"Taking the threads of klatha you've gathered, spin them together into a line," The Leewit explained to the young boy in her arms, sending a series of images to his mind.
"I've got it," Harry said proudly as he felt the thin threads of magic combine into a line a little thicker than a strand of hair.
"Now, shape it like this," the young witch added, sending the picture of an S shaped line with a hook on top and watching through Harry's senses as he relled it snapping into the desired shape, the pliable energy suddenly feeling almost solid. "Perfect, now make another."
Harry was guided through the process to create more and more of them until he had a dozen floating in his mind's eye.
"Fit them together around your mind like this," The Leewit explained, showing how to weave them together into a net.
"Oh," Harry said as everything snapped into place, a thin blanket of warmth setting in around his mind.
"If you get really upset you'll still broadcast what you're thinking, but it's a good first layer," The Leewit fold him, her pride in his achievement easily felt through the klatha line linking their minds. "In a couple of weeks when you get used to it, we'll work on adding another layer."
"How many layers do you have?" he asked curiously.
"Sixty-four," The Leewit said proudly. "I'm kind of a private person, at least in my head."
"Oh," Harry said quietly, wondering if he was invading her privacy, connected as they were.
"I don't want a bunch of people listening to my thoughts, but you're different, you're my friend," she assured him.
He smiled at the possessive feel of her thoughts. He'd spent most of his life being an unwanted burden, so the knowledge that she wanted to be his friend and spend time with him soothed an ache in his soul. He ignored her rage at the Dursleys, which he was getting used to as the more she learned of how they'd treated him the more she yearned to set them on fire.
"So, now what?" Harry asked.
"Most people are pretty tired after making their first layer, but you don't feel tired at all," she noted with some surprise. "I figured we'd just rest up so you could recover. Didn't really have anything planned."
"Could we make another layer?" he asked, thinking one layer was a long way from sixty-four.
"Not a good idea," The Leewit said, "if you put up too many layers without taking the time to get used to them you numb your emotions making everything seem flat and dull."
"Oh," Harry said, unconsciously cuddling further into her arms, saddened at the idea of losing the feeling of warmth he had right now.
"You can always remove a layer," she assured him, "but it's easier just not to put one up in the first place." She felt him unconsciously wrap a thin thread of klatha around the line she'd cast on him, making it a hair thicker, and grinned. "One layer is fine for now, you're a natural at this."
Harry beamed, not used to compliments, especially ones he could feel were genuine. He examined the web surrounding his mind and a thought came to him. "For some reason I thought we'd be moving my memories around, making a pile of similar ones here, hiding important ones there, like we were building a library or something."
"There's probably a technique for that," The Leewit said, thinking it sounded interesting, but not quite sure how one would go about it as the method she used was concentrated more on locating where each memory already was and the thread connecting it.
Harry saw flashes of memory from her as Leewit's thoughts seemed to dance among the many threads from the incredibly complicated web protecting her mind.
"I don't think it's safe to physically move a memory, cause it's actually connected to your brain and actually stored in a bunch of places… but reorganizing the addresses could work."
Harry's confusion sorted itself out as Leewit showed what she knew about how the brain stored information in chemical bonds between nerves, making multiple copies, each with addresses based on their connections to each other. "Wow," he said in wonder, while niggling thoughts about memory storage in the soul, separate from the body, bubbled up from somewhere.
"I think that's all stuff you'll learn when we're older," The Leewit decided. "It's not safe to poke around a soul without a lot of training… and that training is probably a lot of people saying, 'don't poke around a soul."
Harry giggled, picturing the two of them poking a ghostly white mist with a stick.
"Getting familiar with your own mind is probably the best we can do for now," she decided, "and it's what I know how to do."
"Cool," Harry said. "Let's do it!"
0o0o0o0o0o0o
Deciding to start out with something easy The Leewit showed him when she was six and her older sisters decided they wanted to go exploring some of the colony worlds outside the empire.
Harry watched in wonder as they snuck on an outgoing spaceship and hopped from one spaceport to another, preferring freighters and spaceliners so there were plenty of places to hide in, as opposed to the smaller ships which were usually pretty cramped.
