Harry woke up the next morning with a plan fully formed in his head.

Back when he was the one to do all of the cooking, he'd usually managed to get enough to eat. He could do the same thing now. He couldn't use magic to ensure nothing came out burned, but he was a lot older than he'd been when Aunt Petunia had first thrown him into using the stove every day. Eggs and bacon weren't that difficult.

He was up long before the Dursleys were. Just as a precaution, he made his own breakfast first and scarfed it down before starting on theirs. It was the first thing he'd eaten since breakfast with Remus the day before, and it tasted amazing. He vowed not to change a thing when he made the food for the Dursleys—they would never admit it, but they'd be thrilled with him, maybe enough to leave him alone until lunchtime.

Unfortunately, he made the mistake of severely underestimating how much faster the eggs would cook once the pan had had time to heat up, and he hadn't realized the coffee maker was new and worked a little differently from the old one. By the time Uncle Vernon came down to the kitchen, Aunt Petunia and Dudley following close behind, the entire house smelled like bad coffee and burned eggs.

Harry swallowed hard—he had to work with what he had. He cut away the worst of the burned parts and set down the plate of food on the kitchen table. There wasn't much he could do about the coffee, but he poured it anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. Maybe Uncle Vernon would be too half-asleep and out of it to notice how bad it was.

Uncle Vernon took one swig of the coffee and spat. He turned to Harry, fire in his eyes. "What do you call this, boy?" he barked.

Harry swallowed hard. "Sorry, I—"

Uncle Vernon lifted a hand to cuff Harry on the back of the head. Harry flinched, but he felt nothing—nothing except for a slight tingling sensation, like static electricity.

There was no impact at all.

Uncle Vernon yanked his hand back, hissing and rubbing his palm, as though he were the one who had been struck. "What—what . . . ?"

"Potter, what did you do?" Aunt Petunia went to stand over by her husband.

Harry glanced from Uncle Vernon's hand, to his face. All three of the Dursleys were staring at Harry as though he had sprouted two extra heads. Like he was a freak. It was, to some degree, the way they always looked at him, but he hadn't seen such shock in their eyes in awhile—perhaps since Mr. Weasley had shown up to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup.

"Y-you're not supposed to use magic. You'll be expelled from that school of yours."

Harry straightened up, gaining confidence by the second. "I'm not using magic. I am magic. It's in me, in my skin."

"Y-you've never—"

"No. Every day I become more powerful."

"You'll not be going back to that school," Uncle Vernon hissed.

Harry's heart pounded at that, but he thought fast. "It has nothing to do with my schooling. It's just who I am. You. Can't. Hurt. Me."

The Dursleys scrambled out of the kitchen, leaving Harry behind with the bad coffee and the half-burned eggs.

Harry sat down at the table and picked at the eggs, taking deep breaths. So the spell worked. It hadn't helped him at all the night before, when Uncle Vernon had been beating him with his own wand, but he'd guessed that had been because of the fact that Harry had attacked Dudley first. Of course, the night before, a part of him had just wondered if the protective spell hadn't been very effective; Remus had said it was difficult to make effective. The incident at breakfast answered the question of whether the protective spells worked. It also gave him a clue about how the spells worked.

They couldn't hurt him, as long as he didn't hurt them first.

The spell wasn't very perceptive. It seemed to prefer to treat situations in black and white rather than considering anything beyond what was immediate.

For instance, it didn't care about emotional distress or verbal provocation, and it didn't care who had "started" a fight. All it considered was whether Harry had lashed out physically in any way. If Harry kept his hands to himself, the Dursleys couldn't touch him. If he didn't, all bets were off.

He learned this the hard way at lunchtime, when Dudley went to block the fridge. Harry rolled his eyes and went instead to the pantry, but Dudley continued to move to block him, grinning all the while. Harry thought for certain the spell would protect him from food deprivation, so he tried to push his way past Dudley. Not only was this completely useless—he might as well have been trying to push the house itself—but the spell dropped its defenses. Dudley shoved Harry hard onto the floor, then he kicked him in the side. Harry lay curled up, panting and wincing, for a long moment after Dudley left him there, but at least he was able to get into the fridge once he got up.

