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Chapter 71: The Mindscape

Final exams for his third year were extremely easy for Harry. Almost relaxing in a way as he had plenty of time to practice casting the spells. He was far beyond the point where learning the third year spells he didn’t already know was difficult.

Hermione was too. She still was worried about it for some reason, but her spellcasting abilities were well above third year level as well and she consistently did second best on all of their tests only behind Harry in their year.

Despite their groans and protests, Ron and Neville were doing fairly good on their tests as well. Maybe around the top quarter of the class at least on average, Ron only doing a little worse than Neville was.

Harry had managed to convince Hermione to keep his secret from them, which made him feel relieved. She hadn’t liked it much, but after they made a few more comments about ways they could ‘track down and kill the dark creature that had attacked them,’ Hermione seemed to understand his perspective and stayed silent. Harry had always been closer to Hermione than to his other two friends even after they first met.

The distance between him and his other two friends had only increased over time as Hermione and Harry grew more and more advanced in their magic while Ron and Neville worked hard to keep up with the normal classwork.

After Harry’s total reveal of his secrets to her, this divide had only widened further and while they still studied together and went to quidditch matches sometimes, the four of them broke into pairs more often rather than choosing to do things together in a larger group.

It was a little sad that they were no longer so close, but with Harry no longer having to hold anything back from Hermione it was more than worth it. He even told her about his lessons in dark magic from Salazar’s painting even if he was careful to not be overheard when he did so.

She had been very surprised and intrigued, shaking off the prejudice against it after Harry passed on Salazar’s painting's explanation on the difficulty to master it properly versus the easy way others thought of when they spoke about it.

According to her, Salazar’s training methods were surprisingly similar to what she had learned in her lessons on light magic from Dumbledore. Unfortunately, she couldn’t learn any true dark magic yet, as Salazar had stressed how important it was to have an experienced mentor in the initial stages to learn things properly. And Harry couldn’t give her any of the books he studied or bring her into the Sanctum.

But maybe she could learn in the future once Salazar decided Harry was good enough to teach her personally. Salazar said Harry might be good enough to do it in a year or two if he worked hard enough.

Ron and Neville had felt pretty good about their exams, but the scores wouldn’t come until the summer. It would actually be Harry’s first time receiving the actual card itself in the summer. He had been either in a coma or kidnapped the last two times.

Harry was down in the chamber getting some final practice in before he went home for the summer.

“Yes, remember the spell causes pain in the body so it is much less effective than the Cruciatus curse that targets the soul,” Salazar said to Harry as he was finishing up.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t read about the mind arts while you are here," Salazar continued, "This place has some advanced techniques beyond the basic occlumency shields you must already have.”

“Occlumency? Doesn’t that improve your memory, why would I need that?” Harry asked.

Salazar froze and slowly turned from the dummy to stare at Harry from his painting.

“Are you telling me,” Salazar said slowly, “That you’ve been walking around with your little head bursting with world shaking secrets and you didn’t take even the smallest precaution to keep them safe?”

“Keep them safe?” Harry replied, “How would Occulemancy help with that? The books in the Hogwarts library all seemed to think it was useless with a long time to learn with only minor results.”

“MINOR RESULTS!” Salazar shouted, “For a SIMPLETON maybe. I guarantee almost every pureblood child at this school has learned occlumency. It never occurred to me that someone would be idiotic enough to walk around without it!”

“They don’t teach it in class even in the upper years, why wouldn’t they if it was so important?” Harry asked with growing confusion.

“They… The idiocy of modern wizards continues to astound me!” Salazar said, “Truly amazing the new lows these dimwits can manage to find."

“But this is a security risk for the Sanctum,” Salazar started muttering to himself, “And it is a risk for someone possibly learning that you are the Heir. No good, not good at all… Perhaps… Yes, this is an emergency. You must learn occlumency immediately.”

Salazar looked up with a serious expression, “Come to the front desk of the library.”

Harry did so and Salazar was waiting there.

“Do you know the text copying charm?” Salazar asked and Harry nodded. If you had an empty page you could copy writing from one page to another.

Two heavy books appeared on the desk side by side. One’s cover was blank while the other was titled, ‘Occlumency and the Mind Arts: Construction and Deconstruction of the Mind.’

