Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 5– Mind Restored But Still Messed Up.

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I don't even know how long it has been this time. I have just been so absorbed by this book and learning everything from it. If it wasn't for the fact that I had already developed my Occlumency and was constantly keeping my mind clear while reading the book, then I would totally believe that I was being affected by some kind of dark magic, but no, I am not, this is all my own obsession.

I possess a superhuman thirst for knowledge. that could be the golden finger I was given when I was dropped into this universe. There is so much knowledge in this book, and not all of it is good. In fact, let me rephrase, none of it is good, but maybe it can do good in my capable hands. At the very least, it will improve my life, and that is my greater good.

However, before I can focus on any of the knowledge to manipulate and subvert the minds of others, I first have to solidify my base, meaning my own mind. Then, I have to conquer my own mind before I can start conquering the minds of others, and man, am I glad that I focused on the first part of Occlumency, as it made this part a lot easier for me.

First came the sorting and categorising of all the memories stored within the mind. This by itself would have been quite challenging if I did not already learn to clear my mind, this allows me to cut through all of the bullshit and dive right into my mind, but this by itself is pretty hard.

Thank god that there was a spell given in the book to help with this process, and it is a pretty good spell as well, as it is easy to perform and doesn't need much knowledge in the way of magic to cast. Also, this spell has a side-effect that I don't think the creator meant to create.

The best way I can describe it is that the spell basically does to you what The Ancient One does to Stephen Strange in the MCU Dr Strange movie released in 2016. it sends your mind on a wild trip. Still, instead of through the multiverse, it makes you hallucinate and get in touch with nature. in plain terms, it makes you high.

Apparently, that is what you need to do to start making a mind palace or whatever you want to call it. The book says mind fortress. The spell is designed for the caster to first clear their mind of everything and then cast the spell on themselves. With the emotions being suppressed, the magic works on the only thing available, which is the memories, so you take a deep dive into the abyss.

Of course, with me being so excited the first time I used the spell, I did not read the book properly, and so I cast the spell on myself without using my Occlumency and properly clearing my mind, which led me to the discovery of the side effect undiscovered by the previous wizards who used this spell, probably because they weren't so stupid to use it how it was not intended.

Anyway, since I did not suppress my emotions, I went on a wild trip full of colours and sounds that I had no idea the origin of, like that one time I was peer pressured into trying mushrooms but 10 times worse. I woke up on my toilet in my underwear and with about 5 different pictures of myself around me. I don't know what happened, but I think my latent Gilderoy got a chance to come out for some fun.

After that, I made sure to read all of the texts thoroughly and adequately before I did any practical work. Of course, you can not be expected to use this spell anytime you want to use Occlumency, so it is more like training wheels that are used to help you gain an experience of travelling into your own head and memories and eventually, you can dive into your own mind without any aid which I have managed to do. However, I may visit this spell in the future since a high like this without having to ingest any sort of substance could be quite lucrative.

After over a dozen trips into my own head, I began to get the hang of diving in and managed to do it without the aid of the spell. But, of course, the journey there was quite painful as I had to see hundreds of memories of Gilderoy Lockhart being Gilderoy Lockhart and past memories of myself being myself, with the both of them blurring and intertwining with each other.

But eventually, I managed to separate all the memories into three piles, with them being old Gilderoy, past life and new Gilderoy. With that done, I further separated the memories and categorised them one by one until I had a proper catalogue. However, it only made sense to my own brain since, to anyone else, they are just motes of light floating in the abyss.

With that done and the memories being correctly categorised, I got to modifying the old memories of Gilderoy Lockhart and eliminating most of the emotions from them, leaving only minute remnants as they may come in handy one day and adequately bringing them into the fold to be apart of my mind with the muted emotions and feeling giving me complete control and all memories without any of the personality.

However, some little tidbits did escape and come through, but it was negligible in comparison to the advantage I gained. Now that I have fully categorised my mind and sorted out my memories, it is time to build some proper defences and make my mind into a veritable fortress, so that I can go forward without being scared of anyone discovering my origins.

First of all, I had to separate the black abyss that contained my memories from the rest of my mind. I did this by literally shrinking it until I was left in a pure white expanse with a pure black ball clasped within my palm, now it is time to start with the creation of my mindscape, and I begin by doing the best thing anyone can do when they start a project, copy and paste.

