Chapter 88: The two pupils of the fake prophet (Patreon)

“So, how are we going to do this?” Tonks asked from her position of sitting on the floor and leaning against one of Hogwarts’ many grey walls. Harry was standing at the large glass window and looking down at the grounds from their position in the highest room of a tower.

Sometimes it almost felt like Hogwarts spawned new wings, rooms, and towers every time he came back from summer vacation. He was almost 100% sure that this gigantic room with its stained glass, or the tower it inhabited, had not existed before. But here they were. An empty circular space with so much light that it nearly hurt their eyes since the glass magnified the sunlight.

It was empty, weirdly enough, but not so if his theory of new creation was true. Harry wasn't good enough at conjuration to create a cushion, although he certainly could have transfigured something. It wasn't worth it though, he didn’t feel like it.

“What exactly do you know about the Mind Arts?” he asked.

“Well, it's a very restricted topic for one. My mind wasn't budging, she says next year. I didn’t find nearly enough, and I looked too,” Tonks mused before explaining what she did know. “It's divided into two parts is what I learned. Legilimency is a magic used to read the mind, and Occlumency is used to defend against this reading.”

Harry slowly shook his head and turned around. He cracked a grin at his friend. “The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Tonks… or at least, most minds are…”

The girl huffed in annoyance while he grinned at his ability to quote one of his favourite lines from the books. 

“Tell me about it then, if you’re such an expert.” She confronted him.

The funny thing was that Harry, during the summer, had actually become quite an expert. The hat, an artefact much more qualified to teach him than he'd ever thought, had dubbed his Occlumency decent and his understanding of it satisfactory months ago. And then he'd spend the summer reading the works of Kaczynski, who had undoubtedly also been a genius of his time. All of the lessons he had then solidified while teaching Draco. It had to be said that teaching truly did teach the teacher. He felt like he had a solid grasp on both Occlumency and Legilimency now.

“The mind is a mysterious subject. Hardly anyone has ever truly understood it and most people brave enough to experiment with it have gone quite mad, historically speaking. The ministry would like you to believe that this is the reason why it is illegal to disseminate books on the subject of Occlumency, while Legilimency is forbidden in its entirety, punishable with years in Azkaban, for understandable reasons,” Harry started.

“How did you get your hands on it then?” Tonks muttered. “You're always running around with some weird forbidden knowledge.” She paused. “You did say you've never cast a dark spell, right” she questioned.

Was she finally having second thoughts about the mess she was getting into by associating with him? Harry wondered as he shook his head.

“The dark arts are a trap for the foolish and the greedy. The Mind Arts on the other hand, simply are what they are. Nevertheless, they remain even more dangerous, without any of the corrupting attributes of dark magic, which is quite impressive. There are books and tools and artefacts if one knows how to look for them, but the forbidden nature of the magic means that most are incentivized to share.”

“I'm not going to snitch on you, you know,” Tonks muttered.

“I trust you with my life,” Harry reassured her. “But, it is better to not know certain things until one has learned how to properly defend oneself. I thought we had agreed on that.”

Tonks nodded, her pink hair swimming around her head an airborne patch of seaweed. 

“Teach me then,” she demanded.

“Perhaps in the beginning there is not much that needs to be taught,” Harry began. “Legilimency is a free-form spell which allows the user to delve into what is commonly referred to as the mind of the victim. With free-form I mean that the spell does not have a simple cause and effect. A levitation charm levitates something, be it a single object or several. Legilimency is just an entry point, once you are in there it's up to you what you do with your presence. You can either fail or succeed in a manner controlled entirely by yourself, not any formula. It is dangerous. Do not ask me how I learned it.” In this case, he literally couldn’t say, since there was a secrecy clause hanging over the tutelage of the young Malfoy.

“All right, all right.” Tonks closed her eyes in frustration. “I won't ask. I'm not asking a lot of things.”

“Occlumency is relatively simple in comparison since it doesn’t even need a spell to initiate,” Harry continued. “The mind is a integral and wishes to defend itself. The only thing it requires to do so is practice. Theory only supports the exercise. Without experiencing attacks your defence can never grow. There is no other way that I or anyone else knows of.” Even the hat or Kaczynski didn’t know an alternative, which was saying a lot.

