Chapter 8: Inception
A/N: Not dead. Hopefully more updates coming soon.
She was falling, her hair rustling in the wind. Beneath her, an unending, unceasing void. And yet-she was at peace. It felt like she was floating, a bliss washing over her. She took a deep breath. It smelled like strawberries.
No.
Emily shook herself free from the mind-haze. Of course the girl knew Occulmency. Most of the upper class did; a virtual requirement for living in a world dominated by witches and wizards. With the haze wiped clean, a light appeared before her: a manhole in the blank void. Emily aimed for it and twirled through it, the momentum propelling her high into the air in this upside-down world. In the distance: the Eiffel Tower and the Hallows flag flying proudly above it. Paris.
She whipped out her wand-or would've, had she not been wandless and indeed, magicless. This was her mind. I need to play by her rules. Emily therefore didn't cast a spell or do anything else. She just willed herself to not be hurt by the crash back on the ground. And then-she just bounced a bit as the ground took the impact, like a child's ball. A passing crowd stopped and stared at her.
Normal thoughts, she warned herself. Wiping her own mind, she sidestepped the hole back to the void world and tried to blend in by walking on the sidewalk. The crowd, hungry like watching vultures, stared at her in brusque silence. But, after a minute of glaring, they went back to their lives, as if Emily were nothing at all. She turned the corner to another street, and immediately recognized the tell-tale Himalayan mountains, stretching out before her, Everest standing proud in the center.
She needed to find Melania, and quick. Most decent Occulmens could create elaborate mental shields against full-on intrusion. The more creative the mind, the better the protection. Emily herself liked mazes and games that never had any solution. It wasn't the best defense possible; Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw a year younger than her, could trap people twice her age in her mind. Emily never had a go into Loony's head, but apparently, Lavender Brown had lost the ability to speak words for two days afterwards. When she finally snapped out of it, all she could say was, again and again, "I have no mouth, and I must scream". Hopefully Melania wasn't that good.
With nowhere else to go but up, she started climbing. The hike, in the real world, could take days. It probably never would've ended, much like Emily's own mazes. The solution was just to punch through the walls and make your own shortcuts, all while not triggering the active defenses of the mind.
I'm on the top of Mount Everest, Emily thought. And in a single step forward, she was. Here, the skyline was an inverted blue orb, stretching infinitely up. Above her: the warmer dot of Paris and other, different structures. Clearly, Everest was supposed to be an impossible get; it was physically impossible to reach via normal methods. But, like most things in a mindscape, it could be cheated.
She looked around, trying to find the next step in the puzzle. Her stomach turned in on itself as she saw it. The telltale silver skulls led by whitened face of Lord Voldemort himself. He led the procession of Death Eaters towards her, only a few feet beneath her. It was the one reason why she hated legilimency: for some reason, perhaps due to the fact he killed her parents, he was always there, and often joined the Occulmency defenses in repelling Emily. One time, when breaching Ron's mind to practice for the NEWTs, he'd caught her, and cursed her to the brink of madness, to a point where Neville Longbottom instead reverse-legilimized her (it led to their quick fling, so she couldn't complain too much).
There was nothing else on the summit save for a small doorway some thirty feet above her, leading to a whole different world beyond it. A glance at Voldemort: his red-tinted eyes glared back at her. Shit. She had to go, and go now. There was no way to reach the door portal, except to… yes, it was the only way. Looking at Paris, she thought I am falling. And then-gravity and the world around lurched, grabbing her from the navel.
Righting herself just in time, she fell through the door, emerging right side up in a narrow, long-hallway. Glancing at the approaching Voldemort behind her, she shut the door, and reopened it, seeing nothing but wooden wall. That bought her some time, but he had her scent now. It wouldn't take long before he found her again.
She had emerged into an underwater hotel, she realized as she stepped into a cavernous wooden room. Pillars of stone stood erected, etched with Asian letters. Beyond the thin, transparent glass, fish and merpeople swam. The people within moved about with little care in swishing robes and drinks in hand. Judging by the outerwear and other banners on the wall, she figured it must've been somewhere in Japan. And there, at the bar, a girl who stood out from the rest of the crowd: Melania herself.
Emily took a deep breath and approached her. The rest of the mental constructs took little notice of the new arrival; for now, at least. With Voldemort on her trail and judging by the amount of defenses, she really only had one strategy for a chance of success: a woman in the middle attack. It was extraordinarily risky and very likely to not work. But it was her only shot. Worst case, she'd have to mind-wipe Melania and try again-as long as Voldemort didn't catch her, that is.
She reached the bar and flashed a single upraised finger to the bartender, who handed her a white, milky substance. She took a swig; it tasted like rosewater mixed with sake. Emily took a glance at Melania, who had still not noticed her.
"Excuse me miss?" Emily asked.
Melania spared her a quick glance, flashing her long eyelashes. "Yes?"
"Do you know who I am?" Emily asked.
She put her drink down, taking a closer look at Emily. "You do look a bit familiar." As she said this, the other mental constructs stopped their buzzing, inaudible conversations to stare at them.
"I'm Susan Bones, your head of security. Do you remember?"
Melania blinked rapidly. "Susan? I don't-" her voice was drowned out by the bartender shattering a glass in his hand. The other constructs grew silver masks from a growing sheen of fog.