“I have deactivated the anti-copying charm enchantments,” Salazar said, “You will copy the text into the blank book as quickly as possible. I must teach you as many security measures as I can to protect it from falling into the wrong hands before the summer. How long do we have?”

“I’m leaving Hogwarts in six days,” Harry said, glancing between the two books.

“Six days… Well, get to it we don’t have much time. When you get home I want you to follow the instructions in this book and practice your occlumency in your every spare moment. Even with your talent, getting yourself to an adequate level over the course of a single summer will be difficult. I can’t believe you were just walking around completely vulnerable…”

Harry started copying the occlumency book into the new copy over the course of a few minutes. The next few days were a flurry of activity as Salazar furiously made Harry cast all sorts of charms to protect its contents from other people. Harry could summon it from anywhere with a keyword, it opened when Harry flowed his magic through a special pattern in it wandlessly. Reading over his shoulder would lead the book to hide the words until the other person going away. All sorts of nasty hexes that would blast someone if they tried to avoid all the other charms… And finally no less than ten separate self destruct conditions that would destroy the book beyond the ability to recover by magic if any of the other defenses failed.

“Salazar, why is it so important that no one reads any of this?” Harry asked after finishing casting another enchantment on the book.

“You know how valuable that knowledge is, boy?” Salazar said, “Back in my day a book like that unprotected would lead you to be attacked on the street en masse by greedy wizards wanting to read its contents. I’m sure it is even more valuable now. The Mind arts are not kind to those that make mistakes, so to reach a high level one must need a teacher or guide... Or innate talent and a heavy dose of luck. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why written guides were so hard to find even in my time and no one wants to help others become better at infiltrating their minds if they don’t have to.”

“But couldn’t you just teach the defensive part without attack?” Harry asked, “I already skimmed through the first few chapters and it's all about shields and defense. Why would you have to read minds too?”

Salazar snorted, “True, but misguided. That method only allows for the formation of static shields that are largely useless against anything more than a casual attack. A real defense needs to be dynamic and counter attacking your opponent is a big part of that. For the secrets you hold, you shouldn’t be satisfied until your occlumency shields are rock solid and can even be maintained in battle.”

“But why do I have to learn all these protection spells and copy the book?” Harry asked, “I can just read it once and store it in my memory.”

Salazar looked at Harry with a deadpan expression, “And why did you not mention that fact days ago?” he asked.

Harry shrugged, “I thought the spells were interesting and I assumed you remembered. I’ve told you multiple times about it while I was here.”

Salazar groaned, “Yes, I suppose you did. What a waste of time… very well, read through it. I will look through the texts for some advanced techniques that can take advantage of your unique mind.”

So that was how Harry spent his last few days before the summer reading quickly through book after book of Occlumency. They were all so thick that it took Harry a long time to read each one. Salazar found about five or so advanced methods he thought Harry might want to explore once he got his basic occlumency shields down. Harry just barely finished reading them all before it was time to go to the train.

“Make sure to practice, your mind must be a fortress as soon as possible,” Salazar said sternly.

“Thanks for caring, Salazar,” Harry said.

“Caring, bah! I'm just looking out for the sanctum, irreverent brat…” Salazar mumbled, looking away.

“See you after summer,” Harry said.

“Goodbye Heir,” Salazar replied. Then Harry turned and left.

— — —

The Aurors were all over King’s cross station just in case there was another attempt to kidnap Harry. Surprisingly, nothing of note happened. Neville stuck near Harry. Hermione and Ron said goodbye, and then he went home with Alice and Frank.

Then it was the summer. And in between relaxing and playing games with Neville, Harry sat outside and started practicing occlumency.

Frank and Alice tried to convince him that Harry could wait until he was older to learn it when he told them what he was doing. But Salazar was right, Harry didn’t want to be so vulnerable to anyone that knew the mind arts.

The most important step in the process was to find a proper mindscape and fully populate it with as much detail as you could. Everything else you did in the mind arts would build from the base you originally set down when you first made your mindscape. It was possible to fix flaws later in the process but it was much more difficult than it would be at the beginning. Creating the mindscape was technically wandless magic, but a lesser form of it. It was more of an instinct that the magic would rush into the brain when a wizard started heavily straining themselves mentally.