Why spend all those hours creating and sculpting my own little world when I can steal a world from the minds of others? Finally, those hours of playing video games and watching youtube are going to come in handy.

Thinking it through, I begin to sort through all the memories in my mind, through the countless hours of gaming, looking for the perfect map to bring to life in my mindscape. I look at Los Santos, Liberty City, Kamurocho, Springfield, Harran, Skyrim, The Wasteland, The Commonwealth, New York, Yokosuka, Konoha and many more, trying to find the perfect map that can be brought to life within my mind that is as equally detailed as it is big and confusing.

Finally, setting on the one after many deliberations and comparisons, I think this one is actually quite perfect as I only will know the exact features of this land. For everybody else, it will be pretty confusing.

Using all of that useless information in my brain for once, the locations of missions, weapons, NPC's and all that other stuff locked inside my memories that my Occlumency has helped me divulge to a really sickening degree, why do I know how to dangle an NPC from a bridge and not kill them and then swing them around?

Focusing entirely on those memories and those games, I begin to pull on them and bring them out of myself and into my surroundings. I begin to feel the world form around me and the atmosphere starting to exist. I can feel as each tiny grain of sand appears, and each brick is placed. I can feel the animals begin to spawn, and the NPCs begin to form. I can feel each tress roots start to spread through the ground and-

"KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK"

THIS PIECE OF SHIT, ASSHOLE! Can't he just leave me alone, for one goddamn day, just one? The beautiful world that was beginning to form around me starts to disappear and turns into motes of nonexistence as it rapidly disintegrates before my eyes. Then, just when I was getting somewhere, this bastard comes and bugs me. All I want is a little peace and quiet so I can make some self-improvement.

Except this bastard can't take even a single day off, every day without fail since the last time I saw him, this Digby Dickhead Digworth has shown up rain or shine and knocked on my door, and with each day, he stays a little longer and knocks a little longer, recently he has even begun to-.

"GILDEROY, GILDEROY OPEN UP! I KNOW YOU ARE IN THERE. YOU CAN'T HIDE IN THERE FOREVER!"

-Shout while he stands outside my door, and I can only thank the previous Gilderoy Lockhart for getting an entire floor of this building for himself and making sure that all the sounds are isolated. I have no idea why he had that done, and I don't want to question it either, even though I probably have the answer knocking around my noggin somewhere.

This man has been shouting at my door every day. Even though I told him that I would be in the Antarctic for the foreseeable future, I could think nothing of it if it had been a few months, but he started showing up the day after I told him I would be leaving, so he clearly never believed me.

Angry that he had just disrupted the culmination of all the hard work I had done, I stalk towards the door, ready to swing it open and give him a piece of my mind. What is the fat little man going to do anyway? Damn the consequences, I am angry, and I need someone to take it out on, and who better than my main frustration over these last few months.

I walk towards the door, reach my hand out towards the handle, firmly grasp it, ready to throw it open, and deck this pug-faced man right in the face. Still, the cold steel against my flesh gives me a moment of calm, and I quickly pull on my Occlumency to calm my mind before I do anything rash.

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My emotions are rapidly suppressed, and rationale begins to retake control. I think through all my options and identify the correct thing to do at this junction in time. But, first of all, somehow, the man outside this door unequivocally knows that I am in this building, and I have been for the past few months.

Therefore, he knows that I lied about where I was going and what I was doing and yet he only knocked on my door until recently, meaning that my lies were not out of the ordinary for him. He was not shocked by them, he only started to shout recently as I had taken too long, and I know that Gilderoy in the past never took off for this long, so that could be why he is worried and shouting down my door, but that doesn't explain why he started the very next day after I lied to him.

While some things do not add up and are starting to concern me, the fact remains that I am not prepared to open that door and venture out into the world, even with full access to Gilderoy's memories. He is a very underdeveloped wizard in terms of mastery, yet he had a talent that even I am surprised at. Moreover, the man was so unbelievably vain that he constantly applied and maintained all sorts of vain charms and used all kinds of household magic.

