Chapter 70: Aftermath: Questions Answered (1/2)
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”What do you mean there is nothing wrong with me?”
Quinn was stunned to hear Alan's statement. Here he had been having trouble controlling his magic. Whenever he set his magic free, it would go berserk and hurt him in the process.
Just so that his magic doesn't go out of control, he had tortured himself and detached his emotions from himself. He had learned the very first day he had read upon the emotional aspect of occlumency that blocking his emotions for long periods was harmful. But, he still did it because it was the only way he could think.
Now, the old man in front of him was telling Quinn that he had nothing wrong with him.
”What the hell do you mean by that?”
Alan sighed at his student and explained.
”Quinn, I diagnosed you while you slept. I didn't find anything wrong with you,” Alan raised his hand when Quinn tried to speak up. ”I know your magic isn't under your control. But, that isn't a disease or injury.”
”Then why is acting out and rampaging?”
”Before I answer that, let's go back to the start,” Alan suggested and put up his first question. ”Tell me, what do you think happened to you?”
”I was clearly under the control of magic or curse. It all started when I fell unconscious in the vault,” Quinn recalled the time when he returned to his dormitory. ”It lowered my inhibitions. I did plenty of things that I wouldn't do. Plus, vault made it so that I won't return to it for exploration. I was planning to return to the vault but changed my mind and didn't visit. I was clearly under some kind of mental curse...”
Quinn trailed off at the end and then raised his voice at Alan.
”Why in the bloody name of magic didn't occlumency work?! I regularly spend time on that damn magic. Why didn't it work for months, months!”
”Hmm, tell me, Quinn, what is your current system of occlumency defense?” Alan asked a question from his student. He already knew the answer to the question. But was walking his student through the process so that he would arrive at the answer.
”It hasn't changed from the time we ended our lesson,” said Quinn. He wondered why Alan was asking him the question. ”A shield layer built under a defense layer, with another set of the same configuration following under the first set.”
”Correct, and I have to say that you have made noteworthy progress in strengthening your shields. They have grown quite a bit since the time I taught you.” Alan gave Quinn praise on his progress before asking. ”Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that right now, I am inside your mind?”
”Definitely,” Quinn replied almost immediately. He knew his teacher's personality. He had spent a couple of years under his tutelage, and he was sure that Alan was in his mind the entire time.
”Did you sense me entering? Or can you feel me operating legilimency right now?”
”... No, but where are you going with this,” asked Quinn. He wasn't following whatever Alan was trying to show him.
Alan sighed before he said, ”Quinn, with your current system of occlumency, you won't be able to detect anything as long as they get past your shield. If someone or in this case something passes through your defenses, you will have no idea that they are inside.”
”Your defenses will tell you that there is an incoming attack if they are strong enough, but once the attack is inside, your defenses won't do squat.” Alan folded his hands on his lap and continued, ”Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the system you are following. You can build your defenses until they are at my level. There is no limit there, but your system of occlumency defenses doesn't have any other feature beyond that. Your defenses won't do something that it wasn't designed for.”
Alan pointed at himself and said, ”If someone manages to break past my covering shields, that doesn't mean my defense is over. I have various fail-safes present beyond that to protect my mind.” He pointed at Quinn and continued, ”You, on the other hand, have nothing other than your detection layers and shields. You have the castle and the manor inside, and you have sorted the memories in a way that even if someone gets past your defenses, they would have a mighty difficult time to get to the memory they are looking.”
”And, while I was teaching you, we never went over the possibility of something like this happening. We worked on legilimens breaking into your mind to get access to your memories. We never worked on something like this that would target you in such a way that would alter your personality.” Alan paused and stated, ”You don't have a way to protect your mind from being manipulated like this.”
”B-But, I-I worked hard on t-this,” Quinn was shocked to hear that his defenses were useless. He wasn't expecting to hear that after the time and effort he put on his occlumency.
”I know you worked hard. Your defense-aspect and your efficiency-aspect have grown beyond what I had thought you would be able to accomplish at your current age. I can assure you that your progress is quick, and other than myself and some select individuals, your speed of progress is second to none.”
Then came the 'but' of the sentence.
”But... your progress in the emotional-aspect is lacking. While you are able to detach your emotions so that become nothing but a buzz at the back of your head, and that allowed you to keep your magic in check all this time...”
