–– Clara POV ––
Students are lazy and idle they said. Something which was a generalization and even an untrue one. The winter holiday had started on the 13.12.1993, while I was staying at Hogwarts. Even Slughorn had paused his mastery class and now I had all four of my pupil practically kneeling before me, to bring it up a notch over the holidays, as they arranged it, so that all of them had already done all assignments and had no other commitments in this timeframe.
I wanted to say no, weasel my way out of this responsibility, so that I can focus on other things, which I had a lot of. But exactly that responsibility stopped me. I could not let my students down, as they were both ready and exceptionally good seedling in the mind arts. So I put the screws on, upping the ante so much, that they crumpled to the floor, sleeping where they were afterwards.
The training itself was not that difficult, just exhausting. At first, I let them practice at the target range, rapidly changing spells and intent, until conscious intent infusion became second nature to them. They only needed three days to get to the impossible standards I had set for them. All of them transitioning from normal casting, to silent casting and for some spells even still casting, which meant that they did use their wand as conduit, but made no movements with it.
I did not waste time with challenging them more, skipping my planned practice duels, as they could do that in DATDA or in dueling, if that subject gets reinstated. The next topic was slow casting, basically slowing down their intent infusion to a crawl and observing the process of it. This improved their understanding of mental energy even more, with the goal to eject mental energy out of their body without any medium or foci. All of them surprised me even more, as they did not even need a day to accomplish that.
Afterwards I let them practice coating the body, which was easier than ejection and needed even less time, before continuing to scrambling your ejected mental energy, which they got a preliminary understanding of. The hard part was not doing it, but doing it in a way, that no one can decipher it.
Afterwards came thread forming with mental energy. And even though they had practiced the mana equivalent extensively, Draco even able to use it wandlessly, it proved a daunting exercise, where they needed to eject one piece of mental energy and projecting a thread of mental energy to catch it. We practiced this, until they could make three threads, all less man one centimeter thick.
Then I let them all try blanketing an area, once per day at the end of it, as I basically just told them to eject the whole amount of their mental energy into. This is where we plateaued in regard to different intent applications, though I explained how to carve/write intent into material or even air, suppressing their subconscious intent utilization, how to eradicate intent and how to mimic another signature, shadowing. I also explained molding intent, though I advised against using it, before they turned at least fifty.
What came next was improving their control with mental threads, so I let them make 2D shapes, 3D shapes, even some bad drawings, until their threads finally were less thick than a piece of hair.
Then, I told them to connect their threats together with a single partner, which was the easy part of the exercise. As I told them to lower their shields, I heard four high pitched screams and now had four unconscious people lying on the floor, myself manically grinning, scaring of Ron and Harry who thought it would be a good time to interrupt.
After they all woke up, I revealed: „Congratulations to your first try at legilimency. Now you all will practice with me, as you are not good enough in occlumency yet to do it yourself. You will connect your threads to mine and I will send specific memories to you, which you will tell back to me." After a bit more explanation and answering questions, we all went straight to practicing.
At the start they were miserably wrong, until they slowly got the hang of it. The secret was, that my memories were automatically scrambled by my intent, so they needed to decode it or it would just be gibberish and overwhelm their senses.
The next step was to not audibly tell me the meaning of my memories, but to send that information over the mental thread, through which the room got awfully quiet. After doing that with continuously harder memories, I decided to shock them with a rather painful, overloaded memory. The end result was another four unconscious bodys.
The reason for that was, to show them that you needed to have a tolerance for such things, or your legilimency would hurt yourself or someone else. Afterwards I let them practice with each other, the communication line completely open. This went good, better than expected even as no one was unconscious in the end.
I rotated the partners, let them all familiarize with each other even more, before I gave the order: „Now you will all connect with all over three persons and do the same until you can handle it.", which got the first real complaint in all this unforgiving time. But I was unforgiving and coaxed them into trying. It went surprisingly well, all for of them having no difficulties, until I told them to move slowly. They were a jumbled mess on the floor at that point. I let them sort it out, until they could barely walk and ended the exercise with that.
