13 13. Mind Arts Practice

Once I had the criminals all safely tied up and in a room that wouldn't be disturbed, I started my practice of legilmency.

I started with the first one I had tied up and used the body binding curse. I tried a new way since last time I tried reading minds, I focused my mind and visualized sending a mind probe out of my head into their mind, after a few attempts I finally succeeded.

Suddenly I found myself in a dark place, were a person was shivering in a corner, their mind bathed in fear and darkness, to reflect their real world situation. Yet this again was just the surface, so I delved deeper, and found his memories of the past day, then week.

I found out these criminals, were going to rob who they could and fled, they didn't have a greater plan, or a thirst for violence. They were just a group of friends who had fallen in hard times and needed the extra money, well at least from this person side of events, I would confirm or not when I read the others minds.

I then delved even deeper going from the past couple of months, too years, and then witnessing their whole life. It would have been informative, if they had a special skill set or knowledge, but no they were just the average person, turned to crime because of certain situations.

After discovering this one did not have any wicked intentions after reading the first couple weeks of their memory, I was alot more careful when sifting through their memories, and even more when pulling my mind probe out of their mind, to make sure I didn't damage them too bad.

I noticed my awareness of my body was basically non-existent when in their mind, so I made a note to get better at that, and to be able to still be aware of my body and it's surroundings so I wouldn't be distracted, ambushed or killed while reading minds.

Once I exited their mind, I once again sent a mind probe to monitor the surface thoughts, I wanted to see if the flow of his thoughts were different, broke, slower, or in some other way abnormal. After a few minutes of observation, I did not notice too much damage, their thoughts were slower, and sometimes they had moments of confusion, but they would recover with time.

Their mind was like a bowl of soup, and I had stuck a spoon in it and had stirred it, and it would take awhile untill the soup got back to the way it was before and rearranged itself, and then adapted to the new way it was arranged. I was only able to make this comparison after careful observation of their mind.

It was a simple one, comparing the mind to a bowl of soup was like comparing a piece of dirt to the entirety of Planet Earth. Yet it could be done for our simple human minds loved to find ways too take something complex and grand, and turn it into something simple and bland.

Of course not all human thought was like this, but the majority of it was, so the ones who had greater minds and thoughts often had to simplify their way of thinking to communicate it to a broader audience. Yet simplifying something complex into something simple was a way to make sense of something you don't full grasp, and then build more and more simple ways to understand it, until you fully grasp all the simple things about it, and then you can understand it in a more complex way.

After I was done with the first one, I moved on to the second one, the one vomiting slugs, not surprisingly his surface thoughts were about slugs and how horrible it was to vomit them, I had even given them an irrational fear of slugs.

This was a chance, after sifting through most of their memories, I then went to try something new I went into his most recent memories and removed all the parts about slugs and vomiting them, this altered his surface thoughts drastically, there were barely any mentions of slugs, but from time to time they still thought of slugs.

I was a bit puzzled removing memories should have erase all thoughts of slugs. So I went through their entire mind once again, and found that my use of the curse, left an emotional scar of fear deeper in their mind, so after removing it and some other things, I once again sent to view his surface thoughts. After 10 minutes of observation, I found no thoughts of slugs at all, I had completely removed the memory.

I then wondered if it was possible to recover fragments of the memories and piece them back together and restore them, or if I had completely obliterated them, recreate them.

This was far more time consuming and difficult after a long time I realized that I had in fact removed all traces of the memories, so I then started to recreate them, and even the irrational fear of slugs, to see what kind of influences I could have on the mind.

I then went back to the first criminal's mind who I entered and gave them an irrational fear of slugs too.

After finishing this, the slug vomiting criminal once again though about slugs and how horrible and slimy they were and his irrational fear was back.

Next were the last two criminals, I hoped I would find something interesting, unique, or just something slightly useful in one of their minds, but I didn't get my hopes up.

While two of my house elves, invisibly guarded the door from the hallway, Klaw guarded me from within the room while i entered their minds.

