Chapter 45
"The blue train is running and swaying, the fast train is picking up speed..." I happily and somewhat dazedly crooned the words to a long-forgotten song from a legendary Soviet cartoon about a lop-eared lost creature in crates of oranges and his cool crocodile friend with an accordion slung over his shoulder... And no, I hadn't completely lost my mind, no matter what my friends might have thought about it, completely unable to understand what I was humming under my breath in a language totally foreign to them.
The ride on the Hogwarts Express had already thoroughly tired our entire group out, and so the endless stream of conversation had slowly died down, replaced by sluggish chatter about nothing. Even Ginny, who was offended by me and had heard right at the beginning that the betrothal between Daphne and me had been concluded after all, albeit under new conditions, had gradually begun to thaw from her burning resentment.
I paid almost no extra attention to this, being too focused on... my own breakthrough in mental magic, I would say. Though "Breakthrough" could be written with a capital "B" in this case. My success today—which was almost accidental, I must admit—had truly taken me to a new level of mastering mental magic.
Over a whole summer of quite thoughtful study of this specific topic, I had really advanced a great deal in many mental practices. Fortunately, the Black library and Sirius himself—who, albeit with some awkwardness, did not hesitate to share his own experience of using Occlumency in conditions of constant contact with Azkaban's dementors—helped me a lot, allowing me to accumulate a critical mass of the knowledge I so lacked...
Honestly, the fact that I had managed to advance so far in working with my own consciousness using what was essentially just school literature before this was almost a miracle. Sirius, when I finally trusted him enough towards the end of the summer to allow him to test my mental defenses under controlled conditions, was quite surprised by my resistance to relatively crude influences and my ability to instantly notice any attempts at subtle manipulation on his part.
Seriously, the overgrown slacker even got offended at me after he failed to catch me out even once during three days of our little game of "Constant Vigilance"... Which, of course, isn't necessarily an indicator, but my skills still surprised my godfather. And after realizing the level of my skills through personal experience, he lightly scolded me for getting involved in such magic at such an early age in the first place.
Mental practices really were quite dangerous for ordinary children. Their magic, which hadn't completely settled yet, and banal flashes of spontaneous and uncontrollable desires made studying even the basics of Occlumency—with the exception, perhaps, of some very basic exercises for training memory and concentration—quite a risky endeavor. A student who was too young could, on emotional instability alone, make such a mess in their mind that no master mentalist would be able to fix it later.
This, actually, is why even the most notorious scumbags and idiots don't mess with children's heads. It's too easy to accidentally drive an underage wizard insane... Or get yourself killed by falling under the influence of magic that hasn't fully settled down yet.
But it's exactly around the ages of thirteen or fourteen that such limitations gradually fade away. Which is why I had actually been trying to lean especially desperately on my development in mental magic lately.
After all, very soon some mages will want to use this very magic on me, if only out of pure curiosity. Or for the sake of some test... it doesn't really matter. Right now, the main thing is that a new facet of these amazing possibilities for working with my own mind has yielded to me. To be more specific... I had learned to directly control my own emotions, which I couldn't even dream of until recently.
Even though I was already quite good at working with my own consciousness before this. Evaluating my successes here, even if this time relying solely on my words, Sirius had basically called me a bloody genius and even got a little offended once again that I was already "cooler than him" in some aspects of magic.
In short, everything was within the bounds of our regular madness, but... I really wasn't going to deny my own talents in this direction. Still, my godfather delivered a quite thorough lecture about how my current successes in mental magic were absolutely not the norm. Most pureblood wizards, even from those families where mental practices were historically very strong and commonplace, could not reach my current level even by the end of Hogwarts.
*Well, that's if Sirius isn't exaggerating,* I smirked slightly, trying to somewhat tame my own satisfaction with at least thoughts like these. It wasn't working very well, but... I wasn't really trying seriously to get rid of the dizzying veneer of euphoria. After all, today was the first time I had reached my own emotions directly, and out of inexperience, I had immediately tried to influence them in a rather drastic way...
For which I was currently paying the price, flashing a slightly drunken and blissful grin in all directions, and humming various children's songs from my past life under my breath... It really had hit me hard. I need to be more careful next time... but still—the prospects opening up before me now... it's just awesome!
*And yet very few mages know how to work directly with emotions—even just their own, let alone others' for now. You don't just need knowledge here, but also... a certain predisposition for it. Almost a gift,* I continued to melt into a happy puddle mentally. I had long had the ability to indirectly influence my emotions, but... today's burst of happiness was just on a completely different level.
And now I can fully develop in this direction, which in perspective promises to result not only in complete control over my own emotions but also in the ability to directly influence the emotions of others—or at least clearly distinguish them bypassing practically any mental shields. And that is much more difficult than simply working with a mage's memory or thoughts. There wasn't even that much information on such types of mental magic in the Black library yet...
A rare gift and a very valuable one for any mental mage. After all, direct control over emotions only seems simple and banal from the outside. In reality, it's a literal cheat code for this life. In the sense that... well, it's literally the ability to approach practically any task with incredible enthusiasm, no matter how boring and tedious it might be.
