She watched as he finally lifted his head, and his shoulders sagged as if before he was propping something heavy, and now the weight had finally lifted.
After looking up for a couple of seconds, he lowered his head again.
'You shouldn't look at the sun directly, Henry,' came an errant thought as she watched her baby boy bow again.
As her baby boy held his bow and kept his head touched to the ground, magic started swirling around him. Now, while magic wasn't visible or even had any color, magicals could definitely feel magic. She had never felt so much magic around her son, not even when he did accidental magic that day.
While sensing magic wasn't a field she was gifted in, she was definitely better than the average magical at sensing magic. Likely due to how much she practiced magic compared to her peers.
And she could feel magic in spades around her baby boy as his surroundings started to heat up, and she felt warmer.
'No'
'It's not the surroundings that's getting warmer, it's magic itself,' she realized.
She was feeling warmer because of her connection to her baby boy, not because Henry had used magic to raise the temperature.
She was sensing the changes through her connection to her boy, trying to investigate the changes happening when Henry once again lifted his head. This time, it was a much shorter rest before he lowered his head again and bowed.
Her thoughts came to a halt as she was bombarded with a range of emotions through the connection she had with her baby boy. One second, she would start to get a clear picture of what Henry was feeling, and the next second, it would stop before a completely different feeling came through the connection. This went on for a couple of minutes, during which she wasn't able to pinpoint exactly what her baby boy was feeling.
She had some conjectures of her own; the first feeling she felt through their shared connection was undoubtedly gratitude for magic, the second was warmth. Is it gratitude about warmth, or is it just because he had been in the sun some time now, and his magic was simply reflecting that feeling and sending it through their connection?
Approximately three minutes later, she watched as her baby boy finally lifted his head. At this point, she had already felt too many things through their connection, some felt like things she might know, like a deja vu, and some things she wasn't able to decipher.
The magic swirling around Henry had grown even more. She wondered how it was possible for a 5-year-old child to display such a feat of accidental magic, if it was even that. The possibility of it being intentional magic did cross her mind, but the magic around Henry wasn't being directed to do anything; it was simply surrounding her baby boy.
As more and more magic began to surround her son, the link she had with him began to fade, and it became muted. By the time Henry had bowed for the fourth time, she couldn't feel anything coming through the other end.
She decided she didn't like this feeling at all, since the very first day when Henry was born, she always had a magical connection to him, and now it was gone. She felt hollow, like a piece of her was missing.
But the escalating situation outside didn't allow her to dwell on the thoughts. The magic around Henry had reached a crescendo. If the magic was to be direct in anyway whatever effect it had would probably be seen or felt kilometers away. However, her priority would be Henry if the magic's effects were harmful in any way, rather than finding a way to contain it.
She couldn't imagine what would happen if all the magic surrounding her baby boy were to be directed in some way that would change the environment. He was right in the middle of it.
She wanted to interfere and bring her baby to safety, but she hesitated to do so as mixing her own magic into this maelstrom might be the trigger.
'Protego Maxima'
'Fianto Duri'
'Obscurus Intuitus'
'Repello Muggletum'
'Cave Inimicum'
Her wand blurred as she threw out a slew of protective and obscuring charms that would shield them from the prying eyes of muggles, wizard and witches alike. The protective enchantments were there in case they were attacked, if someone decided to take advantage of the situation, whether they be magicals or muggles.
With the outer area taken care of, she shifted her focus to the inside, where her baby boy had already lifted his head and was just sitting on the ground with his legs tucked underneath him.
She kept her wand ready in her hand. If she saw any sign of danger, she was ready to apparate to him, grab him, and apparate away to a safe distance. However, if the danger was internal to Henry, she was also ready to stun him so the magic would disperse and she could heal him while he was unconscious if necessary.
As she waited with bated breath, the magic surrounding her baby boy finally changed.
First, from its dispersed, swirling state, it halted and began to slowly sink toward the earth. Then it slowly started to rise, but this time it wasn't just the magic moving.
Instead, it was trying to take the whole ground with it.
She saw rocks rise from their place, the loosened soil on the ground rose, and so did every single piece of debris in her garden. The pull was strong enough to dig up the buried roots of some of her plants.
As astonishing as this display of magic coming from a 5-year-old child was, it was nothing compared to what happened next.
It first started with a slight tremor, then she heard a sharp cracking sound as if someone just learning how to apparate had teleported right next to her. She then saw a crack appear, starting at the bottom of the second-floor wall and traveling up the wall toward the ceiling.
She felt herself lose her balance as she tumbled where she was standing, watching her baby boy. The whole house shook as if an earthquake had just passed through.