Alan had seen the memories, and with his level of legilimency, he didn't just watch the memories like a film and was able to feel what Quinn was feeling during his memories.
”...You have done nothing to make sure that your emotions won't be manipulated. The one to blame here is time. You just didn't have enough time to devote to the emotional-aspect while you learned other magic.”
When Alan said Quinn's progress was below himself and some other individuals, he didn't consider that Quinn devoted time not just to occlumency but various other fields of magic.
Quinn had recovered from the reeling shock that his occlumency had failed him because he hadn't designed it sufficiently.
”...Shields.”
Quinn said something that Alan wasn't able to hear, so he leaned forward and asked. ”Pardon, I didn't get that.”
”Shields, you said my shields are strong. Why didn't they stop the magic from entering my mind? Even if my emotional-aspect occlumency was lacking, my defense-aspect was strong enough to block out an attack.”
Alan nodded to that question and gathered his thoughts to answer. ”Friar? was that his name. Yes, Friar. The ghost who gave you the riddle said that another ghost had ceased to exist because of that vault. What did you think about that?”
”That the vault was harmful to ghosts, what about it? I am not a ghost,” said Quinn. He would have answered better if he was in another time, but right now, Quinn was defending his occlumency.
”Alright, what are ghosts?” asked Alan.
”A ghost is the imprint of the soul of a once-living magical, and as such, a type of spirit. These fleshless spirits are either afraid of death or have some extremely potent connection to the locations they haunt.” Quinn gave him the textbook definition of a ghost.
Alan smiled as the words were right there. ”Exactly, they are imprints of souls. Imprints of souls have similar properties as actual souls. You get what I am talking, right?”
Quinn gave it a thought, and after some time, he exhaled.
”The curse was soul-based. Is that what you are talking about?”
Alan made a face that said, 'kind of, but not really.'
”The curse was emotion-based, but I can safely conclude that the curse definitely had a soul aspect. It might as well have been the entry point as after that your neither your mind nor soul had no defense for your emotions.”
Alan gazed at Quinn as he thought about how to explain it to his student.
”Emotions are connected to both mind and soul. Some believe that it might even be connected to the body as negative emotional states can affect physical output. But, emotions are definitely connected to mind and soul. Mind connection, you already know, and the existence of ghosts show conclusive proof of the soul connection.”
They remained in the mortal world because they had unfinished business, whether in the form of fear, guilt, regrets, or overt attachment to the material world who refuse to move on to the next dimension. The choice to come back as a ghost was emotionally based.
”You never noticed something was wrong with you the entire time the curse was active. You made decisions and acted in ways that you wouldn't have. A lot of things should have triggered some suspicion inside you, but it never did. Not once did you think that there was something wrong with you. All of this was because the curse was acting on your emotions and, in turn, your personality. It attacked from two sources, both closely connected to magic; Mind and Soul.”
Quinn just grabbed his head and groaned. He was regretting the decision to dive into the second vault.
”What about my magic rampaging out,” Quinn questioned. ”How is that connected to my magic? What about the changes the curse bought to my magic before it broke?”
”About that, I have no idea how did the curse, if we can even call it that at this point, increased the capacity of your magic, but I can tell you that the increase in control was because emotion and will is an essential aspect to magic. The curse definitely brought your emotions close to your magic. Your magic responded to your emotions better than ever while you were under its influence.”
A magical's emotional state can affect their inherent abilities. For instance, an agent of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force was said to have produced better results with their Inn Charm after channeling the goodwill they received from inn-keepers they met on their travels into their spell-casting.
While in service, Gareth Greengrass, a senior researcher in the Department of Mysteries, at one point, documented over seven hundred instances of spells being cast in anger. He found they were all more powerful than even the casters themselves had thought themselves capable of producing.
”The curse targeted your emotions with cardinal sins, or the capital vices, or the seven deadly sins.”
Quinn collapsed back into his bed, and while gazing at the ceiling, he asked, ”Do continue.”
”It triggered your emotions when you felt things that were even remotely in connection to the cardinal sins,” Alan listed all the seven sins. ”Pride. Greed. Envy. Sloth. Wrath. Gluttony. Lust.”
”Let's talk some examples of how the curse affected you,” spoke Alan as he got up from his chair and walked around Quinn's bed.