Boring homework? Monotonous practice of the same spells? Nauseating potion brewing or just dirty digging in the dirt in Herbology classes? Who cares! If you spin your own emotions up correctly, you'll be able to approach any of these tasks as if you're not about to do some nonsense here, but at the very least screw every single most beautiful woman in this world all at once...
Ahem, that's also a problem. It came, as they say, from where it wasn't expected... Or rather, I expected it and was morally preparing for it, but the awakening of hormones and the body's first reactions to the opposite sex still came as somewhat of a surprise to me.
Not exactly a very unpleasant one—I had already experienced this before, after all, and in general, I had always known how to keep myself in hand... Fortunately, with mental magic and my new capabilities in it, this was becoming a pretty trivial matter altogether. And my adult mind, having felt the familiar attraction, even relaxed a little somehow...
More precisely, I diagnosed in myself certain hints of comfortable relaxation in response to the newly begun hormonal boom. Staring at women not only speculatively, but with a quite clear physical message was surprisingly pleasant emotionally. I had missed emotions like these...
And yeah, no matter what my body might have wanted, I still couldn't look at my peers and most of the Hogwarts students in that way even if I really wanted to. Although I still noticed a few pretty witches from the sixth and seventh years today before boarding the train...
"Harry... Are you absolutely sure you're okay? You're being... particularly smiley today." Ahem, yeah, I've completely gotten carried away with this mental magic and thoughts of the sublime. Time to pull myself together. Fortunately, I had already understood and realized the mechanism of how the new facets of my abilities worked—I could cancel the previously arisen effect without any problems now. It had mostly faded away on its own already, anyway.
"Um, everything's fine, Daphne... Just in a good mood," I cheerfully winked at the girl, however, immediately calming my own heart a little and wiping the smile that was too wide for me off my face.
"Pfft, isn't that because you finally concluded this... betrothal of yours?" the red-haired Gryffindor snorted, continuing to pout resentfully and... cling to Luna, who happened to be the final member of our friendly group for this trip.
We had prudently left Malfoy, who was pestering us with his questions, to be torn apart by Pansy Parkinson right at the beginning of the trip. Whom even a pair of loyal squires couldn't save the guy from, so actively was this energetic brunette tyrannizing our resident ferret this time.
"And because of that too... Believe me, after my first conversations with my godfather, I seriously thought that nothing would come of this betrothal," I looked away slightly awkwardly, not rushing to mention that I myself, actually, was already ready to give up the betrothal to the heiress of a not-insignificant magical family in the country.
"Oh, yeah... Sirius Black turned out to be a surprisingly persistent and pushy... haggler," Daphne snorted in response to my remark, seemingly disliking Sirius a little. "Believe me, even if you didn't hear it, but the way that boor bargained and argued with my mother... for a moment I thought she would kill him right there in our living room."
"Really? But my godfather told me your mother was the sweetest person..." I stretched my lips into a slightly thoughtful smile, actually embellishing Black's words somewhat.
"He has a very strange idea about people and their characters... Although maybe he was right about something. Mother was still satisfied in the end, and she congratulated me..." the Slytherin became slightly embarrassed, trying not to look at me unnecessarily during this entire conversation. The girl was feeling awkward... although she couldn't hide her happily silly smile either.
"Seriously? I thought that the new terms of the contract... were no longer all that beneficial for your family," I carefully clarified a rather awkward point of discussion. Everyone understood everything, but discussing it out loud... was somehow awkward and generally not done.
"That's exactly what isn't scary. According to the Healers, Runologists-Arithmancers, and even the Seers hired by my mother, I will be able to give birth to at least three healthy children without any problems, so the terms of the new contract aren't that difficult to fulfill..." Daphne finally dared to look up at me, her cheeks now burning openly scarlet. "But the fact that Black promised to seriously take up your training and give you practically full access to their family library... my mother can't even imagine what will ultimately come of this."
"Hmph, and you're happy about it, I see... Are you also already predicting the role of 'the second Dumbledore' for your future husband?" I chuckled somewhat sarcastically at the girl, noting with the edge of my consciousness that discussing such things with a peer of my body wasn't exactly completely normal, but... Daphne is the heiress of a pureblood family. And that says it all.
Simply by virtue of her upbringing, she treated many things completely differently than girls of this age that I was used to could treat them in theory... Ginny over there was getting embarrassed a couple of orders of magnitude more strongly by such conversations. And the malicious envy in the red-haired witch's eyes somehow instantly diminished by an order of magnitude when the topic turned to having at least three children.
It seems Ginny definitely doesn't want to repeat her own mother's fate even at such a young age... More accurately, recently my friend didn't want to be anything like Molly Weasley at all, which is why she looked at Daphne very strangely in some moments too.
...And only Luna continued to smile softly as usual and look somewhere seemingly into the far, far future, not particularly worrying about our betrothal or her friend's overly offended-angry behavior. The Ravenclaw, who had spent practically this entire summer in the company of the youngest Weasley—which isn't surprising, they live next door to each other, after all—seemed to have managed to somehow tame her friend during this time.
So, even when Ginny was frankly burning with anger or rage, a couple of simple touches or quiet words from Luna were usually enough for her not only to stop arguing with Daphne, but also to calm down a little, most likely remembering something of her own... most likely known only to this pair of radically different girlfriends.
And what have they cooked up, I wonder?
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