Chương 27: 27 Seeking Answers
Tbh I don't know how to feel about this chapter.
Just a warning ahead.
----
Over the ?¿days¿? he watched as the stones laying on the ground moved back to their original place and the single pages returned repaired back into their respective books, which flew back into the shelves they belonged to. Lucas lost track of time as he watched his mind slowly reconstructing the damage the basilisk had caused.
Second turned to minutes, minutes to hours and hours to days, but without any clocks or other indications showing how long it has been, he couldn't be sure how much time actually passed.
Eventually, after an immeasurable number of days, his mindscape looked like it used to do. The uncountable number of shelves with all kinds of books appeared like new. The roof that was totally missing was back in place as well as all the stone bricks without any cracks.
The stairway was filled with functional traps again and the statues were ..., well nothing much changed with them, they were lifeless recreations of people after all.
Which brings us to the hidden room with the blue hexagon. The outside Lucas was standing in front of the inside one waiting for him to wake up. It was only a matter of time.
*Ughh*
"Finally."
Lucas groggily got up from the floor while rubbing his head. "What happened?"
"The basilisk happened."
Those horrifying yellow eyes flashed before his eyes. "Oh yeah that happened. But wait, shouldn't I be petrified then? Can you think when you are petrified?"
"I don't think so, but we also didn't do any research into basilisks."
"Yeah, kind of a bad idea, wasn't it?" The original said dejectedly. "I mean, I knew it was coming, but I never imagined it to hit me and so early at that. Well at least nothing bad happened."
"About that. If I had to guess then we spent the last three months repairing our mind from it."
"WHAT!"
"Yes, you heard me. You were unconscious for a long period of time, how long exactly I don't know. If you want to know my best guess to why it happened then I would say, even though we didn't really look into the basilisk's eyes, we did look into its eyes."
"Wait, let me process this. OK, so what you are saying is that the magic echo is treated similar but not the same as real vision."
"Yes."
"And because it came into contact with its eyes and came back to me I technically 'saw' the basilisk's eyes."
"Yes."
"Oh come on that's bullshit."
"..."
"Fine, fine. What now."
"For starters you could finish what you started." The outside Lucas said as he pointed to the last few transparent strings floating above them. "And then we can talk about our arrangement."
"Fair enough."
Whatever time it took later, the room was finally empty, only illuminated by the blue hexagon.
A comfortable silence settled in.
Both Lucases were sitting with their backs pressed against the glowing wall as the one outside opened his mouth, "You know, as the rational one of us two, you should really open up more. This is no way to live your life. Since we came into this world Sophia was the only one we were vulnerable around. She was the only one who got to know us. The only one we let in."
"I know, but it is just so much easier thinking that everyone is part of a fantasy story and I am the only real person."
"But it's also cowardly and weak. I can't tell how you feel, but I imagine you don't want to run away from every responsibility coming at you your whole life. It would just be pointles."
"..."
"..."
"I am scared, ok. This isn't how I expected my second life to go. What would you do?"
"If I were a real person and not just a messed up part of us, I would instantly kill myself and hope to cease to exist."
"Why?"
"What would be the point in living? Tell me, why should I get up in the morning?
"To learn something new?"
"I have no interest in anything."
"To connect with people?"
"I don't care about them."
"To get more powerful?"
"And then what? Why should I do anything?"
"..."
"That's what I am trying to tell you, without a drive or opening up to people you will eventually start to stagnate. Now that you are not clouded by their lives, look at the puppets underground. Most of their joy came from other people and not from their achievements. They rarely thought about their accomplishments compared to how often they thought about their friends and loved ones."
For those who still haven't figured it out:
The puppets below the ground floor were all people once, they had their own lives, their own problems, their own emotions, their own history. Now what happens if you just villy nilly copy hundreds of lives and put them into your own head.
Their personalities bleed into your own.
That's what happened to Lucas, so out of a last ditch effort he severed the connection between himself and his emotions, splitting himself into two.
"..."
"I am not saying you should be friends with everyone and I am definitely not saying you should stop using Legilimency, but maybe it shouldn't be your first choice. I could be wrong but I think it would be a far more enjoyable life, with other people around, and you do so too, remember the mirror? So how about it, will you break down this wall?"
"..."
"Give this life a chance."
"*Sigh*, you're probably right."
"And also it would be best, if we removed our memories of our last life."
"Yeah."
Of course he didn't fully remove his knowledge about this world, he condensed everything plot related and created another book that he buried one floor under the puppets, with no visible entrance. The only way for someone to find it would be to deconstruct his mind or knowing the exact location, in order to directly teleport into that tiny room.
As the book was not about the world of Harry Potter, but solely about the plot, it was fairly short, there hardly was any information about people. Even Harry Potter was stripped-down to only his actions throughout the years. Also with all the changes he had observed up till now he couldn't rely on the fact that the story would play out the way he knew.
With that done there was one more open question.
"It's time. How are we doing this?"
"I don't know, I have never read anyone doing what we had done."
"Ok let's just try doing the same we did in the summer, but in reverse."
"But before that do you want to have a fight as practice for when an actual Legilimens breaches your defences?"
"Now?"
"Yeah, we might as well do it now. It would be good for you."
"Alright."
"Ok, then I will move out and attempt to take over. Brace yourself."
The emotionless Lucas vanished from inside the Library and reappeared at the edge of the mindscape, near the endless darkness.
