Summary: Discovering just who keeps putting up those bloody wards...

Chapter 2: The Meddler

Three weeks later, Pandora was annoyed. She'd discovered who the meddler was. Albus Dumbledore was not who she had expected. But, given that accursed prophecy Lily had never learned the actual wording of, it did make an annoying sort of sense. The problem, of course, was what the hell she was supposed to do about it.

The wards, at least, wouldn't be an issue. With her conscious this time, she'd easily been able to direct the full power of Lily's protection ritual against the old man when he'd tried to attach a tap to her and Harry's magics. The increasingly frustrated look on his face had left her giggling to such a degree she was fairly sure Harry had actually heard her. Which was another potential issue. She was a bit embarrassed to admit she hadn't actually thought to contact her charge up to this point. Though, to be fair to herself, she was still sorting out something like 120 years worth of combined memories and knowledge. She wasn't even a quarter done with that task, yet.

But now, as she was idly sorting more memories, including a delightful foursome Marlene had gotten into with her roomates in sixth year, she pondered if she couldn't possibly solve one issue with the other. There was zero chance she'd be getting Harry away from his aunt and uncle anytime soon. Not if Dumbledore was the one keeping him here, even after the old man had to know about the less-than-ideal conditions. Perhaps, without the special wards, he could be convinced to move Harry. But she had no way of making the argument herself. Given that Harry was all of six, he wouldn't be likely to manage a convincing argument either. Which meant…

Pandora nodded to herself. The best she could go right now was mitigation. And the best tool she had for that was magic. Unfortunately, that was easily stated and not so easily acted upon. She could easily manipulate the protection Lily had gifted her son, she'd been directly tied into that ritual after all. And, internally, she had enough magic of her own to do some forms of purely-internal magic. Boosting Harry's healing, defending his mind. That sort of thing. But…she had no physical magical pathways of her own. And very limited access to Harry's. Which were, themselves, still nascent and developing. He'd been doing some accidental magic since the wards stopped draining him. But it was just that, accidental.

She pondered for long minutes, then nodded decisively. The solution was obvious, even if it wasn't totally optimal. She needed to work together with Harry. Working together, they might manage to make his 'accidental' magic a little less than accidental. Mentally cracking her knuckles, she focused down on what she'd need to do first.

She needed to figure out what she wanted to look like!

...

It had been both surprisingly easy and annoyingly difficult to get a six-year-old, even a relatively mature six-year-old like her partner, to believe she existed. The situation hadn't been helped along by the fact that she could only communicate with him in fits and starts, his magic simply too unstable at this age to establish perfect communication. Pandora had persevered however! Now, after several months of effort, she'd convinced her charge not only that she was real…but that so was magic. Her ability to share stories about his parents, even sparking some memory in him of a few specific incidents, had helped with that quite a bit!

It had also shown her the way forward. Her communication issues had put a crimp in her original planning. But the sparks of shared memory had shown one method of helping things along. Specifically, she'd realized that the memories of Euphemia Potter had provided her with an extremely solid understanding of Occlumency. Harry was much too young to be taught much of the art yet…but internal magic was something that Pandora could do. Which meant that she could catalog, sort, and store memories for it! Better yet, since she taught his mind and magic to do it, it would keep doing it all on its own. The resulting perfect recall would be immensely helpful for him throughout life. And in the short term, it would create a much more stable mental landscape, somewhat stabilizing Harry's magic. At least as much as it was possible for a child's magic to be stabilized at all.

With her new plan, annoyingly slower than her old one but will some serious long-term benefits for Harry, Pandora set about helping him as best she could…

...

Harry and Pandora stared in mutual glee at his first successful intentional bit of magic. In the years since she first contacted him, they had managed quite a bit of intentional accidental magic, as it were. They'd made liberal use of such to improve his situation a fair bit. Making the Dursley's more prone to leaving him alone had been one trick. Repairing quite a few of Dudley's old things and selling/trading them to other kids for money, in turn used to improve Harry's nutrition and acquire needed supplies, had been another.

Unfortunately, it had relied on a lot of luck. Maybe one result in three had been useful, at best. Which had made both of them determined to remove the 'bugger factor.' If they'd had access to a wand, it wouldn't have been too bad. At ten years old, Harry's magic was no longer completely wild, and a wand would have allowed a fair bit of mostly-controlled low-level magic.

Unfortunately, they lacked a wand.

Fortunately, multiple of the people whose knowledge of magic Pandora had, had known wandless magic.

Unfortunately, wandless magic was a bitch. Even with an adult's tamer magic.

Fortunately, Pandora was part Pandora Lovegood and was willing to seek odd, possibly insane solutions.

The result had been several years of Pandora painstakingly working with Harry. Using her ability to interact with his internal magic along with his strong desire and basic understanding of what she was attempting, they'd managed to bring a level of 'order' to the normal chaos of a magic user's internal magical channels. It would have been impossible in an adult. But in a child, it was possible to 'guide' the growth of those channels to an extent. Doing so had, for all intents and purposes, cut about 70% of the difficulty out of wandless magic. At least wandless magic achieved through Harry's arms/hands.

Since most of the remaining 30% was all about magical control and concentration, with a dash of power, it was now within reach. As the hovering ball of light above Harry's palm proved. Harry's by-now mostly developed Occlumency provided the concentration. The years of attempting to wrangle accidental magic into something useable had provided oodles of natural control. And Harry's own natural power, amplified by Pandora's second magical power tap and built on by their constant efforts, had all resulted in a frankly unfair level of magical power for a ten-year-old.

Now…now they could really begin getting things going! Only three more years until Hogwarts! So much to do!