SD: CH171 - THE BOUND SELF

The fireplaces in Excelsior never crackled. They purred.

It was the sort of detail you’d only notice if you’d been force-fed enough polished aristocratic nonsense to recognize the difference. The flames didn’t hiss. They murmured — like the kind of people who said ‘subtle’ with a soft ‘b’ and meant it.

Amelia liked them. Said it reminded her of control.

I liked them because they didn’t scream.

The drawing room was warm in a way that felt artificial. The walls, carved in quiet oak, bore the Potter crest now — updated. Sharper. Hung like a warning. I hadn’t asked for it. I also hadn’t taken it down.

I was seated cross-legged on a floor cushion that probably cost more than I’d ever spent on myself. Across from me, Emmeline Vance sat still as sculpture, a faint smirk pulling at the corners of her mouth. A teacup hovered beside her, untouched. She hadn’t blinked in over two minutes. That was the first thing that unnerved me.

"You’re sure about this?" I asked.

She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze remained fixed on me, not harsh—just unnervingly unbroken. At last, she said, "Harry, I once stared down a vampiric inquisitor from the Vladic Orders who tried to flay my psyche open with seven tongues. You’re just a very horny incubus with control issues. Yes, I’m sure."

From the armchair behind me, Amelia Bones snorted. "That's the polite version. You should hear what she called you in her sleep.”

"I'm sure it was something flattering," I muttered, shifting. The runes under the floor vibrated subtly, reacting to my unease. Excelsior knew my moods better than I did.

It was my first class on the psychic arts with Emmeline. Regardless of her becoming a Lilim, I still needed her to teach me how to make use of my growing affinity for the psychic arts. Quite naturally, when Amelia heard about it, she invited herself along.

From the armchair behind me, Amelia leaned forward, fingers steepled. "A few clarifications first before we begin. The name Occlumency invokes ideas of occlusion, so you might imagine it has something to do with hiding memories, thoughts, and emotions from external intrusion.”

She met my eyes. “It’s a misnomer. In fact, Occlumency, or Legilimency for that matter, do not even fall under Witchcraft or Wizardry. In fact, what wizards today call ‘mind magic’ is just the faded echo of the ancient Indian meditation techniques.”

“Like what?”

“In the original tradition, these were spiritual attainments—powers arising from complete internal mastery. To reach them, you didn’t learn incantations. You transformed. The mind wasn’t defended. It was dissolved and reformed in stillness. And that is what you will be learning. Not defence, but developing an inner dominion — the science of commanding cognition, feeling, memory, and will. You would learn how to spiritually still your mental turbulence, culminating in a purified consciousness. To master the mind, it is said, is to unshackle the soul from illusion.”

‘Cryptic,” I deadpanned. “I like it. Where next?”

"And Legilimency," Amelia added, "was never meant to be about 'reading thoughts'. It is ‘inner knowing’. The trained mind can walk into another’s without being lost. But only after it has anchored itself in silence. Which is why you begin, today, with the First Current."

I raised an eyebrow. "So, this is ancient wisdom we're dealing with. Not just magical shields and memory locks?"

Emmeline’s smile was cold. "You're not building a shield, Harry. You're forging a throne. This is not a 'defense' against Legilimency. This is sovereignty. This is the ritual stilling of your mind until it no longer reacts to external suggestions. You will not 'clear your mind'. You will claim it.”

I nodded slowly. "Alright. What do I do?"

"Breathe," Emmeline said. "That’s the beginning of all things. The one who conquers his breath, conquers thought.”

"Your first mantra — So'ham, a Sanskrit mantra meaning—I am that. It is the pulse of breath. With each inhale: 'So'. With each exhale: 'Ham'. You are not trying to silence the mind by force. You are allowing it to exhaust itself in rhythm."

I repeated it under my breath. So... ham. So... ham.

Emmeline shifted forward slightly, now her voice lower, laced with an intimate force. "Now, close your eyes. Place your awareness at the tip of your nose. Breathe gently. You are watching the breath, not controlling it. The observer, not the doer."

