The Mind

"Draco! Come say goodbye!" The voice of Mother rings through the hallway of the mansion.

I opened my door and ran to the end of the hallway where she was waiting with a smile on her face. Behind that smile, however, there was an underlying worry. Despite her trying to hide it, it was so obvious I could practically smell it. 

I reached her and she immediately picked me up into her arms.

"Now Draco, I'll be gone for a few days. You be good for the elves okay?" She said, trying her best to be stern.

I nodded. "Yes, mother! I'll be good!" 

She smiled a strained smile before kissing my forehead and walking to the door with me. Only once she was leaving properly did she kiss me again and put me down.

"Now Draco, the elves will take care of everything. Remember to brush your teeth, make your bed, eat your vegetables and don't get into too much mischief!" She said worryingly.

I nodded again with a smile. "Yes, mother!"

She smiled a final wane smile before decisively turning around and apparating away with a *Crack!*

I smiled to myself. I finally have some time to myself. I'm 1 and a half-ish now and it's November 2nd, 1981. Lucius had been arrested yesterday when Aurors came to take him away for the death eater trials. Mother is entering a sort of voluntary custody of the Aurors to prove her innocence. Unlike Father, she is actually innocent as far as I know. At the very least she doesn't have the dark mark.

This leaves me alone at home. Normally people would hire someone to take care of their 1 year old or have someone assigned from the government to take care of the kids during this time of unrest. However, there are a few reasons why I'm being left alone at home.

The first is that the government simply doesn't have the resources to allocate someone to take care of the kids of the death eaters at this time. The second reason is that despite magical contracts existing, neither of my parents would ever trust someone else to take care of me. Lucius' friends and acquaintances aren't what you would call good people. Magical contracts aren't absolute and he has too many enemies.

The final reason is that the elves, despite my parents' disdain for them, are trusted enough to take care of me. The elves as a race are fanatically devoted to their masters, no matter who they are. Dobby was a rare exception. Not to mention that their life and death are decided by the master. I've found through soul sense that the bond between master and servant is an intricate thing.

It's a symbiotic bond at its core. Magic for work. I don't know the history of the elves, however, I can tell that the elves' own magic is chaotic and unstable. Without an outside source of magic to stabilise theirs, it would riot and they would die after some time. Our elves are tied to the wardstone and recognise Lucius as master as the head of the house, although they aren't bonded to Lucius himself.

What this means is that I will finally have the few days alone I need to reach step 6 of occlumency! My magic core formed 3-4 months after my birth and it felt absolutely surreal when it happened. There was a great whoosh as the magic in the atmosphere converged into the space intersecting my body, mind and soul and then there was an ephemeral spark.

Witnessing that spark with my own soul was something I'll never forget. For a single moment, everything was possible. For a single fleeting moment, my existence had no limits. For a single, unforgettable moment, the pure POTENTIAL of that spark rocked through my entire being and I was enlightened.

I know where magic comes from now. That spark was an echo from the beginning of creation itself. I was enlightened by witnessing an infinitesimally small part of the creation of all. Despite what I saw only being a tiny part, that moment enlightened me to the fact that magic is a primordial force that has existed since the beginning of all creation.

I didn't know where wizards replenish their energy from when they run out before, now I do. When a wizard runs out of magic, more is seemingly created from nothing in their core. And that's exactly what happens. Magic energy is created from nothing as an echo of the beginning of all creation is what forms the magic core. Due to this property, the magic energy is directly created from nothing.

It's really quite amazing to think about. Energy can't be created from nothing according to modern physics, but then again modern physics doesn't know everything.

Anyway! I finally have time to myself. The biggest thing to do for me now is to reach step 6 of occlumency. Recounting my experience with it, I completely breezed through the first 5 steps of it. It wasn't hard with my advantages after all.

Clearing my mind as previously mentioned wasn't difficult. Most of my time when doing this step was simply to get more experience with meditating. I had a shallow knowledge before but now I can slip into a meditative state at will. It's very relaxing to just let your mind float on the currents of thought, not allowing anything to affect it. I started doing it before sleep and in any spare time simply for how relaxing it was.

