When Dumbledore had first proposed the occluemcy lessons, Harry was actually pretty keen. He hadn't even known about the possibility of someone reading his mind and he was determined to keep him mind safe. The idea of letting Snape of all people have access was almost enough to put him, but the thought of Voldemort getting in… It was so much worse.

But after Snape's disastrous first lesson he quickly lost faith. How was he supposed to learn when all he had was clear your mind? What did that even mean? Hermione started researching, looking for any tips to help Harry out. She scoured the library for anything related to the protection of the mind. She wasn't able to find much, apparently the skill was pretty obscure.

"And why isn't Ron here?" Hermione snapped, as she went through the shelves. "He should be helping too."

Harry was nursing his latest headache, this time curtesy of Snape. He leaned against one of the tables and smirked tiredly at Hermione. "Ron is following your advice and taking his responsibilities as a prefect seriously."

She paused and pulled her head out of the stacks to blink at him. "What?"

"A couple of the younger years have been complaining about Malfoy and the Inquisitorial Squad. Apparently they have been cornering some of the first years of the other Houses and offering them 're-education.'" He scowled. "When they complained to McGonagall, she just told them not to travel alone. Word is, the other heads of Houses are being equally unhelpful."

"And what is Ron doing?"

Harry smirked again and chuckled. "I gave him my invisibility cloak, the Map and instructions not to get caught. He's went armed with some of Fred and Georges supplies."

"Oh, that's going to go well." Hermione really couldn't imagine Ron being sneaky.

"Actually it is. He might be a bit of a hot head but he does have five older brothers. He's been out the last couple of nights and the first years are noticing. They feel safer. They're still travelling in groups but at least no one's ending up in the hospital wing. All thanks to Ron."

It took Hermione a couple of hours to finish combing the library. She had experience. She was even able to con a pass to the restricted section from her Ancient Runes professor.

"Oh, is this all?" Harry asked wryly as Hermione dumped a pile of thick tomes on the desk, sending a puff of dust in the air.

She quirked an eyebrow at him and flicked her wand.

Dozens more books flew out of the stacks to thump themselves one by one into piles taller than Harry's head around them.

"Start reading Harry. There's got to be something more helpful in here than 'clear your mind.'" It might have been the closest Harry had ever heard her come to insulting a professor.

They went through book after book. It became very clear why the skill wasn't widely used. Used properly, it would allow the user to resist outside influence. Used incorrectly however, it striped a person of their emotions, blocked them off. Every book contained multiple warnings about wizards who became numb, desensitised from their feelings. Most of the books spoke of recognising the intruding Legilimency probe and shifting thought away from it, blocking it off so it couldn't be reached. But while an intruder couldn't find that part of you the mind, neither could the wielder.

The more he read, the less he even wanted to learn the skill. Stripping pieces of yourself away from yourself seemed unhealthy. It seemed to Harry, like being an occlumens was a recipe for a Dark wizard. When Harry mentioned this to Hermione she just scoffed at him.

"Don't be ridiculous. Dumbledore is an occlumens. He wouldn't have requested you learn it if it was dangerous."

"Hermione, we have book after book with explicit details that it is in fact very dangerous. If Dumbledore is an occlumens then he can shut off his feelings. Feelings like concern for a student, or regret for his actions. It might explain a few things about our earlier school years."

Hermione just gave him a long look. She might not be convinced but he could tell she was starting to think about it.

But still it was better than allowing Voldemort, or Snape for that matter, access to his mind.

A couple of books contained some helpful suggestions. They tried a few different techniques for clearing the mind, but nothing helped. His next lesson, Snape stampeded through his mind, destroying every scrap of equilibrium he tried to hold on to.

Back in the library in their usual table tucked away in the back, he was flicking through one of the books Hermione had discarded in disgust when he found something different.

This book, 'Divining the Inner Eye,' described one seer's attempts at controlling his gift of psychometry. When his gift had come online unexpectedly, he had found himself seeing the past and future of every item he had touched. It had almost driven him mad. He was able to find and use a technique that had allowed him to enter his own mind and confront his power at the source.

While he was there he had confronted every memory, every emotion, good, bad and overwhelming. He was confronted with the very core of himself. As he had become more familiar with his mind and power he was able to control what his gift was showing him.

Harry was intrigued. The trouble was, whatever technique the seer had used wasn't described. All he had was the name. Intra Mentem. He showed it to Hermione.

"Really, Harry? Divination? That's hardly likely to help us at all." Hermione had always scoffed at any sort of divination.

"It's not about the divination. It's about how he came to learn it. It says he confronted his power at the source. That he stood on the edges of his own mind and looked at magic itself. It says he could see his Sight as being different from his magic and so was able to use his magic to get better control. Come on Hermione. It can't hurt to try it out. Nothing else has worked."

Hermione remained skeptical but Harry was right. They had no other ideas.