Depending on how well your mind and magic connected to the construct you formed with just a hint of magical power, the more powerful your occlumency would be. So that was how Harry had spent his last three days of practice, testing out various mindscapes to see how they would suit him.

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He spent five seconds in each scene he imagined and populating as much detail as his mind could conjure. With his ability to recall every facet of an object he desired it felt like a sort of summoning in the mental realm more than anything else.

He flitted through all the places he knew in Hogwarts, the ministry building, the Longbottom's house, even the Dursleys when he ran out of other places to test. But none of them clicked with him. So he started getting more fantastical. He started conjuring the worlds and realms he had read in his books, constructed magical places he had read about at Hogwarts. Some clicked, but only weakly. Harry needed more.

He tried to get more fantastical. Floating islands, the center of a star, deep space. He even reluctantly tried the void where his soul had been. But nothing clicked well. All were interesting but they didn’t speak to Harry well enough. Some worked but not well, like a shirt that Harry knew would be too tight if he put it on. He could do better than that.

Finally after the first week Harry was getting a little frustrated at his total lack of progress. He tried to think of the most outlandish thing he could create just to relax a little from the grind of accurately populating the vast landscapes of floating islands and mystical landscapes.

Harry went with Alice, Frank, and Neville to a magical zoo. Harry saw creatures he had only read about in books walking around unaware of the wizards and witches watching them from beyond the wards.

They still edged away from Harry when he drew close, but they weren’t nearly as scared as Harry was used to. They got ice cream afterwards and Harry relaxed a little more. The landscapes clearly weren’t doing it for him. He had to make his landscape even weirder for it to fit him.

After they were done with a late lunch after getting home, Harry went outside on the back lawn and laid out in the sun to try more mindscapes. The sun was pleasantly warm and in the wizarding world, Alice casting a single spell on Harry stopped him from ever getting any sunburns from this. Harry sunk deep into his mind and tried to think of what he should do.

Finally, Harry remembered a painting ‘Relativity’ by MC Escher. The staircases and people every which way with gravity and perspective depending on where in the painting you looked. He remembered the way that when you looked at another section of the work then the whole thing would change.

Even Harry with his perfect memory of what the whole thing contained was still fooled whenever he focused on a specific aspect of it. He wanted his mindscape to be something like that. Something he could spend his time in forever and keep seeing new parts and perspectives on it. He never wanted to go back to the dullness and grayness he had felt growing up at the Dursleys.

Decision made, Harry sunk deep into his mindscape and began constructing his fantastical world. Harry chose to make everything out of a beige sandstone as he worked on building on the twisting and reality bending land. He floated above a massive cube of sandstone as big as a mountain.

He had summoned it here mentally by remembering a single piece of sandstone he had held once and copying that pattern millions of times until it was big enough. The sandstone floated there in the empty void as Harry constructed a series of buildings all over its surface and top half, carved directly into the stone. Stairways curled downwards between levels and up spiraling through the stone inside.

Then he rotated his body thirty degrees in the air and redefined gravity and his ground in the new direction. He started building again on the top half, making sure to avoid the pieces that he had already added. After he was done, he rotated himself again and reset which direction was ground again.

He realized that he was smiling as he kept warping into a new position and angle, adding new structures upright with his new definition of the ground. Just like the painting, gravity would switch depending on which of the staircases or doorways you looked at.

Even remembering everything he had done, Harry still felt satisfaction at seeing the empty buildings and staircases angled below him or from a new perspective. He did it again and again. He did it until the massive rock was riddled with a massive city and the inside was cored out from all the staircases running every which way with each having their own direction of gravity.

Harry stared down at the floating sandstone and he was almost satisfied and there were only a few things left. He decided that there would be a mist swirling around the structure, pulled and tugged by the gravity of the nearest stairwell. The mist curled and twisted in hundreds of hypnotic patterns as Harry watched as they floated around and through the chaotic empty city that Harry had created.

Then as the final touch, Harry snapped his fingers for effect in the mindscape and a bright sun appeared in the sky and the black void brightened into a dull blue.

Harry floated above the city and stared down at it proudly. He floated there for a few minutes just running his eyes over it, tilting his head and teleporting occasionally to get a new perspective. This, now this was what he was working toward.

