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Weaving through a psychic mindscape was more often than not, an arduous affair.
Not because it was difficult, since any idiot with a smudge of talent could throw psychic power at someone's mind like a battering ram. But more often than not, it would induce extreme reactions, often resulting in a mind-melting pot of agony for the victim causing all of his psychic structures to go haywire.
The trick was to pass undetected, and guide the victim's mind into thinking in specific directions without leaving obvious signs of manipulation. The inception of ideas was always a difficult thing since the mind was always quick to identify which thoughts were conceived naturally and which were induced by foreign stimuli. Most minds quickly recognized intrusions and sent out flares to their consciousness, causing the victims to scream in agony, again, destabilising the psychic structure.
One might as well find a thorn in a haystack after that.
For professional Obliviators like her, most jobs required a cluster of multiple tools, out of which Legilimency was just one. For instance, if she were looking for memories related to anger, rashness or perhaps, a crime scene, she'd force-feed the victim with two drops of the Draught of Rage. All she needed after that was focus on his memories of a single person, and his draught-addled mind would automatically guide her to relevant memories. There had been cases when she had to make the victim smell Amortentia to identify the victim's greatest desires, which more often than not, had obvious links with the committed crimes.
There was a reason why the Obliviator office was often called to work with the DMLE.
If Potter was correct, then this dream would give her vital information about the people involved with the Dark Lord. And with his direct connection with the DMLE Director, Emmeline was hopeful that they could capture those people and Legilimize them to get the Dark Lord's location.
Emmeline smiled. She might not share Hestia's strong views about Wizarding Britain, but there was a reason she was an active member of the Order of the Phoenix.
But that for later. First she had to get to the damn dream first.
Cautiously, Emmeline made her way through the dark passageway, the steady thrum of power from her own psychic strands being the only dim source of light in this blackness. Despite having practised weaving and traversing through psychic matrices and mindscapes for close to two decades, she couldn't help but feel that Harry Potter's mind was… strange. Not because the teen had powerful defences or latent psychic powers, but because of how exceedingly easy it was.
Traversing through mindscapes was no different from trekking through a forest at night. You couldn't see much, there were invisible distractions all around, and the ground kept shifting beneath you. If you weren't cautious, you could trip into the wrong memory, or worse, be carried away into an entire stream of memories that could take you further and further away from your target. And that was excluding all kinds of creative defences that an Occlumens could conjure up.
Compared to that, Potter's mind was akin to sliding down a pipe, as a feeling of weightlessness and ethereality consumed her.
Emmeline slowly felt the sensation of having a body come back, despite knowing such feelings were purely illusory. Closing her eyes for a moment, she allowed her other senses to come to the fore. Satisfied there were no hazards nearby, she looked around and —
—Blinked in surprise at the large, sprawling, glitzy city. Words such as surreal, fast-paced, and hyper-reality flitted through her head. Her work had often taken her out of the country, but Emmeline was sure that putting muggle London, Venice, Paris and New York together wouldn't stand a chance against the grandness that she was witnessing. The sky was pitch dark, but the city seemed lit by things that eclipsed her imagination. She had never seen something so… grand, so fashionable before, and given the modern cars that sped through the city at speeds that would make broom-makers die of jealousy, this had to be a muggle town. Moving images of men and women in scantily-clad dresses, the citylights, and the casinos and nightclubs — this was a vision of the future. Emmeline tried to look at everything at all once, from the skyline to the skyscrapers to the blaring music, it was just… glamorous.
Just how could a young mind conjure a mindscape this futuristic in such great detail? Especially one that didn't even have the slightest amount of psychic defences at all?
It simply made no sense.
Then she saw it.
A cloud, no, a sea of darkness. She had almost missed it with the bright lights and magnificence, but now that she noticed it, she couldn't help but see anything else but it. A wall of shadows. Titanic would be a good way to describe it. And the worst part? She had the eerie feeling that she was only seeing a part of it.
Its eyes were crimson. Its flesh, the darkness itself. A maddening, primordial light was glaring out of its sunken sockets for eyes. Dozens of little mouths lined with serrated teeth opened along its extended flanks, gasping at the world. Shadowy tentacles protruding out of its outer form were undulating in weird unison, the motion becoming more and more energetic, as the nasty thing moaned with a sound that felt both loud yet incomprehensible at the same time. An ocean of twisted protrusions were constantly branching off from its endless form, spreading into the grand city below. Malignant growths, like the diseased skin of a plague victim, they fell down on the city below. Emmeline blanched in horror as a shadow fell on a speeding car, turning it into an inferius-like state, corrupting it beyond recognition.