Locating my mindscape was again very easy with my advantages. Accessing it, however, was a completely surreal experience. It wasn't difficult, but when I entered my undeveloped mindscape for the first time, I found myself in a black-greyness that represented my understanding of the Void surrounded by countless twinkling stars. It just goes to show that my after-death experience affected me profoundly.

When exploring the mindscape, I found that those twinkling stars were the memories taken from my soul and represented in my mind. I loved my mindscape's aesthetic, however it wasn't very secure. I ended up spending a lot of time simply keeping the aesthetic the same whilst moving all my memories to a central point for the initial sorting. All I had to do was replicate what the stars/memories looked like whilst taking the original away.

Anything is possible in your mindscape. Anything. I didn't do anything too fancy, but I built myself a proper wizard's tower in the middle of my mindscape and stored my memories in the basement for now. The tower I modelled was a light cream-coloured Orthanc because I liked the look. It was proper wizard-like.

Building the structure was also easier than I thought it would be. I couldn't simply imagine it in its entirety and *poof* it was there. No. But I didn't have to imagine each brick separately either. I built it wall by wall and floor by floor. It wasn't too tedious or time-consuming.

For defences, I simply put up a few energy walls or forcefields if you prefer to cover the entirety of my mindscape in layers. It was very tedious to set these up. At least 5 days for each forcefield. I had to stop at 3 layers as well or the time it takes to go into my mindscape and renew my defences simply takes too long. In my mind, force fields are impenetrable except by overwhelming force. Even precision use of massive force only re-distributed that energy into the rest of the force-field so that option was mitigated as much as possible.

Step 5 was a strange experience overall. To locate the emotional centre of your mind, you need to meditate inside your mindscape to sense the deeper layers of your mind. Everything concerning your mind is already inside the mindscape but without locating things like your subconscious or emotional centre, you don't have much control of them.

Whilst meditating inside my mindscape, I gradually sensed the location of these deeper layers of my mind. I followed the feelings and impressions I received during my meditations and moved through the Void of my mindscape until I came across a large Star sitting in the Void.

It took a little time to understand what it was, but that star was the emotional centre of my mind. I had to get inside the star itself to figure that out though. When inside, however, I was stunned!

There wasn't a core like I expected from a star. The outer layer was just a shell. What I found was an infinitely complex, intertwined web of colours. I recognised these colours! These colours were the colours that made up the souls of those in the afterlife!

There were more colours than you could possibly see with the physical body. Brilliant white, all-devouring black, all the colours of the rainbow, neon colours, weird chromatic and non-chromatic colours that defied description were all arrayed in an intricate web all around me.

Honestly, the whole thing was so complex that I didn't even know where to start. The books I had read simply stated that when you take your emotional centre into your control you can control your emotions better. As I was wondering what to do, I left the Star to think in my Void.

As soon as I left the star, though, I immediately felt the difference. As soon as I left the star containing my emotional centre, I felt that I had considerably greater control of my emotions than before. Huh... I guess that is why the books didn't mention much. The moment I touched that part of my mind, I immediately had control.

Shrugging to myself, I pulled the star with me and moved it to become a centrepiece of my wizard's tower, providing extra illumination and looking really fucking cool. I mean, I have a personal STAR floating in the central column of my tower.

Speaking of my tower, It wasn't complicated. All it contained was a central column with a spiral staircase going up on the walls. Along the walls were different doorways leading to rooms of variable size. Most of them were empty right now. Only the room at the top of the tower was used at the moment as it contained my memories on rows atop rows of shelves.

The rooms can be as big or small as I like and I will have use for more in the future. For now, it costs so much time and mental energy from me to upkeep my mindscape as it is right now, defences included, that I wouldn't want to add more stuff to it yet.

That's why I need the few days alone that I have now in order to connect my mindscape directly to my magical core. This will not only power my mindscape, it will also give me a more intimate connection to my own magic. This process however takes time and has to be done in one go. It can't be done in parts.

Scanning the mansion with my soul, I made doubly sure that there wasn't anyone lurking within without me knowing. I needn't have worried. The mansion's wards were the best money could buy and the wardstone was being fed from the layline running underneath the area.

Detecting no one and feeling the state of the wards, I went to the main dining room and sat at a chair. Without saying anything, a bowl of baby food appeared before me and I ate until it was empty. I waitied for a little and it was refilled then ate some more, overfilling myself at this point. I'll need it however.

