Key Connection

He lost his grip as he heard a loud POP. In his hands was the tube inverted, but he couldn't seem to touch it with anything but his rope. There was no edge. He gently grabbed the opening and twisted the rim inside out, a frown of concentration etched into his face as he could feel the threads again. Apparently the turning inside out part was a mental thing, not real. The threads almost felt like they didn't belong to him now when he "turned them inside out". He continued unrolling the rim until suddenly the rim connected to itself. Now he was holding a ring, one side covered in his cloth, the other side still a really long tube that felt unconnected to his power.

A rush of success made his eyes sparkle as he held the ring. Placing it on the ground, he felt it with the thread and confirmed that the twisting inside felt like the pouch. The rim seemed odd though. He waved a hand, and a copy of him exploring the wallet and pouch appeared as small booklets from his library.

He absently floated the bottomless disk as he reviewed his memories. It looked like there was a secondary thread level along the rim of the professionally made stuff. One felt like his tube, but shaped like a funnel. The other was too complicated to really understand, with complex and interwoven parts. That part probably handled the contents list creation and the item retrieval parts, which were the most complicated parts of the pouch.

Harry created a tube, and began to turn it into a funnel. He dropped the memory into the large end... oh.

Well, guess the shrinking charm won't be that hard to learn.

He picked up the tiny book, flipped the funnel over, and dropped it the other way through, watching it restore to the expected size. Wonder if this works on anything?

Yep, works on ducks. Well, memories pressed into the shape of a duck with vamp teeth. Maybe he should test this on animals in the real world before jumping in a funnel himself. Harry also had a bit of a freak-out when all of beta squad had jumped in. Thankfully the process turned out to be reversible. From what he could see, things that went in the large end were coated with a thin thread layer, which compressed the object (Without pain, according the Beta team lead.) Reversing the trip cleaned all the threads right off.

He had made several more disks, and messed with the shape of the bag. He could make some pretty big ones, but only up to a certain point where it began to stick to itself when turning it inside out. The real breakthrough had been when he had made the bag out of threads, ropes, and cords, where the cords acted like a strong box frame, the ropes created a structured grid, and the threads created green sheets filling in the gaps. He had gotten the idea from one of his memories of the trunks, where he had examined the internal thread network. The boy rolled his shoulder. He had forced the reinforced box-bag inside out and had nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket. It had taken a LOT of ropes, and he had been really tired for a while after. The second time had been much easier, somehow the process got easier with repetition, like his magic was learning from the process and doing things more efficiently each time.

Harry lifted the ring leading into the box-pouch. quickly forming and fitting a funnel into it, he began pushing things in. Without the shrinking, he could fit all kinds of stuff inside, but WITH it it would take FOREVER to fill this up. After filling it with some random copies of memories, one gamma duck who had gotten too close, and two or three clouds, he analyzed the box. No matter how he rotated the entrance, the contents acted like they were all stationary. It felt like turning these pouches inside out somehow disconnected it from reality to some extent. Not that surprising, since magic always felt disconnected from normal reality. Still, it meant that he could leave delicate things inside without worrying about it being squished, or thrown around.

He idly twirled his fingers, watching the square opening spin. He could bind the magic to a pocket or something, like his pouch... but why bother? It worked as raw magic, although he needed to keep it attached to one of his threads or else it began to degrade. The box-pouch version weakened a bit, but the non-reinforced pouch version would dissolve in a few hours with nothing to bind it to.

He had reviewed many memories of the pouches at this point, and after careful examination he could just barely see random threads in the air being sucked into the bound pattern. Random magic in the air was slowly absorbed by the magical cloth, like drops of dew collected on grass or other objects. Without being bound to a physical object, magic had to be directed to it specifically, or the air had to be much more saturated.

He dropped the square object into the back of his left hand. Focusing, tiny threads of green power under his skin wrapped into the lip of the box-pouch and dragged it into the back of his hand.

OWCH! Bloody HELL, why did he do that?!

His left hand felt like he had smashed it into a wall. As he watched the threads in his skin were reconnecting to the box-pouch, and the lip began changing the pattern in his arm. He now had a thick rope from his core connecting to the pouch, and the inside was now filling with the thin threads that naturally grew in his skin.

It was like growing a new arm, but while on fire.

Teeth clenched, his face stone solid, he glared the pain down. As his magic stabilized, he saw that the main cause of the pain had been his body trying to handle the part of the box outside his reality, the inside. With barely a thought he flicked his left hand, all kinds of memories and one annoyed duck flying out of it. Hell, it stung like a... well, it felt bad anyway.

Harry ran his shaking right hand through his hair. He really needed more information about magic. He could tell when something would be 'dangerous', but clearly not when something would be 'OH GOD WHY DID YOU DO THAT' painful.

He ran his fingers over the back of his left hand. The opening almost felt like a mouth. It opened when he wanted it to, he could feel everything inside of it (Of course he would, it was like he grew skin inside now that it had all his threads in there), and right now it ITCHED. Hopefully that would pass quickly.

Harry woke, grumbling slightly under his covers. His left hand was still sore. He had REALLY hoped that his stupid idea had not been incorporated into his physical body, but NOOO.

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