So the spell didn't defend him from deprivation, and it didn't care why he'd shoved Dudley—only that he had.

Harry quickly learned to work within the confines of the spell. Unfortunately, the Dursleys seemed to be picking up on how it worked, too. Harry understood, more and more, the answer to the question he'd asked Remus, about why people didn't go around with this type of protection around them all of the time. It was certainly an advantage, but it wasn't anything like the invulnerability he'd hoped for.

For the most part, the Dursleys got around it by switching to verbal abuse, or by trying to provoke him to act out against them. Dudley seemed to be particularly creative about this, especially around mealtimes. Harry learned to eat at any time other than mealtimes, but Dudley had a tendency to wait around for him if he didn't see him around the times Dudley usually ate. Eventually, Harry started eating at odd times, but he'd still check the kitchen at least once a day at a regular meal and let Dudley shove him around a little. Better to take a couple of hits than to go hungry all day.

Uncle Vernon didn't really have the creativity required to work around the protective spell. Aunt Petunia was a little more imaginative. She'd spit insults under her breath or even sit outside his room and tell him stories through his door, terrible things about Harry's parents and grandparents, for the sole purpose of riling him up. He wouldn't lash out at her physically, but it left him fearful of what she would say next. He was sure the spell wouldn't defend him against any of them if he drew his wand in their presence, and at times, he felt like he was going to explode with anger—the same intensity of anger that had led to Aunt Marge getting blown up.

At first, he wasn't sure why she was doing it at all; she wasn't usually cruel for the mere sake of hurting Harry. But over time, he began to realize that she was manipulating him through this. She would occasionally give him an off-handed order to complete some chore—the kind of orders he'd been ignoring ever since he'd told them about Sirius. But once, on a whim, he did the dishes when she asked. When he was finished, she left him alone for a couple of hours, even making sure her other family members stayed away from him as well. It didn't last long, but it was long enough to make it worth it for him. After that, he got into the habit of doing whatever she asked.

So a week into his stay with the Dursleys, when she asked him to pull weeds in the garden, he did it, even though the sun beat down hard on his ears and the back of his neck. It was a hard chore, and he figured she knew it—she'd give him an extra long period of respite after he finished.

He never would have guessed that it was a trap.

When he came back inside and went up to his room to change out of his sweaty work clothes, he found that his few things had been removed, along with the bed. A bunch of Dudley's things filled the room instead. Dudley himself sat in front of a new video game system.

"Go away, freak." There was less confidence in his voice than Harry suspected he realized.

"This is my room, Dudley."

"Not any more. Mum said I could have it back."

Harry's voice caught. "So where am I supposed to sleep? In your room?"

Dudley shook his head emphatically. "In your old room."

Harry took a step back. He hoped that didn't mean what he thought it did. The Dursleys wouldn't do that to him—even they wouldn't be that cruel. Harry was almost a foot taller than he'd been the last time he slept there. He wouldn't even fit.

With a sinking feeling of dread, he descended the staircase and opened the cupboard under the stairs.

There, jammed inside, were his few belongings, as well as an old mattress with his covers and pillow.

Harry was supposed to be checking in with Remus today via Floo. If he told him about this, Remus would come pick him up. Harry wouldn't have to live through another week of this. It was tempting enough that, for a moment, Harry felt convinced that that was what he was going to do. But he kept thinking about the blood wards, and how he would need every advantage he could get against Voldemort . . .

Harry wasn't a coward; he could do this. He'd lived for years in this cupboard. He could handle another week. He'd just have to tell Remus that everything was alright.

And it wasn't exactly a lie, either. Strictly speaking, things weren't worse than they'd been before Harry got his Hogwarts letter. Not yet, anyway . . .