He surveilled the construct in the distance and couldn't help but be a little disappointed. He knew that it was a little bit hypocritical that he had neglected his defences up till now, because he had believed that as a natural Legilimens no one would be able to beat him in his own head. Nonetheless, in his purely logical point of view, there was no reason why he shouldn't have built at least some protection. If he had then this would have taken a lot longer.
The other Lucas was patiently waiting for his counterpart to attack, he was confident that whatever was comming, he was ready for it. It was his mind after all and he had full control over it.
"Hmm."
He heard a hum that sent shivers down his spine. It was a voice he never ever wanted to hear again.
"What do we have here."
Now a cold and indifferent voice came from right behind him and he could feel the warm breath brushing past his nape.
"You are doing better than I expected! Congrats!" The voice slowly travelled from behind him to his right, but he was too preoccupied by the scene in front of him from which he couldn't take his eyes off. In that brief moment in which the voice had stopped talking his mindscape vanished and he had reappeared in his living room with his mom reading a newspaper on the couch right in front of him. He couldn't feel his connection with his mindscape any longer, meaning this had to be reality.
With a soft, almost gentle, pat on the back the voice said kindly "Would be a shame if something were to happen to her."
*Crieek*
The living room door opened and Sophia said without looking back "Good morning young man, I didn't expect you to get up so early. If you want breakfast then I will quickly hop down to the bakery."
Lucas' pupils constricted and his heart began beating madly in his chest. Cold sweat ran down his back, because what came through that door was definetly not human. It was so horrible that he could hardly describe it in words, whatever this mangled floating pulsating collection of flesh was, was so horrible that he wanted to throw up, but before he could his jaw snapped shut and wouldn't budge.
"We wouldn't want to disturb our guest would we?" Lucas could have sworn it was giggling while saying that.
So once again he was powerless.
He couldn't do anything but watch as that thing slowly approached the couch and a tentacle reached out for his mother.
The filthy, liquid dripping tentacle quietly approached her throat and in one swift motion went through her neck, ripping out her tongue and vocal cords in the process. Before Sophia could react in any way the tentacle wrapped around her body, pressing her arms closely to her body so she couldn't do anything. The monster lifted Sophia off the couch and turned her around, so that she looked into Lucas' eyes. At the same time it forced Lucas' eyes to stay open, forcing a mental connection between them two, just so he could hear her scream in horror in his head, not that her expression was already enough, as well as live through the same pain she would be feeling shortly.
"Did you know that a person can survive getting skinned alive, and if I make some additional arrangements, your beautiful mother could even live for a long time. Well infections are a bit tricky, but that is not my problem, is it? HAHAHAHAHA"
Just as it was about to peel her skin off, Lucas fainted.
The surroundings reverted back to his library and instead of the horror the other Lucas loomed over the unconscious one. 'That was enough?'
----
"Aaaah" with a scream Lucas awoke from his nightmare.
"Relax, it was just your imagination, well, my imagination." The other Lucas said nonchalantly.
All the fear and pain he had felt was instantly converted into rage as he sprang up fron the ground and angrily marched over to the other. "What the fuck is wrong with you!? You have no bottom line, do you!?"
"This was the most effective way of showing you how easy it is to infiltrate your mind."
"But you could have done that without bringing mom into this!"
"I judged it to be the best course of action."
"IT WASN'T!!!"
"Well according to your reaction it was."
"*Argh*, I wont tolerate this. I will not spent another second with you around, let's get back together!"
"You should still work on your defences."
"Yeah, yeah, I will, but first come here."
The other Lucas seeing the hate in his eyes made his way over to him and once he arrived they started with the reversal of their predicament.
Both closed their eyes and imagined their magic cores manifesting in 'reality'. Their chest began to glow in a soft yellow, which grew in intensity until a hemisphere slowly floated out. It would have been apparent for anyone observing this scene that both cores used to be one. They looked like they would fit perfectly together.
As the two halves of the once whole sphere approached each other the bodies of both Lucas started to break down into tiny particles that swirled around them.
In this whirlwind of particles the two hemispheres finally met and seamlessly fused together with a blinding flash of warm orange light. After the flash died down only one Lucas remained, standing there with a quickly dimming light in his chest.
He opened his brown eyes that were brimming with power as he got a feeling for his new body. He felt stronger than before, both in terms of physical as well as in magical power. He also instinctively knew that the calculating and cold part of him was still present, just dormant.
But the cherry on top and something he never expected in his wildest fantasies, was that he could think two thoughts at once. It was a weird feeling and not something you could accurately describe to someone, who didn't experience the same.
Nonetheless, he had achieved parallel thinking.
How exactly?
He didn't know.
If it was byproduct of the merger or a natural process after splitting yourself in two for a prolonged period of time, he wasn't sure. Perhaps Voldemort could do it too.
Maybe he just got lucky.
He didn't really want to go through it another time, not really living for three quarters of a year was enough for him and he imagined it all could have gone so much worse, if he hadn't split so onesidedly there could have been a fight over who gets to be in control once the merger was on the agenda.
He had no clue how any of this worked. And he didn't want to imagine how messy a fight would be between two versions of himself.
But all these were speculations and Lucas was glad that everything ended the way it did.
Now he just needed to wait until the end of the year for Professor Sprout to raise her Mandrakes.
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