I don't want to live in a cupboard

Harry's high fever lasted three whole days before his temperature finally came down on the morning of the fourth.

That let the young doctor from the community hospital breathe a small sigh of relief. He was not yet thirty, and his lackluster skills had left him stuck working here.

He could tell that the boy's two guardians, whose builds could hardly have been more different, were anything but good-tempered. In fact, even though the boy's temperature had fallen and he was out of danger, their expressions had not improved.

The Dursleys were unhappy. Of course they were unhappy.

Harry's sudden, persistent fever had terrified them. Though they had plenty of grievances against the sister and brother-in-law they refused to mention, they did not dare mistreat their child too badly.

Heaven knew whether those disreputable friends of theirs would come and make trouble if anything happened to this little brat. The Dursleys wanted absolutely nothing to do with those people-unless they had come to take this little nuisance away.

The only consolation was that the brat did not fall ill easily. In the five years or so since he had come to their home, this was the first time he had been sick.

When Harry woke again, his eyes were full of confusion.

He felt as though he had had a very, very long dream.

In the dream, he had met an old man with a long white beard.

The old man had been fierce and wanted to catch him, so Harry had run and run. In the end, the old man had failed to catch up, collapsed from exhaustion, and turned into countless silvery-white motes of light.

Then Harry had woken up.

When he looked around again, the whole world seemed different.

Harry now had all sorts of strange information in his head, and it all seemed to have come from the old man in his dream.

Harry had dreamed before, but the details usually faded quickly after he woke. This time was different. Everything in the dream was perfectly clear. He could even remember every wrinkle on that fierce old man's face.

The information he had gained from the dream was just as clear, as though it had been carved into his mind.

The old man's name was Neil. He had been a mage from a place called the Aegean Continent, and apparently quite a powerful one? He had been killed in a treacherous attack, but his soul had been too powerful to perish outright. Instead, it had entered a turbulent rift in space and time, arrived here, and entered Harry's mind-or rather, the depths of his soul.

Old Neil had originally intended to devour Harry's soul and take over his body. But traveling through the turbulence of space and time had weakened him too much. Not only had he failed to devour Harry, but the attempt had drained him so badly that he had ultimately dissipated within Harry's soul.

After his soul dissipated, Harry had acquired his fragmented memories and a wealth of information-or rather, knowledge.

How could I have such a ridiculous dream? And yet it was so clear.

Then...

"...%%a;...*a;...a;%..." Harry raised his hand and recited a string of jumbled syllables. They came from the information he had gained in the dream: a spell that was supposed to summon a fireball.

Harry wanted to use that fireball to burn Dudley's baseball bat.

But nothing happened.

"How stupid am I, believing something from a dream?" Harry pouted and shook his head.

Then, with a pop, a spark appeared in Harry's palm. It vanished in a flash, like the tiny spark struck from a lighter's flint. Anyone not paying attention would never even have noticed it.

But Harry had been glaring at his hand as he complained, so he happened to see it.

What was that?

Harry could not believe it. Did I do that?

Could those things in my dream actually be real?

Harry tried again, but this time nothing happened, even after he waited for ages.

Looks like my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Harry pursed his lips, but suddenly an indescribable exhaustion swept through his whole body. Even his head began to swim, as though the world were spinning around him. He fell heavily back onto the bed, his head hurting as though it were splitting open.

Excessive depletion of mental energy and mana.

That information flashed through his mind. The knowledge from old Neil in his dream seemed to include a description of this very condition. And the way to deal with it was-meditation!

A strange piece of information surfaced in his mind.

Instinctively following its instructions, Harry pictured a peculiar symbol in his mind. Once it appeared clearly, he tried to make it change colors.

It was not as easy as it sounded. Just getting the symbol to appear clearly in his mind took Harry quite some time, and changing its color was even harder. The symbol kept turning into a jumble of colors. Making it a single solid color was difficult enough, let alone getting it to change colors rapidly at his mental command.

Still, after a great deal of effort, Harry actually managed it.

And the terrible headache disappeared once the symbol in his mind became completely clear. Not only was the headache gone, but Harry also noticed that his senses seemed sharper.

It was a wholly subjective feeling. Harry could not hear Aunt Petunia and his uncle downstairs, nor could he feel the movement of the air or anything like that. Yet he had the distinct sense that everything was different from before.

Climbing out of bed, Harry sat cross-legged on the floor. There was a little dust on it-this room was a storage room for Dudley's toys, and Aunt Petunia almost never came to clean it. Harry only swept it when he felt he could no longer stand staying there. Clearly, though, he was not all that fond of cleaning.