When I was done, I went up to my room that was given to me after I turned 1 and sat down on my king sized bed. Lying down and getting comfortable I slipped into my mindscape, appearing in the foyer of my wizards tower.

Connecting the mindscape to the magic core is an arduous process that starts with me accessing my magical core from my mindscape. I proceeded to mediate in my mindscape. I first felt the deeper layers of my mind but I ignored those, my focus never wavering as I delved deeper.

After an undetermined period of time, I felt something new. At the edges of my perception, i felt 3 distinct entities. I knew by instinct that they were part of me. Two of them were connected to my mindscape in a way that felt integral and completely inseperable. Following the first connection, I realised immediately that this was my soul.

With my previous experience, I didn't need to wonder about that because I already know that the soul makes up part of the mind. It might be a separate entity and contain everything about me, but I already know everything about it that I can at this time.

Ignoring it for now, I followed the second connection and found myself viewing my physical body in a strange space. It was a completely empty white space that only had a representation of my physical body at this moment hovering in the middle. It was like a hologram. I could view everything in different ways.

Playing around a bit, I found that I could view all the different parts and systems of my body down to the tiniest detail. I don't understand that much right now, but I made a promise to study medicine to rectify that. It was fun, but it wasn't what I was here for.

Leaving that space I followed my senses to the last entity. This one wasn't connected to my mind as my body and soul were at this moment. Following where I felt it was, my consciousness went towards it. After a while I found myself in another empty space looking at yet another star.

This star however was a deep, rich blue and made completely of magical energy. It wasn't very big right now, but I could tell that this space I was in had no limits to it in size. It wasn't a real space to begin with, more of a folded dimension within myself that was both real and imaginary at the same time. This was my magical core.

It was strange however that everything i've come across has the representation of a star. I suppose that is a subconscious choice. The books stated that different people had different mindscapes and their memories were presented differently depending on the person. Lakes, oceans, forests, mountains etc. All were possible.

Looking at my magic core from this perspective however I felt there was something lacking about it. It took a minute to figure out what it was but when I did I was quite surprised.

Whenever i'd viewed my magical core before, I was viewing it with my soul. This time I was viewing it with my mind. Whilst viewing it with my mind the ephemeral spark of creation was absent. Whenever I view it with my soul, that spark of creation is in the centre of the magical core. It isn't there right now when viewing it with my mind. It was an interesting bit of information but not relevant right now.

Now for the hard part. I directed my consciousness and went closer to my core, trying to interact with it. It was a little finicky but in the end the best method to move magic with my mind was to directly force my will upon it. Magic doesn't move like any other substance. It's not a solid, liquid or gas. The closest is plasma but it doesn't move exactly like that either. 

In order to connect my magical core to my mindscape, I needed to take a stream of it from the core and bring it to my mind following the connection I can feel even now. The difficulty was understated if anything. The magic in my core didn't want to leave. When people use wands, it is directly connected to the core using the resonance between the makeup and personality of the wand and the person. "The wand chooses the wizard" are not just empty words.

Floating there in this space I tried again and again to bring a stream of the deep blue magic from the core without losing control of it. It took a few tries but I figured out the best method. I needed to exert full control over every bit of magic in the stream I pulled out and keep it up with all my focus the entire time.

As you can imagine, this was incredibly draining. Slowly, carefully but with full focus, I finally managed to bring a stream of deep blue magic back along the connection towards my mindscape. When I reached about where I felt halfway was, the difficulty of moving the magic suddenly increased and my attention slipped in a moment of surprise. The stream I was controlling snapped back to the core from my lapse.

Frustrated, I took a moment to calm down and began the long process again. This time when I reached halfway, I didn't allow my attention to waver for a single moment. I was determined to do this!

As I moved along the connection getting closer and closer to my mindscape, the difficulty kept increasing more and more in an exponential way. When I was about 9/10ths of the way there, the effort it took to move even a little bit forward was so great it was like all the effort it took to get halfway added together.

I kept my focus up however and pushed forward with great determination. I will do this! I was so close now!

Right when I got to the point where I felt my mindscape was only a single step away, I had a splitting pain running through my consciousness and I felt stretched out like a wet noodle. I gathered all my willpower and pulling the stream of magic with me, made the final push.

