During the following week, I mulled over what kind of mind palace I should construct. The book warned that if the mind palace wasn't compatible with your spirit, the whole thing would crumble.
I had several ideas on what to build. The annoying thing was it took ti and energy to make the palace. It was very ntally draining. But, if I wanted to pass the trial, this was the first step in being able to craft false mories. Knowing that I had around four months before the trial ended, I decided to go ahead and make my first attempt.
After ditating, I found myself back inside the empty void of my mindscape. Bringing my imagination and willpower to life, paved stone rocks began slowly forming a floor beneath my feet. Once I had gotten it about six feet wide, I started expanding the floor one stone at a ti.
After expanding the floor a decent amount, I noticed that it was becoming harder and harder to form more of the floor. Exhausted, I opened my eyes in the real world, content with the amount I had progressed. I felt drained. It was like my brain had just lifted weights to the point of complete muscle fatigue.
The rest of the week continued in the sa manner. Each night before sleep, I spent so ti working on my mind palace. After the floor, I started on the walls and the arched ceiling. When I was building the hallway, it looked like it stretched into infinity. Now that the hard part was over, all I needed to do was bring my mories inside. One by one, doors began forming next to one another.
Each door contained a mory within. From what I could tell, they were in seemingly random order. One entryway held mories from the previous day, and the next was from when I was a toddler. But, after giving it so thought, the randomness seed right. How often do our minds flit from one idea to another? Who hasn't caught themselves thinking about one thing, only to move to a completely different train of thought? Sotis mories are like that. They are connected in strange ways that we can't always fathom.
Unfortunately, after admiring my handwork for a few minutes, the infinite hallway began to shake. Cracks started to form in the stone floor and then large chunks started disintegrating into nothingness before my eyes.
My eye twitched in annoyance. "rlin's Chafing Nipples." I cursed, I was furious about how quickly the whole thing ca apart at the seams. It hardly seems fair, with the amount of ti and effort I put into this place for it to fall apart in minutes.
The following day I couldn't help but be a little grumpy. My brain was exhausted, one week into building my mind palace, and I was already fed up with the process. It was like studying for a test so much that even the idea of reading one more page made you cringe with fatigue. Then when it was ti to take the test, you find out that you had been studying the wrong subject, and you have to start all over.
What sucked about the whole process of building a mind palace, was that sleep didn't fully rejuvenate my mind. I now understood why the books recomnded the slow and steady approach and why most never advanced past this point. Building a mind palace was ntally exhausting, and then to see all your hard work go up in smoke was discouraging. Plus, most people were satisfied with being able to keep out the few who had learned Legilincy out of their minds with Occluncy shields.
Thankfully, there were classes I could sneak short naps into, like History of Magic. I don't even know if Professor Binns realizes that half the class doesn't pay attention to his monotone, droning lectures. When I first started his class, I found the subject exciting and I scoffed at the inattentiveness that Harry had shown in the subject. But ever since I read ahead in the textbook. I mostly use the ti to study other branches of magic. But today, I buried my face into my arm and dozed off listening to Processor Binns rambling on in his monotone voice.
Of course, there were other consequences to being so out of it during the day. I found myself making slips ups in other classes, and so of those teachers were far less forgiving that Professor Binns.
"Mr. Fawley!" a sharp voice rang out.
I jerked as my eyes snapped open, "I'm awake." I defended.
Looking around the dungeon, I found Professor Snape looming over . His dark eyes glanced over at what remained of the smoldering potion I had been brewing. "Clearly," He sneered. "20 points from Ravenclaw and tonight see for detention after supper. Tell , Mr. Fawley, is my class so dull that it puts you to sleep?"
I struggled not to roll my eyes at the question. Why do people ask questions like that? I wonder what he would do if I said yes? Judging from the throbbing vein in his forehead, I'm guessing nothing pleasant.
