Children and Monsters

8 months passed quickly as I worked on my magic and legilimency. I did the latter with the help of Dobby. He would go and get me small rodents at first so I could practise on them and then moved up to birds outside, then the stupid flamingos in our grounds, then dogs and cats and finally I got him to take me out at night to practise on some random muggles.

It might sound bad but I didn't hurt anyone. I needed to learn how to navigate a human mind. The stronger the mind, the more difficult it is go through but also the harder it is to harm it. I found this out quickly as I went through over 50 rodents before I could read their minds without them becoming braindead. When I moved on to birds I found that their minds were stronger and more aware than the rodents.

Practising on small rodents really helped me refine my control. Animal minds are simple things though so I had to move to more complex minds as I got better. Birds are slightly more complex with more layers but still not too difficult. The flamingos were more because they annoy me. Stupid pink monstrosities.

Dogs and cats however are much more complex than those. It was a big jump. There are layers and layers of the mind all working together in a complex structure. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be. It is definitely not simple mind reading. Reading the surface thoughts of others is very easy but anything deeper gets exponentially more difficult.

The minds of dogs and cats are driven mostly by impulse and instinct along with surprisingly sophisticated emotions. When you're inside another mind, you are moving your consciousness or part of it out of your own mind and the protections you have. Because of this, when in another mind, you have no protection against the impulses, thoughts, emotions and instincts of whoever or whatever's mind you're in.

I needed to learn how to control my own thoughts and stay centered when in another mind through a light metitative state when practising legilimency. This light meditative state is actually quite useful to keep my thoughts focused when studying, practising magic and especially anything tedious like the lessons I receive as an 'noble' heir.

The Malfoy family isn't technically a noble family, we're just very rich. These lessons were very annoying and consisted of handwriting excercises, posture training, speech training, etiquitte training etc etc. Very boring.

When I moved onto humans a few months ago, the jump from dogs and cats to humans was absolutely enormous. Much greater than the gap between birds and dogs and cats. It took a solid month to learn how to navigate a human mind. And that's simply navigating it, not finding specific information or anything more sophisticated.

Learning how to read the memories of a human is also very difficult and took another month to learn. The problem is that unless the person has an established mindscape, one memory is connected to multiple other memories and there are multiple different connections as well.

I looked through a persons mind in the beginning looking for recent memories and watched the memory of the guy eating in a restaurant. Simple right? NO! Every sight that reminded him of something else like a colour, crack in the concrete, a jacket etc. brought those memories to the forefront. Every smell he smelled brought more memories of other meals he's eaten with similar smells and emotions connected to those, which brought more memories in a never ending cycle.

By the end of watching that memory, I was reeling from watching tens of thousands of memories in less than a minute. The moral of the story is that everything is connected to everyting in one way or another in a mind. I went back and found it to be the same with other animals as well. It took a whole month just to be able to isolate a single memory to watch it!

And finally, I spent the last month refining my skill so I could navigate a mind to find what I want to find and watch what I want within the shortest period of time possible. I'm still not very skilled obviously. Legilimency is a skill like occlumency; there is no limit to it. It can be constantly refined with no end.

My plan with Harry will start as soon as I enchant both a ring and a medallion with lasting notice-me-not charms. I couldn't decide which to use so I thought 'why not both?'. 

Speaking of magic, my education with magic has been going swimmingly! As soon as I got my hands on a wand it was like I grew wings and could fly freely! The first thing I did was to replicate what I could already do with a wand which I found I could do immediately.

After that I started with a steady progression like in school. The small transfigurations of first and second year, slightly more complicated charms like the similtanious levitation charm, the fire making charm, water making charm, cutting charm etc. Defense doesn't have any spells on it's own. Defense is where you use what you learn in other classes to defend yourself from people and beasts. All defense spells are charms, transfigurations, curses, hexes etc. 

One thing I find annoying is that there isn't a strict definition of a curse or a hex. I mean, hexes are supposed to be from annoying and midly irritating to mildly debilitating whist curses are everything more severe than that... those are all charms! It's very annoying!

Anyway. I've been progressing well with my magic. I make sure to learn magic without the incantations. A lot of times I have to consciously block my mind from remembering the incantations otherwise i'll still think it when casting. It gets annoying. I know that's how magic developed in this world but still.