The Leewit was amused by the things Harry found fascinating, like ray guns and robots, while having little interest in the ship's systems while they crawled through ducts or snuck into the control room to alter the records to disguise their presence. The Leewit was also a bit embarrassed by all the scenes of her older sisters babying her on the trip and was surprised to feel that Harry didn't find them embarrassing but rather looked at them wistfully, wishing he'd had an older sister who cared enough to try and protect him like that.
The Leewit shared her frustration at being protected from things she could handle, but admitted it was motivated by love and not an attempt to disparage her skills. In a few scenes she even found herself agreeing with her older sisters that she probably couldn't have handled it as well as she thought at that age.
She missed her sisters. The Leewit hadn't even realized how lonely she'd gotten as it had crept up on her. Sure, she had friends, but their interests were different than hers, so she'd ended up alone a lot.
She felt Harry turn and hug her as the memory continued with the three sisters getting caught by the empire as they raided the colony for slaves and the memory ended.
"That was amazing!" Harry exclaimed excitedly.
The Leewit grinned. "You can see it's connected to a bunch of threads because it has a bunch of associations."
Harry followed her mental guidance as she showed him where it linked to other thoughts and memories and that in fact there were numerous copies of the memory with slightly different emphasis on details with each one.
"How much space do we have in our heads?" he asked, not quite sure what he was asking and wondering if adults got forgetful because they ran out of space.
The Leewit knew what he meant, having wondered that herself and asked her mum years earlier so she knew the answer. "No one has yet, though after a couple hundred years the brain's architecture gets massively complex."
"A couple hundred years?!" Harry asked in disbelief, thinking about how the oldest person on record was just a little over a century.
"Being witches we can age shift, so we don't have to get old," The Leewit explained before breaking out in giggles as Harry pictured her as a little old lady because she seemed to know so much. "This is my real age," the young witch assured him. "Anyways, as I was saying, the older you are the more complex your mind is and the more you can cram in it."
"That's a relief," Harry said, "while I wouldn't mind forgetting some things, I'd hate to forget important moments."
"Now, let's share one of your memories," she said.
Harry frowned and wondered what to share, his mind flitting through dozens of memorable moments in his young life before settling on one that wasn't too awful or embarrassing. "Here is the time I flew up to the top of the school…"
0o0o0o0o0o
Toll looked up from her tea as she heard the roar of someone traveling the Egger Route and relled The Leewit and Harry arriving in their bedroom. She jumped up and hurried inside to restrain them so they wouldn't hurt themselves, but when she flung open the bedroom door she found them wrapped up in blankets and sprawled on Goth's old bed talking to each other in Harry's language already prepared for the coming seizures.
"Using blankets to telekinetically restrain yourself," she said with a nod, "smart." She watched, ready to help if needed, knowing how important it was to let them learn to deal with things on their own, but after a quarter of an hour passed the blankets slithered off them and they stood up. "No seizures?" she asked curiously.
"Didn't get any going the other way either," The Leewit confirmed.
"Huh," she said, shocked as some of their hottest talents had tried and failed to come up with a way to prevent people suffering seizures for traveling the Egger Route.
"It was a short trip, we only swam to Earth, but I doubt that had anything to do with it," The Leewit told her mum.
Toll nodded thoughtfully. "Well, let us know if you figure it out. So, what brought you back so quickly? I figured we wouldn't see you two for a week or more not just overnight."
"Forgot my quiver and to do laundry," The Leewit replied.
"It's not good to rush," Toll teased her with a smile.
"Also, forgot to pack a lantern, food, probably a number of other things," The Leewit admitted.
Toll frowned, unable to think of a reply to that. 'Maybe we have been teasing her a bit much', she decided.
"I'll make you a large meal while you're taking care of that," Toll said apologetically while letting her love and pride of her daughter radiate.
"Wow," Harry said, after Toll had left having felt the emotions second hand through Leewit who was trying not to be 'touchy feely' about it but was really happy and made a mental note to hug her mum before they left.
"Come on, we should shower while we're here," The Leewit told him, "there's no telling when we'll get a chance while we're exploring, and we can't just swim back every night." She paused and considered that. "Okay, since we haven't been having convulsions and such going Egger we probably could, but it wouldn't feel like exploring if we did that."
