nerves playing tricks on her quickly revealed itself as the utter truth and she no longer has to move her hands out to touch the walls.
The hand that Harry kept in front of her face touched something and she ducked her head lower to avoid the latest jagged outcropping from the ceiling. A few words she'd heard from Dudley, ones which had Aunt Petunia coldly telling her child off for using, escaped Harry's lips as groping around revealed that the 'outcropping' was actually a lowering of the tunnel's roof.
"It's just a test." Harry muttered to herself as she crouched then forced her body to take another step despite her leaden limbs, "Hagrid will be at the end and I've got plenty of time. It can't even be near lunchtime yet."
"He'll let me out and then explain everything." She told herself a few minutes later when she was forced to stoop lower. "I'm sure."
"It won't be far at all." Harry insisted to herself when the tunnel become lower than her waist and she resorted to moving forward on her hands and knees. "Just a little further."
There was a hollow feeling in Harry's stomach as she was forced to crawl to progress along the passageway. The rough dirt and scattered rocks which formed the floor here dug into her palms and, through the fabric of her trousers, into her knees but she forged onwards. Again and again she had to remind herself that the walls weren't closing in on her, that she could still move, and that the entire passage wasn't about to snap shut on her like the jaws of some giant beast...
She winced at that particular line of thought. Something about the image of the tunnel as the mouth, or perhaps gullet, of a monster which Hagrid was happily feeding her to struck a chord which made it hard to ignore bec-
Something shifted under Harry's hand as she put her weight on it and, with no more warning that that, she slipped and hit the dirt face first. Haltingly she tried to move her arms, to put her hands beneath her and push herself up so that she could go on, but after coming so far she simply had nothing left to fuel the attempt.
Harry was alone with the taste of soil on her lips as she lay there in the endless darkness.
Occasionally Harry twitched as she tried to convince her body to 'get up!' and get moving, but slowly those attempts also ceased. For a time she tried focusing on her breathing, forcing herself to be aware of the mechanics of inhaling and exhaling, yet her awareness of the earth around her intruded on that and each breath was shallower than the last.
It crossed Harry's mind that this was what it was like to be buried alive, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to care. She was empty, utterly empty, and what reason did she have to try to go on? She felt as though she could just rest there in the comforting darkness and let it numb all her hurts.
Here there wouldn't be yells to wake her.
Here there weren't be demands to do chores.
Here nobody would call her 'freak!'.
All Harry needed to do was lay down and lay still as the earth pressed upon her. That wasn't so hard a thing to do, she realised, and the faint fuzziness of her thoughts made the idea seem all the more inviting.
But don't want to die...
Something inside of Harry Potter twisted as the thought surfaced in her mind. It twisted and thrashed and tried to move. It wasn't her body, the animal instincts saying to simple lay down and die. It wasn't her rational mind as tha had found acceptance with the idea of passing on.
It was her soul, her will and the essence of herself, which dug in its heels and objected.
Faced with no alternatives the core of Harry Potter's existence stirred itself in an attempt to simply survive. With no resources, with nothing to work with, Harry Potter pushed and strained against the hollow lethargy within and the crushing pressure she felt from outside her body.
I want to LIVE.
The vessel is empty yet stands ready to be filled.
A barrier broke and Harry felt a sense of both loss and gain. The hollow inside of her, the result of the accursed pill that she had chosen to swallow, gained a sense of permanence. Yet something else cracked open and, for the first time in what felt like an age, she took a breath.
New energy began to fill Harry, drawn from the darkness and the earth with each fresh breath, and she coughed once in response to the strange sensation. It was just a trickle of energy, like beads of moisture forming on the outside of a glass, but her body drank deeply of each drop and her numbingly exhaustion gradually faded.
Hagrid's waiting for me, Harry realised as she breathed slowly and deeply, So why am I just laying here?
Harry could almost smell Hagrid's distinctive scent and could almost feel the warmth and solidity which had reassured her when he had carried her far from Privet Drive. He wasn't far away, not too far at all, and she felt sure that he'd be able to explain about all of... this.
Harry Potter got up onto her shaking limbs and, as the darkness and earth filled her with a trickle of energy, she began to crawl forwards with renewed determination.