It takes a few tries to make spells work without it, but it's better to learn like this from the beginning. It doesn't even take that much more time to learn correctly the first time around.

The best thing however is wandless magic! When I got a wand, I had to use it for it to form a weak connection with my magic core instead of it doing it by itself. With the wand, i've been learning the intricacies of magic. As soon as I cast a spell, I can then cast it without a wand straight away as I've felt through my soul sense and magic how the magic weaves itself into that structure.

My body is like a superconductor for magic from my earlier efforts so there is no difficulty as if my entire body is a wand. Which it kind of is at this point. I'm still getting the hang of it and will be for at least a few years still, but it's a fascinating topic of study.

With this however, i've reached the necessary level to enchant the jewlery with notice-me-not. I will also enchant it to be unable to be taken off by anybody including Harry himself. Then if the worst happens he can't be threatened or blackmailed into taking them off. A couple of quick calculations and a few runes and voila!

A few days and one broken prototype later, I was finished. I had a simple silver ring and a carved piece of wood on a string enchanted with a strong notice-me-not field, unable to be taken off, resizing and unbreaking. I added the resizing and unbreaking later after a little thought. I made the notice-me-not quite strong but not to the point of them forgetting his existence.

Basically, they will have to think of him and only him with quite a lot of mental power to be able to remember him. And even then, they have to keep their mental focus up. The only muggles who can do that for extended periods of time are those with mental training like military, monks, martial artists etc.

Either that or have innately incredible willpower from birth which is almost impossible. I doubt Vernon Dursley could keep his focus on Harry for more than a minute.

I had dobby collect a pair of blank linked books from my father's study that he normally uses for his businesses. They're blood locked so a drop of blood is needed to key them to you. I already did that for mine.

The last thing is to write a long letter for Harry explaining what's going on. Everything else can be conveyed through the journals. They're enchanted to be endless anyway so there's no limit. I will be copying entire books into these journals so he can read them.

I quickly sat down and wrote him a letter before folding it and used a weak sticking charm to attach it to the cover of the journal. He'll be able to pull it off like a piece of Blu Tack.

It was night time right now as I got ready for my mission. I dressed in thick clothes and put the journal with letter in a space expanded pouch I swiped from the basement.

"Dobby". I called, finally ready.

"Yes young master? What can Dobby do for you?" He said.

I was very glad I ordered him to study occlumency. Just the initial meditation quieted his mind and has helped calm him down immensely, allowing him to think more clearly, elevating his speech.

"Dobby, take me to Surrey. We'll find our way from there for our mission tonight." I ordered.

"Yes master." He put a hand on my shoulder and we popped away.

We appeared in a dark alley near a main road. I don't recognise the place but it's fine.

"Dobby, please make us invisible as we move." I told him.

He snapped his fingers and we shimmered before turning invisible. He was skillful with this too as we could see eachother but others can't see us. This is still beyond me at this time. For now.

Quickly moving down the street, we found a bus stop that had a map of the area. A quick look and I located Privet Drive. If we didn't manage to find a map tonight, I would've called it off for tomorrow night and asked Dobby to get a map during the day.

Maneuvering through the streets by Dobby express, we reached Privet Drive within 5 minutes. The minute I stepped on the street, I spread out my soul detection and found what I was looking for. The only house on the street with any wards was number 4. His next door neighbour had magic and so did her cats but no wards.

I remember from the series that she was an old squib woman. I can tell that something is wrong with her magic, but not what. And frankly, i'm not very interested in figuring out squibs right now. I could feel the entire street with my soul sense and through that, Harry.

Immediately I could tell it wasn't looking good for him. We're only a 1-2 months apart age wise, but he was too small. Way too small. We're 5 years old, nearly 6, but he looks like he's 3 or 4 years old. His bones were sticking out of his skin and they were brittle and cracked in some places or mishapen. His fingers in particular are bent in wrong angles. 

He's also covered in scars all over his torso and legs. There are too many things to count wrong with his physical body but moving to the magical side of things, it gets worse.

I'm obviously still learning magic so I can't recognise even one of the spells cast on Harry and around the house. What I can do however is use my soul sense to feel the intent behind them along with their structure. Even without any knowledge, I can still target the weak point to destory these spells!

First of all was a bevvy of bindings centered around his mind. The intent behind them all is restriction. I didn't count on this. I was worried about bindings on his magical core like in many fanfictions so I looked up information about the magical core.

