Chapter 23

The Grangers walked us to the door and gratefully sent us off after the session was over, the next one already scheduled. I wonder how they would have reacted had I given an actual lesson in Occlumency, going for the most painful, most embarrassing memories.

Hermione would have probably burst into tears, the lessons discontinued and our families' relationship with the Grangers strained.

Thankfully I was smarter than that, and had, as mentioned already, begun with fairly harmless stuff, and would only accelerate towards more emotionally impactful memories once I had harangued the girls parents into letting us have the lessons in private.

I knew intellectually that that was the correct approach of course, and I'd never been described as a particularly impatient man. The opposite rather, my time preference was quite low- However, that did not mean that I enjoyed those parts of a plan that were simply a slog to get through.

I'd spent the last hour viewing memories of what the girl had been eating for breakfast the day before, and once I'd found the information, the day before. Ad infinitum.

It wasn't a complete waste of time of course, Hermione had actually been able to feel the probe at the end there. But due to the mundanity of the memories, she hadn't had any incentive to stop the intrusion. She'd tried, sure, but the situation was comparable to Hermione getting into a fight with a professional sumo wrestler.

It was honestly quite unfair to the girl that I was the one who was teaching her. While my proficiency with the spell was still unsatisfactory, the mental battle often-times basically boiled down to a clash of wills. The notion that a little girl had any chance to retaliate against my decades, soon, centuries, of life experience, and the willpower that I'd been honing during all of that time, was quite frankly, ridiculous.

Thankfully holding back so she could actually learn something was a perfectly plausible alternative to simply crushing her every time we attempted a mental battle.

"You look... annoyed." Grandfather remarked after we'd apparated back home.

"I am." I admitted.

"Care to enlighten me as to why? Your acting was prodigious, and the progress of your little plan has been sufficiently secured for the foreseeable future." Grandfather remarked.

I huffed. "Just because I will greatly enjoy what will come out of this venture, does not mean that I enjoy taking the steps it will require to ripen this enterprise to its fruition."

"Don't tell me you're having second thoughts about the morality of the issue." Grandfather said, aghast.

I snorted, after contemplating how my previous words could have been interpreted. "I assure you, that morals are a thing I decisively lack. Likely to an extent, that if you knew the true depths of depravity I was capable of, if promised sufficient reward, would horrify even you."

We fell into a contemplative silence for a while after that.

"What is the problem then?" Grandfather eventually asked.

"Do you, just because you enjoy the meal that you eat, enjoy the process of cooking it?" I asked back.

Grandfather snorted. "Ah, I see that my belief in your inherent complexity as an individual has left my thoughts somewhat befuddled. I had ignored the possibility that you were actually exhibiting something that might even remotely be interpreted as childish, likely because you did not at any opportunity act on your emotions, like a child would. You are bored by the process of turning the little Granger into what you want her to be, almost as much as you are anticipating the rewards that you will reap from her transformation."

I considered his words. Before I eventually decided that I agreed. Boredom, a deadly foe. "You've hit the nail on its metaphorical head. To tell the truth, I experience boredom quite often, although I try to minimise it where I can." I said, not rising to the bait of his hidden question of what I actually wanted from the girl.

Grandfather sighed. "Well, if you are willing to take advice from an old man," funny, considering I was older than him, "then I would say that what needs to be done is to change the lens through which you view the world, into something that will make even boring tasks enjoyable, to a certain degree. Journey before destination and all that."

It was sound advice, I admitted. It was much easier to change one's outlook of the world, so as to turn boredom into contentment, rather than change the whole world to eradicate boredom. "Sound advice." I eventually said, and we parted ways. Having reached, and spent the last two minutes talking at the crossing between the children's wing, where I still resided, and the wing where Grandfather completed most of the family business. Business that would soon find its way entirely onto Lucius' shoulders. Freeing up Grandfather in the process.

He'd died somewhere before the original Draco's sixth year, if I remembered correctly.

Although his newfound study of archaic and complicated magic, that I had prompted by bringing up the Fidelius all those years ago, might have changed his fate. Although what he was studying now, at my urging, was unlikely to save him from dragon pox. Sympathetic connections between entities sharing attributes, and the manipulation there-off. Voodoo, basically. If some African shaman high on mushroom juice could torture someone with a doll bearing the hair of the targeted person, I wonder what potential shenanigans possessing half a person's soul could lead to.

The fidelius, it was going to be cast soon. Mother was taking on the secret, the only thing yet to be decided was where to put our little hidey-hole filled with dark books and artefacts. Considerations for the near future.

How had I even come upon these topics? Ah yes, Grandfather's likely imminent death.

Maybe it was time to start hanging out a bit with the old man. Show him a thing or two before he kicked the bucket.

It might even lead to the early beginning of some hobbies that I was technically incapable of pursuing due to them requiring adult supervision.