The noises it made… it was something no human should ever have to hear.
Emmeline realised what she was witnessing.
Armageddon. An Apocalypse. The end of the world. Whatever that thing was, it was feeding upon the city. Tearing it apart. Corrupting it to its very core.
What kind of twisted mindscape was this?
"Fascinating, isn't it?"
Emmeline spun around, and found herself shakily pointing her wand at —
"... Potter?"
He smiled. "Guilty."
"What… "she glanced at the world-devouring darkness above, and then back at him. "What is this? What is this place? And how — how are you here?"
And instead of answering his questions, the blasted teen just… snorted. "Where else would I be?"
"You have no Occlumency defences. How do you have a mindscape?"
"Is that what this is?"
"You're telling me it isn't? And here you are, a psychic avatar of your real self."
"Is that what I am?"
"Are we going to keep answering each others' questions with questions?"
His smile widened. "Would you like that?"
Emmeline gritted her teeth, and clenched her wand tiger, pointing it at his face. "Answer the damn question."
"Woah!" said Potter, raising his hands in surrender. "Someone's really twitchy." Then he barked a laugh and dropped his hands. "Come now, Lady Vance. This place isn't real. Neither are you, nor me for that matter. The real me is sleeping, and the real you is sitting next to him. And if you really hate being here, just end the spell."
The truth didn't make her feel better, but she lowered her wand anyway.
"What is that thing?" she asked.
"Hmmm, it's never an easy question with you, is it?" He said whimsically. Emmeline observed how utterly laid back he was. The Harry Potter she had observed in the real world was tight as a knot. Oh yes, he could joke and laugh and be an arsehole, but he held his mask tighter than a niffler did its gold. This one though…
"I've been observing it for quite some time now," he said, a strange humour lining his tone, like an inside joke. "I believe it is some kind of a living tempest, a creature that is able to consume this reality itself. As for what this is, it's a shark tank, and that creature up there, it's the shark."
"This is your mindscape," she said. "You created it."
"It is my mindscape, yes," he admitted. "But I did not create it. And neither did I create this creature. For Merlin's sake, can you not see what it is doing?"
"It is eating the world —"
"A world crafted out of my memories. What does that tell you?"
Emmeline froze. "Your… your memories. You're saying it's eating your —"
"Yes."
"Then this place is…"
"Yes."
"And you —"
"Yes."
Emmeline scowled. "You don't even know what I was about to say."
"Probably not," he shrugged. "But the answer is probably yes."
"What are you, Harry Potter?" She asked. "Your mind has no psychic defences. It's obvious that you haven't been introduced to Occlumency at all. Yet you can manifest as a psychic imprint? You have a mindscape of a futuristic world, and a meta-psychic construct that is consuming your memories?"
"A construct…" he mused. "No. I'm pretty sure it's real. In fact, it almost swallowed me whole, but then she pulled me out of it."
"She?"
A knowing smile formed on his face. "She."
"Does she have a name?"
"Yes, but I don't feel like telling you."
She was getting annoyed now. Annoyed and wary and almost cursing herself for agreeing to extract his dream in the first place.
"I've been observing this creature," said Harry, tilting its head languidly. "It has a distinct pattern. Those tentacles, they always keep fluttering, but the creature will not move any further, until… well, until something happens."
"A trigger."
He smiled at her. "Yes. A trigger. And then it will move really, really fast, and consume whatever comes in its path and then halt again, as if considering its next motion."
"Waiting for the next trigger," Emmeline translated. "Do you know what that is?"
"Anchors."
"Anchors?" she muttered. "Anchors to what?"
"Reality," he said simply.
"I — I don't understand."
That annoying smile showed up again. "This world…" He looked at the glamour city with sad, nostalgic eyes. "My world. My… Reality. What I have believed in. But Sharky over there doesn't seem to like it. In time, it will replace this world with something else." He laughed again. "At least I know it won't be something horribly gauche like the Chamber of Secrets or my apartment's dungeon."
"Then what will it be?"
Emmeline shivered as he looked at her, something demonic glinting in his eyes. Was this a manifestation of his Incubus powers?
For a moment, she thought he was going to attack her. Instead, he just raised his hand and pointed it behind her.
"That."
Emmeline turned around to see what he was pointing at and…
….Couldn't look away.
Literally.