Turns out that that would've killed him within a year. You can only bind someone's magic when they've developed past the initial growth phase. Magicals require magic to be healthy. During the initial growth phase, the magic in a person is still establishing itself and the core forms in this period of time depending on a multitude of factors.

Right now I can tell that Harry has formed his core for at least a year now. This is very early. My case was special. It's generally agreed that the earlier the core is formed, the better as they will be more in tune with their magic.

This fascilitates better understanding, faster learning speed, more intuitive handling of magic and just generally more advantages when it comes to learning and wielding magic. A magic core always has the same capacity when formed because the forming of the core is the minimal amount of magic needed for a core to form. Period. It doesn't matter who. Growth of magic after that is up to the individual.

Moving on, there were a number of spells covering Harry's body. I tried to piece them out as I stopped at the edge of the ward line. The intent behind these spells is the same as those on his mind, to restrict. There were a couple of extra spells that felt more subtly insidious designed to attract disbelief, hate and a weird one that felt vaguely similar to the notice-me-not. That spell however is targeted at covering his condition.

And finally the wards. They're connected directly to Harry, draining him constantly. No wonder his core formed so early! His body has been channelling magic from whatever stores he could build even before he had a core, enhancing his growth.

At least one good thing came from this. His magical core formed early from necessity. It's currently stunted by his body and mind but that can be remedied. Moving on and parsing through the layers of the wards with my soul sense, I can feel a few different things from it.

I obviously can't understand them, but there is a single ward that is tremendously strong and feels protective, it's target is Harry. However, this ward feels... stretched is the best word. It feels like the protection directed at Harry from the ward is constantly trying to get back to Harry but is being held back by other wards and spells.

It also feels... kind of alive. Not in the way you or I would be alive but it has a sense of awareness and can act on it's own towards it's primary objective which is protecting Harry.

There are 2 more separate sets of wards however that are beyond suspicious. The first one is a scheme designed to hold back the single ward protecting Harry from returning to him. The protective ward is constantly pushing against this ward and occasionally changing it's method, all to no avail.

The third set of ward's intent is watchful. This ward set is collecting information regarding Harry and the protective ward and sending it somwehere North. 

One piece of good news in all of this is that the protective ward is so strong and unique that despite failing to re-unite with Harry, it has been fighting off these two wards. It isn't gaining ground on the ward holding it back but that ward can't stop the attempts either.

The protective ward is also interferring with anything it possibly can with the wards meant to collect information. It's a simple thing to access the information collected with my soul detection. The information sent North is vague at best. Nothing specific is reported despite the targeted nature of the wards.

Hahahaha! I bet Dumbledore cursed up a storm when he found that out! Still though, none of this is good. The protective ward is obviously the protections Harry's mother created and fuelled by her death. It's not meant to be away from Harry. Everything else is something completely detremental to Harry.

There are some silver linings in this though! The first is Harry's early formation of his magic core. The second is the obsfucation of information sent to Dumbledore by the protective ward. The third is actually the sophistication of the spells.

All the spells on Harry are highly sophisticated to an unbelievable level. They probably have to be to work as intended. I mean, how complicated are spells designed to restrict the growth of the mind or body? These spells are masterpieces of magic in their own right with the structures of them being multi-faceted and complicated.

However! This also makes them have multiple points in the structure that are weak! Target those and the spells will unravel. There is no monitoring directly on harry probably to not interrupt the delicate balance of the current spells. Indirect is the best method of information gathering for Dumbledore but that's being hindered by his mother's protection!

I think that ultimately, Dumbledore simply didn't anticipate someone ever finding Harry Potter in the middle of the muggle suburbs. How many people knew Lily had a sister anyway? Snape knows for sure. Maybe some old school friends if they're still alive after the war? Anyone on James' side is dead already. No one else would know, so Dumbledore's best defense is secrecy!

Having thought through all of this, it was finally time to take action! Having thought that, I placed my hand against the protective ward. The information gathering ward scheme is monitoring the protective ward and inside the house, not outside. Plus it's being obstructed every step of the way, it has no room to detect me here.

Immediately, I felt the protection reach out to me to analyse me. I projected my thoughts of helping Harry to the forefront of my mind and allowed the ward to scan my surface thoughts. The best part about this is that I have no ulterior motives. I'm not tricking the protection, I genuinly want to help Harry.