I did.

Almost immediately, my brain rebelled. Thoughts flooded in: Hermione, leaning over a table in a ripped uniform. Ginny’s smirk. The Goblet’s whisper. The scent of Amelia’s perfume. The memory of Emmeline sucking my cock back at the Greengrass mansion.

It was like trying to hold still in a whirlwind.

"Don’t fight the thought," said Emmeline, as if reading my mind. "Let it pass like mist over a mirror. Return to the breath. Inhale. So. Exhale. Ham."

My shoulders relaxed slightly. I tried again.

So... ham.

You are mine, Harry Potter, whispered a dark, seductive voice that sounded like the horcrux.

My heart skipped a beat.

"Focus," Emmeline snapped. "Your thoughts will rage. Let them. The ocean churns above, but the seabed remains still. Stay at the seabed."

I could feel sweat along my back. My breath stuttered. But I returned.

So... ham.

So… ham.

So… ham.

So…

Then something strange happened. My thoughts didn’t stop—but they slowed. As if watching a train pass, I could see my own memories, flashes of them anyway; feelings — lust, curiosity, fear…

I didn’t engage. I just… watched.

“Observe without reacting,” I heard Emmeline’s voice whisper. It was quieter, closer, yet distant at the same time.

I didn’t open my eyes, but I felt her presence just beside me.

Silence. 

Time passed differently. I felt like I hovered.

Maybe it was just a minute. Or perhaps more. It was difficult to tell. Her voice came again, gentler now. 

"You are no longer in the castle of flesh. You are walking the halls of breath and rhythm."

I don't know how long I stayed like that.

Minutes passed. Then more minutes. I hovered in that stillness, neither asleep nor awake, for what felt like hours. I could sense my heartbeat slowing. My breathing had deepened to the point it no longer felt mechanical—more like a tide I was observing from inside. 

Time didn’t exist for me. Only the breath.

So… ham.

So… ham.

So…

ham…

When I finally opened my eyes…. It felt like a long time had passed. Both women were sitting on the couch. The moment they saw, excitement flooded in their eyes.

“Did it work?” I asked blearily.

“It was a major success,” Emmeline said, clapping her hands. You were locked in the First Current. And that too in your very first attempt.”

Amelia's voice, a little more impressed, carried across the room. "I suspected as much. His affinity for psychic magic is far beyond normal thresholds. It’s not learned, it’s inherent. He didn’t just enter the first field—he inhabited it."

“Is that a big deal?” I asked.

"That usually takes a few months," Emmeline whispered, almost to herself. "And even then, most slip out after a few minutes..."

"Must be his nature as an incubus,” offered Amelia. “Psychic manipulation comes naturally to him after all. I am guessing he will be a quick study when we shift to Legilimency.”

Actually, it was the raised affinity percentages that were making things easier, but hey, who’s making notes?

Amelia stood, walking toward me with a faint smile. "You’ve begun to disidentify from thought. That alone puts you ahead of most wizards. But Occlumency will get harder from here, not easier. You will build your mind into a place of power—or it will collapse you from within."

Emmeline reached into her robes and pulled out a thin crystal orb. She placed it in my palm. It was warm.

"This will help you sense when your thoughts ripple too strongly. It’s attuned to your breath. If it glows blue, you’re centered. If it burns red, your thoughts are controlling you.”

"And what about Legilimency?"

Emmeline grinned. "Finish learning how to keep people out before you ask to break into their soul-houses, Harry. Or you'll walk into a mind and come out as someone else."

Fair enough.

"Again tomorrow?" I asked.

"Twice tomorrow," Emmeline said. "We begin ritual postures. If you pick that up as quickly as you did this, you might even be building your first steps to a mental defence in a month’s time.”