I felt the stream of magic connect to my mindscape with a snap and with a rush of energy, I felt magic rush through the connection, solidifying and expanding it whilst also seeping into every corner of my mind. I barely paid attention to that however as my vision was going dark. I was pulled from my mind and was immediately unconscious.

When I woke up next, I looked at the window and it was dark out. It was morning when I started. My body was stiff and I felt extremely hungry as well. 

All of that barely registered however as the changes to my mind immediately made themselves known. I expected to have a splitting headache after all of the effort I spent but I didn't. My mind felt completely different and unprecedently comfortable. I can feel the magic running through my mind. My thoughts themselves were already running much faster than usual.

Looking at the clock on the wall, the seconds were ticking away 1.5-2 times slower than normal. I didn't even realise! It took a minute to figure out how to make time move normally from my perspective.

When I did, I fiddled with it for a minute. All I had to do was to run magic through my mind at an accelerated pace. Now that my core is connected to my mind, I can feel magic flowing from my core, around my mind and back to my core again. All I need to do is speed up that flow to speed up my mind. I can only do it so fast however before I begin to feel fatigued. It will probably speed up as I get stronger.

I got up from the bed and waddled over to the side table where a bowl of warm baby food was sitting under preservation charms. Immediately scoffing the food down, a second serving popped into the bowl when I was done and I ate that as well until I was satisfied.

Waddling over to the window, I pulled a chair over and stood on it to look outside. I'd been lying down so long that I need to move around.

Leaning against the windowsill whilst looking over the grounds, I couldn't see much but a small crescent moon hanging in the sky. Ingoring that, I dived into my mindscape to see the differences. I'd already needed to figure out time perception but now i'm excited for a deeper look!

Appearing in the light cream coloured wizards tower in my mindscape, I could immediately feel the differences. First of all, all the structures in my tower and the forcefield defenses around my mind no longer required my conscious attention to maintain.

Before this I would need to come and renew the structures and defenses every few days. Especially the defenses. Now though, the magic flowing through my mind was keeping them exactly as I left them.

Focusing for a moment, I made the floor of the tower as strong as I possibly could imagine at this moment. I could feel that the 'weight' of the floor increased a little bit as it went back to how it was when I last renewed it. I observed it for a moment and when it stayed like that with no degredation, I went through my tower doing the same to everything.

It didn't take me long. When I was finished with that I did the same for my 3 layers of mental shields as well, making the imagined force-fields emcompassing my mind as strong as I possibly could. This took a little longer than the tower due to their sheer size but not that much longer.

Deciding to check something else I meditated in the foyer of my tower and soon came across the connections to my mind again. This time however, there was a new connection. A dark royal blue 'river' of magic was connected just as integrally to my mindscape as my body and soul were.

I didn't need to create this connection myself. It felt like it was always supposed to be like this. Through the connection to my mindscape, I felt that I could use my magic much more easily. Before it was actually quite difficult to use magic even with the cheats concerning my soul. It was only a little easier to use my own magic than it was to use the free-floating magic in the air.

Now though, I felt that my magic would respond to my thoughts and emotions as easily as breathing. I no longer needed to excert force with my soul to use it. Accidental magic only occurs during times of extreme emotions but now my magic would respond only when I want it to.

Exploring this connection further, I found that I could use this connection to my mindscape to flow magic to either my body or soul. When I tried, nothing changed for my soul. My soul was constantly refining and being refined by the Void it was pulling in from beyond existence through the cultivation technique, therefore magic didn't have any effect on it.

My body however felt energised and stronger when I ran magic through it. I've always kept up the practise of running atmospheric magic through it. Now though, I made a loop of magic from my core, running through my body and back to my core again instead. just like my mind.

When I did this, I felt like I was hopped up on caffeine but without the manic energy. Pulling my weight up by the windowsill a little, I felt marginally stronger. It wasn't to a crazy level, but it was something at least.

For now though, I was starting to get tired from all the excitement of today and sat down on the bed again with a feeling of accomplishment blooming in my chest. Now that this has been accomplished, I have some ideas on how to improve myself but I'll save that for another day. For now, I just want to rest.