At that thought there was a resounding boom that sounded throughout Harry’s mind space and suddenly he was paralyzed. He felt a massive wave of magic pulsing within his real body and raced directly into Harry’s brain. This… the book had said this would happen when a mindscape finalized, but nothing this big! It was only supposed to a drop, a barely noticeable amount of his magic!

The magic pulsed upwards until it reached Harry’s skull. Everything around Harry’s mindscape suddenly hardened and anchored as if it had just become more real. The sense grew stronger and stronger until with another pulse of magic, Harry’s vision pulsed white and he lost consciousness.

— — —

“...Harry? Harry! By Merlin, are you alright?”

Harry opened his eyes and saw a concerned Frank Longbottom standing above him. He winced at the light and squinted.

Harry opened his eyes and saw he was leaning on the windowsill of one of the sandstone houses in his mindscape. There was only the blue sky in front of him. But on all sides, above below and both sides stretched a seemingly endless expanse of staircases and houses at every which angle built into the sandstone.

Both Harrys smiled and the Harry in the real world fully opened his eyes.

“I’m okay, Frank,” both Harrys said at once, “I think I finished my mindscape. It is… it is amazing. It's like I’m really there.”

Harry lifted his mindscape hands in wonder and stared at them. They looked identical to his real ones. Harry’s body in the real world sat up and stood brushing the grass off of its knees.

It should have been disorienting to control two bodies at once. To have two streams of thought at once. But it felt perfectly natural, like he had always been this way. Harry’s mindscape body continued to admire his creation while the real body Harry continued inspecting himself for damage. He seemed fine, although his brain was absolutely blazing with magic and he felt absolutely exhausted.

It looked like almost all of Harry’s magic had rushed straight into his brain all at once once his mindscape finalized. The Occlumency books hadn’t mentioned anything like this happening.

His second self in the mindscape sat there passively enjoying the view.

The Occlumency books... At Harry's thought, his other self perked up looking away from the view of the mindscape and there was a strange transfer as Harry felt that part of himself focusing intently on the books he had read on Occlumency.

It started experimenting with the next step. Codifying the memories you had and giving them a physical form in the mindscape.

Harry took a step in the real world and started reassuring Frank that he really was fine and was just adjusting to the new feeling of the mindscape. His other self sat there for a long moment before holding his hand out to the wall palm first of the wall of the room he was in currently. Harry would use carvings to store the memories, it felt right to make it match the sandstone theme Harry had created. Keep it all with one theme and have them fit all together.

The wall rippled and the memory was engraved in the wall. Harry imagined little carvings that were significant to the memory and they appeared like they had been carved by hand. There were even little chips in the lines as if the carver had made a mistake or missed a blow with his chisel.

It was like hieroglyphics or cave drawings spanning the entire wall, a single moment at Harry’s birthday party where he had managed to tag Hermione. No more than two seconds total, but it still managed to cover the whole wall. Harry in the… Harry had to think about this in a better way. Both versions were him, but his thoughts in each body were running independent from each other. Only the essentials of both filtered up to Harry if he was focused on one aspect of himself or the other. Should he rename one part of himself? No, that felt wrong…

Harry decided to be simple. The Harry in his mindscape would now be Mind Harry. The Harry in his real world body would be Body Harry. He didn’t want to say his physical body was real because he knew that both versions of him were equally real, and he didn’t want to diminish the mental part of himself.

Mind Harry moved to the opposite wall and began engraving another memory from that day. Another small segment of his life filled another wall of the room. Mind Harry moved deeper inside and continued engraving memories on the walls inside the sandstone city. When every memory Harry could recall was stored in his mindscape then he could begin with his defenses. Needless to say Harry had a lot more work to do there than almost everyone else.

But whatever had caused Mind Harry to form would speed up the process dramatically. But Mind Harry didn’t only carve the memories into the walls. Occasionally with some focused will, he summoned some furniture and little shelves to liven up the place. Even doors and other smaller details occasionally if Mind Harry was feeling inspired by anything in particular. Things to make the homes seem like real places rather than the blank facades Harry had originally created them as.

Body Harry sat down at the dinner table and explained what his mindscape was like to his family. They were all rather shocked at how complicated he had made it.