Harry nodded, her good mood pushing away any trace of envy he might have felt for having a mother who was everything he'd ever wished for in a mum.
"Mum's a pretty fast cook and we're both hungry, so we'll just have to share a shower," The Leewit told him, ignoring Harry's sudden trepidation. She knew he was ashamed of how small he was and the scars he'd gained from living with the Dursleys and she was determined to make him realize they weren't signs that he was weak, but instead evidence of how much he'd survived.
Sharing and sorting through some of their memories together had given both of them a greater understanding of one another, but even feeling The Leewit's emotions and knowing she wasn't lying he had a hard time accepting that none of it was his fault or something to feel ashamed of.
The Leewit knew it might take years before Harry was healed from the wounds the Dursleys had left on his psyche and she was determined to heal them as quickly as possible… and to one day travel back in time and set his relatives on fire.
"Won't your mum be mad?" Harry asked, searching for an excuse to avoid exposing all his old wounds and injuries.
"We haven't hit puberty yet and when we do, we'll have more than enough self-discipline to wait until we're properly married before doing anything non-witch parents worry about," The Leewit replied grabbing his hand.
Harry allowed her to pull him along feeling her determination to help him through his shame and embarrassment… and to set the Dursleys on fire, which was getting really easy to overlook as it never seemed to go away, like part of her mind had decided its function was to feel the urge to set his relatives on fire as naturally as the section next to it was to control her breathing.
"Faster we get this done, the faster we eat," The Leewit encouraged him.
0o0o0o0o0o
Toll moved around the kitchen, knives slicing up vegetables and mashing potatoes seeming of their own volition, while she set the table, the roast on the stove cooking itself, though there was no visible source of heat or flame with a couple of small containers hovering over it, adding spices as necessary.
A quick flicker of her mind's eye showed the two children were comparing scars as they washed up. Surprisingly, it seemed to make Harry a little less timid. Toll smiled, pleased to see the young boy showing clear, if minor, signs of recovery from what he'd been through and that The Leewit was coming out of her shell as well.
While not a major concern she'd been a bit worried about how quiet her daughter had become since her older sisters had moved out. Why, it had been months since she'd broken anything in the house!
Humming to herself Toll poured herself another cup of tea while the food finished cooking itself and floated to the table.
It was only a few minutes later before the children arrived, Harry's stomach growling loudly and embarrassing him as he smelled the food.
"Well, don't just stand there, dig in," Toll told them.
Harry and The Leewit didn't need to be told twice as they quickly took their seats and The Leewit grabbed Harry's plate and filled it to overflowing before placing it in front of him.
"Make sure you finish your plate," The Leewit told him, "healer's orders." She then filled her own plate with nearly as much.
Toll smiled as she saw that Harry wasn't put off by how pushy her youngest was and in fact seemed to enjoy it. "So, what have you two been up to?"
"Decided to poke around Earth, since it's right there," The Leewit explained in between bites. "We appeared in an empty apartment building in Canada with the first four floors buried in snow. The Upper levels are warm and have power, but the place is cleaned out for the most part. Harry cast his first spell, creating a ball of light so we could see where we were going. Haven't been able to copy it yet myself, I just keep making a ball of fire."
"It should be easy with your skill in light shaping," Toll said curiously.
"And it would be if he was shifting light," The Leewit agreed, "but what he's doing is creating it without any fires, just a big ball of light like it's a thing you do."
"We all have our gifts," Toll said, "it took you years to figure out how to teleport small objects like Goth does."
"Harry can already teleport himself," The Leewit said with a grin, "and not by the Egger Route."
"That's fairly advanced," Toll congratulated Harry who tilted his head, blushed, and looked down with a smile on his face.
"I've got a line on him or he has one on me," The Leewit explained as she saw her mother was curious about how Harry was understanding them, "so I'm translating for him."
"If Goth had tossed a line on Captain Pausert when he first arrived, I'd have teased her unmercifully," Toll said with a pout.
"And I really appreciate you not teasing me," The Leewit assured her mother.
"I know," she said with a sigh. "I'll try and save it all up for your teenage years."
The Leewit took a second, deciding on the appropriate response to that announcement, before she pushed her plate forward and thunked her head on the table.
Typing by: fyrewolf5