"Focus, ma'am," Emily said. "I'm your head of security. Do you know why I'm here?"
Melania scratched her forehead as the bartender himself turned into a Death Eater. "Someone's trying to get into my mind."
"That's right," Emily said, nodding. "I'm here to help you defend your mind."
The hallway leading to Everest shattered then, Voldemort stepping out from the debris. "Who is it?" Melania asked.
"I don't know ma'am, I'm just a mental projection myself. I'm you."
"Lies", Lord Voldemort hissed. Poor Melania looked even more confused.
"Listen," Emily said. "You need to lower your shields and let me inside. I can shore up your defenses."
"How do I know I can trust you?" Melania asked
"Because, I am you," Emily said, and with a careful thought, transformed herself into the mirror image of her victim.
The real Melania looked at her doppelganger, then nodded. In that instant, Emily grabbed Melania's arms and stepped deeper into her mind.
I am three years old. It's my first memory. I'm in my father's home. He's not here. He never is. Miss Penelope raises us. She's a nice Muggle lady. She's not being nice now. I'm red-handed and caught: I took a toy wand from the next-door neighbor's older kid. I tried to cast a spell. It didn't work. Now it's cold and I'm hungry and I want to eat and have my warm blanky.
I am older now. In a white building with white-tuniced people. My father is here. It's one of the few times I've seen him. He's an older man, with a rough face-scarred and pox-marked. He spares me a glare, but never a smile. The white tunics come in. They run several wands over me. Force me to drink a potion, or several. I don't recall much. It was all a haze. But I know I don't have it. The gift, they call it.
Father beats me. Calls me weak. A squib. His wand lashes out in a vicious red. I feel pain. All my nerves on fire. It's worse than death. And I want to die. Let him please dash my head against the hall. Crucify me. Anything but this! And then it stops.
He has other daughters, and forces me to stay with them. Miss Penelope is killed in the central square. She'd mated with her husband and birthed an accursed. I don't get why they killed her. She was nice to me.
I met Clarissa today. She's funny and smart and a better person than me. Lives in the flat next to mine. I wish I was her.
The other girls aren't as sympathetic. We each fight for father's attention. The older ones get a nice wizarding husband. The less lucky are just rotated in and out of relationships.
Today, I found out about privilege. On a whim, I took a Knight Bus to Unterlondon. The abject poverty! The abject horror! Father cares nothing for us, but at least we're fed well enough. I'd never wanted for anything. To think: people fight for scraps of rotten rat!
The last of the other girls left today. Now it's just me. The others married, or are romping elsewhere, and some are dead. Even father doesn't visit anymore. Too busy to care about his solitary Squib, the youngest of his brood.
I use my allowance to purchase a new flat with Clarissa. I like her a lot. I don't know if she feels the same about me. It can't be of course. As squibs, we have a duty to breed a new magicals.
We met Sirius Black today. His sister downright scares us, but he seems alright. Good pedigree, nice sense of humor. Clarissa wants to bone him and leave him. But I think the forever bachelor can be swooned to marriage. If we both play hard to get, we can seduce him.
The plan is working. We haven't lain with him once, and already, he's ravenous for more. Not that I want him, truly, as an equal partner. I don't love him. All I want from him is his name. To think: me, a Black! Father would be both proud and furious.
Clarissa kissed me tonight. She was drunk, I was drunk. We'd just come back from a party with Black. She apologized. I did too. But I didn't mean it.
I see two witches. They cast a spell on Clarissa! And then: blackness.
Emily cast obliviate and erased that last part. She parted her arms from Melania's, bringing herself back to the hotel. She was a little shaken, seeing more of herself in Melania than she'd like to admit. And now, with Polyjuice, she would become her-in body and spirit.
"Crucio!" Voldemort yelled. The torture curse splashed over Emily as she yelled in her mind to wake up. It felt just as bad as the real thing.
Another torture curse hit her. "Wake me up, Hermione!" she yelled, hoping the other witch heard. The pain flared, and she collapsed onto the ground.
The windows cracked and shattered open, a fountain of cold water streaming out. Voldemort's wand tip glowed green. The water hit her. And then-
Emily opened her eyes, her face red-hot. She was on the ground, next to Melania, Hermione standing above her. She took a deep breath. Hermione reached down, and pulled her up.
"You all right?" Hermione asked.
Emily nodded. "Mental defences." She left out the Master's underling invading her mind yet again.
Hermione nodded. "You pull all the info you could?"
"Yeah. Melania's in love with Clarissa."
"Really? Well, that's not what Clarissa believes. In either case, we can get away with being hard to get with Sirius."
"If he doesn't propose to us at the party."
"He's gaudy but not that gaudy." Hermione's plucked a handful of hairs from both. "C'mon. Did you obliviate her?"
Emily cast a full mind-wipe. "She's forgotten all about the invite to Black's and our faces."
"Same. Well, all right," Hermione smiled. Emily felt a flitter in the pit of her stomach, like Melania felt looking at Clarissa. She shook her head, wiping the thought from her mind."Let's go see how Ronald is faring."
They did one final sweep to clear evidence and made sure to obliviate the entrance guard before apparating back to Hermione's flat.