The first glimpse of light as Harry rounded a twist in the tunnel was a painful. After so long in utter darkness it jabbed into her eyes like a dagger, making her reflexively turn her head away from it and screwed her eyes tight shut.
"Yer almost there, Harry." Hagrid called from somewhere beyond the glare, "Jus' a lil further now…"
The sound of that deep rumbling voice, such a contrast to the silence which had dominated the hours of the void, shook Harry. Her fingers dug into the dirt beneath her, softer and with fewer rocks than further back through the tunnel, as she fought the urge to retreat into the calm and safe darkness.
Yet, somehow, hearing Hagrid's voice wasn't a complete surprise. Somehow Harry had known that she was getting close to the cultivator. The knowledge that she had just needed to go a little further had helped spur her on to reach this home stretch despite the pains from her hands and knees.
The floor, the rocks and soil, had not been kind to her flesh.
"Come on, Harry." Hagrid coaxed and somehow Harry found the energy to move forward despite the way her eyes watered. The weight which had been pushing down on her, the crushing sense of the stone and earth on all sides of her, diminished and abruptly Harry realised that she could hear the sound of her own breathing as she panted for air.
"Well done, Harry. Well done." Hagrid congratulated and she risked opening her eyes.
Harry was out of the tunnel.
"Just catch yer breath there," Hagrid advised as he knelt there on the dirt next to her. Harry pushed herself back, moving from all fours to sit on the ground, and looked up at Hagrid's smiling face. "You dun well."
"I.. I think that I did." She said breathlessly, "I knew that you'd be here. That you'd be waiting for me. It didn't- It didn't take that long, did it?"
"Longer than you prolly thought." Hagrid told Harry. "You still had a good three, maybe four, hours till sundown though. Plenty of time."
Harry blinked several times as she looked at him and saw more than she remembered seeing before she had gone into the cave. Hagrid appeared just as large, and just solid, as he had been then but now there was something else about him.
The closest comparison that Harry could think of was that Hagrid had gained a bright 'afterimage' which somehow moved with, rather than behind, his motions. With the darkness gone her thoughts had begun to clear and she realised that this 'image' was what she had noticed, and used as a beacon, while in the darkness.
"Yer seein' that, are ye?" Hagrid asked, sounding interested and perhaps even vaguely impressed, "Well, I wuz definitely right 'bout you bein' worth it then if you're gettin' a sens of my vis."
"Vis?" Harry echoed as, drop by drop, energy returned to her tired body.
Hagrid pulled himself up straighter at the question and when he spoke he was obviously trying to suppress his accent"Vis is yer- Vis is your strength. Your energy. The stuff of your spirit which fuels what any cultivator does. If you use techniques then that is what fuels them and as you advance yer- your body and mind will gather or even produce more of it."
"Yer awakened now." He favoured Harry with a smile then lightly tapped her collar bone, "You should be able to feel it inside of you, little droplets of it condensing inside your soul now you've cleared out some of the blockages. The next steps are all about clearing out the rest and making your body fit fer yer spirit to dwell in."
As she rubbed the small bruise from that 'light' tap, wincing as the automatic motion aggravated the scrapes on her fingers, Harry realised that this did make sense in a way. Inside of her was a hollow she had never been aware of before, empty and waiting to be filled, with the merest trickle of something beginning to fill it drop by drop.
Hagrid rummaged around in his coat and produced a block of something wrapped in waxed paper to Harry. When she pulled it open she discovered large chunks of fudge inside and she shot him a quizzical look.
"Yer gonna need the energy there." Hagrid said as he stood up, "Someut sweet should help and I'm goin' t' work you hard just now on a a sensing technique."
Harry picked up the first chunk and carefully popped it into her mouth. She hadn't thought that she would want to eat anything, her stomach was still twisted from the stress of her experience, but as the sweetness almost melted on her tongue she found herself craving more.
Before she knew it the half dozen chunks of the treat was gone and Harry was extracting the last fragments of it from the paper. However as she was doing so the girl noticed that her hands weren't hurting any more and neither were her knees.
Her hands were still dirty, and still showed trace of red-brown smears were blood had been, yet somehow the underlying scrapes had vanished. Harry hesitated, uncertain if this was normal or not, but finally found her voice.
"Hagrid? She asked quietly.
"Yeah?"
Harry held her unmarked hands up to the cultivator, "They were bleeding before, but they're not now."
