The scariest thing to the mind | Legilimency one shot

[Deleted]

Following the events of the school year - Riley knew that he needed to be better able to defend himself and those around him. He was a large enough guy, but he knew that his talents didn’t lie within physical strength or even dueling magic. His strongest skills were all those of academia and mental magic. Learning legilimency seemed like a natural fit to both his magical skills and his career choice. He didn’t plan on staying on as a healer at St. Mungos forever. He had always planned to open his own magical physiatric practice and being able to offer the use of legilimency to some of his clients might be a strong selling point to those who just wanted someone to open their mind and take a peek inside - literally. Not to mention, if the tides ever did turn on him again, he would have an advantage over his enemy. And an even bigger one if he were to learn occlumency - but that was a later goal. The start of his legilimency practice felt more pressing.

It wasn’t hard to find someone to teach him once he started looking. Especially in his line of work. Riley had spent the last 9 years of his life training himself to pick up on the little details. He was well versed on non verbal communication and knew how to read people without even needing to use magic to get inside of their minds. He observed another healer do something that cued him that they were using legilimency and he waited around after work that same day and approached the healer about training him, privately, in the craft. The healer agreed, in exchange for some compensation, naturally. Riley had enough saved to be a decent incentive and their work began.

With his base knowledge already in non verbal communication, his mind quickly picked up on the delicacies of legilimency. It took him only 3 weeks to get the hang of the magic and to feel physically alright with using it. It was draining, incredibly so. But it was also fulfilling in a way that he always felt that he was lacking. It was the final step in being able to do what he had been working on since he was 9 years old and first found a book about psychology. After that it was all about getting the technique and being able to stay in it. He also began to focus on looking for specific things. It wasn’t until the end of July that he felt comfortable actually trying it on someone other than the person he was paying to help him.

With the permission of his best friend, Dominique Weasley allowed him to use her as his first test subject. He wanted to go into it with a specific goal - he didn’t want to aimlessly search just for the sake of searching her mind. He didn’t want to be that invasive, especially while not knowing exactly what he was doing. So they settled on him finding her earliest childhood memory. Something low impact enough not to bring any negative memories to the front of her mind.

It took some sifting but he found it and later they had discussed how far long it had been since Dom had thought of that moment, in fact, she couldn’t remember the last time. While he knew he was now capable of the skill, Riley also felt reluctant to use it regularly since he didn’t want to get into anything he couldn’t handle. He was always cautious with other people and even more so now. He didn’t want to abuse his talents and cause those few people he loved to lose their trust in him. But it did set him up with another tool to add to his future career and an added layer of protection since he knew he could use it to his aid, if he ever needed to.

mentions @dominique