Harry's eyes suddenly widened and he went to a corner of the room, pulling up the grass green carpet like it was nothing. Pulling up under a board, he pulled a wallet out. "Speaking of money, I already made one withdrawal from Dudley before you guys got around to cleaning up there. As you probably noticed, he had collected quite an amount." He held the leather wallet out to his Aunt.
Petunia took the black wallet and opened it before quickly closing the thing. "GOODNESS, how much cash can one eight year old HAVE!" She opened it again, hesitated, and handing it back to Harry. "Here, consider it missed allowances. Use it responsibly though, not just toss it wherever." She leaned against her husband. "Seriously Vernon, we need to keep Dudley dearest from treating money like it was worthless." Vernon had missed a good amount of the conversation, relying on his practiced "Yes dear" reflexes as he planed out a birthday. Nothing huge, he didn't want to overwhelm the boy. Lunch at a restaurant, spend time at the zoo... they had a tiny train there, didn't they? Dinner maybe at a steak house. It had been a while since they had eaten out.
Harry put his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, and began focusing on improving the room. Apparently the threads he had used to paint the walls had caused them to subtly glow like in his dream world, which is why they could see without any real light sources. Still it would be awkward to explain to others. He would need some basic furniture, or at least some more raw materials. For now he took a couple of metal cubes and moved over to his bed.
Placing three cubes near the edge of his mattress, he used some ropes to pull one of the white cloths over and began working. The metal rapidly began to vanish as all the springs in his mattress increased in length and thickness, and the bed itself seemed to enlarge as the materials and cloth vanished into it. With an afterthought, Harry re-colored the entire bed brown like a log, and began weaving some more of the white cloth into a thick blanket. He felt a nudge on his shoulder.
Petunia was standing there holding a bed-sheet, two pillows and a cover. Harry gave a smile and grabbed the two pillows, ropes already devouring them and combining the stuffing. In his hands they merged into a thick and long pillow with a seamless cover, colored like green moss. Placing his new pillow on the bed, he absently bound the bottom of his new cover and sheet with the bottom edge of the mattress and used excess cloth to continue the patterns of the coverings to fit the new bed. As he finished, he realized his Aunt and Uncle were silent. He turned as Petunia knelt and touched his pillow. "Harry, you have a gift." She saw his eye-roll and shook her head. "Aside from the magic I mean. This bed is beautiful." Her fingers rubbed the now moss patterned coverings. "These look beautiful you know. All the things you have made so far are beautiful."
He gave a nervous chuckle. "Hard to pin a bed on the refrigerator though, right?"
She gave him a smile. "Well, I am sure you could find a way. Could we trick you into doing stuff like this in the house? Not as obvious as the pantry, since Vernon has clients that may visit, but clothing like yours or decorations like these?"
Vernon nodded. "I know I would love to have extra hands to help me fix up the place. I always felt like SOMETHING was breaking or needed repair around here." Harry could have lit the sun with his smile. He never realized how much he had desired to be wanted, needed for something. "I may fall for a few dastardly clever plots to help out around here. I may need practice fixing things, but I bet we can figure something out."
Vernon couldn't help but smile at the young boy. "Well, I got work in the morning but we should have time to introduce you formally to Dudley in the afternoon. I think we should take a break for now, but let us know if you need anything. Be careful to stay here today so it will look like you showed up tomorrow. Petunia will stop by with lunch and dinner."
Petunia nodded and gave another hug to Harry. He hesitantly hugged back, and after watching the door closed behind them just tried to stand still, holding the recent memories like a warm blanket. He absently picked one of the school books from the box and began looking at each page. Study and learning would happen later, after viewing each page so they could be rebuilt in his memories. Might as well take advantage of his faster mind world.
Harry sighed and put down the book. He was in a purple library, on the softest chair he could remember, working on one of the many texts Vernon had provided. Coming back to his world had seemed like a great idea at first, since time moved so differently here... until Jim started making idle suggestions.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose again. It wasn't that he didn't like the company of the duck, not at all. But Harry had things to do, and all these breaks were really becoming annoying. Still, he had already studied for a very long time here, and had learned some interesting things.
Harry replaced the math book on one of the near shelves, and watched the books sort themselves. Having accidentally done something similar to the pantry, he had taken the memory of the accident and studied it for a few hours. Jim had suggested this would save time since his mental library would always be ready and sorted.
He snorted. Well, it should THEORETICALLY save time. Except it had taken a few internal DAYS to get all the bugs worked out. After dozens of tries where nothing happened at all, the shelf had actually sorted JIM into the shelfs too. Harry rubbed his elbow. Stupid duck had REALLY sharp fangs. And thin feathers. Not like he was sorted on purpose or anything, although Harry probably should have stopped laughing sooner. Or not fallen over.
He decided a break was needed. His reading level had quickly improved after memorizing all those books, although a couple had words blocked by his hands and he had to exit his inner world to fix them. After another glance at each page, he had came back in, molded the two memories together, then squished them back into books, THANKFULLY complete books this time. In any case, he had learned an important (if obvious) lesson: If he never saw it, he couldn't remember it.
Wandering out of the purple library, he entered the white wood hall. He glanced at another featureless wall of the corridor and couldn't suppress a smile. He had made another door inside the green room, which he now heavily suspected was his magical core. He was building a model of number 4, Privet Drive. Even a half day ago he would never suspect that he would hold any form of sweet memory of the place. This model was already being filled with memories of his very first hug, the first smile he could remember from anyone, a pat on the shoulder, and someone planing a party JUST for him.
He wandered upstairs to the grasslands. As he viewed the duck facilities, he sighed. Jim had increased his forces due to the larger number of rooms Harry had asked him to patrol, and had requested raw materials. After Harry had provided memories of the wood in his room (The walls, and so forth), the tiny duck had ordered squads to get going. Harry had been asked to add several new rooms to Snail Quarters, including a room that operated one of his ropes for "Cloud Control" as they put it, the sorting and control of the local memory weather, and a room which allowed memory duplication so that clouds could be properly secured and still allowed to float in the sky if desired.
Now that they had good quality memories of wood, apparently Jim had them duplicating it as well as using memories Harry had gathered from Vernon fixing things. He still couldn't get used to watching tiny ducks hammering away on tiny wood houses.
At this rate there would be an actual village.
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