The faint glow of the magical symbols drawn on the stone floor looked… magical. Well, how else do you describe a blue magical luminescence? In the center of the circle, formed by a complex mandala of silver dust, crushed moonstones, and drops of my own blood, stood I. Barefoot, in simple linen robes, I felt the cold stone under my feet and a slight excitement — not from fear, but from anticipation. If only this works! If only it returns my stolen memory!
The ritual, found in the deepest archives of our library, was called "Mentalis Aeternum." It wasn't listed among the forbidden ones, but its complexity was frightening to Mother. She still decided to test her strength, for my sake, but it required long preparation. The ritual demanded jeweler-like precision, titanic willpower and those were just the requirements for the subject. It also required a ritualist and a strong mentalist to act as a guide.
"…the knowledge of another mind will help the needed mind find the path to the lost."
That's roughly how it was written. Well, of course. The description on the scroll was predictably couched in pompous, archaic style — how could it be otherwise? The role of the much-needed mentalist was played by the master we hired. Essentially, he was supposed to help me open the boundary between the mental magic "vault" and my memory, so that during the ritual, something— anything —might return from there.
Master Vincenzo, a celebrated specialist in mental magic from Italy, stood opposite me with an almost impassive face. "Almost," however, for in his dark eyes I read a burning, almost physical thirst — to study every symbol, to delve into every detail of the ritual. But who would allow him?
Alas, involving an outside expert this time was unavoidable. Unpleasant as it was — who knows what he might glean for himself — there was no other choice. In any case, his participation didn't grant him even half the whole picture. Key components, some symbols, sacred formulas, and entire stages of the ritual remained hidden from him, despite his role being one of the main ones.
The ancestors who created such rituals and preserved them only for their descendants understood perfectly: not every generation produces its own virtuoso ritualist or, in our case, a powerful mentalist.
Therefore, particularly complex rituals contained many seemingly redundant elements, allowing them to be broken into parts and involve different specialists, none of whom would learn everything. But of course, this only protected the secrets of the most powerful and secretive rituals. In our case, the direct executor was again Mother. Her knowledge of ritual magic was deep enough, sparing us from situations like the one with the ritual to strengthen natural mental defense, when we had to hire the Romanian Master of Ritualistics… By the way, our world is very small, as that ritualist was the father of our lovely dark-haired classmate — Miss Nox.
I digress. So, the essence of the ritual was to artificially create a resonance between the projection of the erased memory, still lying in the mental magic "buffer," and the gap in memory where the recollections were absent. I couldn't open the path for this resonance myself; amateurs can't do that— hence the need for a Master Mentalist. And I desperately hoped he would succeed, despite my innate mental defenses. Because even with all my subconscious desire not to interfere, they would offer colossal resistance.
The emptiness in my memory was like phantom pain — you don't remember what exactly you lost, but you acutely feel the gaping, aching void pulling you into nowhere. Though such a thing rarely happens to those who've experienced Obliviate, let's be honest, I am a very special case. Too many unique features in my mind.
"I am ready," my voice sounded, echoing under the vaults of the ritual chamber.
Master Vincenzo took his position at the outer edge of the circle. His long fingers, with incredible dexterity, wove into a complex pattern, and he placed his palms on my temples. At the same time, Mother began the ritual, and words in Latin flowed into the resonant silence.
The symbols on the floor flared with a brighter, blue radiance. The air seemed to tremble and thicken, and I felt magic come into motion. It circulated along the circle, entering through my bare feet, rising up my legs, filling my head, with the excess flowing out through the crown. It was like a warm, pulsating wave washing over the most important thing from within — my mind. Like an invisible breeze playing with strands of short hair, but inside the skull.
"Focus on the emptiness," Master Vincenzo's voice with its characteristic accent sounded as if he were standing fifty paces away. "Don't run from it. Enter it and accept it; it's just an image in your head."
I closed my eyes, surrendering completely to the process. Instead of trying to escape the oppressive feeling of loss, I took a step towards it. I imagined myself standing on the edge of an abyss — a black, bottomless hole. This was the image of the chasm left by the Obliviate. Of course, my mind merely associated it this way, but in mental magic, everything was exactly like this — conditional. I looked into the depths of the chasm, feeling only determination. Because… I can do it!
And at that moment, the ritual began its true work.
At first, it was so subtle I took it for imagination. It seemed as if in the farthest, most abandoned corner of my consciousness, someone whispered a word I couldn't make out. Then an image flashed — unclear and blurred, like a shadow from smoke. I didn't understand what it was, but something stirred in my chest. Even a vague awareness appeared.
Thus, the ritual's magic deepened and penetrated the most secret corners of the mind — those even Obliviate couldn't completely destroy: muscle memory, the depths of instinct, emotional imprints etched far more firmly than conscious recollections.
And then the emptiness began to change. I felt something finally shift. The abyss… or what lay beneath it, was drawing closer, acquiring layers. It slowly rose, forming something else. Right… what if I change the viewpoint a bit… everything depends on the observer's position and the direction they're looking. Let me try!
