I'm The Wizard, Harry

(Word Count: 2,257)

Before Harry knew it, another couple of months had passed by. Now that he had a set time for when Quirrell would hunt the unicorns, Harry had felt driven to prepare for the upcoming confrontation.

He had decided. He would deal with Quirrell then and there. There wasn't much need for Harry to wait until he was down the trapdoor. He could always go down there on his own initiative, seeing as he had three different quests, from all three deities, to get the philosopher's stone. 

With those plans decided, Harry thought about his group. Fate didn't want him doing things on his own, and wanted him to bring along some friends to help them grow into better wizards. There was no way he would bring them into the upcoming fight with Quirrellmort. They wouldn't be able to help in a fight against him, not as they were now, so it would needlessly place them in danger. But there was no reason he couldn't bring them with him to fetch the stone. Only one person could go into the final room anyway.

Because he was preparing to confront Quirrellmort, he had made some great progress:

[Name: Harry James Potter-Black

Level: 25 => 31 32.89%

Stats: [+30]

Power: 92 => 105, [9], [22]

Control: 100 => 103

Focus: 100 => 105

Classes: Mind Arts 15, Magizoology 11, Dueling 5 [+6]

Skills: Occlumency 4, Legilimency 1, Serpensortia 5, [+10]

Perks: Potter Family Magic, A Mother's Love, Horcrux, Parselmouth, Black Family Magic, Animagus, Natural Occlumens, Magical Growth, Emotional Empowerment, Harvester, Empathetic Sensing, Insight, Seer, Wide Wormhole, Teamwork Makes the Dream Work, Spellchainer, Memory Infusion]

One of the first things he noticed was that his natural growth in his stats had slowed down after reaching 100. It wasn't too much, but it was noticeable. Except Power. That one was still increasing by a lot.

Despite this, Harry still placed only 5 points into Control and Focus, and placed 20 into Power. Because Harry never really struggled to cast any of the spells he learned anymore. So Harry felt it wasn't too bad to concentrate on his Power at the moment.

Power: 105 => 125, [9], [22]

Control: 103 => 108

Focus: 105 => 110

For his Class points, Harry had dumped 5 of them into Dueling to get the 10th level perk, which would undoubtedly be helpful in defeating Quirrellmort. And he was right:

[Duelist: When fighting 1v1 against another wizard, your spells are 10% more effective, while your opponent's spells are 10% less effective. This is applied after all other modifiers.]

The last bit was huge. From what Harry could tell, all of his other buffs only added using the base. For example, if he used a simple Bombarda, let's say he used only 10 units of "Power" into it, just to make the math simple. Bombarda was a Charm, so add 20% from his family magic perk, it would be as if he had used 12 units instead. Then let's suppose he used it in a spell chain with 2 spells before it. Both of those spells, thanks to his Spellchainer perk, added another 10%. But it's not adding 1.2 then 1.4. Both would only add 10% of the base 10, so it would add up to 14 total at the end. This new perk would add 10% after everything. So instead of 1 unit of power, it would add 1.4. The difference wasn't big now, but it would add up with each new perk adding to his spells.

The one Class point into Divination didn't add much. He did get some basic info into how to use Divination magic, but he already knew most of it since it only covered 1st year materials. Though he did learn the basics of reading from a crystal ball and tarot cards.

The biggest gain was from his skill perks. He used 5 points to get the final level in Occlumency and 5 points to get the second and third levels in Legilimency.

[Occlumency: Level 5/5

The magically mental discipline of defending the mind against Legilimency and other mental effects.

Level 1: Occlumency is twice as effective at defending against Legilimency. 

Level 2: No matter how subtle the effects, you will always be aware of any external influence.

Level 3: Constructed memories feel as if they are real to legilimantic probes.

Level 4: Perfect objective memory.

Level 5: Can manipulate one's own subconscious mental plane.]

[Legilimency: Level 3/5

Level 1: Twice as effective at eluding Occlumency defenses.

Level 2: Can utilize multiple probes at once.

Level 3: No longer requires line of sight.]

Harry had learned how to enter his mindscape before, and he was good enough that he could reliably enter it through his dreams, but now with these new understandings, he could enter it anytime he wanted to. Not physically, of course. The mindscape wasn't an actual dimension he could travel to. It was still in his head.

Harry had been tapping into his unconscious mind for a while now, since it held all of the objective memories, and he had been slowly but surely going through all of the important memories he had to convert them from subjective to objective. He was applying the unconscious thoughts/memories to his conscious thoughts/memories.

This was the next step. Now he could do the opposite. Apply conscious thought and organization to his unconscious mind.

In short, it would be similar to the fanfics Harry had read before, where he could create landscapes, buildings, and defenses in his mindscape. Obviously, it wasn't exactly the same. The unconscious mind was already full of a chaotic mess of everything "Harry". Every thought that he had, every emotion, every fear, every memory. It was all here. Jumbled together and experienced in random patterns. It's what gave birth to dreams.

So removing anything here would remove it from himself. Adding anything here would add it to himself.

There were some things he could add that would be harmless: Landscapes, buildings, and the like, so long as they weren't connected to any sort of memory. Even if they were connected to a memory, the only consequence would be that Harry would subconsciously include it alongside his memories.

With this new found knowledge, Harry entered his mindscape and got to work sorting through and organizing everything. He placed all of his memories of Hogwarts together to form a mental Hogwarts in the mindscape. Now Harry could walk through the halls of Hogwarts in his mind, and as he did, memories would play as dreams passing by around him.

Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, Grimmauld Place, Black Manor, the Potter Vista, the Ministry of Magic, even Malfoy Manor, and Privet Drive. Every place Harry had ever visited, he had reconstructed in his mindscape with his memories.

Then there were his past life's memories. The childhood home town, the Carolinas, his Grandma's house, his parents' house, his new apartment, the university he attended. As he walked through these constructed locations in his mind, his memories would play back around him with a glaring hole that stopped it from being whole: himself.

In his parents' house, he could see his mom, dad, brothers. They would move about and react to someone that wasn't there. There was no little Harry running about with his brothers. It's why he had so little connection to his past life. Because that sense of self was gone in those memories. He was Harry Potter now, because of this. No one else.

Just putting a bunch of locations was boring though. Thinking of the beautiful mountain range and stars he saw when he was visited by the deities, Harry started terraforming the landscape. Each location he had created was placed on its own mountain, and he created small trails weaving down each mountainside, connecting them all. The Black Lake was at the base of the Hogwarts mountain, hidden in the valley. He didn't separate out the previous life's memories away from his current life's memories. Doing so would only increase the dissociation he had with them, and give them a faint feeling of "other". Instead, he just made each of those locations on mountains in the innermost parts of the mountain range.

The sky was a vibrant recreation of the night sky, made of all his memories of stargazing. The milky way stretched across the entire sky, filled with countless stars.

To further beautify the landscape, he added huge trees, grasses, and flowers. For defenses, most of the trails were lined with a variety of magical plants: Devil's Snare, Whomping Willows, and so on. He added labyrinthian mazes of hedges, and thorny briars. Basically, all of his memories of plantlife. To populate the mountains, he added all of his memories of animals and magical creatures. Real or otherwise.

He added streams and rivers across the land as well, each much deeper than they look, and connected back to the Black Lake, the center of all the water in the mindscape. He populated the waters with all of his memories of aquatic life, mundane or magical.

He populated the skies with his memories of birds, and other creatures. Large pods of sky whales flew through the air like blimps, different types of dragons perched on the tops of the mountains as kings of the realm. 

The mountains of his mind became a clash of existing creatures and fantastical beasts he had imagined in his readings or seen in media. These creatures around the mindscape would attack any intruder on sight. Also, Harry was pretty sure he had cryptids he had read about wandering the place somewhere.

Harry was flying through the sky, observing the lush landscape he created, when he noticed that the animals were avoiding a specific valley between the mountains for "Godric's Hollow" and "Diagon Alley." Curious, he started flying closer, but then gasped in realization. The only thing here in his mindscape that could cause an anomaly was the horcrux.

He flew into the valley, and quickly found the source of unease in the wildlife. There, halfway submerged in a slow creek, was the skeletal, bloody, oily form of voldemort. It was struggling in vain to pull itself out of the water. It was too weak to lift itself up, and was just left gasping.

Harry grimaced in distaste. He lifted the horcrux up out of the water with telekinesis. "Now what should I do with you?" He mused. It writhed around in midair, not responding to him.

He didn't want to place this thing in any of the locations made from his memories, and he didn't want to just leave it here in this valley. He flew up high above everything to get a bird's eye view, keeping the horcrux at his side.

'I need a central base!' Harry thought. He thrust out his hands dramatically and in the center of everything, a new mountain rose up, pushing the surrounding mountains out farther.

On top of the mountain, he created a large castle of Harry's own design. If Harry was right, now that his subconscious mind was organized, he would be coming here every time he slept. So this castle was meant to be his home when he was visiting the mindscape, and where he would receive any benign visitors. It had a library filled with everything he learned.

Beneath the castle was a dungeon that wound its way down through the entire mountain. At the very bottom, Harry excavated a small cavern and created something very special: the torture machine from The Princess Bride. Without any more thoughts, Harry strapped the horcrux to the machine and raised the level to the lowest setting. ).5. 

He would have raised it all the way to 50, but he didn't know if it would destroy it, and he didn't want that. He had plans, after all.

But even at level one, it was enough to reduce Wesley—from Princess Bride—to tears. So 0.5 should be enough for some more prolonged sessions.

Immediately, the horcrux started convulsing and screaming. Harry nodded in satisfaction, and left it there.

~~ ITW,H ~~

Back in his quarters, Quirrell started screaming in pain. On the back of his head, Voldemort was writhing in agony. "Ahh! Master, I'm sorry! Forgive me!" Quirrell shouted, thinking it was Voldemort causing it.

Voldemort gritted his teeth and hissed, "This isn't me, you fool! What have you done?"

~~ ITW,H ~~

Harry left the dungeon and flew back up to see all of his creations. He had his mindscape created, but there were no defenses to stop any intruders.

He reached into himself and used something he hadn't used yet: his fears. Fears that most people have ingrained in their subconsciousness. His fear of losing his way in the wilderness: anyone unpermitted to walk his mountain paths would find that the paths would redirect them deeper into the back lands. His fear of drowning: if an intruder touches any water, it will drag them down into the deep. His fear of being trapped: every tree, every blade of grass, everything will grasp at the intruders and close in on them. His fear of the dark: The bright stars wink out, replaced by eyes to observe every action the intruder made.

Organizing his unconscious mind like this made it so that every single memory he had was suddenly objective, not just the ones had gotten to so far. His mind felt like it was cleared of fog, and it was like he could think clearly for the first time in his life.