Even if I wasn't tasked by the Guardian to help Harry, I would choose to do it on my own volition after seeing the situation here. It's grotesque, predatory, abhorrent and many more strong adjectives what Dumbledore has done here. I don't give a fuck about his master plan. It looks like this universe has a classic Evil Machiavellian Dumbledore! Hahahaha! Good! Now I don't need to have any reservations about screwing him over.

After a bried period, the protection finally came to a decision and let me through. Scanning the information being sent out by Dumbledore's ward just in case, it seems the protection already compensated for me being here and is presenting that nothing has changed. Accoring to the information sent, i'm not even here. 

Ignoring that, I moved quickly. Unlocking the door and moving quickly to the boot cubpoard I opened it up quickly to find Harry exactly as I saw through soul sense lying on a small cot in a fitful sleep.

"Dobby, put him deeper to sleep while I work." I whispered.

He said nothing but followed my orders, waving his hand and Harry fell deeper into sleep finally going still, breathing deeply. 

I took my wand out and began my work, targeting the weak points of the spell structures with simple dispelling charms. The targeted nature of the dispelling charms worked wonders and cleaved through the weak points, unravelling the spells quickly.

I moved my wand over his form as I continued my work, breaking all the foreign spells on Harry as I went. I was so glad to have the soul cultivation technique at this time. Without my soul sense, I wouldn't know where to start. Anyone else would probably need a whole team of prefessional cursebreakers.

After half an hour Harry was free of foreign spells and shifted comfortably in his sleep. Using soul sense, I finally concentrated on the piece of Voldemort's soul he carries, diving deep with my detection to do a focused search.

Quickly, it became apparent that the situation wasn't that bad just yet. The protective ward outside is part of the protection his mother left him, but not all of it. It was ripped out of him by Dumbledore to create the ward. The remainder of the protection is holding back the soul piece and keeping it at the edge of Harry's soul space.

It hasn't yet latched onto him and is being kept at bay for the moment. However, the soul piece isn't budging either, struggling to gather even a scrap of magic to keep fighting. It's on the back foot for now but that could change if it grows stronger or the protection grows weaker. If it manages to latch onto Harry's own soul... he'll probably need to go the way of an AK like the books and movies.

The good news is that there is time before either of those happen. The stalemate won't change for some time. There's nothing I can do about that for now though.

For now, I simply put the pendant on him and the ring on his right hand miggle finger. They immediately started working as the enchantments were trying to shift my attention away. Ignoring it, I stuck the book with letter onto the door of his room with a weak sticking charm.

Lastly, I opened an eyelid and took a dive into his mind. I took my time with this, looking through his life from his perspective. I didn't even notice that I was muttering to myself as I was looking through his mind, all my concentration on his memories. There were gaps here, unnatural gaps... not good. I don't have the skill to recover erased memories, but he can do it himself when he gets proficiency in Occlumency.

Oh wow! Even with all the spells to restrict his mind, Harry pushed through them with sheer willpower and was doing just fine in the mental department. When he wakes up, the only difference he'll notice is that his mind runs smoother and faster than before. Good job Harry! It seems this Harry inherited Lily's intelligence. Thank fuck!

I left his mind after confirming some thoughts I had. Like why would he never try to run away? He did. A blank space immediately follows before he wakes up in the cupboard. The final thing I did as I left was to leave a strong compulsion in his mind to check out the book stuck to the door.

Feeling and starting to brainstorm ideas about how to help him, I left the house. Looking back for a moment, I signalled to Dobby and he placed a hand on my shoulder and we were suddenly back in my room at home.

I sat on my bed and thought for a minute. Firstly, I don't have the magical expertise in order to heal him, but I don't need to at this point either. I'm rich and there are potions available. All I really need to learn is a spell to vanish bones. Then I can vanish his incorrectly healed bones and feed him skelegrow. The potion will regrow his bones correctly and correct the damage done to the existing bones.

Once that's done, some poitions to conteract long term malnutrition and food. Apetite stimulators, nutrient poitions, stomach settlers and digestion boosters along with a craptonne of food. Following a potion regime along those lines for 6 months to a year will bring him up to where he's supposed to be.

Having thought of an initial plan to help him recover I nodded to myself and went to bed for the night, feeling determined.