As soon as I mentally altered the angle of perception…
Hah, now my consciousness perceived it as a wall. A dark, impenetrable wall that was gradually becoming more transparent. I felt its texture, every irregularity, every rough protrusion. And I knew subconsciously that there was something behind it. It resembled trying to see a picture through thick, murky, multilayered, and dark glass. I didn't see the image itself, but I vaguely guessed outlines, color spots, and movement.
Fragments began to wash over in waves, each time becoming slightly clearer. I could barely hear my mother's voice continuing the ritual, but I clearly felt the transition — we had reached the so-called first wave. There were to be five waves in total.
First Wave: Smells.
Suddenly, clearly and sharply, I smelled old wood, damp with moisture, dust, mold, and something else… something heavy and metallic. Blood. A great deal of blood. The smell was so real and strong, hitting my nostrils, that I almost coughed, my throat tightening with a spasm. It lasted only an instant and vanished, leaving only oppressive emotional desolation.
This was just a pure, unfiltered emotional trace left in the mind.
Soon the second wave began: Touch.
My wrists, lying freely along my body, suddenly ached with a dull, painfully familiar pain. Wait, they aren't tied! But I felt coarse rope biting into my skin, numbness in my fingertips from impaired blood flow. And then — sharp, gut-wrenching pain in my left arm. The bone was broken. The sensation was so real that I involuntarily flinched, nearly jerking my arm in reality.
Through the growing roar in my ears, like through a thickness of water, a familiar voice with an Italian accent, full of tension, broke through:
"Breathe, Arcturus! I don't know what you're experiencing now, but…" — it was Vincenzo, his words seemed distant but clearly distinguishable — "This is just an echo! Let it pass through you, don't cling to it, don't let it drag you in! Just remember."
I tried to breathe deeper, but the next wave crashed down with renewed, doubled force.
Third Wave: Sounds.
My ears rang, and through this intrusive ringing, a hoarse whisper saturated with hatred broke through, freezing the blood in my veins: "…must pay… with his mind…"
Followed by the same voice, calmer but with noticeable tension: "…three days… meaning three days…"
And names… maybe I imagined it, but I thought I heard names! I tried with all my might to concentrate, to snatch them from the stream, but the wave had already receded, giving me no chance to grasp them. Each new wave lasted shorter, and the fifth, decisive wave was supposed to be sight. But when it came, all I managed to wrest from the abyss after the ritual was one single, blinding flash. In my memory, as if imprinted on the retina, a face flashed — distorted, with small, pig-like eyes full of malice, and the red glow of a spell I associated with pain.
The picture behind the murky glass began to clear. I still didn't see a complete memory, but now I knew it was there. I felt the mass of this piece of memory, its pressure and weight. I almost remembered what I was supposed to remember. It was like a word on the tip of the tongue, but on the scale of memory.
And then the ritual reached its peak. Light blinded me, even through closed eyelids, flooding the inside of my skull with liquid radiance. It seemed as if magic had condensed around me, turning into a dense vortex that twisted not air, but the very space of memories, the very time stolen from me. I was no longer standing on the edge of the abyss — I was falling into it, swiftly and uncontrollably, and in this rapid fall, disjointed fragments began to stitch together into something greater, into a semblance of a picture. But then I was abruptly pulled out; I still couldn't remember what I saw at the end, only the general impression… but for some reason, I was sure it was temporary, that it was only a matter of time before the memory returned.
Perhaps this was too much… the overload was overwhelming. My consciousness, unable to withstand the monstrous influx of alien yet my own sensations, tore away like a frightened beast. I felt myself losing my footing, my legs buckling, and Master Vincenzo's hands caught me, pulling me out of the circle, breaking contact with the raging magic.
The light apparently went out, replaced by oppressive darkness, and a tomb-like silence fell in the hall, broken only by my heavy, ragged breathing, which echoed loudly under the stone vaults. The Master told me not to open my eyes.
The ritual didn't restore the memory entirely; that was clear. But I had experienced, felt with every nerve, a veritable kaleidoscope of forgotten sensations, and when I was about to open my eyes, feeling incredible fatigue, the mentalist's resonant, distant voice again penetrated through the cotton wool in my ears:
"Without opening your eyes, speak. Everything that comes to mind, without thinking. Just speak…"
And I began to speak, slowly and with difficulty at first, then faster and faster, pouring out all the chaos swirling at the very surface of my thoughts, unfiltered by reason.
"Cold stone. Wet wood. Blood… metal. Dust in my mouth. I want water. Rage… it's fear. A hand squeezing my throat. Crimson light — it hurts. A lot of pain. Obliviate. Fear. I'm afraid. It's being erased, I must save myself. If it hurts, I must destroy. I'm scared, I must kill the fear. Destroy… hatred."
Tears streamed down my temples, hot and salty, soaking into the fabric, and I kept going, continuing my disjointed stream of consciousness, this whirlpool of thoughts and associations that pressed on my heart and mind more and more with each second, threatening to crush me completely.