She saw seven large platforms, stacked on top of each other, constantly morphing their shapes and designs in ways that defied basic Euclidean designs. It was still, and it was moving. She could see effigies decorating the entire edifice, sculptures of women in various levels of nudity, offering their bodies towards the central dome, radiating submission and worship through their very postures. Relief panels covering almost the entire structure, from the large pillars to the wide walls and the archways, depicting women, sometimes single, sometimes in groups, with a single man, engaging in more sexual positions than Emmeline ever knew existed. Twisting, broad-hipped and high-breasted nymphs displaying their generously contoured and bejewelled bodies, running riot across the surface of the stone, putting up make-up, washing their hair, playing erotic games, dancing and shaking their girdles. And the only thing that stayed ever-constant was the massive doorway that lay at the peak of the stairs.
This… this was a temple. A shrine dedicated to a deity of lust.
A sex-god.
"What is this place?" She murmured.
"Lecherous Shrine," said Harry, standing next to her. His eyes were filled with a sense of childlike wonder and something like jealousy. "The bastion of the God of Lust."
"God… of Lust?" Emmeline smirked, and looked at him. "Is that what you see yourself as?"
He shook his head. "Not me. Not yet."
Emmeline furrowed her temples. Something about that utterly nonchalant, absolutely indifferent behaviour rankled her. Why, she had no clue, but she hadn't reached where she had in life by ignoring her instincts.
"Hestia told me about your nature as an Incubus."
"Oh."
Just that. No anger, no surprise, not even a smidgen of emotion. Just a casual acknowledgement.
"I'm not going to hide what I am, Lady Vance," he said softly. "And this place isn't for me. Not yet. When it's complete, it will be a magnum opus that belongs to someone that I have not become yet."
Emmeline glanced at the edges of the compound, which looked slightly hazy, as if she was seeing it through an old, faded mirror.
"A God of Lust?"
"Yes."
She pursed her lips. "A futuristic town being demolished by a malevolent cloud beast, and a temple belonging to a sex-god under construction. A shift from what you were to what you are becoming, I suppose."
"Correct."
"If I might ask, what is it like being an incubus?"
She had never met one before. Incubi were practically as rare as metamorphmagi these days. Oh she had a lot of experience with veela and the nastiness they could pull off, but never dealt with a guy that could perform magic of a similar sort. Rumour was that Vlad the Impaler was actually an incubus before he got tainted with vampiric blood to become the monster he was. The great Merlin Emrys, was rumoured to be fathered by an incubus too.
"It's… sudden," he said after a sigh, speaking slowly. "Most of the time I don't feel anything at all, or at least, I don't think I do. But there are triggers, things that cause it to flare up. If something threatens me, all I can think about is how to destroy it. If someone threatens me, all I can think of is how to dominate them. And if I see someone attractive…"
He eyed her.
"I'm married."
"Does that matter?" he asked, tilting his head in a most childishly inquisitive manner.
She snorted.
"It's all instincts," he said. "Like my hormones are dialled up to eleven, and I cannot think of anything else but to bed the woman. No matter how."
She narrowed her eyes. "Even by force?"
A sly grin formed on his lips. "There's where you are wrong. If I need to force you to have sex with me, I've already lost the game."
"Potter…" she hesitated. "You're being incredibly forward."
A small smile played on his lips, as if amused by an inside joke. "I'm not. We are going to have sex, and you are going to ask for it. I'm not going to seduce you. You are already seduced. You just don't know it yet."
Emmeline swallowed and took a step back. "Potter, I — I'm married."
Just what was it he was doing to her? Was it his allure? She fortified her mental shields.
That damnable smile reappeared. "I know. I'll make sure to remind you of it, when you ask me to fuck you."
His eyes left her face, and looked up at the majestic edifice soaring in front of them. "I am not worthy of this… Not yet. I'm still trying to understand it. Its triggers, its… fetishes. Identifying them, cataloguing them, determining what responses I would regret coming to, and what I should never suppress. It's no different from being a werewolf, I suppose."
"And what about your necromancy?" Emmeline prodded. "If your incubus nature has such a great effect on your mindscape, surely necromancy will have something similar?" She paused, and looked at the massive demonic cloud. "Is that thing…"
"Not a work of Necromancy," Harry finished for her. "There are many shades of darkness, Lady Vance. Sharky there was created by Darkness, and it was made to take that reality into Darkness, but Darkness does not control it."
"You speak like you know things," said Emmeline. "But you have just three years of magical education. How do you know what you know, Harry Potter?"
He smiled. "That is for me to know, and you to find out."
"Find out where, inside your Lecherous Shrine? I imagine this is the form your subconscious has crafted to protect its secrets."