I floated towards the third criminal and prepared to enter and search their mind. When I entered the third criminals mind I was rewarded with something different entirely, this one was the one who had the idea of robbing people, they also had a desire to hurt people and were excited for the robbery so they could hurt someone.

Knowing this one deserved a much larger punishment, I debated in my mind how to punish him. I could kill him, although I had never killed, I was sure in this dangerous world I would be faced with that decision.

It would be better to have already killed and prepared for it when that time came, but I was only two years old in this world, with my Occulemency, I was sure I could get through it, but I decided to wait until I was much older before I would think about killing again, I just hope this decision wouldn't come back to bite me, in the form of me having to make the decision, in a split second moment of life and death.

Deciding the punishment didn't fit the crime, I thought of a different punishment, I would change his mind literally. I would take away all parts of his mind which made him interesting in killing someone and giving him the urge too.

Focusing my will I sent another mental mind probe into his mind from my head. Once I was in their mind, I began to read his surface thoughts first, then delved deeper, into his memories and the things that made him who he was. After hours of gruelling, painstakingly careful work, to not totally screw up their mind, I was finished.

I had removed all thoughts and urges, and thoughts of fascination with death and killing.

I know this was just changing a small part of a person, but it still fundamentally changed him, which had certain moral indications. Yet I was a wizard in a dangerous world, and I would soon find myself pushing against the normal limits of what's right and wrong.

In this world, and in any world, you had to survive, wether that came in the form of self-reliance of a governmental body, or the belief in a higher power, or a feeling of control brought upon by your own power and knowledge.

In my past life, I had the illusion of safety and control, because society as a whole had spoken and unspoken laws, in the form of morals, to follow. If they did not follow the laws and rules, they would be punished, so most followed them, but some did not, wether they did just not care, or they were forced to act against them because of certain situations, or they just felt pleasure against going against the norm, or breaking the rules.

In this Wizarding World which I knew to be corrupt, I knew I would need to change. I would need to grow stronger, I would need the power to go against the grain, to break free from the shackles of the law, to not be weighed down by the corrupt officials, of those in power in the world.

I already had an advantage swaying the public, because I was the famous boy who lived. Yet I knew this would only go so far if newspapers such as the daily prophet continued to publish gossip and untruths, just to bend the will of the masses to follow whoever paid then the most, to publish a story, and for the daily prophet to make a few quick bucks.

So I decided to follow the law of the jungle, the law of the strongest, whoever had the biggest fist. Yet until I was sure my power and knowledge were enough to place me above most men and women of the Wizarding World, and non magical world, I would continue to lay low.

In the future though I would rely on only the strength of my mind and magic, and use them to make my will a reality.

After this storm of thoughts settled down in my mind, after altering a small part of the third criminals mind, a made a note to check up on them, to see if my changes hold, and were permanent. For I knew everything about them, their name, were they lived, and all the memories of their current life.

Finally done with the third criminal, I turned and floated to the last. When I searched their mind I found much the same as the first two criminals, they just needed money and were forced by circumstances, and a group mentality, who thought the best decision for them was to steal money to fix their situations.

Finally done with this mind arts expiremental practice session, I kept them all still bound and kept their belongings, except their clothes. Then left them only with one empty gun and a knife, lastly I freed one hand if theirs, separately, one at a time, and went in their minds and sent a simple suggestion in their minds to write a confession of their crimes.

With this finished I bound their hands once again, and I left them in the train cabin, which had no charms on it to hide it, or the things going on in it, and left them for the train attendant to find, after everyone disembarked from the train. Hopefully the train attendant would contact the authority's, and the police would take it from there.

Finally disembarking the train myself, with my house elves, we all silently and invisibly left the train station, and found an empty alley, just to be even more careful, and then mounted our broom, and soon we flew away.

For we were on our way back to our home base, flying through the sky, feeling the air rush though our hair, or to cause my house elves ears to flap in the wind, which they stopped from flapping, after I gave them a quick command, for it was ruining the ride back to home base.

Yet right now I was just enjoying flying through the sky, free as a bird, watching the world flow by underneath me, as I made myself a part of the wind, as I continued to soar the sky's freely.

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