Harry nodded. "Yes, but thankfully, he doesn't know about this. He was pretty surprised that I had any shields at all. He was looking for things about Sirius's escape. I think he wants to prove I had something to do with it and get me expelled."
Hermione gaped at him. "That's what he wanted? He can't! I mean, even Dumbledore knows Sirius is innocent! He can't do that to you!"
Harry grinned. "I know. When I told Dumbledore, he cancelled my detention and I think he was about to reprimand Snape when I left the office. But that's not the point... I think we should keep practicing Occlumency, just in case. This is a really powerful device, and we can't let the wrong people find out about it."
"You're right, Harry. I think we should take up practicing it every day. It'll help us organize our thoughts as well... maybe we can figure out more details about the future with it. When should we start?"
Harry grinned. "No time like the present. Nobody's going to disturb our meditations down here, and we still have a few hours before dinner."
After two hours of practice, they had made enormous strides in creating their mental barriers. It seemed that, at least for one cycle, they had been practicing it every day, and they had their minds fairly organized and shielded. However, Harry noticed a discrepancy within his own mind.
"Hermione? Do you notice anything... odd about your memories? Especially a few of the future ones?"
"Funny you should mention that, Harry. Are you talking about the ones that seem to have their own built-in shields? I think I came across a few of those myself."
"This is odd... I'm going to open one up and see what it is..." Harry concentrated for a minute, trying to peel away at the encapsulated memory. It was definitely a shield he had created himself, as it felt almost identical to the shield he had made for his own mind. After half an hour of intense concentration, he broke through and recalled the memory as clearly as he could. He gasped at what he was now remembering- runes. They were several specific runes, but half a dozen complex rune phrases, and their appropriate carvings. He could see them clearly. It was as if he had spent weeks committing every detail of these particular runes to his memory. "Hermione? Do you have some parchment and a quill? I think I need to write this down."
"Err... Me too, Harry. I just opened up one of my own memory-capsules. I need to write this down, too." Hermione scrambled for her book-bag, pulling out two quills and a stack of blank parchment. Both of them began writing and drawing furiously. Between them, they ended up with lots of rune phrases involving the runes of Memory, Time, Return, Landmark, and Identity. They looked up at each other, and back to the runes. Hermione quickly scrambled back to her book-bag, and pulled out the original notes she used for her beacon. "Harry... I think I know what this is."
"I think I know too, Hermione... but do explain it to me in case I'm missing something."
"I think... this is an improved version of the beacon. We sent ourselves memories of an improvement on the beacon. Look, my original didn't bother with the Setzis, the rune of Identity. I think these ones will be keyed to our magical signatures. On top of that, there's an entire second layer over everything I did before- there's Arlantz, rune of sequence, linked with Koteib and Teantso, runes of progression and counting. There's also Lomelke, rune of Dominance, bound tightly with Lakehns, rune of Clarity, but I'm not sure what that set really does. The whole rune phrase is ordered above the Memory runes in the beacon."
Harry nodded, and then grinned wildly. "Hermione! Do you know what this means?"
Hermione looked at him with a puzzled expression, obviously still trying to figure out the runes drawn in front of her. "No, I just said I didn't, Harry. This is going to take me a while..."
"No, no, no... I mean about time-travel!" Harry was very nearly jumping for joy. "This is why we didn't remember anything beyond three futures ahead! We sent back memories to build a newer, better beacon! And since it seems like nearly all the additions are focused on the memory runes of the beacon, I think we figured out a way to send back memories better and clearer. That's what the Lakehns is for, right? Maybe we won't be stuck with confusing, fuzzy, déjà-vu-like memories each time!"
Hermione eyes shone with an excitement that Harry was familiar with- she always looked like that when she realized there was plenty of research to be done, and she knew exactly where to discover the information. "Harry, that's brilliant! We have to finish this as fast as possible! And we have to unlock all of the memories we stored in our little Occlumency capsules!"
Harry was taken aback by Hermione's sudden enthusiasm. "Huh? Why? This is exciting and all, Hermione, but what's the rush?"
"Oh, don't you see, Harry? We figured this out in one of our futures, right? So why didn't we just build the improved beacon then, instead of sending the instructions back in time to build it now?"
"Err... wait, why didn't we just do that?"
"Time, Harry! It's a precious resource, you know. You remember, in the time we got to the end of sixth year, Dumbledore was dead, and Voldemort was gaining power every time! We need to build this as early as we can so that we can have as much time to prepare... even if we have to go back a few more times after that, the earlier we are, the bigger advantage we'll have."
Harry nodded in agreement. "Right... let's work on unlocking these every night... I want to make sure we have all the important, packaged memories, just in case one of them is some kind of warning not to do something. We can make a plan after we've got them all."
.
.
.
.
🎉The novel is available in PDF, visit us in our Ko-Fi store🎉
🎉ko-fi.com/madarasama125🎉