Ten: Seen and Unforeseen

Spring 1996

"The next stage of Occlumency advances from direct blocking of all memories, such as you have been practicing, to indirect concealment. This will involve hiding certain memories of your choosing while leaving others open to the Legilimens."

My audience of one sat frantically scribbling the particulars. Her first several Occlumency lessons had focused on improving and refining the rudimentary blocking technique. Miss Granger was now ready to progress.

"Indirect techniques are central to more advanced Occlumency. If done correctly, they can distract or mislead the Legilimens away from his target. But you must pay careful attention to where the Legilimens is focusing within your mind, to discern his target and select the right memories to hide and those to release. You must try to anticipate, even before the encounter, what your adversary will do. That way you can take the advantage, right from the moment the spell is cast, to hide the memories he wants.

"You have already begun to practice anticipating the Legilimens as he moves. I think you have a sense of where my enquiries are going during these sessions, do you not?"

"I think so. I'm starting to see what paths you are taking sometimes . . . I know I'm not very fast."

"Well, you've just got to keep practicing, haven't you?"

"You'll still be aware that I'm Occluding, right? I mean, do you always know when I'm using Occlumency?"

"As you have been using the full block, yes. Indirect concealment is much subtler. In this strategy, you do not directly engage your combatant, but preemptively hide your memories before the need for straight blocking even arises. With some practice, this should become 'silent' enough that the Legilimens remains unaware of any concealment at all. This is the heart of the Occlumens's strategy: He must constantly act to deceive his adversary."

"Or her."

"Or her," I admitted.

She then enquired about the methods of memory concealment, to which I responded thusly:

"There are a number of ways. Firstly, you must shut down the connections between the memory in question to other memories or feelings. This will make it possible for you to block the memory without your action being detected from other parts of your mind. A more subtle, but difficult, method is to disguise the specific memory you wish to conceal within other, mundane memories. You've got a decent start at that with your library: a good place to hide things, a familiar, believable setting based on reality."

"I'm confused," she said presently. "I've been trying to clear my mind of emotions, but don't I need to let some emotions through so the Legilimens won't be suspicious that I might be Occluding?"

It was not a bad question. I thought a moment, then said: "Miss Granger, why do you never ask such questions in class?"

She tensed. "You never ask us for questions. You only ask us for answers." I scowled. She spoke with her eyes on the floor. "And – and even if I did, then everyone would know that I didn't understand everything."

So. There it was: She was terrified her peers would see her for what she really was. Where was the Gryffindor bravery now? I felt the start of a triumphant sneer – but a glance at her naked expression stalled it. She had taken a risk in revealing this much; if I mocked her now, I was unlikely to get any truthful answers from her in the future. (Especially now that she could Occlude.)

I said indifferently, "You give far too much credit to your peers' opinions.

". . . Regarding your question: Yes, revealing a bit of emotion is necessary in silent Occlumency. But in this you must be very cautious. Emotions become difficult to control if not suppressed to the greatest extent possible. It might be a good tactic to reveal some emotion if and only if you are confident you have severed any ties to compromising memories. Your best bet is to reveal a bit of what you are feeling at the moment, which, if you happen to find yourself in a Death Eater interrogation, will likely be fear and will be difficult to suppress entirely anyway. In this circumstance, you would want to isolate your immediate feelings from any memories of Potter, the Order, or of me for that matter; perhaps concentrate only on your fear for yourself or some other plausible explanation for your feelings.

"The same goes for memories. If you hide all memories of Potter, for example, it will be obvious you are Occluding. You must conceal just enough, but not too much. You see, by what you choose to reveal you create a sort of fictional story for the Legilimens to read; with this you lead him down a false trail and away from any sensitive memories. And remember: The best fiction always holds within its falsehood an element of truth."

"Is that how you do it?" she said hesitantly.