Their next and probably last exercise was sending a part of their own mind through their mental energy into mine. They needed a lot of pointers to figure that one out, but after they had reached that point they could do it without problems and repeat it. Then I forcefully ejected them, which gave them quite a headache, before I told them to do it through ejection instead of the threads.
They needed longer for that, but I also did not give any tips this time. They missed Christmas dinner, but finally succeeded two days later, first practicing on me, before they went on to practice on each other, before I dismissed them on the twenty-seventh, the start of part two was on the 02.01.1994.
My favorite part of this whole ordeal? They knew each other like the back of their hands, except Lunas vow secured memories. They even know about the bigger world, which at first was ignored as Luna being Luna, before I validated it, which sent them even more into a training frenzy, only after interrogating me for details though.
The days between I wanted to relax. Took walks, playing with mosaic and more, until I found a lost little puppy, as I walked around the hills near Hogsmead. The puppy was a large black grim though, not really a puppy but still. It was nice to see how it annoyed that one. I took it into Hogwarts, straight to madam Pomfrey, which the dog seemed to realize, before I quickly stunned him. Once there, I told madam Pomfrey to reverse the animagus transformation. It did not take too long, though I realized that he did note use any potions but found his inner animal, which was a rarity in Britain.
The man before me now though, was anything but healthy. Malnourished, scarred, hundreds of wrongly healed bones, cruciatus and dementor exposure to top it of. I needed to plead madam Pomfrey to let me talk to him, before she got to work, her leaving the room even harder to accomplish. I was lucky that no one else was around anyway.
„So, what brings you here, Mr. Black? The world thinks to kill Harry Potter, but we both know, that you are unable to do that." I inquired, getting a bad attempt at a raised eyebrow and smile in response: „It was a long time ago, being called Mr. Black. To answer your question my fair lady, I want to right past wrongs. Aye, I want to kill someone, but it is not Harry Potter as I am his godfather. Hogwarts made that pretty hard though. Those wards got a serious upgrade since I attended."
„To kill a rat, nice goal. But ever though about what happens after?" I asked gently, having read his surface thoughts while he talked: „You will not be freed, your last chance dying with him. Even with him as witness and real perpetrator, it would be hard to force the ministry to review your case. Anyway, you will be save at Hogwarts, that I can guarantee you, but only if you stay in your room for now." Addressing a wall I said: „Hogwarts, if you would. I need a separate room for the man here, full protection, only madam Pomfrey is allowed in for now and do not let Mr. Black here escape or he will ruin his chance at redemption", I said, the last part more to myself and Sirius than Hogwarts, promptly leaving as the hospital was rearranged, much to madam Pomfrey's displeasure, as I hard her scream, cursing, a second after leaving the hospital wing.
Destination: Dumbledore, Hogwarts already having captured the rat. I made short process of it, giving Dumbledore the facts I knew, referring him to my lovely lawyer, before going back to relaxing again. The following time was nice, until new years approached. Contrary to probably anyone else, I decided to just sleep. Not meditate, but real deep sleep.
–– Observer POV ––
At midnight, between 1993 and 1994, strange things happened. Dotted over the whole surface of both earths, newly ascended persons collapsed, entering a deep coma. At Hogwarts, four persons were affected, all in their own secure locations already, though they did not know what was coming.
–– Clara POV ––
A weird feeling upon waking up was becoming too natural by now. This time, I just appeared standing in a pure white room, a disembodied voice speaking: „Welcome test subject. Commencing trial number 9.413.741.896.892.351. Lower your mind's defenses completely." I refused, obviously: „I did not ask, I ordered!", it thundered: „I repeat, lower your mind's defenses completely." I still refused, not knowing what was happening.
„Test subject repeatedly refuses to comply. Initializing first try of will breaking subroutine.", it said, before it went completely silent and black, the floor disappearing, though I was not falling. And then, I waited. And waited. And waited. I tried to do other things, but I could not seem to concentrate on anything else than waiting. Time slowly, ever so slowly passed. I waited more, and more and more, my inner clock taking on progressively ridiculous numbers.
