The Next Step in Legilimency

Classes were back in session. This allowed Harry to go back to his regular routine. He had spent practically the entire duration of the holidays in the darkness of the Slytherin tunnels. It had been an exiting if not very fruitful adventure. In a way, it was nevertheless nice to be back among the living.

"I can't believe you were down there for the last two weeks." Theo exclaimed.

"Look here, I made a map of all the tunnels I searched." Harry wanted to show something for all the work. He had not been able to find Mafalda, but the extensive map proved that it was not for lack of trying.

Theo leaned over the map. "Wow, that is awesome, what are all these symbols?"

"These here are the rooms with lighting. I tried to mark down everything I found. Especially if they had any cool feature. This one for example has a stream and some strange animals in it. I wanted to make sure that I could find them again, if need be."

"What about this one, with the pentagram?"

"That was a strange room, my lamp went out. It looked like magic was blocked there or something. Before the light went out, I could see this big circle of seven lines and in the center of it there was a pentagram. I don't know what it was for."

"That must have been a ritual room. Pentagrams are usually used for that kind of stuff. The seven lines denote the strongest category of ritual circles. You see, they can only be build in certain places. Depending on the inherent magic of the precise location, they can strengthen the ritual. Many rituals can only be done at a circle of a given strength."

"Have you ever done such a ritual?" Harry had never heard of this type of magic.

Theo lowered his voice. "The Ministry of Magic has outlawed ritual magic. Many view them as dark magic, since they often involve soul, blood or sacrificial magic. My family has a fifth category ritual chamber in our house. My father taught me about some rituals last summer."

"And the Dungeons has one right there!" Harry pointed onto the map.

"It must be from the time of Salazar Slytherin himself. He was well known to have performed some powerful rituals."

"Is there a ritual we could use to find Mafalda?"

"If there is we would need some of her blood or hair or something. Besides, its super illegal, if we were caught doing that, we could get time in Azkaban." Theo answered. He seemed taken by the idea, despite his negative response.

"I get it, it was just a thought. Searching for Mafalda as we have, seems pointless. It is like searching for a needle in a hey stack. There has to be a better way."

HPU

"What we can agree on is that you were too slow. Your physical abilities and casting speed is something of a limit. A limit that can be pushed through various means, mainly practice and some dubious to dark rituals. But a limit nevertheless. But there is another way to improve your reaction time. You can think more efficiently, think faster." Snape summarized their physical practice of two days before. As always there were very little positive observations, but a lot of things to improve. They sat in Harry's room and started Legilimency practice.

"I thought we have been working on this through Legilimency for the past four months?" Harry said, a little frustration seeping through.

"Of course, I am merely talking about another step of Legilimency. One rather difficult one. From now on we will spend part of the time developing your Mind council."

"Sounds interesting, what is it?"

"It's a fascinating approach to using ones mind. In short, it is a method of dividing your mind into independent parts, called developed councilors. You can then task them with problems that you need solved while you can focus on other things."

"But wouldn't make that the individual parts dumber?" Harry asked.

"It would, if you always use your full mental capacity. But in fact we never do. Add to that that the compartmentalization is dynamic, each developed councilor only uses as much as needed for the task, the rest is still available to you."

"Is there no danger in splintering your mind?"

"Quite a bit. It is very easy to lose ones mind, using a mind council." Snape frowned. "I am a bit hesitant to introduce this already to you. Most Legilimens are not ready to even look at this technique until at least a year of Legilimency practice. Most need at least two. But you consistently surprise me in your Legilimency abilities, and since the longer each councilor is developed, the better they become, I will introduce this to you now. Professor Dumbledore also encouraged me to push you to this as soon as possible."

Harry swallowed hard. His Moody alarm bells rung deafeningly in his mind. Was Snape basically setting him up for failure? "I promise to be careful, Professor."

"I hope so." Snape smirked. "I will introduce you to three of my councilors. We will meet in a small chamber I have put up just for this. Therein I will introduce you to some basics of this craft. I also want you to read this manual in the next two weeks."

He took the small, beaten up booklet and scanned the title, Mind Councilors: The Most Fickle and Most Rewarding of the Mind Arts, by Stephan Rosier. Harry wondered, what did fickle mean in this circumstance? He would have to be careful. Constant vigilance and all that…

"Potter, enter." Snape pulled Harry out of his wandering thoughts. Harry looked at Snape.