After regaining her balance and looking outside to check if her baby boy was safe, she saw him still sitting on the floor, in the same position he had held for the last five minutes, like nothing ever happened.
He was completely still.
The whole garden was floating in place and rising higher; the higher the debris went, the more she heard the house crack and shake.
Her mind went back to all those times she saw her baby boy hunched over his toy, trying to do magic. She replayed the day of his accidental magic, where he called the snack bowl from the kitchen and lifted it in front of him.
'He is doing intentional magic,' she came to a realization.
This was no longer accidental magic or magic that just swirled around him without any purpose. He was intentionally using his magic to levitate things.
'What is with him and the desire to levitate things?' she complained fondly. First, it was his toys, then the snack bowl, and now he was lifting the garden.
As if that wasn't enough, she realized that he was trying to lift the whole house up as well.
Thank Merlin, she had enough foresight to erect a shield around the whole house. She could only imagine the commotion it would cause if someone saw this debacle.
While she could congratulate her past self, her current self still had an issue in her hands.
That's right, the small matter of the whole house trying take flight into the air. By now, the cracks were already numerous, and this was just in one room where she was currently standing. She could only imagine what the whole house looked like right now.
The house was already starting to separate from its foundation; she needed to act fast.
She held her wand out in front of her and closed her eyes as she spread her magic, covering the whole house. Just the house, as she still didn't want to interfere with Henry and what was happening outside in the garden.
As her magic covered the whole house in the form of a bubble.
'Totalum Descendo,' she uttered finally after about ten seconds of focusing the intent of the magic she wanted to cast.
She used the spell to gently press down on the whole house and have it go down, hopefully canceling out the force her baby boy was exerting.
It seemed to have worked as the noise of cracking faded, and her attention shifted back to Henry, once again ready to interfere at the first sign of any harm to her baby boy.
She saw her whole garden floating and hovering in place, and Henry, her baby boy, still sitting in the same place, steady as a rock, not affected by anything happening around him.
After waiting for a couple of more seconds, just as she thought nothing more would happen, she was proven wrong when everything that was floating in the garden slowly started moving towards Henry.
She raised her wand, ready to intervene, when the debris moving toward her baby boy drifted out of the way and avoided him. While this was happening, she also felt the force that was trying to lift up the whole house settle, and she no longer had to use magic to press down on the house.
It seemed Henry's focus was on the various things floating in front of him, and he had given up trying to make the house fly, thank magic for that.
After some of some time of him staring at the impressive piece of magic floating in front of him, she saw him raise his hand.
She watched as he moved the debris around with the movement of his hand. She exhaled a sigh of relief as the tension from the start, when she naively thought she would catch him doing something embarrassing, to tease him about finally bled through her body.
As she watched her baby boy deliberately use magic to move and float debris, the amazement and disbelief of what had transpired finally set in.
Once again, she found herself proud of her baby boy and the effort he put towards magic. She had accompanied him through all of his failures, even if it was without him knowing. She couldn't even imagine any other child failing thousands of times continue their efforts; she didn't think even most adults had the same drive as her 5-year-old son.
She looked around the room, and the sight of it brought her out of her thoughts. She saw that the things that were on the table had fallen to the floor; the windowpanes behind her were broken, and pieces of glass lay scattered on the floor. She looked away from that mess and saw the walls with cracks covering most of their surface. She sighed.
'Reparo Maxima'
A wave of magic released as her at the center, she covered the whole house. She didn't even want to know the state the rest of her house was in. She heard more cracks and felt tremors as the house settled itself correctly. She decided to let magic fix everything rather than worrying about it.
'Huh, I don't think I have ever done so much magic in an hour,' she thought as she once again used magic. Luckily, magic made physical damage easy to fix; it was when magical damage was involved that the problems arose. Thankfully, the damage was due to magic trying to pull the house up and not spells used with the intention to destroy property. The magic wasn't used directly at the house, but around it in an attempt to levitate it.
Now standing in a clean room with everything looking exactly the way it was, she could finally think about what to do next.
Later, after dinner, when she was alone with Francis
"Henry almost reduced the house to rubble today."
A/N: Notice how Clare can tell the first emotion is about the gratitude of magic, but she only associates warmth with the second emotion she felt, and the third and fourth bows are incomprehensible to her. This is because she knows what it's like to be grateful for magic, but she doesn't feel the same way about the sun, so she can't guess that Henry is expressing his gratitude for the sun. As for his other bows, they confuse her even more since she has never even thought about the things Henry is thinking of, much less be grateful for them.