I paused a moment. "Yes. That is how I do it." An expression of awe had come over her, and I thought, with a touch of self-congratulation, that this sort of teaching was nearly enjoyable when one had such an eager student, even if her eagerness was only to show off to Potter.

I have mentioned that I had never had a female Occlumency student. Neither had I taught a student so young. While every experience between Legilimens and Occlumens is unique, Miss Granger's lessons were singularly instructive – to me at least, if not to her. Her youth was undeniably apparent. I had always considered the prerational stage of life called childhood best forgotten, characterised chiefly by mental deficiency, filthy habits, and the small, cruel tyrannies of parents. Yet now I saw hers looming so fresh and bright and so strangely lacking in guilt or pain: the unquestioning joys and fears of a child; the unsifted, unexperienced thoughts; the determining, defining events that had left their mark and led to the present Miss Granger I knew. At the same time, I could see the beginnings of her personal character, an emergent sketch still uncertain but growing, beginning to overwrite the trace of the child within her. Her mental terrain was altering, uplifted and folded by the intensity of adolescence; the child-existence, fleeting from moment to moment, was giving way to longer-viewed memories. Patches of mature thought had sprung round the outcrops of childish selfishness still indecently exposed. There was so much yet unformed. She, with the mental plasticity of the young, was still forming her self, or at least still struggling to identify it. She had not yet sealed off those unchanging parts of her self that existed for mature adults in more solidified form; she had not yet ceased to question and doubt who she was. I could not help but envy a bit this labile state, for my own form had long ago been fixed, my character hardened. She, at least, still had potential for growth and change, perhaps even for greatness someday.

How concrete, how focused she still was in her thinking! She indeed harboured an excessive regard for factual truths, the sort that one finds in arithmancers and children, coupled with an equally excessive reverence for her friends. Of course, she was petty and manipulative, as all children are, but the girl was no Slytherin; that was for sure. She seemed to suffer from a particularly virulent form of congenital idealism, a doe-eyed naïveté and pertinacious trust in human goodness. I was so taken aback by her simple, unfounded convictions about 'rights' and 'justice' that at several points, I allowed myself some tangential commentary about the poor policies that arose from such nonsense. But she stubbornly ignored me and continued tilting at windmills, and I saw that one cannot teach moderation of view to a mind still so untempered and unready to learn. One cannot simply explain away her foolish ideas in logical fashion, for she does not really understand; words cannot give her knowledge of the world that she does not yet have. Some things come only with age.

In spite of her youth, she improved considerably over the subsequent sessions. Her talent for logic and memorisation and her well-ordered mind served her well in learning Occlumency. What a relief to instruct one such as her, especially after such a fruitless experience with the boy, whose lessons had either been gritty, physical combat or else akin to dragging a dead, dumb weight like a boulder behind me. Miss Granger, in contrast, once over her initial anxiety, seemed unconcerned about the actual invasiveness of Legilimency, but simply intent on learning the skills. She experimented with various tactics: drawing me away from sensitive areas by projecting various distracting memories as decoys, telling lies and Occluding any contradictory memories, training for nonverbal and surprise attacks. She clearly wanted to excel and would do anything to have me recognise even her smallest achievements: After every question, every session of practice, she waited hopefully in case I would say, "Good point" or "That was very well done." I gave her no such satisfaction, of course.

For the reasons previously mentioned, I continued to avoid any explicit memories of me. I knew that if I dug any deeper, I would find that she saw me – as all students did – as only a loathsome, spiteful, thoroughly unattractive man. I did, however, examine many of her past year's conversations with Potter, which contained substantial discussion of the Dark Lord and the Order, but surprisingly scant mention of me. What little Snape-related conversation I uncovered involved her berating Potter for neglecting his Occlumency exercises or reminding him that I was in fact an Order member and not evil incarnate. She seemed hardly to have spoken at all of the time she spent in the dungeon, and I wondered if she had simply taken my request for discretion to heart or if she might be ashamed by working for me. In any case, I was forced to draw the conclusion that whatever her motives for taking a Potions assistantship, espionage was evidently not one of them.

