Monroe felt it the moment Amelia penetrated his mind and his first instinct was to panic. If this had been a physical confrontation, he'd have jerked away from her. However, though most wouldn't know it, Monroe was well acquainted with panic. He suppressed the emotion and moved on.
In the time it had taken him to control himself, Amelia had discovered Monroe's main defence. Monroe knew how memories worked, he even knew how neurons were linked, thanks to his halfblood upbringing, and this was his mind but as Amelia pushed open the door, he found her expectations influencing what happened. Amelia expected to see his memories on the other side of this door… so it made it that much harder to redirect her to trivial balcony scenes which really oughtn't be that hard considering how well linked the two concepts were in his thoughts.
Amelia had already viewed a couple of Monroe's less consequential memories and now he could feel the memory that was being called up next, before it even presented itself.
"No," the groan forced itself through his lips, though later he would not remember speaking.
That memory was private. More than that, it could endanger his ambitions. Monroe began to understand what Amelia had meant by clear his mind. He'd thought she meant something like meditation, but really occlumency seemed closer to forcibly ejecting anyone who tried to look from your mind by stripping meaning from the associations. Or was that by stripping the associations in your memories from each other? Either way, it seemed a rather more philosophical than he'd previously perceived.
As the memory began to unfold, Monroe began to deconstruct it. It had been a sunny day, but how could you really know? What was sunny, anyway? Sunny wasn't even a measurement, it was only a comparison. Even if you did agree that it was sunny, how could you know that the sunnyness wasn't only in your mind? Did Descartes not say "I think therefore I am"?
He had been expecting Amelia to continue with her assault until he successfully repelled her, but as that last memory drew to a close, she withdrew from his mind, leaving Monroe awash with mental fatigue.
Leaning back with the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingertips, he was glad to have been offered a seat before undergoing this ordeal. Monroe had to admit to a certain amount of personal pride before the event that he now regretted.
"I think I am unclear on the instructions," Monroe stated. "What exactly do you mean when you say to clear my mind?"
by Monroe Ashcroft Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:45 am
