Post by Bianca Alia Rivera on Dec 29, 2020 1:33:00 GMT -7
2024
Occlumency had always come highly recommended to Bianca, a worthwhile skill for Ministry employees who worked in sensitive environments to acquire. The logic was sound – Ministry agents in the field needed to operate at their most optimal capacity, and couldn’t afford to be subdued or hoodwinked by the very wizards and witches they were meant to capture.
Nobody had ever said anything about Legilimency. In fact, that was a conclusion Bianca had reached independently, shortly after the incident that had taken her out of the field and into a desk job. Her motives for researching Legilimency were much more selfish – picking up Occlumency had been something of an informal job requirement, meant to enhance her performance at work per the advice given by her mentor and several other Ministry agents. But Legilimency…she couldn’t deny that she always replayed the events of that night over and over again. What if she had been given a slight heads-up? What if she could have taken control of their minds to eradicate the problem? What if one more tool in her toolbox could have been the thing to save her?
The thought had taken hold in her mind, although finding a teacher was difficult. But in her increasing disillusionment with the Ministry, even that wasn’t impossible. The Ministry wasn’t the system she had thought it was, a well-oiled machine where every cog had the same goal to protect and improve the magical world. There were some people who worked towards that goal, but not everyone was so well-intentioned and the Ministry was as susceptible to those influences as anything else. And the Legilimency was so much easier to learn than the Occlumency, if only because the seeds of that desire to control and dominate were already inside her. They only began to sprout after her accident.
Gaining full control over the ability didn’t happen until much later, however. Her mind was protected long before she gained the ability to enter and control the minds of others. But one night (far too late for respectable people, although she’d been working late), Bianca had been walking back to her small, cramped flat when a man with a shaking arm had raised his wand at her. She felt one small flash of panic (this was too close to what her father had seen that night, the last one he’d ever see), before her face settled into a mask of grim determination and her new wand was in her hand in a flash. She cast the spell quickly, staring deep into the man’s eyes. Only a few heartbeats must have passed before he turned and began to walk to the nearest Ministry outpost to turn himself in. It was over too quickly, and the hand holding her wand twitched at the desire to point it at the man’s turned back and teach him a lesson he was unlikely to ever forget.
But no, she had accomplished what she needed, and anything more would be an abuse. Legilimency was easy to exploit, unlike Occlumency which only served to protect. Bianca was starting to shift to that mentality – that being reactive was no way to live, and acting with restraint often produced far fewer results than simply doing what had to be done. But, she resolved…she was not that far gone. Yet.