At the same time, that seems relatively unremarkable, but he was actually maintaining multiple spells while casting dozens of others. To put it simply, the man simply had magic reserves that were astounding, and yet he wasted all of his talents because he saw some other people doing better than him and decided to give up on that subject entirely. What a fool. Regardless of what this man knows or wants until I have adequately learned magic to suit my abundant reserves, I will not be paying attention to anything else.

I turn around and lean against the door for a bit of respite, I have constantly been working and doing something since I woke up in that bed, and it has been months since then. I haven't even taken a moment to relax once since I began to advance my knowledge.

If I am honest, I am a bit tired now. So maybe I can take a break for a while. But, on the other hand, I have finally sorted out my own mind, which was my main goal, so perhaps it is time to relax and take it easy, start exploring this magical world, and learn some magic while doing so.

Apart from Voldemort, there isn't much to be scared of. All those little minions of his are too scared to try anything until he comes back, so it should be fine for me to stop cowering in here and go out there and live my brand new life. At least until Harry Potter reenters the magical world, which isn't for a few months at the very least since I entered the world a year before his first year, and even then, I have quite a while till anything dangerous happens outside of Hogwarts.

Hmm, I must have been thinking about this for quite a while since I can no longer hear that annoying little shit outside the door. Digby must have got tired and left after using those fat little T-Rex arms of his for so long, I suppose I am being a little bit mean about the guy, but he has just pissed me off so much over these last few months. I can't wait till I have acclimated to this new world so that I can give this man his walking papers and get him far away from me so that he may never besmirch my sight again with his-

"Lockhart, I know you are in there. Open the door, now."

The words travel into my ear, and I feel a shiver down my spine. In any other situation, I would have ignored the words, but with the back of my head resting right against the door, it was as if his mouth was right up against my ear and spoke directly down my ear canal, but even that, I could have shrugged off though, what really made me nervous was the fact that he let those words out typically instead of shouting them.

All this time, he had been crying outside my door like I had knocked his daughter up and he was coming for my ass with a shotgun, but just now, he spoke calmly and relatively quietly, as if he knew I was right against the door, and so he had no reason to shout.

"I know you can hear me. I know that you never went to Antarctica either. I know that you have never done a single thing in any of your books, and you stole the achievements of better wizards than yourself. I also know that if you don't open this door right now, then I am going to head straight to the daily prophet, to Rita Skeeter, and tell her every dirty little thing I know about you. It is up to you. Open the door right now, or never leave your home again."

I... I have no choice. This guy somehow knows that I am right on the other side of this door, which means that he most probably somehow knows my exact location as well, so I can't just pretend to not be inside. I might have joked about it before, but this is not one of those Jehovah's witnesses at the door that you can just hide from, and they can't do anything even if they know you are there.

If I don't open the door, then there is every chance that this guy will go to the Daily Prophet or, even worse, Rita Skeeter. He somehow knows about old Gilderoy's past misdeeds, and if they are revealed, the whole of the wizarding world will ostracise me and turn against me.

Digby Duplicitous Digworth really has me up against the wall, and I am just going to have to take it, at least for now, until I know more about the situation and can figure out some way to turn the tables on him. Resigned to my fate, I push myself up off the door and turn around to grasp the handle once more, but this time my Occlumency is in full force.

What is the worst that can happen? Digby has been my cowering little lackey for a few years now, constantly following my orders like a good dog. However, it seems in the few months I've been away from him, he has grown a little backbone. Or, at the very least, without me, he has probably been making shit money, and he can't bear it anymore.

I am thinking with my complete rationale, and this is the only logical option I have right now in order to live the carefree life I want to lead in the future. So I use my free hand to unlock the door and take off the chain, and then I pull down the door handle and pull the door by an inch, stretch it, a fragment out of its frame. There is no turning back now.

Pulling the door slightly more open, I peek out through the slight gap, but I am confused to see something wooden pointing in my fa- Oh shit, that's a wa-

"Stupefy."

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Ow, what the hell just hit m-

"SLAP!"

"Ugh." Son of a bitch, what the hell is the thing that just hit me now?

"Wakey, wakey Mr Lockhart. Rise and shine." An annoying voice calls out as I shake my head to try and get rid of all the thoughts clouding my mind and focus on my surroundings. Something is seriously wrong. I remember I was working on my Occlumency, and then there was knocking at my door, and Dig- DIGBY THAT BAST-

"SLAP!"