“A month?” I repeated. “I thought you said —”

“”You have a surprisingly high affinity for it, yes. But talent does not equate experience, Harry Potter. You would do well to remember that. Also, it’s always safer to slow things down when it comes to the mind. When you disidentify yourself from thought, you begin to look at everything from a neutral perspective. You can choose what to feel, and reject what you don’t. Most Occlumens stop this exercise after reaching his stage. Most Occlumens are wrong.”

“Why so?”

 “Because it’s not the zenith. It’s a trap. A mirage where even the most talented, or the most skilled practitioner can falter. Because it plays to your ego, and twists you.”

“How?” Surprisingly, it was Amelia that asked the question.

Emmeline looked at her curiously, as did I. Amelia was a seventh-level Occlumens, the highest there can be. For her to ask a question about the very basics was practically paradoxical.

“Because being able to sort out what emotions you want to acknowledge changes you as a person. Feel too much, and the emotions would twist you into anything from a world-renouncing hermit to a sobbing wreck. Feel too little and you could turn into a raging psychopath with the inability to feel any empathy at all. Feel too neutrally about everything and you would become a sociopath that is neutral to everything but his own goals. Or I suppose, something like young Daphne, that plays with emotions the way a child would play with toys.”

“Wait, you’re telling me that Daphne is the way she is because of Occlumency?” I demanded.

Emmeline bit her lip, hesitant. “It’s not my place to reveal that. You’ve to ask Anastasia for that. All I can tell you is that Daphne was born with a natural facility to surf aboard the First Current, something you yourself have just experienced.”

Interesting. That girl always ticked all the boxes for a sociopath, only someone utterly content at ignoring everything happening around her unless it caught her fancy. Clearly, there is more in the Greengrass subtext than is visible. How surprising!

I wonder if having Narcissa in close quarters is really a bad idea.

More peculiarly, Amelia had gone stiff. I’d have called her a mannequin if not for how she was aggressively trying to not look at me. She had admitted, very clearly, that she had used Occlumency to develop a persona that was so very different from the frisky young woman she once was, into a hardened ambition-fueled pitiless war-witch that lived life with the constraints of laws she had chosen for herself. 

“We westerners believe that the ability to choose not to feel is a strength, when it is our greatest flaw,” said Emmeline. “The idea isn’t not to choose, it’s to not let the emotion overpower us. To feel, and yet be composed is the mark of a successful Occlumens.”

“And… What happens to those that have made that mistake?” asked Amelia.

A spark of recognition shone in Emmeline’s eyes. “As I said, it changes them as a person. Puts them on a path so different that when they look back, they are unable to even associate themselves with the person they once were.”

“Despite their heightened Occlumency?”

“A castle constructed with a weak foundation crumbles just as easily as a ramshackle, Director.”

“So will I then, I suppose,” Amelia said, sagging down to her chair.

“Am I missing something?” asked Emmeline.

I glanced at Amelia, then at Emmeline, and then back at Amelia. Exhaling, I came to a decision.

“I imagine you know what chastity bindings are?”

“Harry!” snapped Amelia.

“It’s for the best, and you know it,” I countered back. Turning to Emmeline, I said. “This stays between us.”

“Naturally, and yes, I know about them. The way you know about Spattergroit.”

I arched an eyebrow. “I thought, as a pureblood —”

“Last of my line,” Emmeline clarified. “The sacrificial magic of the Chastity Bind is for women that have to accept the magic of her husband’s family as its Lady. The job fell on Gideon, since he married into mine.”

“A virgin, until his marriage… can’t say he was too happy about it,” I mumbled.

“Yes, and now I’m stuck in a marriage I want to be done with, but can’t because you have plans for that twisted, rapist son of a bitch.”

Exhaling, I said. “Amelia was originally betrothed to my father, James Potter. For reasons I won’t go deeper into, James managed to fudge the betrothal contract, ensuring that they could have sex before marriage, heavily tying Amelia to the heir of House Potter.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” remarked Emmeline, before her eyes widened. “No —”

“Yes,” Amelia said, resigned. “Then James married Lily, had him, and then Voldemort killed them. My father had passed away some months before from cerebremous spattergroit, and uncle Fleamont and aunt Euphemia had been murdered by Voldemort barely months ago. James died, leaving me and my magic bound, waiting to experience sexual pleasure from the Potter heir that was now dead.”

