Chapter:23: Occulmency
After getting permission from Snape, when Ronan started heading towards the Library, he felt very weird. He had this whole speech and points prepared at the back of his mind that he would have used to convince Snape. He also knew that if Professor had just told him no from the start, there was no way that he would have convinced the man to change his mind. Still, he had a few things prepared.
But when Snape agreed that easily, he felt that something was wrong. But he couldn't put his finger on it.
At the end of the day, when he came to the Room, with his Occulmency book, he pushed his paranoid thoughts aside and started reading the book. He had a lot of free time that day, as today was the quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. There were no classes today, so he could stay in the room as much as he liked.
The book started with an introduction to mind magic. Basically, mind magic was divided into two categories, namely Legilimency and Occlumency.
Legilimency was the act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings. A person who practiced this art was known as a Legilimens. Muggles may have called this "mind-reading", but practitioners disdained the term as naive. The opposite of Legilimency was Occlumency, which was used to shield one's mind from the invasion and influence of a Legilimens.
Occlumency is an art that not only shields the mind from Legilimency attempts, but it also has a lot of other uses as well. One of the most beneficial uses of Occlumency is that it strengthens one mind, which in return could help a user to come out of the Imperious Curse easily. It could also help dampen the effect of the Veritaserum or the truth potion. But to attain that kind of power, one had to become master of Occlumency.
One another great benefit of Occlumency is that it helps its user really consolidate their knowledge. As the brain strengthens and its power increases through the practice of Occlumency, a user's memory improves as well. With enhanced memory, an Occlumen could recreate their memories in an artifact called Pensieve, which is an artifact used to analyze in detail past memories. If a non-Occlumency user or any subpar Occlumency user uses the Pensieve to review their memory, they will find the whole ordeal very difficult.
A natural mind is not made to remember every single detail about an incident, and it tends to forget everything that holds no significance to the user. But a Master of Occlumency has the power to save every detail about an encounter, which they could later review. This basically meant that all the Occluemency users have very great memory. This also makes sense as Ronan had photographic memory…
After reading the most basic stuff of the magic in the upcoming few days, Ronan sat down in the Room in a Lotus Position. He closed his eyes and emptied his mind of any emotion or thought. Which was easier said than done. But it didnt take him long, soon, he lost track of time and started sensing something around his mind. He didnt know how to describe it, the better words would be that it was a sort of dome in which his mind was enclosed.
According to the book, this dome must be the Occlumency barrier. This barrier acts as a shield against Legilimens probes. This barrier also helps in dampening his emotions, which Legilimens could sense. Dampening emotions helps an Occlumency user to stay calm and collected in difficult situations, which made sense as since his transmigration he had not been a very emotional man. He didnt feel any fear, nor did he become anxious thinking about the stuff that would happen in the future. It was weird how calm and collected he stayed, he felt that. But after reading the book, it all made sense to him.
He started probing the barrier, and when he willed to go through it, his sense passed through very easily. After entering the barrier, he found himself standing before a very weird and ginormous colorful bush. It was quite a thing to marvel at, in the magical sense this bush represented his brain and all the memories stored inside it. The leaves were made of these tiny particles which upon further probing, he found them to be his memories.
He willed for the nearest particle to come before him, it flew to him, and as projector started playing a film before him. He saw himself, at the age of five, standing before a small mirror trying to comb his hair. This was the first day in the fifth standard. He remembers this day, after he got ready and was coming downstairs, he slipped and came sliding down the stairs. He was not injured, his bum ached for several days in the future.
From what he had read in the book, most of the time a human's brain is a mess of memories. These small particles from which the leaves of his bush were made, float around randomly in a normal human's brain. Which makes it easier for normal people to remember anything from their past, at command. But as Ronan is Occlumen, he does not have to worry about that. His memories automatically get stored in this complex network, always at his service.
The only thing that he needs to do now, is to work on the barrier that is surrounding his brain, strengthening it will boost his shields against any Legilimency probes. The strengthing part would take a lot of time and is a very slow process. So Ronan would do that eventually, the main thing that he wanted to do was go through memories, and see whether he could siphon his past life memories. And try to find any clues about those kids.