"Well, yeah?" He responded with a vague shrug as he examined a large rock. "It was just small stuff, right? Not like you broke a bone or tore a big gash in yerself? Tell me yer not scared o' blood."
"No." Harry answered hurriedly, "It's just that, well, is that normal?"
"Not really." Hagrid admitted as he picked up the rock, a slab which was as struggle for him to grab each side of but apparently not a hard for him to life otherwise. "Once you get started on body hardening then you'd not be getting cuts from something small like that."
That wasn't quite what Harry had asked, but she decided that it would be better to drop the subject. Instead another question rose to the forefront of her thoughts and then came unbidden from her tongue.
"If I hadn't gotten out before sunset would you really have sealed me in?"
Hagrid dropped the slab in place, covering the tunnel entrance which she had just used, then brushed off his hands as he strode past her, "Well, let's get started on your training. You ever done meditating? It's dead simple, you see..."
As Hagrid began to give Harry her first lesson on cultivation she did her best to focus on his words rather than how he had avoided that second question as well.
The character sheet and glossary post has been updated with new information.
You have been taught a type of technique that is new to you.
Do you have an affinity for sensory techniques?
(This is a separate vote from the other in this update.)
[ ] Yes. (Takes up one affinity of three for your female form.)
[ ] No. (Barred from taking this affinity for your female form.)
After Hagrid finishes teaching you today where will you be left until the trip to Hogwarts?
(Pick one; no write-in.)
[ ] An alliance way house in a small town.
[ ] A holding place in a big city.
[ ] A empty building in the wilds.
[ ] On an isolated ranch.
[ ] With an isolated cultivator.
It was when Aunt Petunia, or Uncle Vernon, had wanted to yell at Harry that she had been dragged out from the cupboard but while inside with the door shut she had felt safe. She remembered the Christmas when she had been given the upstairs spare bedroom to sleep in, the windows finally fixed so that it was no longer unlivable in the winter months, and how she had ended up retreating to her cupboard after barely a week.
She still didn't know what it was about the New Year's fireworks which had triggered them, but sudden her nightmares had driven Harry to retreat to the cupboard. To her cupboard.
Harry had never been afraid of the dark.
As Hagrid sealed the cave, cutting off the last of the light and leaving her in the narrow passage, the young girl found herself mouthing protests which she couldn't manage to give voice to. Hagrid had been warm and Hagrid had been reassuring, but now he had fed her that pill and left her to potentially die?
"This can't be happening," She finally began to mutter, eyes staring blindly into the utter blackness, "I can't believe it. There has to be an explanation!"
Her voice grew louder as she spoke and her last exclamation held a hint of hysteria.
"Hagrid?" Harry called, reaching out towards the wall of the tunnel to support herself, and she struggled to ignore how lacking in energy her body felt, "This is a joke, right?"
There was no answer and she couldn't tell if it was because Hagrid chose not to respond, if the stone muffled her voice too much for him to hear, or if he had already left.
"HAGRID!" Harry tried again as loudly as she was able.
There was still no response and, despite the stone walls of the tunnel, the darkness around her seemed to almost swallow the sound of voice rather than echo it. If Harry had paid attention to only what she could hear and what her eyes were showing her then she would have thought herself somehow lost in an endless void. However the feel of the stone wall beneath her hand reassured her that was not the case.
Harry moved her hand from the wall to the slab blocking the entrance. There was a different texture to the two types of stone, the first rough and the second as smooth as glass, but as she tried to feel around for some way to shift the slab out of the way her fingers began to tingle.
At first the sensation was not too intrusive but soon enough, as she continued to check for seams or handles or anything that would let her out, the tingle in Harry's hands progressed to the level of an unpleasant buzz. Harry grit her teeth and stubbornly tried to continued searching, but when she felt her fingers prickling like the brush of nettles she was forced to pull away.
"He… said that there was another way out," Harry reminded herself as she shook her hands, trying to return proper sensation to them. "Hagrid wouldn't lie about that. He's a cultivator and they're supposed to keep their word."
Harry clung onto that idea, and her memories of stories about cultivators keeping their word despite the troubles that it had caused them, for reassurance. It was just that most of those tales had concerned promises of vengeance for wrongs, or insults, given to them.
