111 Mind arts

Nick hung out with his friends for another couple hours before heading to the library to find as much information on the mind arts as he could. A few people noticed him in the hallways and the library itself and whispered amongst themselves. Nick ignored them however as he was hyper focused on his goal. He quickly began scouring the bookshelves starting from the first and making his way back. He didn't expect to find any information on legilimency , occlumency or obliviate in the "Normal" area of the library but both stupefy and confundus should be available.-

He was correct in this thought as well as he found two tomes with information on the spells and their effects. In a surprising turn of events Nick also found a book on occlumency as well hidden behind a series of tomes on warts and toads. Satisfied with his finds Nick found a table in the "ancient" section out of sight before he started to hungrily devour the information in them. The stupefy charm was sort of similar to getting punched in effect as it was simply meant to overload the mind with sensory information making it basically restart itself.-

The confundus charm however was where things got interesting what it did was stop the mind from creating any new memories while leaving the receiver unaware of their surroundings. Nick had an ugly expression when he saw this information as it fit perfectly with his memories of a certain moment recently that he seemed to lose a few moments of time. Thankfully the spell could be blocked with occlumency shields according to the book. Nick ignored the rest of those two books as it was merely information on attacking spells and his time was limited at the moment leaving him unwilling to waste it learning spells he didn't need.-

The occlumency book was both helpful and not at the same time due to the fact it did explain how to get started in the art but was needlessly vague beyond that. Still Nick grit his teeth and spent the rest of the day deciphering what was basically the ravings of a demented mind. While it was clear that the author knew his stuff it was equally clear that they wanted to make it as hard as possible for the reader to understand said knowledge. Nick wasn't sure why they would do such a thing but could only shrug and chalk it up to wizards being weird.-

Still at the cost of skipping dinner Nick finally had a fairly decent base by which he could work with for further research into the mind arts. There was no visit from the elf this night and Nick slept peacefully. Waking up at dawn on sunday Nick stretched and yawned before sitting on his bed and clearing his mind like the book of occlumency said to and began to imagine his magic entering his mind like a fog. This part supposedly took the longest amount of time to achieve but since Nick could directly control his magic to a degree he accomplished it easily.-

The next part however was the most tricky as it was totally different depending on who did it. This was the mindscape phase of occlumency that involved creating a personal representation of your perfect environment in your mind using the magic gathered there. The reason this was tricky in that there was no actually way to know what that actually was until you succeeded. This meant that you had to try over and over again until you succeeded before you could even begin to think about building defenses.-

Nick was clearly not very lucky as even with deep introspection on his personality and habits he failed instantly five different times. Volcano , nope , library , nope , forge , nope over and over again with no signs of even getting close to finding the correct scenery. After an hour of constant failure Nick could only sign and open his eyes as Ron and Harry had began to stir awake. Despite using occlumency herself Nick couldn't ask Daphne for advice since everyone's mindscape was totally different. Still he wasn't bothered by this setback as he was willing to put in the work for what he wanted.-

Nick went straight for the library after breakfast and began to dig through the "ancient" section of the library and could help but crack a wide grin at what he found. Six whole books on both legilimency and occlumency as well as four books that cover only a single subject at a time. Ten books on the mind arts was an exceptionally rich amount considering how rare the information was. It came as little surprise to find that two of those books were authored by none other than Salazar Slytherin himself since he was a notoriously well versed individual in all aspects of healing.

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