"Ughh." the slap hits my face, but it doesn't disorient me this time. Instead, it just puts everything in my head back in place, and I quickly look up to see that son of a bitch shaking his hand, probably never having felt the sting on his palms before having had magic do everything for him in his life.

I quickly move my eyes around to take stock of my situation and realise that I am sitting on a chair in front of the fireplace in my living room, and I can feel the ropes tightly binding me to the chair. So Digworth probably used the levitation spell to place me on the chair. No way he is doing it himself. His arms looked like they were made of jelly, and then he fired an Incarcerous at me to bind me to the chair.

I try to wiggle around and find some leeway as he focuses on his hurting palm, but no matter how I struggle and subtly test my bonds, the ropes don't move, remaining steadfast. So how do I get out of this situation? I don't have anything within my hands or near my hands that I can use to cut the ropes. The ropes themselves are firm around my chest, and having just been conjured, there are no frays or anything.

The chair itself is not nailed to the ground, so I can at least move it, but I don't have enough mobility to stand up straight with the chair still attached to my backside. Lockhart did look after his body but only so that it was aesthetically pleasing enough, meaning that while there is far more muscle than the average wizard, there is not enough to stand up with the chair.

So the best I can do at the moment is push myself to the side and hope the chair breaks, in turn, loosening the ropes. Still, I don't want to rely on luck at this moment, though if the worst comes to worst, I may have to.

"It hurts me to use such Muggle methods, but there is something rather satisfying about causing pain with your own hands and feeling the impact on the flesh of another. I would still much rather use a wand. But, luckily for you, that is not an option. Magic leaves traces, and I very well can't be leaving any clues for the Aurors that find your corpse." `The bastard says while looking at his hand with a contradictory mixture of disgust and satisfaction. All the while, he has his wand in his other hand but hearing that he can't use his wand, I feel emboldened.

Digby might have said that he is going to kill me, but if he isn't using his wand, then there isn't a lot he can do with his pathetic body.

"DIGWORTH, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!? UNTIE ME THIS INSTANCE, RIGHT NOW!" I shout, not expecting him to do anything of the sort but knowing that he won't use his wand. I do so anyway. Without his wand, the most he can do is use his fists to attack me. While that may hurt, it won't kill me, but making him angry will take him off guard and may open an avenue for me to take.

I don't know what sort of avenue, but I am doing the only thing I can think of in the hopes that he will do something to my advantage. Of course, what I am hoping for in my head is for him to come and punch me in the stomach and for the rope to get caught in his ring.

Of course, the rope will unravel when he pulls his hand away, freeing me from his clutches. Still, I know this is just my deluded and frightened mind coming up with unrealistic thoughts because there is no way that will occur, and Digworth isn't even wearing any rings.

"SHUT UP, YOU DISGUSTING HALF-BLOOD!" Again, I receive another slap for my efforts, but this time I don't grunt or let any sound out of my mouth, though nothing happens as I expected in my panicked mind.

"I did not want to use my wand because it might leave some traces, but listening to your annoying voice again has just reminded me how much I hate you, so I am willing to risk it. I want to cast a severing charm and chop off all of your fingers, one by one and use an Incendio to burn each of your little toes, cast a freezing charm on your ear, and then smash it to bits. But you see, that leaves traces, and I can't leave any trails." He says while looking condescendingly down at me, tapping each part of my body with his wand while saying what he wants to do to them, but then he says he can't do that, which confuses me.

"But, why does it matter if you leave traces? You are planning on killing me anyway. why wouldn't you just get rid of my body?" I ask with morbid curiosity. I don't really have much else to be doing right now. The more information I can gather, the better chance I have of surviving, no matter how trivial the information may seem.

"I can't hide your body. I need it to be found, or else why am I even doing this? But enough about that. You don't need to worry about what will be done with your body. You will be dead after all. But being magnanimous, I will allow you to live for a bit longer, and we can have some fun in that time. There are many spells that can be used without leaving a trace behind, and I have perfected the correct usage of each of them so that they don't leave a trace in my time following the Dark Lord. If only that Potter brat was never born, I wouldn't have to waste my time with a pathetic Half-Blood like you."

"T-The Dark Lord? V-Voldemort..."

A cruel grin stretches across his face, and he points his wand toward me.

"Crucio."