Frank chuckled, “You have a whole city in there, Harry. My mindscape is a library. That’s what most people end up going with if it resonates with them. That makes the memory storage part much easier to conceptualize. That is the longest and hardest part once your mindscape solidifies. I only have basic shields past that, but I’ve heard there is more you can do with it. But your mindscape sounds interesting at least. How did you say you were going to store the memories in this strange city of yours?”

Mind Harry paused in his work to stare out of the window to appreciate the twisting beauty of his mindscape again. He was sure this was the most proud he had been of anything in his whole life. And it was only going to get better from here. He turned back to the wall and added another carving. He had figured out that emotional weight of the memories correlated to size on the wall. Mind Harry had almost finished carving the whole of Harry’s birthday party in the last few hours. But as a test he had been able to carve two particularly boring weeks of his stay at the Dursleys in barely fifteen minutes.

Mind Harry turned back to his work and focused as the wall rippled yet again. He should read some books about interior design, his furniture choices and little additions were starting to get more repetitive as he had to fill room after room. After finishing up, Mind Harry stepped through the door he had just created and walked on what had been a wall a few moments ago on a staircase that twirled towards his new upward. This place was so big that even after all of this time Mind Harry had still not stumbled across a room he had already been to and altered yet.

“I’m going to carve them into the sandstone walls,” Body Harry said to Frank, “Like cave paintings or Hieroglyphics. One for each memory. It has worked well so far. But do you have any books on interior design? I want to do better in furnishing the rooms of the place so they aren’t all so bland.”

Frank glanced at Alice who answered for him, “We can get something like that. Wizards don’t care too much about that, but I can run and get a stack of magazines during my trip to London tomorrow for groceries. Do you want to come with me, Harry, and maybe choose the magazines for yourself?”

“Sure,” Body Harry said, “Sounds good.”

Body Harry turned to Neville who was sitting next to him, “Only if it's okay with Neville though. I know he wanted to practice some stuff on the brooms with me tomorrow.”

“No, it is fine Harry,” Neville said, “We can do it the next day. Should we, like celebrate you completing your mindscape? That- that feels like it should be important.”

Frank rubbed his chin, “I’ve never heard of anything like that, but Harry’s does seem rather complicated… Want to go out to eat this weekend, boys? We could go to one of the steakhouses near London. They're always very good, if a little overpriced. Alice?”

“Yes, sounds like a plan,” Alice said, “Celebration on Saturday for Harry getting his mindscape.”

— — —

The shopping trip went rather well. Harry sat in the corner and vacuumed up as many interior design magazines as he could while Alice chatted with one of the women there about how to take care of the various mundane plants they had on their windowsills. Harry knew that Alice also had several magical ones as well that were even more picky about where they should go, but this was a muggle store so she obviously didn’t mention those ones.

After thirty or so minutes, the muggle woman Alice was talking with wandered off as Harry kept furiously reading. Seeing that she was looking a little impatient, Harry read fully through one last magazine before standing up.

“Get what you needed?” Alice asked.

“Yes, I did. I have lots of ideas now, thank you,” Harry replied. Mind Harry was already putting them in practice by adding little tables and kitchen counters as well as adjusting the style and placement of several of the couches and chairs.

“Not at all, that woman really knew her plants,” She said, “I’m lucky I bumped into her here of all places. Hardly any people like us know anything about caring for plants without using their special gifts as a cheat and it was interesting getting her perspective on how to do things. Now, lets go home, shall we?”

They walked out of the store and to one of the designated apparition points scattered around London. They were warded against muggles so no one would see them using magic. Harry grabbed Alice’s hand and with a wrench in his gut and Alice apparated them both onto the front stoop of the Longbottom house. Harry had nearly vomited the first time he had done that with her, but now he was more used to it.

After a few hours of relaxing, Harry settled into bed and slowly drifted off to sleep. Body Harry’s breathing slowed as he went to sleep. But Mind Harry kept going strong carving more memories, furnishing rooms, and staring out a window on his mind bending creation when he needed a break. But Mind Harry didn’t get bored the whole time he worked despite his flurry of activity. The power of creation and the fantastical nature of the mindscape was far too amazing for that to happen.