Not wanting to end up further on Snape's shit list, I stayed silent, he didn't want to answer. He just wanted to say the wrong thing and dig the hole deeper. When I didn't rise to the bait, he lectured the class on how only incompetent wizards take their eyes off potions that they are brewing. From his pointed glare, he let everyone in the class know he was speaking about .
I took my licks in silence. I had ssed up. I was so tired that I shut my eyes for a second, and the next thing I knew, I fell asleep. Plus, I kind of felt bad, from the suspicious look in Snape's eye, I think he might believe that I did it on purpose. It was hands down, the worst I've ever done in a potion's class, not to ntion that the Davis incident was only a couple of months ago.
After scrubbing the stained and burned potion cauldrons under the watchful eye of Professor Snape, I again went to work on my mind palace, no matter how many tis it took, I was going to succeed. Exhausted or not, I needed to step up my ga if I wanted to pass the trial. I was beginning to realize why so few had ever passed the test. A year isn't much ti to master a difficult subject like this.
I can say with confidence that the following month was probably one of the worst months of my life. Every morning was a struggle to get started with the day. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and stay there.
After the first week, I realized that I had too much on my plate. So I started prioritizing. The ti I usually spent practicing my fourth-year spells was replaced with quick naps. I even reduced my dueling to the annoyance of Anna. While I want to do well at the International Dueling Competition, there is always next year.
The Ravenclaw trial is a once in a lifeti event, and there are no do-overs. I was curious about what the prize was for winning. I had looked up all of the previous Heirs of Ravenclaw. Each of them had been pioneers in magic, but if they were good enough to complete the challenge, then they probably would have been successful whether they succeeded or not.
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That was how I spent the following month, every night I worked on my palace. Outside of a few slip-ups in classes, my grades didn't suffer too much because I was so far ahead in my subjects. One of the most frustrating things about the whole thing was I couldn't talk about what was going on with . More than once, my friends tried to find out what was going on, but the trial's geas thwarted any attempt to let them know.
By the end of the month, I was beyond fed up. Never before in my life had I felt such fatigue and failure. I had studied other difficult magics previously, and even when it took so ti, there was always so sense of progress. It was like I had co across a wall that not only I couldn't pass, but actively mocked my attempts. Every mind palace I created fell apart shortly after its creation. No wonder most people who found success in occluncy never moved on to the next step.
I tried a vast lake, where the waters contained my mories in the shapes of fish. I even created a small wooden boat where I could sit and fish out a mory with my bare hands.
When that didn't work, I built an elaborate labyrinth system inside of a cave where my thoughts and mories could be viewed in shallow pools that dotted the floors. Similar to my previous attempts, it fell apart.
After a few more failed attempts, I started trying to think outside the box and dredged up my faded mories of my previous life. I built a house of mirrors, a futuristic spaceship, a castle, an underground bunker. It didn't matter what I did. One by one, they all fell apart in the end.
When those didn't work, I held off for a few days so I could rest and cover while thinking about what kind of mind palace would fit . While I ditated on the issue, I concluded that I needed sothing more relatable to .
Had it not been for the Ravenclaw trial, I would have given up. The whole point of building a mind palace was that it was the first step in being able to craft and store fake mories. I didn't even know how useful it would be to in the future. It wasn't like I was planning on being a spy. I was perfectly happy with keeping people out of my head with my shields. I imagine only those like Professor Snape needed to master the ability to craft fake mories. But, if I wanted to pass the trial, I needed to figure this out, I had less than three months remaining, and this was only the first step.
Once I settled down and started to reflect on what would suit . I settled on sothing that I loved, books. Ever since coming to this world, I have gotten my hands on as many books as I could. I even had started a secret operation to copy as many books as I could from the Room of Requirent and sneak them back to my tower. I loved to read and study about magic in all its wacky forms and applications.
Once I decided on books, I figured the next step was to form a library. I decided to base mine on the Hogwarts Library because I thought it was the most suitable option. A week later, as I watched in annoyance as my duplicate of the Hogwarts Library fell apart.
While I was annoyed that it fell apart, it wasn't all bad. I could tell it was closer. Unlike my previous attempts, the library nearly lasted a day before dissolving into nothingness.
