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Alaric quietly placed silencing charms around his bed along with a minor detection ward with a wave of his hand, nothing major really but he would be mentally alerted at once if anyone were to approach.
Warding was something that he planned on putting a certain amount of emphasis on when his other pursuits allowed him the time to do so. But for now, these were the only wards that the Peverell was capable of casting and not for the lack of trying— the detection ward alone had been a very large step in the right direction but the subject was more nuanced than he had expected and anything other than simple wards that a simple third year could cast went over his head.
Once he was reasonably confident with his setup, Alaric laid back on his four-poster bed and withdrew the book that had been recommended to him by Professor Quirrell.
From what the book told him, Occlumency was the defensive form of mind magic which involved clearing one's mind to prevent a Legilimens from perceiving one's emotions and thoughts— more advanced Occlumency involved suppressing only the thoughts, emotions, and memories or outright manipulating them. This required a great deal of mental power and practice, but the benefits of Occlumency were vast
A strong Occlumens could not only trick invaders into thinking confusing the truth with a blatant falsehood or do the opposite to the point where they could even trick Veritaserum, but mastering the mind arts allowed one to gain a great deal of control over their emotions and intent— enhancing not only their personal conduct but also the potency of their magic which danced to the intent of its wielder.
There were stages to Occlumency, according to the book. The first stage involved understanding one's own mind and recommended a rigorous routine of meditative and contemplative exercises which might allow readers to isolate and understand their own emotions over time— the end goal was to identify emotions as soon as they surged forth and internalize them, gaining somewhat of a mastery over them.
Only after mastering this stage, could he advance from identifying psychic intrusions and detecting irregularities in thought to actually removing them.
The book was a bit rough in its explanation, but the second level of Occlumency focused on establishing what normal wizards generalize as 'Occlumency shields' which were nowhere as absurd metaphysical defences that could protect a mind against Legilimency, but simple mental memory trained to the extreme and converted to a reactive instinct.
Alaric found the term 'Occlumency Shields' to be actually very misleading, especially when he learned that there was no barrier, mental or physical that could stop a Legilimency probe— such a thing would be useless even if there was since most mental intrusions worked by forming a connection with another person's mind directly. There was simply no medium or middle ground where shields or defences could be created.
There was only one way to defend against a Legilimency probe and Alaric found it to be astoundingly simple— well, the concept was simple but he could tell that putting it into practice would be far more complicated.
The method was to simply clear the mind, or at least to focus on whatever thought one uses to clear their mind. If one were to think of the human mind as a web of interconnected ideas then by clearing the mind— a wizard could make it nearly impossible for any invader to even see the web inside their head, let alone do anything with it.
But that had to be done instantly, any hesitation or distraction in the process meant that the defendant had already lost since even a single thought or emotion gave an invading Legilimens something to latch onto. This included emotions, thoughts, memories, or anything of the sort— once an invader has a hold of any one of them, then they could twist it, manipulate it, or follow it to more strands and do the same with them.
The quickest way to learn Legilimency was not a traditional method of teaching per se, but one that was hard for Alaric to work with. The book recommended having an instructor repeatedly probe the student's mind so that they could try to develop a proficiency for detecting more subtle probes.
The reason initial practices of meditation focused on understanding the mind was to ensure practitioners developed a memory for what an untouched mind felt like so that they could instantly detect anomalies caused when another person projected their magic to form a connection with their mind. No matter how subtle, the feeling of a connection does not change, it simply becomes more difficult to detect.
Over time, a wizard would slowly become more and more adept at sensing these anomalies and learn to instinctually clear their mind whenever one it gets invaded.
And that was about when Alaric was done with his impromptu reading session. Fascinating as it all was, he had hoped for a less tasking answer— something that did not require having an outsider probe his mind and lay bare all the secrets he had. That was simply a recipe for disaster, even the barest chance of someone detecting his origins would place him in a situation more dangerous than any he had experienced since his awakening into this world.
Ugh! He was doing it again, going even further down the rabbit hole. He regretfully realized that perhaps, sleep may not come as fast as he would like it to. Alaric had firmly settled into his Hogwarts routine by this point of the school year and he would explore the castle to calm his mind whenever sleep eluded him.