“It's wandless magic, how does that work?” Tonks asked.

“Being attacked on a mental level is more traumatising than being attacked on the physical plane. Enough so that I theorise accidental magic still holds some ground in our reaction. Occlumency harnesses this instinctual magical reaction and lets you form it into a valid defence. There are several steps to fully implementing this, but the first one is realising that you are even being attacked in the first place. After all, our mind is much more abstract than our physical body and knowing when it is being assaulted is the first step to defending it,” Harry said.

“Yeah, I got that far. That's why we're meeting and you're just going to blast me until we get it done right?”

Harry curled the corner of his lip upwards. “Essentially," he agreed. “In repayment for the duelling and healing services, and because you're my friend.”

Tonks nodded and scrunched her legs around until she got into the lotus position. She stared resolutely into his eyes. “I'm done screwing around. Next year the Auror Academy starts, that's my goal, nothing less.”

Harry pulled out his wand and chuckled at his own selfishness. He could have technically given her the hat. However, that was just another secret that he couldn't entrust her with yet, especially now that he had learned what the hat actually was. The sword of Gryffindor. The mental magic capacity of Godric himself as embodied into an artefact.

People would kill for the hat. Voldemort would kill for the hat. Dumbledore might kill for the hat. Right after Horcruxes, the hat had very much become the most dangerous kernel of knowledge in his precious little head. Godric Gryffindor had not been a man, but a legend. That carried weight, even today.

Harry had always thought that the man’s prowess was more myth than reality. But if he had been able to create the sword, then he must have indeed been a genius blessed by the heavens.

“Let's start then,” he said out loud. “Try to clear your mind first, however. As I told you, meditation will be intensely helpful for this practice. Take five minutes, and then I will start attacking.”

Tonks closed her eyes. A silence started radiating outwards from her position on the floor as Harry looked down at her placid heart-shaped face.

How funny that both his students were Blacks. Maybe he had a particular affinity for that family? He wondered how fast Tonks would progress in comparison to Draco. The boy was surprisingly talented, but the older girl was more experienced. Perhaps her N.E.W.Ts would drag her down?

Regardless, at the end of the year, she should at least be able to attain a decent enough level to keep out whoever she wished to unless they somehow locked her down and had repeated attempts.

Five minutes passed slowly. He counted them down in his head by the second. When it was finally time he raised his wand, pointed it at his friend and tapped on the floor a bit as a signal for her to open her eyes.

A spell that he had cast often enough now on someone less precious to him slipped past his lips almost wordlessly. “Legilimens.” His focus narrowed and he entered the mind of the girl with no resistance at all. 

It was a start.

-/-

For an institution that lauded itself as being one of the premier in the world, Hogwarts had relatively few extracurricular subjects that Harry was interested in. Care of Magical Creatures and Arithmancy were fascinating and useful in their own right, while Ancient Runes was a curiosity.

Muggle Studies were a complete waste for someone with his background and probably for anyone with any type of background. Divination was being taught by a hack and was useless if one didn’t already have the talent.

From year six onwards, there was the option for people who did not continue their N.E.W.Ts in the subjects they picked in the third year to do either Ancient Studies or Alchemy. But, they would only occur if enough students applied. Historically not enough had for the last two decades, maybe because the minimum requirement was a flat number that made sense before the war, when Hogwarts had double the student population.

So, in essence, Hogwarts really only had five options. Ignoring Muggle Studies and Divination Harry was taking three of the five. He’d had to really consider if he truly wanted to do Ancient Runes as well. After all, it was a rote memorization subject that he could have just as well taken after graduation in his own free time. However, the subject wasn't that important actually so probably if he didn't do it now he was just going to avoid it for the rest of his life.

There was a slight interest, then, but the deciding factor had been his consideration that taking the class might qualify him for receiving a time turner.

