Chapter 9: Secret Revealed (1/2)

After Alan extended his contract with the West family, Quinn spent another five weeks completing his second set of another detection layer and a thinner five-layer hexagon-based shield.

Quinn, who had painstakingly completed his last line of defense, looked at Alan with expectation clear on his face, ”Now that I have completed my last line of defense, are we finally going to learn the aspect of efficiency?”

Quinn couldn't conceal the excitement from his voice. Quinn clearly understood the importance of the defense of his mind against legilimency. He didn't want his emotions, thoughts, and memories to be leaked or spied upon by any outsider. But, Quinn couldn't help but want to move onward to learning the aspect of efficiency as he knew that this part of occlumency might support his other magic endeavors.

He impatiently waited for Alan's response, yet the reply wasn't the one Quinn was expecting.

Alan shook his head and explained, ”We are not done with your defenses yet, Mr. West. There is still some work that needs to be accomplished before we proceed.”

”What! But that is not what you promised. You said that this was the last step to completing my defenses,” Quinn spoke with heat lacing his words.

Alan disagreed with Quinn and quipped, ”Mr. West, I did say that this was the last step to building your defenses, but I never said that it would be the last task with regards to your defense. We still have to test your defense as a whole; to see if it works well as an integral system.”

Quinn immediately cooled down hearing that. It was true, while he had completed building his defense, he hadn't tested if said defense worked against a legilimency attack. After all, what was the use of having a defense system if it didn't perform its task?

Quinn rubbed his temple, internally scolding himself for his impatience. His thirst for magic was making him impatient. Quinn stared at Alan and enquired, ”So, how are we going to test if my mental defenses work?”

Alan smirked and replied, ”The simple way, I am going to attack your defenses with legilimency of varying strengths and employ various techniques that we used while training your detection layer. Step-by-step, I am going to increase the level of my legilimency attacks, and on the way, we are going to examine the problems and try to fix them.”

Quinn nodded in response as he saw no problem in this approach, as practically testing his defenses was the best possible method to test his progress.

”One more thing, Mr. West.”, Alan spoke, gaining Quinn's attention as he declared, ”During this period, I am going to be attacking your mind with the full intention of looking at your memories.”

Quinn stiffened at that statement as he till now Alan had only gone as far as looking into his surface emotions and had never looked into his memories. Just the thought of Alan looking at his memories terrified Quinn.

”Please remember that whatever I see or discuss is protected by the contract I have signed. I am not allowed to speak or reveal any memory that I end up witnessing in your mind.” Alan tried to assure Quinn, who he saw stiffen up at the mention of memories.

It took Quinn a while to calm down as he looked at Alan with determination in his eyes, ”I am ready for it. Please do whatever is necessary.”

Alan nodded and addressed, ”Before we start, please tell me if you remember the difference between passive and active defense.”

Quinn nodded and recited what he remembered about the asked topic, ”Passive defense is when the occlumens is not aware that his mind is being attacked, and the occlumency defense that has been built defends against the attack without the occlumens knowledge. The shields are in a weaker state as the occlumens is not concentrating on fighting the attack and not focusing his magic on the shields.

While the active defense is the scenario when the occlumens is aware of the fact that his mind is being attacked and is actively trying to defend against the attack by providing magic to his shields, making them perform at their full capabilities.”

Alan nodded, satisfied with the answer, ”Yes, which is why the detection layer is essential as it would alert you about the presence of the legilimens, and you would be able to switch from passive to an active state.

I will be testing your active defense for now. For your passive defenses, I will test them randomly in the future when I am teaching you the aspect of efficiency, as you won't be aware of the timing of my attacks.”

Seeing Quinn reply with a yes, Alan stated, ”Alright, the moment your detection layer senses an attack, you must pull up your shields to their maximum capacity.”

Quinn gulped and made eye contact with Alan, and the next moment he felt a hit on the detection layer, and the heaviness covered his mind.

The attack was on. Quinn immediately focused on his shields, and they thrummed into action.

Alan smiled as he spread his legilimency attack thinly and tried to sift through the shield, but Quinn immediately stiffened the paths Alan was using, trying to trap Alan and cutting off his attack.

Alan chuckled, ”An interesting approach, Mr. West. Let's see how you deal with this.”

Alan stopped trying to sift through his shield and began drilling through the layers of the shield. Quinn gritted his teeth and abandoned the first four layers of his shield as they had already been breached and shifted his focus to the last six, giving them extra power, but Alan drilled through them like a hot knife through butter.

Quinn cursed as he felt the second detection trigger, which meant that Alan was already past the primary ten-layer shield, and the only thing between Alan and his mind was the secondary five-layer shield.

He immediately put his all into the secondary shield and waited for the attack. For a couple seconds, Quinn felt nothing. Then he felt a sharp pain in his head as Alan slammed his legilimency into Quinn's secondary shield like a wrecking ball, immediately cracking the shield.

Alan easily slipped into the now unprotected mind. He found himself in Quinn's mind as he witnessed a few random pieces of memories. Alan saw some of Quinn's experiences during his time traveling.

He saw few glimpses of Quinn's piano and dance lessons, a few memories of Alan's own occlumency lessons. He also a weirdly large number of memories of Quinn staring at a rubber toy ball.

But, maybe because it was Quinn, who was desperate to hide his memories of him doing magic, or perhaps it was pure luck that in the short time Alan was inside Quinn's mind, Alan didn't see any memories of Quinn performing magic.

When Alan came out of Quinn's mind, Quinn's shoulder slumped as he placed a hand on his temple, trying to nurse the dull pain caused by the brutal cracking of the secondary shield. It took a couple of minutes for Quinn's shields to return to maximum integrity. This feature of occlumency was the one Quinn liked as it relieved him the most knowing that he won't have to consciously repair his shields by rebuilding those damned hexagons.

Quinn looked at Alan and asked, ”What did you see?”. He felt his heart threatening to beat itself out of his chest as he asked the question.

Alan described all the memories he had seen, and Quinn noted that there was no mention of him doing magic, and more importantly, 'There was no mention of my past life memories.'

Quinn felt his heartbeat calm down, but he didn't let just this one exchange be the proof of a theory that birthed in his mind. He needed another attack from Alan to cement his findings.

After a short break, Quinn once again defended against an attack from Alan, and again, failed to keep him out. But this time, it relieved him as when he asked Alan about the memories, there was no mention of his past life memories. There were a few mentions of Quinn performing magic, which Alan took as accidental magic, but no mention of otherworldly memories.

'Memories of my past life are somehow safe from legilimency,' Quinn thanked Gods, Merlin, Death, Fate, R.O.Bs, any higher divine being he could think of, as this was one enormous weight off his shoulders.

Quinn stared at Alan and asked, ”Was that a novice legilimens' level of attack?”. While Quinn was rejoicing that his biggest secret was safe, he was worried if his defenses couldn't handle a novice legilimens' attack.