“Until… Harry met you this summer.”

‘...Yes.”

Emmeline’s eyes lit up. “That makes so much sense. I always wondered. What could’ve happened that made Amelia dominatrix Bones to play ball in merely a weekend, that led her to take a leave on a work day?”

“Dominatrix,” I mumbled. “Why is that not surprising?”

“Please,” said Emmeline. “You should hear some of the other epithets she has. Guess it took an incubus’s cock to dislodge that really thick stick up her proverbial arse.”

Amelia rolled her eyes.

The Obliviator hummed, cupping her chin. “I am guessing that between Harry’s incubus charm, and the obvious exit clause to your celibacy, you gave in. Not a choice easily taken, that much is sure. Breaking through layers and layers of fortified Occlumentic design, only to give in to the very desire you locked away… I can only imagine how difficult it must have been. Incubus or not, you need to have balls of steel to attempt something like that. I’m a Master Legilimens and even I’d shrink from this task. Honestly, that you’re not horrifically cursed and thrown in the deepest pit of Azkaban for life is nothing short of a miracle in itself.”

I digested all that, reeling at the contradiction. On one hand, I had no doubt in Emmeline’s words, just like I had no doubt that Amelia was a powerful Occlumens. But at no point during my stay at Bones Mansion, had I the need to employ the Devil’s Charm, except for the sex challenge she had thrown at me much later. No, if anything, the only thing that was on my side was….

….Oh.

Before I could articulate my thoughts, Amelia spoke. “I did not burn out my ability to feel desire, Vance. I made myself believe that others were not worth it. That I was — am better. That my body was a temple and everyone around me was unworthy of worshipping it.”

“Everyone… except the Potter heir,” Emmeline concluded.

“Yes,” came the stiff reply.

Emmeline exhaled. “And this is why it’s so very important to strengthen the basics. A seventh-level Occlumens, brought to her knees, literally, just by the fulfillment of an exit clause to her celibacy. Still, for someone that religiously abided by laws, that’s… oddly flexible behaviour. I mean, yes, even I fell for Harry's charm, eventually, but that was because I chose to. I had reasons —”

“I had reasons too,” Amelia snapped. “You cannot stand there and comment on my flexibility, Emmeline Vance. Not when you have no idea what it meant to be addicted to sex, only to cut yourself off from it, and then have myself relapse by the very clause that damaged my life. You have NO IDEA what it means to have an orgasm, after twenty long years!”

Emmeline stood there, stunned. “Twenty years…. I… I can’t even fathom how— but even so, Director, surely it couldn’t have just been his —”

Amelia snorted. “Hardly. Harry is more like his father than he thinks he is. That casual demand for attention, strong-arming me into siding with him on something I was on the fence with…. The way he kept challenging me and then standing, no, surpassing my expectations? He practically ran me through everything I had felt and experienced with James and more. Believe me, I loved him and hated him for doing that. And when we…. When we fucked, I knew I would never be the same again. My lust would never go back to that cave it had hidden all this time.”

“There is one more thing you are ignoring, Amelia,” I said slowly. “Susan.”

“Pffft!” sneered Amelia. “Susan’s just a little girl. A child that had no idea what to do with a man like you. A jealous little brat that attracted your eye by blatantly fighting and ignoring you like a child, and then giving in —”

“Just like Lily Evans?”

That shocked Amelia into a stupor.

“....what?”

“Just like Lily Evans,” I said slowly, watching her every movement. “She ignored James for the initial years, subconsciously playing hard-to-get only to fall into his arms sometime post their OWLs. A scheming little bitch, in your own words. Someone that had no idea what to do with a manwhore like James, only she did the one thing you couldn’t. She had James, she married him, and they had a child, while James left you to dry.”