Unfortunately, that had not been the case and the schedule that he'd been given by his head of house in the morning had not had any overlaps. Muggle Studies overlapped with Ancient Runes since they were respectively the fifth and fourth least popular class, but there had been no offers of time turners given to him by anyone. Not even from a shady back alley dealer in Knockturn Alley when he’d been there.

Truly, the state of the world. He shook his head as he waited in front of the door with all his other classmates for Professor Babbling to either arrive or bid them inside. The group was mostly composed of Ravenclaws. He was the only Hufflepuff and there were two Slytherins. No Gryffindors. Good for him, since it had mostly been the people from his house and the red and gold army who’d approached him about his results in the duelling tournament.

The nerds were a bit butthurt that he was beating them in academics and real-life achievements, and the racists couldn’t openly interact with him without losing their racist membership cards even if they wanted to. Or maybe they were just not interested?

Anyway, about time magic. Amongst the books given to him by the dark artefact dealer, there had been a fascinating treatise on the very subject, which had explained a lot of the theories that he'd been missing. For example, one could technically meet one’s past self when time-travelling. One just couldn’t kill them, or anyone else who was still alive in the future.

It would just fail, no matter the effort. Additionally, there were no real negative consequences to using a time-turner. One's body would simply age faster, which was not that much of a loss when one considered that his time at Hogwarts was severely limited and he would still be able to feel the years passing instead of just losing them completely.

Unfortunately, it seemed like time magic would stay out of his reach for the moment.

Nobody was offering him any time turners in any back-alleys. The subject matter was too complicated for him to tackle without more years of experience in magical theory. For the moment it was a lost cause.

The door to the classroom opened and a female voice called the students to enter.

He didn't have many expectations for the Ancient Runes class, but it would probably serve as a decent enough time filler and perhaps expand his cultural knowledge of the Wizarding World and its history. After all, it seemed like no matter which world, be it that of Harry Potter, or Harry Evans, Professor Binns would be a boring dead man whose main goal in life was to ruin any passion anyone had for History of Magic.

“Someone should really perform an exorcism on that man,” he muttered to himself as he took a seat next to a relatively handsome kid who he thought was named Roger and zoned out for the first lecture as the professor introduced the very basics of the subject to them. Things that anyone with two functioning brain cells would already know anyway.

The only interesting thing of note was the fact that due to him taking a window seat, he could look out at the grounds where the first years were having a flying lesson. Unlike what he remembered from the books, Neville had not received a remembrall and thus hadn’t given Draco the opportunity to make an ass of himself.

In fact, the adopted Potter was quite decently flying and hadn’t had his accident. Having James Potter as a father probably meant that one couldn't go too long without being exposed to at least some modicum of broom proficiency. 

The flying class was one of the highlights of anyone's first year at Hogwarts, so Harry didn't quite understand why Draco had felt the need to ruin it in the books. Everyone seemed to be having a decent enough time, the only exception was perhaps Hermione Granger whose long frizzy brown hair easily made her identifiable as the most reluctant and scared flyer of the group.

A piece of parchment with some runes on it suddenly floated towards Harry's desk and gently laid itself down in front of him.

The task was to consult their dictionary of Elder Futhark and to translate the sentence.

Harry returned his attention to the classwork. He was sure he'd find a use for Ancient Runes at some point. It probably wasn't going to be such a tough class anyway.

-/- 

It was later in the day when Harry decided to go to the library to check up on some duelling-related factoids before his incoming meeting with Flitwick that he saw Hermione Granger sitting alone at the desk and studying at her lonesome.

This wouldn't have been odd if it had not been for another occupied table full of Ravenclaw first years studying together and making jokes amongst themselves.

No matter the amount of things that changed, Harry thought, some of them stayed the same.

After gathering his books he walked up to the lonely girl reading what looked to be Hogwarts: a History.

She looked up at him confusedly with what were perhaps slightly moist eyes.

“Can I sit here?” Harry asked, gesturing with his head at the free chair at her desk.

She nodded absentmindedly as he sat down, opened his books and started making notes in his notebook.

They didn't exchange any words that day, but Harry considered it his nice gesture of the week. 

Being together in silence was better than being alone.