Soon the tears stopped flowing, drying up, but the cold, familiar fury only grew. It grew for all those responsible and began to burn in my chest with renewed strength. With every second, I unwound this tangle in my head more strongly and quickly. More words, broken sentences, seemingly absolutely unrelated, flew from my mouth, and the further it went, the more these disjointed words and sentences began to intertwine, forming a bizarre but recognizable web, and everything I said no longer vanished into emptiness but remained with me, searing my consciousness. It was as if a bucket of sand had been poured into an empty room.
If not for this frantic, spontaneous delirium, it all would have slipped away and vanished into oblivion again. But the mentalist did his job; he was the catalyst that prevented the memories from crumbling to dust. I recovered pieces, small but strong threads that would eventually unravel this whole damned tangle to the end, and when I unraveled it, when I pieced everything into a single picture, I would find and destroy everyone even remotely involved in this. I would grind them to dust! I WILL KILL THEM ALL!
For the rest of the day after the ritual, I simply slept, collapsing from mental exhaustion, and in my dreams, I saw strange scenes. Very delirious and absurd, but it seemed there was a grain of something real in them, as if I were looking at reality through a broken, distorted mirror. Upon waking, I immediately wrote down everything I could remember in a notebook, but I didn't yet understand, couldn't piece it all into a logical chain. For example, how could a Tickling Charm in a dream protect against the Cruciatus Curse in a duel with an unknown wizard? And what kind of stupid duel was it, and what did it show?
Everything from the dream — or rather, what I remembered and what I had to recall in the morning through Occlumency — I wrote down. Fortunately, Occlumency provided such opportunities. In general, all the dreams that day were of the same surreal and incomprehensible nature.
Because of the daytime sleep, I couldn't close my eyes all night, but inspiration visited me… or rather, a thought clearly and distinctly arose in my head about how to use my air ram, or rather its concentrated version, which I had decided not to use anymore thanks to acquiring the wandless analogue of Flipendo from Professor Flitwick's notes.
Of course, no one stopped me from visiting the training hall at night. Well, the house-elves tried to insist on sleep, but the ironclad argument that no one had given them specific instructions today forbidding me from wandering the manor at night worked. I did have to apply a little pressure, hinting that their tendency not to obey the young master, without a contradictory direct order from the Master or Mistress, was crossing a line. That's when they backed down. Because my parents were already asleep, and the house-elves couldn't clarify what to do with me in such a situation. Before, Mother always personally ordered them to put me to bed if I stayed too long in the library, but now the situation was different, not covered by their rules. In the end, they yielded.
In the empty training hall, I began my experiments. The thing is, in the standard wandless analogue of the spell, its force was uniform throughout its existence, like a steady stream. A beam-type spell, as it were. My concentrated air ram was just a subtype of telekinetic influence. That is, instead of a beam-like spell, I simply created a powerful, pinpoint impact. Because of this, it was at its peak at the very point of manifestation and weakened, as it was essentially a very strong magical push from the hand.
I understood this back when I was just studying the wandless analogue of Flipendo, but what if I used my unique version not at a distance, but in close combat, point-blank?
When, say, I lost my wand, then lost distance, and was left with bare hands at close range from an opponent.
I froze and concentrated before a wooden dummy, casting aside all extraneous thoughts and doubts. I extended my hand, placing my palm just a couple of centimeters from the dummy's wooden head, almost touching it. Then I began to concentrate magic, forming the projectile almost right inside the target, in the very core of the wooden head. I literally began to pour, to push magic from my hand directly there, into the target, and there, at the point of application, initiate a simple but monstrously powerful magical impact. With my other hand, I protected myself with a magical half-dome.
The air before my palm thickened, swirled, became almost visible to my magical sensitivity, seething with concentrated force. And then came a loud, deafening crack, like the sound of breaking the sound barrier, very short and dry. The dummy's head exploded from within with a crack, shattering into a thousand splinters. The entire floor was showered with small fragments. If not for the shield, I would have had at least a lot of splinters. A dangerous spell, indeed; despite the directed nature of the explosion, the splinters would have given me unforgettable impressions without the wandlessly created magical shield.
But that's not important, because at the moment of destruction, when the wood turned to splinters… In my eyes, for a split second, it seemed it wasn't wood. It was… a human head. I saw, as if in my hand, I held that face. So alive, sweaty, distorted with a grimace of incomprehension… and with magic, I created an identical, monstrous rupture. I saw the moment when something scarlet and gray — flesh and brain tissue — flew in all directions. I saw the already lifeless body with a half-destroyed skull, driven by pure physics of the impact, spin in the air and… then a void, I don't remember…
The picture was so vivid, so clear and dense… tactually real, that I involuntarily looked at my hands, expecting to see them drenched in blood, smeared with shreds of flesh and bone. But my hands were clean and not torn. Wait! My hands should be like this… — flashed the only sober, saving thought, trying to pull me from the abyss of "new," yet old memory fragments. And despite the illusory nature of this piece of memory, the ghostly but completely distinct, sweetish smell of blood and death, the smell of torn flesh, lingered in my nose. And for some reason, I couldn't wipe off the stupid, even frightening smile from my face. This was a piece of my lost memory, and I liked it.