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Chapter 3: A name, an apartment, no plans

.Chapter Text

Laying on a shitty motel bed and staring at the ceiling one phrase filters to the top of your mind—appropriately, it's the Mind Arts. With an affirmation in your head you begin to recall everything you know about things that could be considered 'mind-affecting' in the Potterverse, both canon and fanon. It's not just Occlumency and Legilimency really, those were just the two parts named and focused on in canon. Still, in your contemplation you notice that you recall a lot more than you did just a moment ago; the new information has slotted in so smoothly you only realized by it's previous absence.

Fanon Occlumency where a day reading a small pamphlet and five minutes of chanting 'om' causes a mind palace to sprout fully-formed inside Harry's head like a mental Athena and gifting him with perfect recall and wandless magic this ain't though; you have a solid grasp of magical techniques you can use to improve your memory, protect your thoughts, and use all of the sensory information available to you. Using that knowledge fully on the other hand seems like something to be done when you're in a safe location and taken somewhat slowly anyhow. Like trying self-transfiguration, hasty experimentation will only end with you being fucked up somehow.

Hmm, on second thought, you seem to have some grounding in the memory improvement and enhanced parsing of senses, because this hotel room suddenly became much, much grosser. You know your nose isn't good enough to detect mold, but it can certainly smell the lack of cleaning products. Ugh, time to think of something else…

On the 'cool shiny' end, you have the theoretical knowledge of a bunch of mental spells, but you'd be hesitant to use anything other than perhaps the cheering charm, a variant of the entrancing enchantment that makes people chill and vaguely agreeable, and the big daddy of them all Legilimency itself. Now, you doubt you'd be able to get useful information from the latter at the moment, so you'll need to find a safe target to test it out on.

Rolling off the bed you check the time—9:45. Checkout is at 10 if you remember the text on the keycard correctly, so you gather your papers declaring you as James Peverell, check everything over to make sure you're not leaving any ancient artifacts behind and make your way outside. The documents you got did happen to include directions to your luxurious new digs so you decide to hike the two miles or so. 

During your walk you notice while you're not reading the mind of everyone around you, you have a vague sense that there are actually people around you, minds full of thoughts that allow you to know if someone is behind you. It's not developed enough to sense any feelings or motives and it pulls at your attention enough that it would likely be a liability in combat, but you can see the uses if you practice at it a bit more.

Taking a break after grabbing a drink and some chips you stop in a run-down park and ponder your legilimency. You tried casting basic spells silently and failed, so something even more advanced isn't going to make it any easier. You'll definitely need eye contact until you get practice in as well. 

Eyeing what is probably a Merchant—or at least a client of the Merchants—stumbling around stoned out of his gourd fifty feet or so away and arguing with a tree you look around, pull out your wand, and shielding it with your body wait until his eyes pass over yours. You incant firmly, but without shouting and feel—

Teethhurtfuckin'treesabitchneedanotherhitrandymejonhnboyassholefriendsatthebrownstoneoffcookstreetourturfhatfuckerlokslikecharlieihatehimmybrotherassdeadnowholeknucklesbleeding

—A torrent of thoughts all accompanied by images and feelings. Sorting through it is tougher than you want but easier than you feared, your acquired skill must be better than you thought. Leaving Randy to stare at his bleeding knuckles you finish your your walk and unlock your fifth-floor studio apartment.

It's small, twenty or twenty-five feet square, bare except for a mattress, a large cable spool-turned-table, and a battered folding chair. A pile of books on the table are likely your course materials. Rooting around the place shows a ratty towel and half-used bathing supplies in the bathroom, but no toilet paper. The radiator seems to be struggling to maintain a decent temperature and the paint looks like it was applied by fingerpainting toddlers.

Shit, this place is a dump.

You lock the door, then shoot a locking spell at it and wait for the squelch. Pulling your trunk from its pocket you embiggen it and sit on your supremely uncomfortable chair. You get off your chair and cast a cushioning charm on it because you might be a dimensionally displaced recently-dead college student, but you are also a wizard, goddammit.

The chair's actually pretty comfortable after that.

It's coming up on 11am at this point and you have decisions to make. You have a long weekend coming up because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, but you're going to take it one day at a time first. Magic practice, going out and starting a fight, looking for wizarding drugs in your trunk, the possibilities are (not quite) endless. You might even be able to find actual furniture to turn this into a real apartment. There is also the slight issue of not having any phone or computer, so you're reliant on the one paper you lightly skimmed for history—maybe this version of Earth Bet has people run around naked every other day or all capes wear skintight outfits, or perhaps Tagg is the local director. Getting some kind of internet access or researching at the library would give some details.