Reaching out with both hands Harry let her fingertips brush against the walls either side of her then slowly and carefully began to walk along the tunnel. The solid contact was reassuring in more ways than one but her mind kept playing tricks on her, trying to convince her that the tunnel was closing in on her, even though she knew that it couldn't really be doing that.
No matter how much it felt like it was about to. No matter that she could almost feel the presence and mass of all the rock, earth, and soil above her head. A mass which was just waiting to collapse down on top of her.
Harry's already hesitant steps began to falter and the soles of her shoes scraping against the soil beneath her as the sensation of weight made raising her feet to take the next step harder.
"What was that pill?" Harry muttered as she forced herself to go on rather than stop to catch her breath. While she lacked the usual aches which would normally indicate exhaustion the sheer lack of energy made her body feel like a hollow shell. "He said it'd give me more energy."
The sound of her own voice, despite how the words were swallowed as soon as she spoke them, was encouraging and she thought over the question as a distraction from the growing need to just stop.
Hagrid hadn't actually, Harry realised as she thought back, said that it would give her more energy. He'd said that it would give her more energy 'to work with' and she had certainly felt that for a brief time after swallow the pill.
Distracted by the thought Harry almost stumbled on her next step as her foot almost caught on an irregularity on the tunnel floor. Her hands broke contact with the walls as Harry reflexively moved them to catch herself but when she failed to fall she immediately moved both back out again.
She hesitated before taking her next step. Were the walls just a little closer than they had been a moment ago? Surely not.
That stumble was the first sign that things were to become harder as the further along the tunnel that Harry went the more uneven its floor seemed to become. What had been relatively smooth dirt path was becoming littered with stones of increasing sizes until Harry found herself carefully stepping around a rock which reached up to her knee.
Harry consoled herself with the thought that the passage couldn't be that long, that she just had to keep going for a little longer.
And a little further than that.
Then a little further again.
With the encompassing darkness surrounding Harry soon had no clue as to how long it had been since she set out along the tunnel. The apparent narrowing of the passageway which had seemed at first to just be her nerves playing tricks on her quickly revealed itself as the utter truth and she no longer has to move her hands out to touch the walls.
The hand that Harry kept in front of her face touched something and she ducked her head lower to avoid the latest jagged outcropping from the ceiling. A few words she'd heard from Dudley, ones which had Aunt Petunia coldly telling her child off for using, escaped Harry's lips as groping around revealed that the 'outcropping' was actually a lowering of the tunnel's roof.
"It's just a test." Harry muttered to herself as she crouched then forced her body to take another step despite her leaden limbs, "Hagrid will be at the end and I've got plenty of time. It can't even be near lunchtime yet."
"He'll let me out and then explain everything." She told herself a few minutes later when she was forced to stoop lower. "I'm sure."
"It won't be far at all." Harry insisted to herself when the tunnel become lower than her waist and she resorted to moving forward on her hands and knees. "Just a little further."
There was a hollow feeling in Harry's stomach as she was forced to crawl to progress along the passageway. The rough dirt and scattered rocks which formed the floor here dug into her palms and, through the fabric of her trousers, into her knees but she forged onwards. Again and again she had to remind herself that the walls weren't closing in on her, that she could still move, and that the entire passage wasn't about to snap shut on her like the jaws of some giant beast...
She winced at that particular line of thought. Something about the image of the tunnel as the mouth, or perhaps gullet, of a monster which Hagrid was happily feeding her to struck a chord which made it hard to ignore bec-
Something shifted under Harry's hand as she put her weight on it and, with no more warning that that, she slipped and hit the dirt face first. Haltingly she tried to move her arms, to put her hands beneath her and push herself up so that she could go on, but after coming so far she simply had nothing left to fuel the attempt.
Harry was alone with the taste of soil on her lips as she lay there in the endless darkness.
Occasionally Harry twitched as she tried to convince her body to 'get up!' and get moving, but slowly those attempts also ceased. For a time she tried focusing on her breathing, forcing herself to be aware of the mechanics of inhaling and exhaling, yet her awareness of the earth around her intruded on that and each breath was shallower than the last.
It crossed Harry's mind that this was what it was like to be buried alive, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to care. She was empty, utterly empty, and what reason did she have to try to go on? She felt as though she could just rest there in the comforting darkness and let it numb all her hurts.