I tried to examine what went wrong. I concluded that the main problem was while the Hogwarts Library welcod all students, it wasn't my library. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like that explanation was the truth.
This was to be my ntal fortress, a place that held my most precious thoughts and mories. It needed to be mine. I needed it to be a place of peace and safety, a refuge from the outside world. Once I realized what I truly needed, I grinned. I knew what I needed to do.
Closing my eyes, I imagined my seat of power forming around . My lip curled in satisfaction when I felt my gleaming hawk throne form beneath . It was an exact match to the one in my secret tower. I didn't care if sitting in such a throne was one of the trademarks of an evil wizard. Now all I needed was to build my tower.
As the days progressed, I perceived that I was on the right track. The amount of effort that it took to build my mind palace this ti was far less than before. My previous attempts had felt like I was trying to push a square peg through a round hole.
I modeled the tower to be an exact match for the one in the real world. The only difference was the inside was one enormous library. Each level was filled to the brim with shelves that would hold my mories.
Like the Fawley tower, there were seven floors to my library. As soon as I finished the tower, I could feel in my bones that I had succeeded. It was a similar feeling to when I got my wand. I could just tell it was right, like putting on a pair of shoes that fit after wearing a pair that was two sizes small for so ti.
Books started appearing on the shelves. Each contained a mory. Like my previous attempts, they ca in random order. But, unlike last ti, I discovered with so effort, I could shuffle books to different areas.
I left the shelves on the first floor mostly empty. This was to be my decoy area. Once I figured out how to craft a mory, this was where I would store it. Should I decide to let soone past my shields one day, they could look through my fake mories all they wanted.
One of the most appealing things about the mind palace was the ability to review mories. I found the effect similar to the pensieve that was used in the Harry Potter books to view mories. I have always had a great mory. But, being able to see your mories from outside of your body was a whole new experience. It allowed to view things from a new perspective.
Unable to help myself, I searched for mories of my previous life. At first, I thought it would take forever because the books were blank, not giving any indication of what was contained within. However, I discovered that if I picked up a book, I could get a sense of what was contained within without opening it.
As I perused my library, I stopped when I found an old book that seed to be falling apart. Considering my fading mories, I thought that this was probably one of them. I picked the book up gently, almost afraid of damaging it, but once I grabbed it, I felt it was much more solid than it looked.
The book did end up containing a mory of my previous life. I decided to move it to the top floor, which was the farthest it could be from any outside detection. I wasn't too worried that they would be discovered, soone would have to wade deep within the depths of my mind to discover them.
I figured I would have more significant problems to deal with in the real world if they were in a position to go that deep. All I had to eject soone that was in my head was raise my shields, and if I couldn't do that, then I was probably in more danger than having a few of my secrets being discovered.
As I searched the tower, every mory I discovered from my previous life, I moved up to the top as well. Most of them were in terrible condition, it made wonder how long I would have access to them all. It was apparent they were degrading, but the thought it didn't bother as much as I thought it would. My old life didn't matter to . This was now my life, I was learning magic at Hogwarts with my friends, and perhaps best of all I had a loving family.
After seeing how damaged my mories of my previous life were becoming, I made a point to review my moires reading the first five books of Harry Potter. I ended up sitting beside my previous self and followed along. Since all this happened at the speed of thought, t didn't take too long. Now, I have fresh vivid moires of reading the Harry Potter books, even if these mories degrade to the point where I can't view or rember them, at least I have a back up set.
Now that I had finished my mind palace, I discovered that it was possible to open my eyes in the real world and still be sowhat aware of what was going on in my tower. It made organizing my mories go a lot faster.
Now that I had built my tower, I had to learn to craft mories. But, what concerned was that the books warned that this was even more difficult than completing a mind palace. I didn't have much ti left until the trial. It was near the end of February, only a couple of months were remaining until the deadline
I had a few ideas on how to get started. There were several spells related to mory. I figured that I would be an excellent place to start.
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