I did not relent anyway, the flow of time not breaking my will. After ten thousand years, though I was pretty sure this was a hoax, it finally stopped, the voice reappearing, together with me in a blindingly white room again: „I repeat. Lower your mind's defenses completely." I did not comply. „I repeat. Lower your mind's defenses or the next will breaking subroutine will be started."
„Searching for personalized will breaking subroutine", it said, at which point I realized, that it was ignoring my minds defenses completely, which sparked the question why the voice wanted me to lower them. Before I could ponder over that, the voice reappeared: „Will breaking subroutine found. Initiating dog training." That stumped me for a second, before my clothes disappeared and a collar around my neck appeared. Not a second later, I was forced on my knees and elbows, my hands fused behind my neck and my heels fused to my butt. An embarrassing posture. The voice did not care though: „Move to the black marker", it said, waiting a few seconds before chiding: „Bad girl", and before I could do anything else, I was shocked by the collar, the voice repeating: „Move to the black marker", before chiding and shocking me again, with increased intensity. Rinse and repeat that a thousand times, I still refused.
At that, the voice changed the command to: „Lie flat on the ground", a black cross appearing under me, together with an overwhelming sense of sleepiness, that came out of nowhere. The room slowly dimmed, the light getting darker and darker and the sleepiness increasing. I do not know when, but my mind gave out, my inner clock stopped working, together with anything else thought related. I tried to hold on, gritting my teeth, or at least thinking I did, before at some point I could no longer hold on, plopping to the ground, instantly falling into a deep sleep.
The next few weeks, days or hours were fuzzy, my mind not being able to form a single coherent thought.
–– Observer POV ––
Clara Ali Ollivander was struggling to stay awake. Struggling and struggling, until she lost, defeated by an artificial desire to sleep. Then, not even a second later the voice spoke again: „Wake up!", shocking the poor girl again. „Good girl. Now stand up", the voice said, which Clara followed, after the voice chided: „Bad girl!", a few times and shocked her more awake.
Then, the voice ordered: „Walk to the black marking", Clara still stubbornly refusing, even though she got shocked longer and intenser than before, getting chided again and again for not following orders. Then, the voice started the sleep sequence again, defeating her a bit faster this time, but still to no effect on the other orders. So it repeated this process for tens of thousands of times, until Clara finally moved, a vacant look in her eyes.
As she approached the black marker, a feeding bowl with water appeared, the voice ordering: „Drink", which Clara refused. It repeated the previous sequence a few times to no effect, before Clara was becoming increasingly thirsty, her thirst spiking tremendously in what would feel for her like milliseconds. At some point, the sensation having reached a saturation even higher than the first sleepiness feeling, forced her instincts to kick in, Clara bowing down her head and licking up the water, like a dog. The voice repeated that until Clara followed his orders without any sensation or feelings needed, her eyes becoming even more vacant, though her mind's defenses still stood strong.
Next came eating raw meat out of a feeding bowl and later from the ground, before the voice slowly tried to teach her tricks, educating her into a real dog, following the voices any whims.
Then, Clara appeared in a white room, again, the voice ordering: „Lower your mind's defenses."
–– Clara POV ––
One moment everything was fuzzy, having lost the ability to form any coherent thoughts, feelings, just knowing that I existed and then an atomic bomb impacted, everything I had went through, allowed myself to fall too and do, following the voices order. I needed minutes to at least form a coherent thought, but the voice did not let me have that chance.
–– Observer POV ––
„Test subject still not lowering her minds defenses. Initiating next personalized will breaking method", the voice said, still as even as always. Clara, having no time to recover, falling even faster this time. The voice called it: „Pony training", which apparently was a training similar to being a dog, just more fine tuned, with an animated human in the mix, which taught the horse all the possible disciplines, behavioral patterns and more instead of the voice directly. Clara again appeared in the white room, after having absolved the previous challenges. Her eyes, even more vacant, the backlash of the training even heavier.