Here there wouldn't be yells to wake her.
Here there weren't be demands to do chores.
Here nobody would call her 'freak!'.
All Harry needed to do was lay down and lay still as the earth pressed upon her. That wasn't so hard a thing to do, she realised, and the faint fuzziness of her thoughts made the idea seem all the more inviting.
But don't want to die...
Something inside of Harry Potter twisted as the thought surfaced in her mind. It twisted and thrashed and tried to move. It wasn't her body, the animal instincts saying to simple lay down and die. It wasn't her rational mind as tha had found acceptance with the idea of passing on.
It was her soul, her will and the essence of herself, which dug in its heels and objected.
Faced with no alternatives the core of Harry Potter's existence stirred itself in an attempt to simply survive. With no resources, with nothing to work with, Harry Potter pushed and strained against the hollow lethargy within and the crushing pressure she felt from outside her body.
I want to LIVE.
The vessel is empty yet stands ready to be filled.
A barrier broke and Harry felt a sense of both loss and gain. The hollow inside of her, the result of the accursed pill that she had chosen to swallow, gained a sense of permanence. Yet something else cracked open and, for the first time in what felt like an age, she took a breath.
New energy began to fill Harry, drawn from the darkness and the earth with each fresh breath, and she coughed once in response to the strange sensation. It was just a trickle of energy, like beads of moisture forming on the outside of a glass, but her body drank deeply of each drop and her numbingly exhaustion gradually faded.
Hagrid's waiting for me, Harry realised as she breathed slowly and deeply, So why am I just laying here?
Harry could almost smell Hagrid's distinctive scent and could almost feel the warmth and solidity which had reassured her when he had carried her far from Privet Drive. He wasn't far away, not too far at all, and she felt sure that he'd be able to explain about all of... this.
Harry Potter got up onto her shaking limbs and, as the darkness and earth filled her with a trickle of energy, she began to crawl forwards with renewed determination.
oOo
The first glimpse of light as Harry rounded a twist in the tunnel was a painful. After so long in utter darkness it jabbed into her eyes like a dagger, making her reflexively turn her head away from it and screwed her eyes tight shut.
"Yer almost there, Harry." Hagrid called from somewhere beyond the glare, "Jus' a lil further now…"
The sound of that deep rumbling voice, such a contrast to the silence which had dominated the hours of the void, shook Harry. Her fingers dug into the dirt beneath her, softer and with fewer rocks than further back through the tunnel, as she fought the urge to retreat into the calm and safe darkness.
Yet, somehow, hearing Hagrid's voice wasn't a complete surprise. Somehow Harry had known that she was getting close to the cultivator. The knowledge that she had just needed to go a little further had helped spur her on to reach this home stretch despite the pains from her hands and knees.
The floor, the rocks and soil, had not been kind to her flesh.
"Come on, Harry." Hagrid coaxed and somehow Harry found the energy to move forward despite the way her eyes watered. The weight which had been pushing down on her, the crushing sense of the stone and earth on all sides of her, diminished and abruptly Harry realised that she could hear the sound of her own breathing as she panted for air.
"Well done, Harry. Well done." Hagrid congratulated and she risked opening her eyes.
Harry was out of the tunnel.
"Just catch yer breath there," Hagrid advised as he knelt there on the dirt next to her. Harry pushed herself back, moving from all fours to sit on the ground, and looked up at Hagrid's smiling face. "You dun well."
"I.. I think that I did." She said breathlessly, "I knew that you'd be here. That you'd be waiting for me. It didn't- It didn't take that long, did it?"
"Longer than you prolly thought." Hagrid told Harry. "You still had a good three, maybe four, hours till sundown though. Plenty of time."
Harry blinked several times as she looked at him and saw more than she remembered seeing before she had gone into the cave. Hagrid appeared just as large, and just solid, as he had been then but now there was something else about him.
The closest comparison that Harry could think of was that Hagrid had gained a bright 'afterimage' which somehow moved with, rather than behind, his motions. With the darkness gone her thoughts had begun to clear and she realised that this 'image' was what she had noticed, and used as a beacon, while in the darkness.
"Yer seein' that, are ye?" Hagrid asked, sounding interested and perhaps even vaguely impressed, "Well, I wuz definitely right 'bout you bein' worth it then if you're gettin' a sens of my vis."