"Legilimens," Harry entered Snap's mind, but was instantly redirected. He was guided into what appeared to be a little bare room. Snape and Harry remained in a corner of the room. In the middle stood a round table, and three people stood around it.

"This is merely an instructional construct. The three councilors you see are each only allotted a nominal amount of my mental abilities. Really they are dunderheads. I have instructed them to find the best excuses to take points from Gryffindor. As you can tell, they came up with very different approaches. This is because they have very different personalities. If you are able to set this up, then this will help you find novel solutions, and aid you in thinking outside the box."

Harry examined the three. One was an old wizard in screaming, purple robes. He had a long white beard and looked to be modeled after Dumbledore. Next to him was a wizard about Snape's age. He wore the same black robes as Snape did but had short brown-red hair. To the right of him was a blond witch in her twenties. She wore more of a Muggle style dress. Rather short and revealing.

They were debating the merits of their respective excuses for taking points from Gryffindors.

Harry asked: "They are not copies of you, but are they based on people you know?"

"When one creates councilors, they can be created completely from scratch or based on some model. It is advisable to make them different enough to not get confused. If you use a model that is too close to someone else, you might get subconsciously confused between who is who. Remember, the councilors develop on their own once you set the initial parameters. You can of course go back and tweak them, but you might not always be aware of how they develop."

"Ideally not use real life models," Harry said, starring at the Dumbledore doppelganger, "got it."

Snape smirked. And shouted: "Intruder alert, help!"

Instantly the three councilors silenced. A moment they were still, looking between Harry and Snape.

Then in a flurry of action, they reacted.

The young witch sprinted at him, while throwing lightning bolts out of her hands. The wizard Snape's age, stood still but hurled basket ball sized glowing things at him.

Nether could hold anything on the Dumbledore look alike.

He brought forth a tornado.

It ripped the ceiling apart, exposing nothing but black emptiness. The debris from the ceiling was redirected by the winds of the tornado at Harry.

Before Harry realized what happened, he was laying on the floor of his chamber.

His head hurt.

He was physically perfectly healthy, but a strong migraine made itself felt.

"What uses have you seen in this little demonstration?" Snape asked as he sneered down.

Harry picked himself up and shakily sat on his chair, from which he had just fallen. "You tasked the three councilors with a little question. I assume there is no restrictions to what you can ask them to do?"

"Mostly, you can't exactly turn your mind into a computer. But otherwise, there are endless possibilities. As long as it is something inside your mind, obviously. What else?"

Harry thought of his time with the Dursleys. "They could be friends?"

"This is one of the pitfalls of the practice. If one is not careful you can stay inside your mind and never do anything. But yes, it can help with loneliness. But that is not what I am trying to teach you."

"You made you councilors attack me, to give me a headache. They are great for your Occlumency defenses."

"Mind councilors are the best Occlumency defense you can have. You can use them for both the search and the expulsion of intruding Legilimens."

"But were they really so stupid as you said? They did wandless magic." Harry questioned.

"They barely used any of my mental capacity. You saw how hard they struggled with the simple task I gave them. They would have had no chance of finding you if you had hid, but in a duel they did not have a challenge. They did not need much knowledge for that. You must remember, we were inside the outer reaches of my mind. I hold all the cards in the hands. That is why they are so good at expulsion. Also, if they were really tasked with expulsion, than if they meant to they could not only cause headaches, but also really harm you mentally and physically. Only the most powerful of Legilimens has a chance against three mind councilors in an open duel."

"Are seeking councilors harder to develop?"

"Very much so. Legilimency specializes in the covert attack of the mind. It takes considerable effort to defend against it. When a search team of councilors is fully active it can take up as much as a third of your mental capacity, or more, to be effective."

Silence fell between them. Harry tried to digest all the information. But, his headache was worsening.

"I think this will be enough for today. I want to stress again, however, this is very fickle magic. We will go over different components that factor into this, over the next year or so. Do not attempt to develop a councilor until I give you the go ahead. Trying it too soon could be fatal. Am I clear?"

"Crystal clear, Professor."

HPU

A few days later, Harry sat, once again, in the great hall. He was eating his dinner, with Theo to his right.

In stormed Director Crouch Sr. with Percy in tow. Harry had to laugh, the manner with which Percy waltzed into the hall reminded Harry of last year, when he had been head boy. He seemed to think that he owned the place. As head boy this behavior had made at least some sense, but as lackey to a Ministry official it was out of place.