"It has," he said easily. Then, his smile faltered. "Though, I'd appreciate it if you did not enter that place. It isn't ready. Not yet."
"All the easier for me to get what I am here for."
His lips tightened. "Lecherous Shrine isn't ready to welcome outsiders. If you force your way in, I'm afraid you will find more than just secrets there."
"Flowery, but not enough to deter me."
A shadow fell over his face. "Emmeline, that is not a request. You must not go in. You will not like what you find."
"You sound like someone with something to hide," said Emmeline. "Which is doubly confusing because you wanted me to extract this dream for you in the first place. So why are you…"
She trailed off, and then, it clicked.
Suddenly everything made a lot more sense, the difference between the two Harry Potters. The confident nature of the former, and the hesitant, secretive nature of the latter…
"You aren't Harry Potter. ," she murmured, beaming at him. ". You are a manifestation of his subconscious. His inner-nature, the Incubus. This place holds your secrets, your dreams, your nightmares, and all this… you, it is just an elaborate defence, trying to keep me from accessing it."
"Wow. Looks like you've figured me out, completely." he said, that annoying smile reappearing on his lips. "But if that's what you want…"
He extended his arm out, and the great doors that stood barring the entrance to the great shrine before them. Even from a distance, she could see giant satin curtains of purple and satin, with softly glowing torches and engraved artistic erotica on the walls.
"One last thing, Lady Emmeline Vance. Do you know what happens to people who go looking for trouble?"
Emmeline felt a shiver down her spine.
"...what?"
Emmeline swallowed, and looked at the now open Lecherous Shrine, and then back at Potter—
— And found empty air.
Harry Potter had vanished.
"In for a penny…" she muttered, and gathering herself, she stepped in.
….
….
….
Stepping through the door left her feeling sticky and wet, but as soon as her feet hit the other side, the sensation was gone.
As were her clothes. Like, completely.
Emmeline shrieked, then snapped her mouth shut, choosing to glare at the perversity of Potter's mindscape instead. No doubt this was one of his psychic defences. Magical attacks on the intruder was one thing, but an attack on their modesty, especially if the intruder was a woman?
So below the belt, Potter.
Emmeline immersed herself in Occlumency, trying to shake away the feeling of humiliation raging through her. It was difficult, far more difficult than it would have been in real life. That made sense, for she was after all, just a psychic impression of herself. It's not real, she told herself. My real body is still clothed, and all of this is happening inside his subconscious. Not even he'll remember this. Worst comes to worst, you can always obliviate him.
Yes. That felt like a reasonable way forward.
Waving her wand, she conjured some light clothing for herself. The fabric tore away by the time she had managed to put them on. She tried again, and ended up the same way. Confused, she tried conjuring different varieties of garments and undergarments. Every single one of them stayed intact, only to tear away the moment they touched her skin.
"The bastard!" she cursed. "He's doing this on purpose. Hestia can say whatever she wants, but I'm going to curse him six ways to Sunday the moment I get out of this Merlin-forsaken place. Why this—"
The rest of her words died in her throat, as the door opened again, showing her the way out.
Emmeline clenched her teeth. She had come this close to finding out the secrets within his mindscape. She would not be beaten by a third-year passout, incubus or not.
Scowling, she continued to walk through the empty halls. If she was wary before, her fear and humiliation were on red alert right now. The entire manse was eerily quiet with a sexual undercurrent that shocked her like someone was constantly hitting her with a Renervate charm. There were nude mannequins everywhere depicting sexual acts and large portraits of naked women in compromising positions hanging from the walls. Even worse, they were moving and actively participating. Emmeline tried her best to ignore them, and passed through a large living room with a giant chandelier and curved, gold leaf couches and oversized wingback chairs.
As she walked past one of the chairs, she noticed hooks sticking out of the folds. She had entered an open, spacious foyer with a grand three-tiered staircase, intricate iron railing and marble steps. Emmeline tried to cover herself with her hands as she walked stark naked through the enormous place. The dark purple carpet on the floor and the smaller chandeliers above filled the place with a mysterious seductiveness. As she walked, she heard muttered noises that became louder and louder. One of the doors was cracked open. Her skin prickled, and unable to control herself, she grabbed the knob and twisted it, opening it just enough to get a peek of what was happening inside….
….And the world changed.
Meanwhile in Reality…
"It's been fifteen minutes already," muttered Hestia, as she dispersed the tempus charm. "This shouldn't take this long, should it?"