As the lessons progressed, we settled, in a sort of co-adaptation between predator and prey, into the respective roles of Legilimens and student Occlumens. The movements became familiar, habitual¹. I was getting to know the scheme of where she kept things in her mind, rather like learning as a child the network of footpaths through neighborhood alleys or the layout of a Muggle automobile. It was a very odd sort of familiarity to have with a girl. In fact, the whole experience was so novel that I could not help but marvel a bit at this gelatinous tangle of ganglia and glia that somehow gave rise to the consciousness known as Miss Granger. At what point had the inchoate fluxes of nature and experience coalesced into this whole human being? What frame, what design had wrought into coherence the haphazard bricolage of prima materia, the perceptions and memories, thoughts fluttering about like so many birds in an aviary? What depths had I still not uncovered? What untried domain awaited within her? How vast was the scope of even one mind, as mysterious a maze as man ever trod; how complex a study was this most unaccountable of machinery, most sensitive of instruments, most unpredictable and delicate of weapons! (And had Lily's mind been anything like hers? I could not help but wonder.)

In any event, the lessons were progressing so satisfactorily that I even considered making an offer to continue them into the next year. This line of thought, however, ended most abruptly upon the next evening's class, the details of which I am obliged to describe:

"So." I cleared my throat as she settled into her chair. "How are the stillness exercises coming?"

"I think I'm making some progress; I've got the Lentorespiro down pretty well, though I'm not sure I could do it if I were really afraid. I tried to talk to Harry again, but he won't listen to me at all. Every time I ask, he lies and says he's practicing clearing his mind and that he'll resume lessons soon. I can't even bring you up without him stalking out of the room. He's being completely unreasonable."

I ignored this aside and to avoid further discussion of Potter set immediately to instruction. The exercise began in a routine fashion as she proffered various mundane memories for my perusal. But that evening I was feeling impatient. She was becoming too confident; she needed a challenge. On impulse, I decided to try a particular manoeuvre that I had not yet attempted, in which the Legilimens summons an emotion or memory of his own and transmits it to his opponent in an effort to disrupt her focus.

After several attempts² I achieved my aim: Into the midst of the memory now surfacing – in which she was practicing Transfiguring a spider (one of my Salticids, as it were) into a pair of opera glasses – I struck: a thrust of cold, sharp disfavour, the scathing sort a professor reserves for his dullest pupil. It hit its mark: The memory cracked open; her incipient pride of accomplishment wilted. She attempted to mount a recovery, set a straight general block and began to reconstruct her library-fortress. But her confidence was shaken; I had already gained a foothold inside. I ducked into an inconspicuous corner, thus evading detection, then advanced ever so softly through a dark flanking aisle, through one trivial memory of the girl inspecting a beetle in a jar, past another of drinking (and not only Butterbeer) with Potter and Rita Skeeter in the Three Broomsticks. Now I crept through the pub's hidden recesses and out through the door. But I found myself not in Hogsmeade's main street but upon the shore of the Great Lake, where she stood, dripping wet, garments clinging to her like drooping wings, next to an equally sopping Viktor Krum, the Quidditch player, of all people. Head half-turned towards him, she was focusing intently on the soft words and the temptation of a holiday abroad: "You must come and see ze paintings in my castle . . ." And now they were sitting in alarming proximity in the Hogwarts rose garden (wait – there was no such thing. And yet it looked familiar.) – and suddenly she could think of nothing to say, but only the dark strands of hair that fell over his nose, the flux of his stare from her eyes to her chest (you know, he resembled me more than a bit; I could almost imagine that she was almost imagining), and his –

The memory was interrupted by the ugly seborrheic face of the Weasley boy, shouting, "Fraternisation with the enemy!" a jumble of confused, contradictory feelings detached from all language or logic, and the appearance of another unexpected celebrity: Gilderoy Lockhart, strutting round the Hogwarts Great Hall with a gaudy white smile for the benefit of his new Duelling Club. The smile froze to a grimace as he assumed combat position opposite a smug memory-Snape for a 'mock' duel. She was holding her breath, then shrieking as he fell, leaping up with a rush of surprise and embarrassment. (So she'd taken a fancy to the celebrity charlatan, had she? Everybody loves a hero, especially one with hundred-Galleon hair.)

