Chapter 6 – Beginner Occlumency

Lunchtime comes around just as Alucard and finished another book. He feels that tonight's occlumency practice should go much better at the rate of skill improvement, not to mention sorting through your memories is one of the first exercises after forming your mindscape. He puts it to the back of his mind, for now, he can worry about occlumency later, but he needs a break.

He reaches the dining room and sees Vittoria sitting there, he goes and gives her a kiss on the cheek as it seems to be a new tradition that he has started. Not that Alucard is complaining, Vittoria is a very beautiful woman. He takes a seat across from her and asks her how her morning was as he waits for his food to appear. He truly loves the convenience of house-elves, he makes a mental note to make sure to buy a lot of elves for his Hubworld.

"So have we heard back from our people in Columbia?" Alucard asks Vittoria, deciding to get to more important matters. He is excited to see if the worlds share this much in common, not to mention stealing shit loads of money is bound to feel good.

Vittoria gets a serious look on her face, "Well we have had a few complications so it will take a while longer" She informs him.

"Oh, anything serious?" he asks, worried he was wrong and about to look like an idiot.

"No, nothing serious" she informs him, "But it appears he had some half-trained wizards working for him, well half-trained would be an exaggeration really. From what it sounds like, they are only capable of a few weak notice-me-not or muggle-repellent charms, and they haven't informed him of their magic, they just use it so they don't get caught smuggling, so they are not quite at risk of breaking the statute" She explains.

"Would some criminals really care about the statute of secrecy?" Alucard asks.

"Haha, I see what you are thinking Alucard but there is a reason criminals don't break the statute, even dark lords don't, because while criminals have to deal with Aurors from the country they are in, breaches of the statute call for international intervention, thousands of Aurors and wizards on Dumbledore's Level get involved immediately" Vittoria Said, shocking Alucard.

Vittoria then goes on to tell him that they were planning to make the magical users working there disappear so that if the missing money gets discovered, they will look for the people that went missing first and there will be no magic users there to point the finger towards magic. She also informs him that they seem to have discovered more money caches than they expected so they will be a few days to gather everything up and lay the spell work for having the drug lord hide the rest of his ill-gotten gains where they want him to.

"I'm glad it's going well" Alucard responds. "Do we know how much money we can expect from this venture?" he asks, curious how much Pablo Escobar had hidden away.

"I haven't been informed of numbers, but at least as much as we were expecting from how excited our people were" she answers him. "Oh, before I forget, the books from the muggle shops you wanted as well as the schoolbooks from the lists for Beauxbatons and Hogwarts have arrived just before lunch. I will have them sent to your office for you." She informs Alucard, making him smile, it will be good to have something other to look through than occlumency books. Of course, he could have easily found other things to read since there was a large well-stocked library here but he hadn't wanted to go to the library until he was more settled otherwise he may have constantly gotten distracted.

"Thanks, Aunt Vittoria, I will get them all sorted out after lunch" he informs her. They continue to chat until they finished their meals and each head off to do their own things, Alucard heads back to his office and sees a large pile of books on the floor in the middle of the room. Deciding to sort them out before he goes back to his reading. Putting aside the studying help books so they can be read first he then starts placing the magic books on his empty shelves by year, first-year books on the bottom shelf going up by school year, then by subject.

Sorting the muggle subjects next, math, languages, chemistry, physics, biology, geography, and history, there will be a few more subjects to learn but those are the basics that everyone should know the basics of.

He expects to get a lot of new skills on his skill list once he has read all these books. And hopefully, he has read a few of them before, most likely the muggle subjects and maybe some of the first-year books, being able to flash through a book in minutes is an awesome feeling.

After having tidied up all the books that theoretically would be enough for him to finish his school exams, unless the books needed to get changed for each year. He of course planned to buy a lot more books for what he now considers his school library. The fact that even with all 7 years of books from two schools and quite a few muggle books there was still 95% of the bookshelves that were empty had nothing to do with it, he thinks to himself as he looks at his barren bookshelves.

He now looks at his pile of muggle skill books, although he can't make books disappear with a flashy light just by picking them up, doesn't mean he doesn't get to call them skill books, he thinks to himself, not envious about his nerfed skill system at all.

