Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 13: Alohomora and Wingardium Leviosa

Chapter 13: Alohomora and Wingardium Leviosa

A few days later, Harry woke up early—shivering in the early morning chill that filled the small space of his room; he had been sleeping with the window open all night hoping that Hedwig would come back. He listened for her small noises on her perch, but the room was quiet except for a cricket chirping from beneath his wardrobe. He left it alone.

He could smell the rain in the air. "A quarter to 6 in the morning," sang the lyrical voice from his staff. He was glad to be up early before the sun made his room blindingly bright.

Hermione must be writing a novel in response. She probably is spending all her time in the library researching. Hedwig would be weighted down and have a hard time making it back with all her scrolls. That was it. That was why it was taking so long.

He wondered how Hermione was handling the end of term with no exams and the weeks of study that she missed while petrified. Knowing her, she was probably frantically interviewing the professors trying to catch up on everything she missed. He could imagine Ron rolling his eyes in exasperation.

He wished he had written more in his message. He had so much more he wanted to say to both Ron and Hermione.

To distract himself from the yearning and the waiting, he worked on trying to make his staff work reasoning that it had to be more than a talking clock.

When he held it, it gave him the same sort of magical charge that his wand gave off. It wasn't quite like electricity, which was more of a static sensation, this was something that seemed to connect to his very core. His broom felt this way, too, but more subtly.

He held it and tried "Wingardium Leviosa," but couldn't detect anything flying around the room. He locked his wardrobe and tried "Alohomora" and nothing happened. He tried it on Hedwig's cage and nothing happened. He tried it on his bedroom door, but this time the staff was touching the base of the door when he muttered the spell and he heard the lock pop open.

It has to be in contact with the object!

He tried the wardrobe and Hedwig's cage again, but touching the staff to the doors this time and they sprang open! A small thrill raced through him.

He also realized that he was no longer groping around his room for his furniture as he moved through the space, but rather reaching out confidently and finding it where he expected it to be.

He decided to try the levitating charm again while holding onto the bedside table and nothing happened, but when he said it while holding on with one hand and touching it with the staff in the other hand, it floated up a couple inches off the floor and he was able to move it around the room easily. When he let go of it, it settled onto the floor with a low thud. He levitated it back to its normal spot.

What would happen if I touched the staff to something I want to read? he wondered.

He pulled out one of the leaflets from under his bed and tried it. Nothing. He thought about it really hard and felt the paper flutter under his grasp as if a breeze had caught it, but still nothing was revealed. He suddenly felt sapped. There must be a spell.

All the while he was trying these spells, there was a niggling feeling in the back of his brain. He half expected Ministry owls to come swooping in as they had last year when Dobby bombed the kitchen with Aunt Petunia's masterpiece pudding.

He hoped that what the Healer had said about the restriction of underage magic being adjusted for him was really true, but when had any government, magical or otherwise taken care of things efficiently. He decided to stop. If the Dursleys got a message from the Ministry of Magic, they'd surely lock him in his room with no wands or staves and he'd be stuck there for the rest of the summer with absolutely nothing to do; not even read. The thought made his heart constrict.

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The days passed very much like the days before. Harry did manage to take a shower and though Vernon pounded on the door, shouting at him to stop wasting water when he'd barely begun, it was still refreshing.

Harry was figuring out how to cook breakfast and not get burned (he used an oven mitt) while doing his best not to attract the ire of Uncle Vernon. Once Uncle Vernon was off to work, Aunt Petunia lined up jobs for Harry to do. In between, Harry took naps. He was still so tired. He noticed that he had to fasten his belt a notch tighter to keep his trousers up. He just didn't have much of an appetite.

He spent a good portion of one morning cleaning out the fridge after he misjudged where the shelf was as he was putting away the orange juice container and the sticky substance splashed all over the shelves. After his initial dismay, he decided to approach it as a puzzle and tried to figure out what things were by touch and smell. He had to be careful to put things back in the right spot... no longer just to satisfy Petunia's sense of order, but now because he needed to know that he was grabbing the jam and not the pickled herrings.

Some jobs were easier to do than others. He was banned from loading the wash after (according to Aunt Petunia) the disastrous effect of including a red sock in a load of whites.

How was I supposed to know?

Folding was fine, but sorting laundry was a lot tougher. Some of it he could figure out by touch—Aunt Petunia's clothes were easy to tell apart from Uncle Vernon's, but some items were totally perplexing. It took a lot longer as he had to figure out through touch if a shirt was inside out or not. Aunt Petunia was so rigid about how items were folded to fit into drawers.

Ironing was okay, just tedious, and sometimes painful if he drifted into a daydream and touched the hot iron. He had a burn on the pad of his index finger that was especially annoying now that he was completely dependent on his sense of touch.

If Aunt Petunia wasn't close by, he could listen to a radio station that he actually liked, as long as he didn't stay too close to the radio because it would lose the signal and just emit static when he was next to it which made tuning it challenging. At first, he'd tune it to music radio stations, but it didn't take long before he was captivated by the BBC news stories. Petunia bustled in and snapped the radio back to her favorite station that took popular songs and made them perversely instrumental. Harry gagged at the tunes.

He thought about Madam Pomfrey wanting him to spend the weeks at home so he could rest. He bet he would have gotten more rest if he had stayed at school than he was ever going to get at the Dursleys. He was surprised that his Aunt wasn't happier to see him given that he lightened her chore load considerably.

But when did anything she did ever make sense?

He made it through the days and then the evenings with the Dursleys, and finally was able to escape to his room. At the threshold, he listened to see if Hedwig had arrived while he was doing the dinner dishes. He was disappointed to be greeted by silence and found it hard to fall asleep—every nighttime sound made him still with anticipation, willing Hedwig to alight on his windowsill with a rustling message tied to her leg.