This was new and curious territory indeed. Interesting that Potter seemed to elicit none of these . . . reactions . . . from her. She wasn't still dating Krum, was she? I wondered if I could return to her memory of him; it might merit further investigation, given his closeness to Karkaroff³. Creeping from the Great Hall, retracing a memory-branch that ravelled out through this unknown interior region, I stole past a dormitory mirror that sneered, "Dear, you are hardly his type;" past a lavatory where she hid, covered her ponderous teeth with her hands, and wept; through a vessel-like passage that tightened and narrowed, even as my own blood expanded with the thrill of combat, and seemed to pulse with its own secret current that carried me along, drawing me nearer and nearer to that ineffable centre where she would be defenceless – and then there it was, mere steps ahead of me; I had found the garden again, though I saw now it was no natural garden at all, merely a mimicry conjured for some Hogwarts event in her past, a Dumbledorian effort at a suitably romantic atmosphere. It was now just before me, through a half-parted gate: A new, springlike balm in the open night air, defying by magic the flurries of snow overhead, seeped over a thicket of roses. Fairy lights winked on and off through the foliage. Though I could not see her, I felt her presence, as if she were waiting, concealed, her breath within every leaflet's hushed respiration, the bat of her lashes in each furtive moth-flutter, and within each inflorescence just beyond reach, each velvet petal glistening, unfolding –

I had underestimated her mental fortitude; she expelled me violently in one twitchy contraction. I fell against the desk. She had sprung like a deer from her seat. Dear God, what was I doing? I had slipped, let her get the better of me somehow. Why in Merlin's good name was this the temptation I could not seem to resist? One conclusion was clear: These sessions must end immediately.

She had turned a furious shade of pink, in perfect awareness of the delicate terrain I had been heading for. She returned to her seat, struggling to relax her breathing in the manner I had taught.

Ignoring a fugitive feeling of shame and an odd touch of disappointment, I marshaled my thoughts: "You failed, Miss Granger. Your defences are weak."

A wavering tremolo said, "I didn't know you were going to get s-so personal. Anyway, I did stop you."

"The personal is fair game for the Dark Lord. He will not respect your propriety."

"I tried . . . I couldn't find you, I got confused. You – did something different."

"That is enough. You are dismissed." I added uncomfortably, "And stay away from Krum. He is . . . an unwise choice of company."

Tense silence. I avoided her eyes and she mine.

"Shall I come at the same time next week?" she said.

"No. Your Occlumency lessons are finished. O.W.L.s are approaching now and I haven't the time to waste on your mind."

Her eyes filled; she quickly looked down to hide them. Immediately I regretted my words, and just as quickly I felt my own weakness at being now so easily manipulated by her tears. Nonetheless, I relented: "You see, it – would be more useful . . . if you would . . . assist me in marking final exams. You may pick them up next week at our regular meeting hour."

Her expression gradually cleared. She agreed and waited expectantly, dutifully, for more.

"That will be all, Miss Granger. You may leave," I said softly, before I could do more damage.

¹ This is an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of one-on-one teaching, as the parties fall into a comfortable counterpoint that ultimately hinders advancement.

² I am not a particularly skilled Legilimens, having mostly employed it in a classroom environment. My students do not need to know this.

³ A former Death Eater who then headed Krum's school.

Author's Notes:

* "Fraternisation with the enemy" is a direct quote from GOF.

* Thank you to T.H. White for some language and his insights on the nature of youth.

* A 'wide, untried domain awaited' is language stolen from Walt Whitman.