"Vis?" Harry echoed as, drop by drop, energy returned to her tired body.
Hagrid pulled himself up straighter at the question and when he spoke he was obviously trying to suppress his accent"Vis is yer- Vis is your strength. Your energy. The stuff of your spirit which fuels what any cultivator does. If you use techniques then that is what fuels them and as you advance yer- your body and mind will gather or even produce more of it."
"Yer awakened now." He favoured Harry with a smile then lightly tapped her collar bone, "You should be able to feel it inside of you, little droplets of it condensing inside your soul now you've cleared out some of the blockages. The next steps are all about clearing out the rest and making your body fit fer yer spirit to dwell in."
As she rubbed the small bruise from that 'light' tap, wincing as the automatic motion aggravated the scrapes on her fingers, Harry realised that this did make sense in a way. Inside of her was a hollow she had never been aware of before, empty and waiting to be filled, with the merest trickle of something beginning to fill it drop by drop.
Hagrid rummaged around in his coat and produced a block of something wrapped in waxed paper to Harry. When she pulled it open she discovered large chunks of fudge inside and she shot him a quizzical look.
"Yer gonna need the energy there." Hagrid said as he stood up, "Someut sweet should help and I'm goin' t' work you hard just now on a a sensing technique."
Harry picked up the first chunk and carefully popped it into her mouth. She hadn't thought that she would want to eat anything, her stomach was still twisted from the stress of her experience, but as the sweetness almost melted on her tongue she found herself craving more.
Before she knew it the half dozen chunks of the treat was gone and Harry was extracting the last fragments of it from the paper. However as she was doing so the girl noticed that her hands weren't hurting any more and neither were her knees.
Her hands were still dirty, and still showed trace of red-brown smears were blood had been, yet somehow the underlying scrapes had vanished. Harry hesitated, uncertain if this was normal or not, but finally found her voice.
"Hagrid? She asked quietly.
"Yeah?"
Harry held her unmarked hands up to the cultivator, "They were bleeding before, but they're not now."
"Well, yeah?" He responded with a vague shrug as he examined a large rock. "It was just small stuff, right? Not like you broke a bone or tore a big gash in yerself? Tell me yer not scared o' blood."
"No." Harry answered hurriedly, "It's just that, well, is that normal?"
"Not really." Hagrid admitted as he picked up the rock, a slab which was as struggle for him to grab each side of but apparently not a hard for him to life otherwise. "Once you get started on body hardening then you'd not be getting cuts from something small like that."
That wasn't quite what Harry had asked, but she decided that it would be better to drop the subject. Instead another question rose to the forefront of her thoughts and then came unbidden from her tongue.
"If I hadn't gotten out before sunset would you really have sealed me in?"
Hagrid dropped the slab in place, covering the tunnel entrance which she had just used, then brushed off his hands as he strode past her, "Well, let's get started on your training. You ever done meditating? It's dead simple, you see..."
As Hagrid began to give Harry her first lesson on cultivation she did her best to focus on his words rather than how he had avoided that second question as well.
The character sheet and glossary post has been updated with new information.
You have been taught a type of technique that is new to you.
Do you have an affinity for sensory techniques?
(This is a separate vote from the other in this update.)
[ ] Yes. (Takes up one affinity of three for your female form.)
[ ] No. (Barred from taking this affinity for your female form.)
After Hagrid finishes teaching you today where will you be left until the trip to Hogwarts?
(Pick one; no write-in.)
[ ] An alliance way house in a small town.
Various individuals passing through can be talked to and perhaps learnt from.
Encounters will be random and are unlikely to stay for long.
Encounters will be random and are unlikely to stay for long.
[ ] A holding place in a big city.
Extra opportunities for trouble and social interaction.
No real benefits to cultivation.
No real benefits to cultivation.
[ ] A empty building in the wilds.
You'll be fending for yourself, perhaps with others over time, with some supplies.
Grants Insight to Physical Cultivation.
Grants Insight to Physical Cultivation.
[ ] On an isolated ranch.
You'll be doing chores under the ranch owner.
Grants Insight to Beast Techniques.
Grants Insight to Beast Techniques.
[ ] With an isolated cultivator.
Greater chance to learn about cultivation or a technique.
Messing up socially will be bad.
Messing up socially will be bad.