She was sitting in the same room as the others. Emmeline was sitting next to Harry's bed, her posture ramrod straight, her wand tip touching Harry's temples, while he lay on the bed, utterly asleep and unmoving. Emmeline too was imitating a mannequin, eyes open, lips pursed, and if not for the subtle movement of her chest, one would think she was dead.
Hestia was no stranger to seeing Legilimency in action. This was however, the first time that someone was doing it on an unconscious subject, and that too, someone she had grown to care for to an extraordinary degree. Harry Potter was her Master, her lover, her employer and… her Lord, not that she would ever admit it out loud. Sure she had sworn an Unbreakable Vow to keep all his secrets, and be on his side, but it was perhaps a little too early to let him know just how deep her devotion ran.
Hestia had long-since determined that this young man, whoever he was, was not Harry Potter, or at least, not the Harry Potter they knew. Yes, the dementors might have unleashed something that night, and might have transformed him into an Incubus, but that didn't explain his sudden maturity, his business acumen, or his knowledge of things, both magical and muggle. He tried hard to hide it, but Hestia saw through it. Harry knew things. It showed in the way he hobnobbed around with people twice or thrice his age like a seasoned politician, and the casual subtlety with which he went along, making his moves like arranging chess pieces, preparing for an eventuality that would happen twenty steps later. It showed in his casual denigration of British policies and his acute disdain for the bigotry that ran deep in its political system. His three years of experience in the Wizarding world involved Quidditch, learning the wonders of Magic, attending classes and trying to survive whatever dangers fell his way. And in the summer, he was either living with his muggle relatives or being smothered by Molly Weasley. None of which could have explained the genuine anger he felt at British society. It was too raw, too deep, and not something that could be developed through second-hand experience or learning through books. Hestia didn't know how, but she felt like he had lived through this and a lot more, that he understood what muggleborns and halfbloods like her went through, and the more he learnt of it, the more it horrified him. Merlin's Beard, he had gotten the Iron Lady herself on his side, and didn't that just boggle the mind? Amelia Bones, whom Albus freaking Dumbledore had failed to recruit in the last sixteen years, Harry Potter had convinced her to work with him over a weekend.
A fucking weekend.
His knowledge, his disdain, his spellcasting and his prowess in the bedroom — none of that could have been borne from the dementor attack. Being an incubi could have granted him a godly stamina, but his experience in bed — that spoke of experience.
Hestia had the sneaking suspicion that there might have been Time-travel involved somewhere. After all, such a device existed in the deepest vaults of the Department of Mysteries, despite being a technology only in its infancy at the moment.
But what of the future? Could it be… that the person she was serving, the man that was her lover, whom she had pledged her undying loyalty to, was a Harry Potter from the future?
And if she had arrived at this conclusion, then Emmeline Vance, one of the most talented psychic masters she had ever met, would definitely realise the same.
And she was currently perusing through Harry Potter's mind.
Yes, Emmeline was a friend, and a member of the Order. She had her heart in the right place, and yes, she was oath-bound to keep Harry's secrets. But Hestia knew very well that while oaths blocked a lot of information from direct transmission, peripheral information was okay to share so long as it didn't invade the specific knowledge protected by the oath itself.
Merlin, Emmeline was the one that had taught her that. To hand out a particular bit of information in order to manipulate them but not tell them directly, lest the knowledge that it came from her affected their responses, or break her own oaths in the process.
The question was — what could she do to keep Emmeline from wreaking havoc? Vance was a Dumbledore-follower, and while Harry's recent tactic had painted Dumbledore in a less-than-glamorous light, it wasn't enough to convince her to shift loyalties. She needed an ace, a game changer, something that would bind Emmeline for good, something that would ensure that she would do nothing to derail Harry's plans.
Her fingers twitched.
She glanced at her associate and friend, watching her dilated eyes, and the utter lack of expression on her features. Whatever she found inside Harry's mind, it was taking up her undivided attention.
Legilimency was a double-edged sword. It paved the way for mental attacks by the caster, but it also weakened one's own barriers while they did so. Offence at the expense of defence. If she wanted to do anything to a psychic master like Emmeline, she would never get a better opportunity than this.
Slowly, cautiously, Hestia stood up, and placed the tip of her wand inches away from her skull. The seconds ticked by in agonising slowness, and Hestia closed her eyes, and let the self-loathing pass through her. Now that she was about to cast it, she knew exactly why the spell was considered Unforgivable.
Her fingers clenched the wand tighter, as her sense of purpose filled her. She whispered.
"Imperio!"