He sees he has several books for speed reading, Mind mapping (which looks like a shit version of occlumency), mediation, calligraphy (since he will have to write with a quill), a guide for becoming ambidextrous (Which he hadn't expected and doesn't think would work but sounds quite useful if his system can help) and a book for enhancing memory. Looking at the books he realises that many of them are actually covered in occlumency but maybe some of the muggle methods will be helpful when learning occlumency. Since his system will take the information inputted through reading and find the most effective method, it's in reality, a good idea to read all sorts of things anyway as you never know when they will be helpful, he convinces himself.

Starting with the speed reading books he gets to work, and this is how he continues for the next three days, after that first day he had finished all the books to help him study. That night before bed when he went to practice clearing his mind for his occlumency he had no problems, showing that reading more books truly helps, he could even tell a lot of the stuff from the muggle books on mediation and enhancing memory greatly improved his speed. He made a note to get more of those kinds of books in the future before falling asleep.

The Day after was just the same with reading through more of the occlumency books, stopping to clear his mind every few hours to see how he had improved. It was that night that he first found himself in his mindscape, His mind just looked like an empty space except for the floating bubbles of what he presumes are memories, it had no order with his past life and this lives memories all jumbled together and no security at all. He started the first mental exercise which is sorting through his memory's and putting them in order in a library.

He only got a small part done that night before he fell asleep, but he was feeling much better now that he could feel he was making progress. The day after he spent nearly the entire day in his mind sorting memories to the point where he ate all his meals in his office. Going through his old memory's was very educational, however, since he had many memory's that were of a personal nature already removed so that he wouldn't have to deal with leaving anyone he cared about in that life behind.

The memories of his younger self in this life were of much more importance, instead of just a rough idea of his life before he arrived here, he was starting to get an in-depth look. He wasn't overly impressed with how he acted before, although he had been intelligent, he was quite lazy and arrogant, he could see why the maids were always shocked when he was polite with them. It wasn't that he was rude before, he just generally ignored them unless he needed something.

He could also tell that he used to be a very lonely child, Vittoria really should have bought him a pet of some sort he thinks to himself. The best thing about going through his memories was that the sort of multi-personality vibe he kept getting while thinking of this body as a different person had been removed. Now he just thought of both his old life and his earlier life in this body as his own.

It was the next morning that he was happy enough with where he was to join Vittoria for meals again and stop rushing his occlumency. He still had a few books to finished and he wasn't quite finished organising his memories but that could be finished in a day or two. The pressure that had been subconsciously making him want to sort out his mind was now gone, and he felt much more relaxed. He took a look at his skill list after a few days before heading to breakfast.

Skills

General

Wild Magic - 1 - Natural magic (accidental Magic when uncontrolled)

Mind Magic

Occlumency - 21 - Protection of the mind

Mundane Mental Skills

Languages - 4

French - 75

English - 72

Speed Reading - 13

Meditation - 15

Calligraphy - 7

He is quite pleased to see the new skills and a solid increase in his occlumency skill, the memory enhancement books, and mind mapping books helped increase it as well instead of becoming their own skills

Vittoria seemed quite pleased to see him that morning, "Glad to see you join me this morning, has your manic study session come to an end?" she asked jokingly. Alucard seems a bit sheepish at having essentially ignored her for the last few days, answers "Yeah, sorry about that, I didn't notice till I had sorted through my memory's that my mind was under a lot of pressure from a whole lives worth of new memories". Vittoria seems a bit shocked at that information, not having considered it. "But you are fine now? Do you need any help? I can contact a mind healer if you need one?" she asks slightly anxiously making it clear she is worried about him.

Alucard reassures her that it is fine and in a few more days he will be complete with the first stage of occlumency. He then asks what she has been doing the last few days. She explains that she has just been going over the usual family business. Alucard looks interested, "I would like if you would give me some of your time to go over what family business we have. I would like to take a bigger role, so I know what's going on" He informs her. Alucard still has no idea what the assets of his family are like, although he is sure the Lestrange Family is very wealthy, he doesn't even know what family his mother is from.

"Sure, we can go over your assets as well as businesses after breakfast if you would like?" she offers. She seems like she would enjoy spending time together which isn't something he will be complaining about. He agrees, saying that he would enjoy that, and they finish up eating and both head off to her office. Taking a seat at her desk she starts looking through the drawers pulling out various folders and parchment work.

"Ok let me write out a summary for you, that way you can easily see what you have and ask about anything you are not sure about. We will go over the Lestrange family first, then your mother's family since you are heir to her family too." Vittoria explains to him as she starts looking through some parchment and making notes of certain things.