With his will he entered the bushy structure, straight away heading to its core, which was the stem of the bush. He could just tell that the upper portions of the bush consisted of his recent memories. So he went down, to the deepest part of the bush. Then there came a point when he found himself at the very bottom, with his will he started probing his leaves around the area, trying to find any clues.
That is weird.
The leaves showed him memories of when he first transmigrated into this body. Memories before that were filled in the form of very small and shriveled leaves. This particular leaf was filled with vital information that a two-year-old Ronan had gathered in his lifetime. These memories included the name of their caretaker, his friends, and basically every other essential employee of the orphanage. Other than that there were no memories which could be any help to him.
The thing that confused him was where was his knowledge of his past life stored because from what he could sense, they were not there.
If the knowledge of my past life is not here, then what did those kids represent in the mirror? Was that mirror probe into being on a much deeper level than what I anticipated? I surely dont want to start a family in a small home. I want to achieve a lot of things, but none of them involve raising two kids.
A thought about the mirror being wrong also came to his mind, but he quickly pushed the idea aside, it was just too absurd…
By the time Ronan returned to the common room, the sun had set and the moon was upon them. He spotted his friend sitting by the fire. "Where the hell have you been?" Blaise asked as he sat down.
"In Library. Why?"
Pancy spoke, "Potter caught the snitch. They are in the lead to the house cup."
"So?" Daphne then snapped, "SO? They are going to win now. We will be defeated by Gryffindor of all people."
He waved his hand, "Dont worry about that. I am sure Neville and his friends would find some way to lose those points."
"You are right," Blaise said, "Those blokes are dumb. They would lose the point one way or another."
"Ronan," Pancy spoke, "By the way, I wanted to congratulate you."
Ronan was confused, "For what exactly?"
She smiled mischievously, "Oh you know… Lord Black."
He didnt expect that. Ronan knew that someday his friends would know about his true heritage, and then news of being the only heir of a Black family would spread like wildfire in the pure-blood families. But it had been 2 months since he had met his accountant, and he figured that these guys didnt get the news then, they wouldn't get in the future as well. That is why he was a little bit surprised.
"Oh, you guys heard." Ronan acted cool.
"Heard?" Daphne spoke, "The whole house is gossiping about it. You should have seen Malfoy's face when he heard that you are a pure blood as they come, he looked furious."
Blaise then asked, "By the way, have you decided when you will officially change your name? Are you going to throw a big ceremony for it?"
Daphne then asked, "Make sure that you throw your Paraenomen during the winter solstice. It is considered good luck if the ceremony takes place during the time."
"Stop," he commanded. Pancy who was going to suggest something stopped as well. "First of all, I am not going to change my name. I might change my family name, only if the wards of Black Manor require me to do so. Otherwise, I am not going to change shit about me."
"If the wards dont require you to change your family name, you wouldn't?" Pancy asked in disbelief.
"Yup,"
"I dont understand it," Blaise spoke, "If I can get a family name as powerful as the Blacks, I would jump on it the first chance I get."
"Good for you. But I rather not have anything to do with such a name."
Daphne then asked curiously, "Why is that?"
With a smirk he spoke, "Listen well children." He spoke in an elderly voice, those guys hated that he referred to them as children. But by that time they were accustomed to it, "The thing is children, the things that I will be going to do in the future will surely mark my name in the History books.."
"Surely," Pancy said sarcastically.
"In the sections of the history book where my name would recorded.. I dont want someone to quote that Ronan used his family name to achieve things. I want everyone to know that I did, what I did, even though I came from a relatively simple wizard family."
Blaise and Pancy started laughing. While Daphne just stared at him with derision, "You think too much of yourself," she spoke.
Ronan passed her a mischievous smile. His friends might not believe in him, but they didnt know better. They didnt know the extent of his ambitions. They did not understand him at all, and he didnt blame them. They have only been friends for a year now. But he was sure, slowly they would truly understand, he believed and meant every word he said.