Through the tales of older students, he had heard that the castle housed many abandoned classrooms that were the perfect place for practice where he could invite all his friends too. He intended to find one of these, but he was not completely sure where he should look— it was not so much that he was worried about being able to find them. On the contrary, they sounded quite numerous.
No, what Alaric was more concerned about was finding one where they were least likely to be interrupted.
The first option was to find a room in one of the tallest towers, somewhere people would not want to spend all the time and effort getting to. Alaric had experienced the peak of human laziness in his previous life when hospitalized, and he would not be underestimating its power ever again. He had no doubt that this option could work but at the same time, it would also terribly inconvenient to have to spend so much time walking from the dungeons to the highest tower on a regular basis.
The other option was to explore the dungeons if the whispers from the older students had been true. The Hogwarts dungeons stretched far beyond the Slytherin common room and nobody was quite sure what was down there, but Alaric had a feeling there may be some rooms that could be serviceable.
So he went what was quite a long trek down to the dungeons when it became apparent that his recent discoveries regarding mind magic would not allow his mind to rest, walking straight past the wall that he knew to be the entrance of his common room and continuing his descent downwards.
The torches became less numerous as he went downwards, giving him the impression that he was plunging straight into the darkness and moving corridors led to every other direction as Alaric plunged into the belly of the castle. It seemed as if he had left the concept of rooms far behind him, as he simply walked past blank corridor after blank corridor after blank corridor.
Alaric had made it a personal goal of his to explore the entirety of Hogwarts and had been making decent progress on that end because of his regular walks but he suddenly realized that it may well take him all seven years to explore the castle to its entirety if this was any indicator. The interiors of the castle were far larger than they had any right to be, and he was certain that space-expanding charms had been used extensively during its construction that had somehow withstood all the tests of time.
Finally, he took a turn that led him down an extremely long, extremely dark corridor where the gradient of the floor seemed to increase as if he were talking down a slope. As Alaric continued to walk, he noticed that the walls were no longer bare— as a matter of fact, they looked almost familiar. They were decorated with serpentine decor much like the halls outside their common room and he briefly debated the chances that he had somehow walked back to that place because of the magic of the castle but he dismissed the idea quickly.
For one thing, there were far fewer torches lining the walls in this corridor and for another, the serpentine artwork genuinely appeared to be portraits which worked their own rules in the magical world. Not only did their occupants move, but they were even enchanted to mimic the mannerisms of the person depicted.
The Peverell also knew that in this state, the portraits could even speak and communicate with the living and he had read of Parseltongue which was not viewed in a favourable light because of the stigma surrounding Salazar Slytherin and Voldemort's reign of terror by now inHogwarts, A History as well asRise and Fall of The Dark Arts.
Now alone with countless depictions of snakes that dated back a thousand years Alaric could but help but shiver as he looked up towards the nearest serpentine figure which moved under his watchful gaze.
Vaguely, he remembered the events which were supposed to happen in their second year— the opening of the Chamber of Secrets and the release of one of the most lethal magical beasts in a school full of teenagers. His gaze turned more thoughtful as he continued peering at the snakes. He was quite certain that there was more than one way to enter that sealed part of the caste for he could not imagine the founder of their house using sewer pipes of all things to move about secretly.
Moreover, there was a non-zero chance that he could find more than a magical beast down the depths of the castle. So instead of listening to common sense and returning back to his room any sane person in his place would have done, Alaric turned back to the snakes around and extended his senses.
Now he had no desire to involve Rose Potter in his schemes and the most appropriate course of action would be anonymously conveying what he could remember to the Headmaster, but discovering the Chamber of Secrets all on his lonesome and preventing a repeat of their Second Year would be quite the achievement, all things considered.
If nothing else, he could find a Boggart here and use its passive probes in place of a master Legilimency to begin developing his mental defences. Alaric felt a small smirk on his face emerge at the thought of his plan held, and it only grew when his senses brushed against strands of magic when they reached the serpentine around him. Yes, this would certainly prove to be an interesting project…
Thanks for reading.