"May I interrupt your meal for a moment. I have an announcement." Crouch proclaimed, using the sonorus charm. He did not seem particularly concerned about interrupting the meal of the students. "I have business for the Ministry, that will take me away from Hogwarts for the next week. Unfortunately this will mean that I will not be able to come to the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. In order to not leave one of the judges chairs empty, I have decided to promote Mr. Percy Weasley to Deputy-Director of the Department of International Magical Cooperation." First Crouch started clapping, and then everybody followed suit, a bit more subdued. Percy thrust his chest out like a peacock.

After a few moments, the tumult settled down.

Not long after this announcement, Harry saw the Weasley twins get up. He was finished with dinner as well, so he decided to see if they knew more about Percy and Mafalda. Theo followed suite.

"For a Weasley, he seems to rise rather rapidly." Theo commented as they were leaving the great hall.

"I'm curious. Everyone knows Percy is ambitious. And as head boy last year he showed how well he would fit with the Ministry. Maybe he will be able to do something about Mafalda. The Weasley twins just left lunch, maybe they will tell us more."

In the big hallway outside the great hall, was quite a tumult. Students going and coming to lunch. But the Weasley twins were easily found. Two tall redheads are hard to overlook.

"Weasleys!" Harry shouted.

The two halted and turned simultaneously inwards. Harry wondered if they practiced that.

"Our favorite fourth year Slytherin." The one on the left said.

"Are you scared how Percy will judge your next performance?" The one on the right said.

"About that, how is he Deputy-Director already?" Theo threw in. "He was at Hogwarts last year, and now … this."

"Mum wont stop fawning over him."

"He sprouts around, thinks he know everything…"

"… and everybody. 'It's who you know not what.'"

"But he must be good at his job for him to rise so quickly." Theo interrupted the upcoming rant of the twins.

"Percy always was the perfect mix of perfectionism, work ethic and ass licking to succeed in the Ministry." The one on the left answered.

"And it looks like Crouch is one of those who likes yes-men under him." The one on the right said.

"Has Percy used his position 'in the know' to push for helping Mafalda?" Harry interjected. "My search this Christmas has not been successful."

"You misunderstand. Percy has not been promoted because he fixes problems."

"Even if that problem happens to be a missing student."

"Who happens to be his cousin."

"No, he is just good at schmoozing."

"And the people he is schmoozing don't want there to be a missing student."

"Therefore there is no missing cousin in Percy's world."

"If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody saw it fall…"

"And that is why Percy is going to judge you on your performance in the next task."

Percy was the fifth judge for the second task. Who would have thought. That reminded Harry, only a few more days and it was there. With all the searching for Mafalda, he had let that slide a bit to the back burner.

Harry was a bit nervous. The first task had been a close call. He had barely made it. But the wizarding public had decried it as too easy. Harry had no doubt that this task would be harder. At the same time he was calm enough to forget about it. Before the first task he would have never been distracted enough to forget how soon the task would be.

He had prepared hard. Even with Snape's constant nagging, Harry could tell, he was getting better. His reaction times had improved. His strategic thinking was more Slytherin. He could not see how his stamina could get any better.

Harry did not fear the next task.

HPU

Defense was almost over.

"A Potter, you have not faced my imperio in a while. Who rests rusts, as they say. Imperio"

Harry felt the pleasant sensation of the curse landing on him. He felt the urgent need to wash the black board non-magically.

Knowing what to look for made resisting the curse almost easy, Harry thought. He shrugged mentally.

"With all respect, you can wash the black board yourself, Professor."

"Did it even take hold, Potter?"

"I felt the curse come over me, but I didn't let it settle."

"Well done, At least in this regard, you have little room to improve. Five points Slytherin. And stay alert tomorrow. Class dismissed."

AN. It's been a while. I had stuff to do, but I should still have found time to do this. I must admit I discovered this game, OpenTTD and building a train netwook suddenly kind of ate a lot of my time. I am back though, my goal is to update at least once a week for the foreseeable future. Things should pick up now as well.

A note on Legilimency vs Occlumency. I know, Legilimency is the art of knowledge and Occlumency is the defense of the mind (see Ch. 2). It seems in my story the term Legilimency has become bigger. I have used it as an umbrella term for the mind arts, and exercises relating to them. So, I guess Legilimency in a strict sense still refers to the technical definition, but it is often used more loosely, as a term referring to the mind arts as a whole. This kind of bugged me when I was writing this chapter, but I have used it like that consistently, so I didn't want to change it. Also, for some reason, Legilimency practice sounds better then Occlumency practice in my ears.

Next up, the Second task.