The voice ordered: „Lower your mind's defenses", but Clara was still not lowering them, so it said: „Initiating general will breaking subroutine, oxygen deprivation", Clara being forced to relive „drowning" in an increasingly worse manner. Over millions of millions of times, Clara's eyes slowly became more vacant, slowly losing even their last glimmer.
At some point, the voice ordered: „Lower your mind's defenses", Clara complying this time, the voice getting a iron hold other her mind.
–– Clara POV ––
It was not nice, getting my mind rejuvenated to millions of years of training and drowning, being embarrassed with my most primal fears, before just being tortured into mindlessness. And I still stood here, in this damn white room. „Initiating sequence: Survival", the voice said, before I found myself invisibly tied or sticking on a white dentist seat. Some seconds later, the voice said: „Initiating force feeding", after which I was gagged with the corresponding device. Over the next years, I was force fed different food, drinks, materials and so much more, some straight up drugs and poison, being left to live out their effects to their fullest each time, before they were purged from my system.
After having overcome that, the voice teleported me into a huge open white space again, ordering: „Survive", before the terrain rapidly changed into a forest. After what felt like years living there, without any predators it changed into plains, swaps and any other type of environment I thought possible or impossible, my only instinct in all this time, surviving.
At some point the voice was apparently satisfied with my survivability, as the environment disappeared and it took over my body, ingraining different martial arts into my very instincts through endless repetition, interspersed with climbing, sneaking, swimming and the occasional weapons training, though those were more introductory courses if compared with martial arts practice. Then, after it had followed its routine to completion, the environment returned, now populated with a fully functioning eco system. The order: „Survive"
And that I did. Dying, getting reanimated by the voice, hunting, running, hiding, sleeping in trees, foraging, starving and thirsting for days on end, living in the ever changing environments, until after years upon years, the voice was finally satisfied. And all that without any magic.
„Calculating the rewards", the voice announced, my body appearing in the same old white room. Then, a list appeared in my mind. A shop of sorts with trillions of items. Together with an amount of currency I was informed about. Seventeenthousandsixhundredandninetyone credits or whatever they were named. The first few things I „saw", were worth trillions of credits, so I tried to filter out anything over my budged, which slimmed the list considerably. I did not know why, but I spent years going through the list. Weapons, wardstones, enchanted objects, consumables, houses, knowledge and so much more. It was a paradise, for anyone who had enough credits. I had multiple highlights, which I could luckily extract out of the list and save on an extra one. The most important were:
An elixir which cleansed any and all of the impurities in my body and preventing new ones from forming, costing ten thousand credits.
Second was a fragment of a very rare gemstone, attributed with time and space energy, costing ten thousand credits.
Third was a tome with over a million magical languages detailed inside, costing a thousand credits per language.
Fourth was an arithmancy book over designing your own cultivation technique, costing a thousand credits for the first stage alone, the second needing five thousand credits.
I was definitely buying the first one, which left me with seventhousandsixhundredandninetyone credits. It was just too rare of an opportunity to come by, most needing hundreds of years just for another percent. It was also featured as the first place on a separate list titled recommendations.
The second rank on this list was the arithmancy books and the third was something which fitted my remaining budget of onethousandsixhundredandninetyone credits perfectly. It was a talent or bloodline I could infer. There stood that it was randomized, though I highly doubted that, as everything in this test was way too structured, not a single thing left to chance. Even the price was tailored for me. But the voice did not force me to buy it, which was at least a little bit of relieve.
But unknown bloodlines were dangerous, though also highly beneficial if I did not die while integrating it into my body. The only remaining question was, would I trust this voice with my life and after not so thorough thinking, I decided to risk it. It probably had a hold on my very being, able to snuff it out with a single thought. So why kill me with a defective bloodline. Just to give me hope? Itself satisfaction on my suffering?
