Jim nodded as he patted Harry's hand.
"At the same time, I can't spend all my time watching out for people, waiting to be attacked. I have fun stuff to do with my life." His hands shook slightly as he straightened his hair. "Do you think I should make another personality like you? Would you mind?" Jim tilted his head and was quiet a bit. "Quack. Quack?" He nodded toward the general direction of the library. "Quack?"
Harry leaned back a bit more. Jim seemed to want to handle the mental defenses, but had suggested an interesting idea to lessen his troops workload. A personality to directly control his library was a very good idea. New memories took time to sort, time to take care of. Some had to be enhanced with data from other thoughts or memories, and other ones needed to be duplicated for multiple shelves. The ducks tried their best, but they were short... several cooking memories had been stored under "Zoo" since it was closer to the ground and some teams got lazy.
According to Jim, many of his troops had been sorting all the new information when Harry had been attacked, which had caused the delayed response time. Harry surveyed damage again, watching as it was being healed. Some ducks were using the cloud control ropes of magic to repair non-cloud injuries... very clever. But he needed something more.
This world had been created from nothing really, and it was all just representations of his mind, of how he thought. If he wanted, he could probably build strong walls, thick domes, or whatever. But then he couldn't lay on the grass and watch the clouds. What was the point of protecting something if it destroyed what he wanted to protect?
His thought process paused. He could duplicate memories, clouds, and ducks... what was so different about his mind?
Harry walked deep into the golden lake and sat cross-legged. Bringing his hands down to rest in his lap, he began to focus.
Professor Filius Flitwick had gone from ecstatic to concerned VERY quickly. He might have missed the whole situation if he hadn't been watching Lily's son and his new Claw right when the boy had looked at them. Harry had jerked like the hand of God had slapped him and he had almost collapsed at his seat.
Flitwick's eyes gained a tint of red. Unless he was VERY wrong, then someone had just tried to get into the boy's mind. He began subtly watching the other teachers. Most likely it was either Quirrell or Snape, based on the way the two were glaring at the child. Of course, Professor Quirrell HAD just been smacked with a broadsword by Albus, so the glaring may be unintentional.
Harry finally was calming down, surrounded by the warmth of the golden lake. As he focused, he felt himself fading, the world fading. Finally he opened his eyes.
Before him was his inner world, surrounded by a green glowing mist. Raising his right hand he watched as the world began shrinking, twisting, falling into itself as it collapsed into a blowing green and blue bubble in his palm.
As the crystal like bubble rested in his hand, Harry smiled... then his face froze.
"Uh... Jim?"
Very distantly, he heard a 'Quack'. Thankfully it didn't SOUND angry or like he had been huffing helium.
"Nothing! I mean, it's not like I forgot you guys were... I mean, everything is going as expected."
There was a significant pause before the second 'Quack', and this one sounded annoyed.
Harry felt nothing really as he floated in fog. He wasn't sure how long he stared at his mental world... it was so beautiful, all tiny like this. Because of how large the grasslands were, the only landmark you could see at this scale was the golden lake... ocean? Whatever. He pulled at the bubble, which felt like cool glass to his skin. A copy appeared... or was it? It felt like the same world, but in two places. Harry frowned. There was no point in trying to make distractions if ALL the distractions had real copies of his mind.
Before he vanished the copy, he paused. Maybe a total backup would be wise. It would be easier in the future to just wipe a copy and replace it instead of healing his mind each time. He grabbed the copy with a cord and floated it behind him so he could ignore it for now.
His eyes contemplated his mental world. He needed a copy that contained nothing, one that had all the structure but none of the data... Hmm.
A grin crossed his face as he waved a hand, and a tiny cloud inside his mental world was duplicated and brought to the surface. A quick squeeze in his threads and he now held another copy of his mind... sort of. His left hand now held his MEMORY of holding the world. Breaking into it would show you... him holding it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Harry began to chuckle as he started duplicating the memory and allowing all the worlds to float around him.
The green fog was now FILLED with bubbles. As far as the eye could see, thousands... no, MILLIONS of bubbles. They floated above and below Harry, they had orbits and bounced off each other. It was beautiful, as light from inside each of the crystals created rainbows and sparkles through the others.
He turned his eye back to the Backup, as he thought of it. Harry surrounded it with memories of metal, of thorns, of sharp teeth, of poison. Fears and anxieties were woven into the shell, paranoia orbited it. When he felt it was protected, he focused and squeezed it down to the size of a grape. Harry felt his power connecting to the tiny bubble, binding it to his mental world. Now every day (Or when Jim requested it) his mental world would add a new grape to his Backup, a new copy of his mental world. If he ever suffered heavy mental damage, if someone tried to take something from him, he should find it here, just in case.
With an almost tender motion he then wrapped the backup in a memory of his mental world, like all the other glistening gems floating around the green mist. At least from the outside, it would be identical to the other bubbles, floating randomly in a sea of crystals.
It was at this point Harry was pinched on the arm.
"OW!"
Anyone at the Ravenclaw table who HADN'T been staring at Harry was now watching the boy glare at his brown-haired and bushy friend. "Mione... What the heck!"
The girls just seemed relieved. Hermione seemed to shrink as she realized how many people were now staring in her direction. "Ah... oh. Sorry Harry, you were worrying us... I mean..."
Harry sighed and rubbed his arm. "No problem I guess. How long was I out? I didn't mean to stay in there so long."
Hermione noticed Padma's expression. "Harry has this... uh." She looked around, noticing how large her audience was. Looking at Harry, she gave him a questioning look.
He nodded. "We will tell you later Padma. Hermione, Susan, Hannah and I are going to be meeting up at the library tomorrow, if you want we can talk then."
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