Chapter 57: “nurturing” Harry
Harry suspected he had been tricked… After days of “Legilimency” practice, all his memories, including his dreams, had been thoroughly searched by Vaughn, yet he still hadn’t made any progress, and this was the thought that arose in his mind.
Ron agreed emphatically, “Listen to me, Harry, based on my 11 years of being bullied, Vaughn is definitely using you as a target to practice his magic. He’d help people willingly? Ha! Laughable!”
Then he laughed twice, and his front teeth actually fell out…
Vaughn, who was passing by, casually put away his wand.
Ron had to go to the Hospital Wing and drink a large potion to regrow his front teeth.
Hermione, however, had a different opinion. She asked Harry sternly, “How can you be sure that thought was really your thought?”
It sounded like nonsense, but it made so much sense…
Harry clutched his head, sinking into fear of the Dark Arts and philosophical contemplation.
After thinking for a day, he obediently went to the Room of Requirement that night, looking determined, and asked Vaughn to use Legilimency on him.
Compared to the hardly perceptible progress in his Occlumency, Vaughn’s Legilimency was advancing at lightning speed in Harry’s eyes.
This made Harry feel a bit dejected.
Entering the second week of November, Harry, coming to the Room of Requirement again, dejectedly asked Vaughn, “Am I really that stupid?”
Vaughn, immersed in the joy of practicing magic, casually asked, “Why would you think that?”
Harry sighed, but his lips moved a few times. In the end, he said nothing, lying straight on the carpet like a piece of dried fish, and sighed, “Come on! Let’s get it over with.”
Vaughn: “…”
It was only then that he realized something was wrong. The Boy Who Lived seemed to have been broken by him. How could the target completely give up resistance?
This kind of magic, Legilimency, was naturally more effective when the target resisted more fiercely.
Vaughn troubled himself, flipping through books for a long time, and finally found a solution.
“Harry, if you cooperate with me actively, I’ll cast a Sweet Dreams Charm on you after we finish practicing, how about that?”
The dried-fish Harry said expressionlessly, “What’s the use?”
Vaughn smiled seductively, “It can let you have a beautiful dream where you can achieve anything, for example, you want to hold hands with a certain girl…”
Harry shot up, his face flushed, and stammered, “I already said that wasn’t what I thought, dreams, maybe…”
Looking at Vaughn’s half-smile, Harry’s voice gradually lowered. After a moment, he asked almost inaudibly, “Is it really a Sweet Dreams Charm?”
Vaughn nodded.
Harry said shyly, “It’s not that I can’t. At least having a good dream, I can sleep well, right?”
The next day, Vaughn happily saw a new dream in Harry’s memory. It was still a fantasy and hazy dream, a pink dream, where a small boy and a girl half a head taller than him walked side by side.
It looked extremely beautiful.
Harry’s consciousness desperately resisted in his memory, but as Vaughn’s mastery of Legilimency grew, it became increasingly difficult for him to expel Vaughn from his mind as he had at the beginning.
After another day of practice, and still resisting in vain, Harry could only ask Vaughn pleadingly again, “You promised me, you can’t tell anyone about my dream.”
He didn’t care about anything else. During his years living with the Dursleys, his memory was filled mostly with the cupboard under the stairs, and the rest was Hogwarts.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
After getting Vaughn’s assurance, Harry felt relieved and went back to rest. Vaughn, who remained in the Room of Requirement, placed his wand against his temple and slowly drew out a wisp of silver.
That was his memory, containing everything he had seen after invading Harry’s mind.
Vaughn hummed a leisurely tune and put the silver wisp into a small empty bottle.
Sealing it, he took it to the Headmaster’s Office on the Eighth Floor.
“Hi, Albus, want to take a look at Harry’s fresh love?”
“Don’t say it like we’re spying… Oh—the little boy is already experiencing nascent love, truly…”
In the memory world manifested by the Pensieve, Dumbledore sentimentally wiped his eyes.
But sweet dreams are always short-lived. The pink images quickly jumped past, replaced by fragmented, dark, and oppressive scenes of the boy’s helpless decade spent at Number Four, Privet Drive, flowing past like scenery rushing backward outside a train.
After a long time, Dumbledore sighed, “He has too little happiness…”
“Yes, apart from Hogwarts, it’s very few. These are all the nodes I’ve compiled these days.”
Vaughn waved his hand. He was becoming more and more proficient in operating the Pensieve, and a series of wisps of memory fog flew up, swirling before them and then into the sky.
Densely packed, like Muggle surveillance screens.
From this perspective, it could be seen that the gloomy scenes representing negativity in Harry’s memory occupied the majority. The first moment of light in his life was actually the day Hagrid gave him his admission letter.
Reading the original work in his previous life, the description of Harry’s childhood was very brief. The fairytale-like text made it difficult to fully convey what kind of life a child who was rejected and hated by his entire Family truly endured.
Looking at Harry, who had been wearing worn and small clothes and had to live in a cupboard from a very young age.
Vaughn said somewhat mockingly, “You should be glad, Albus, that Harry didn’t turn into another Tom. It’s a miracle.”
“Please forgive an old man’s anxieties.”
Dumbledore sighed, “Lily, Harry’s mother, left him a protective magic with her life, which requires a blood tie to be effective. I was also afraid that if he grew up in the Wizarding World, constantly hearing praise and adoration from others, it would make him indulge in false glory…”
Vaughn remained noncommittal. No one knows how things will evolve if they don’t happen.
He wasn’t here to plead for Harry either. He looked at all the nodes he had compiled and said, “Currently, I haven’t found any traces of tampering with Harry’s memory. It seems Tom really didn’t notice the connection between himself and Harry.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Vaughn. Tom is a master of Memory Magic. His greatest skill was once to enter other people’s minds and bury his own malice deep within their memories, disguising it as their dissatisfaction or anger with life or others, constantly linking and amplifying it… until malice overwhelms reason. Those poor souls didn’t even know they had been distorted and manipulated by him.”
Vaughn listened attentively.
He was never an arrogant person. He knew Dumbledore had more experience than him, and he also knew his skill in Legilimency was still quite immature.
“Okay, I’ll continue to pay attention!”
Harry could continue to be his target for practicing magic.
This was truly good news.