My words hit Amelia like bullets. “You — you couldn’t possibly —”

“Be insinuating that you see my mother in Susan? Yes, I am. I was there, Amelia. I have seen it all. Seen you change when Susan entered the picture. Every time she tried to barge into my life, you reacted. Viciously. From having sex in your office, to shaming her on the beach and having sex in the ocean. Admit it, as much as it was my charm, it was the fear of having me — the heir of House Potter, ensnared by another redhead that isn’t you.”

Amelia just stared at me, her mouth open.

“As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I believe he might have a point, Director,” said Emmeline. “If you consent, I would be willing to dive into your subconscious. Clearly all of this has fractured your already flawed Occlumency base, and I can only imagine what… resurrection might have added to that mess. We should get it looked after before ....”

“Before? Before what?” asked Amelia defensively, before it hit her. “You…. Are you telling me —”

“That Voldemort was able to influence you through these cracks? Possibly. We will never know. Not without you consenting to a deeper insight.”

Amelia stared at her in vacant horror.

Huh. What do you know? This was supposed to be an introductory class on psychic arts. Instead, we were dealing with Amelia breaking apart in an existential crisis.

“Do you think Legilimency would help heal… whatever fractures exist in her mind?”

Emmeline shrugged. “It’s difficult to say. I’m not a certified mind healer, and even the best I know would either reject the case away, or demand exorbitant sums of gold—”

“I’ve got the gold.”

“...I know,” she said softly, glancing at Amelia who was still silent. “Gold isn’t the issue. The risk involved is. We don’t know where the fractures are, how deep it might go. These are issues that date back over two decades, as she put it. Experiences. Subconscious desires. Layers of Occlumency cemented upon existing notions. Contradictions. Even if I had to chance it myself, it would take me at least a year of regular Legilimency sessions just to gather enough data points and gain familiarity with her mind, to even conceive an idea of how to do this right away. It’s like a meandering river. Every time it takes a turn, it leaves an existing pathway, to carve out a new one. Occlumency layers are like that. You try to poke into the fracture, and it's entirely possible that it might send us meandering into alternate could-be variants of her personality. Worst case scenario, her mind might not be able to even take it and could collapse on itself.”

“Or we can just let me deal with it myself,” said Amelia, not meeting my eyes.

“I cannot even articulate how terrible an idea that is. Like, she’s stable now, and already it’s pressing my panic buttons, and I’m the Master Legilimens. What happens when things go out of hand?”

“You think he’ll be able to influence me again?” asked Amelia, looking at her.

“Influence you, torment you, play your insecurities against you to act against your, or perhaps, Harry’s best interests. The possibilities are endless. Maybe next time, he wouldn’t just limit to activate his necromancer powers.”

Necro —

“What — what did you say?” I asked, my voice coming out as way less confident than I’d like.

“That next time he could twist them way further, instead of just wanting to let you activate your necromancer powers.”

That got me thinking. All this time, I had been assuming that it was Voldemort that had possessed me from afar, and applied the magical principles of Contagion to influence Amelia and Hermione. But, if their sole interests had been to make me shift into Necromancer mode, well… there was another insurgent closer at hand. 

My bloody scar.

And the horcrux in it.

“Say…” I began very cautiously. “You know I can shift to Necromancer mode at a whim, correct?”

“I’d request you not call it a mode, Harry,” admonished Emmeline. “I admit I have seen you twice performing Necromancy and while you retained your control, you felt completely different. Like something else was wearing your skin and your identity and calling themselves as Harry, all the while being as different as they possibly can while not betraying your most fundamental values.”

And wasn’t that telling?

I swallowed, deciding not to focus on that. “Okay, the point is, if I transform into my… other self, and stay in control, would it be possible to see how deep my— or rather, its influence goes on her?”

“Absolutely not!” snapped Amelia. “I’m not letting you change, and certainly not willing to allow that darkness to infect me.” Even more than it already has, went unsaid.

“Amelia —” I began with a counterpoint, when a blood-curdling shriek echoed out from the house’s dungeons. 

Boy, do I lead an interesting life!