After confirming my purchase, I woke up groaning, together with three others, also groaning, Lagern and Meyer sitting at the opposite end of the room, drinking tea over a game of bridge? It was disorienting but oh well. My whole body was hurting, but I had four objects securely stored in my soul? I realized with a start. After our groaning had stopped, Lagern cheerily addressed us: „Good morning! What you just went through is a whim of an old sadistic mastermind genius. What topic did you get?", he asked.
Dumbledore spoke first, calmly answering the question: „Alchemy", followed by Slughorn: „Potions", and Luna: „Creatures". I also answered: „Survival", after which Lagern sighed: „Tough luck. What were your credits like in the end?", he continued, all of us answering in the same sequence: „100.000" „500.000" „700.000", „Seventeenthousandsixhundredandninetyone". I was gaping at the end, before Lagern started to explain: „This is a mostly automated ritual designed by one of the most powerful man of our race. He has a few screws loose, but who hasn't. Every new years, he takes new ascended, any rank and species, and gives them personalized trials, or how he likes to call it tests. Survival is considered to be the hardest of them all, especially as you need to lower your mind's defenses, which I am sure you refused?" he inquired, before seeing my look and continuing: „Apparently. Most other topics do not have that requirement, but the survival course is even more straining on your mentality as the others. The creator of this ritual has a specific talent, that lets him affect minds in a myriad of ways, which is the reason why you all are and were so calm and the whole ritual is even possible. It is also a kind of forceful tradition to not warn new ascended of this, as it lowers the credits in the end and a secrecy contract is forced upon participants. Did you all buy the recommended items or shop for something else?" He got a positive from all of us: „Good. Those recommendations are probably the best things you could have bought and anyone who went through the whole affordable list will probably know that." He looked at me, like I was the weird one: „These items are bound to you and cannot be used by anyone else, though they can still be stolen. All of you got the impurity potion?" At which point only Dumbledore said no.
„Yes, that should be right, phoenix and all. I would also like to congratulate you on your scores. Normally, even reaching 10.000 is hard, not to speak of 6 digits like most of you. And for survival, 17.691 is also exceptional. The end goal of this ritual was to foster and advance talents faster. Any change of mind to my invitation Slughorn?", he tried, getting ignored. „Well, I cannot explain more sadly, as even the strongest powerhouses and scholars only know that much about this ritual. There were tries to understand it more, but they either did not succeed or vanished before being able to publish anything. Due to that, it became a taboo topic, only a few of those existing. We will take our leave." Lagern waved, getting forcefully teleported by a happy Hogwarts this time and Meyers looked concerned over to Luna, who just shook her head, before he also disappeared.
„So, how long did your tests take?", I decided to ask, as I was curious. The answer was a uniform ten years, at which I just blanched, before facepalming, getting three concerned looks in response. „I approached one hundred million years in the end…", I revealed. Maybe should have asked about that time dilation before Lagern left. Spilled milk, anyway. I went back to relaxing, before starting to teach my mastery class the next day.
I still thought a bit about what effects the test, trial, ritual or whatever had on my mind, but even though I lived the equivalent of nearly one hundred million years, my psyche and mentally had not changed in any major way. It was a disconcerting feeling to be sure, to know that I had gone through all that, but I also realized, that my whole mind was minutely controlled in such a way, that the only thoughts I could form were over the thematic and topic, anything else being suppressed to a scary degree, making me a puppet of that voice in any possible way.
The only effect that stayed was, that I had overcome two of my deepest fears, though it was such a brutish method, that it only worked through the amount of time spent of it.
The training for the remaining week of winter holidays was kind of boring. All four of them practicing legilimency on me, while I built rudimentary walls around my normal defenses, which they should somehow breach or avoid. I used a variety of different defenses, making them a bit more challenging each time.
Through this, their occlumency also spiked, though I did warn them at least hundreds of times to not copy from me, which none thankfully did. Their understanding of defenses, their application and probable mistakes that could happen just spiked through this training and would help them along nicely.