Hermione's prodigious memory made locating the ritual simple. Rituals wasn't a popular subject at Hogwarts and they didn't have much on the subject. Apparently the ministry had banned a lot of rituals due to the somewhat sketchy components called for. The book was in the restricted section, with most of the rituals.

It was a pretty simple ritual compared to most. The more components of the ritual the more controlled and less risky, and this one had the complete set. Potion, runic array and chant. Hermione's experience with runes helped set the array in place. Even Harry could have made the simple potion. It didn't take much to put everything in place.

Late one Saturday night the two met in the Room of Requirement. Hermione tried again to talk him out of it. She didn't think it was dangerous exactly, she just thought it was a waste of time. Harry was just looking for any advantage he could find. The dreams he'd been having were getting worse.

Hermione was able to link the spell to a mirror so she could see what he saw and hopefully help.

"Here goes nothing." Harry toasted Hermione with the potion that acted at the catalyst.

He lay down in the runic array, and began the chant that would bring him inside his mind.

At first the mindscape was confusing, flashing with every thought. Memories and imagination crowded everything. Each thought was a bright flash, a cacophony of noise. His emotions blinked past his vision as colors.

"Concentrate Harry, just stay calm." Hermione's voice came from far away. "Count back from twenty."

"Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen."

Colours coalesced into hazy shapes.

"Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten."

Outlines slowly drew themselves over the landscape like an etch'a'sketch.

"Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five."

The world took form.

"Four. Three. Two. One."

He found himself standing in a forest, sunlight streaming through the trees, a sparkling blue river winding through from the distance. The trees were huge with wide trucks and branches spread out across the canopy.

Mist drifted through the trees, bringing wafts of thought in ghostly letters. 'That potion tasted foul.' 'It's kinda cold lying on the floor.' 'I wonder if the Wasps will make it to the Quidditch Finals.'

"Really Harry, a time like this and you're thinking about Quidditch. Focus on what's around you." Hermione's voice sounded around him and sparkled in gold in the air.

'She can see that?!'

"Yeah it's weird, I'm not quite seeing things from your point of view, it's more behind you but I'm definitely seeing what you're seeing. Are you really seeing my words in gold?" She sounded amused and the sparkles looked like fireworks.

'Don't think about anything embarrassing!'

"You know not thinking about something is the best way to think about nothing else. Just focus on what you see around you."

It wasn't a normal looking forest. The ground underneath him was green and lush even in the deepest shadows. A rolling grass carpet that dropped off sharply to the river. Trees grew on the edge of the banks, their roots digging into the ground and out into the glittering water.

"What's wrong with the water?" Harry asked. It wasn't flowing right. It seemed to eddy, swirl and bubble in the oddest places, following no pattern he could spot. It had a bright glow to it and as he focused on the banks of the river, he noticed nothing that touched it seemed to be wet.

"Well, it's different for everyone, obviously, but my reading suggests that the water is probably your magic. I'm more interested in what those marks are on the trees."

Now that they were pointed out to him, they became glaringly obvious. Strange markings covered every tree, rock, bush and flower he could see. The more he looked the clearer they became. Most sparkled the same blue as the river, others glittered white, some other colours entirely. No two were alike. Some were faint shadows, others deeply etched.

"What do you think they mean?"

"I don't know. They look like runes of some sort but it's not any language I've ever come across."

Harry walked up to the nearest tree and reached out to touch one of the marks. This one was the same blue as the river, deep and large. Just as his fingers made contact with it, the river surged up. A splash of glowing blue something, something that was clearly not the same as water, jumped the river bank and washed toward the mark Harry just touched.

"WHOA!" Hermione shouted. "Harry James Potter, you stop that right now!"

He jumped back and the not-water dropped to the ground, seeping away into the soil. "What? What happened?"

"You just levitated me! Whatever that was, you just cast Wingardium Leviosa. On me!"

Harry looked around him in wonder. "They must be spells. If the river is magic, then these are the spells I know. This is what happens when I cast magic."

"Fascinating as this is, we are here for a reason. We need to find the source of your visions."

"And how are we going to do that?"

"Follow the magic."

"What?"

"Follow the river. And don't touch any more of those runes. Who knows what you'll cast."

Harry didn't have a better idea so he started the trek up the river, to see where it came from. Travel in the mindscape was as strange as everything else. The ground moving under him didn't equate with the number of steps he took. The trees shifted around him as if in a dance. He didn't feel as if he was moving, but he was.

Abruptly he stopped. "What is it, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Do you see that?" he asked. Some of the trees ahead of him were damaged. Some looked like they had been struck by lightning, some bend over as if pushed by strong winds.

"They're hurt," he whispered. "I'm hurt."

Markings covered these trees too, most in colours other than blue.

"What could have caused that?" Hermione asked in shock.

He walked up to one tree that was missing all its leaves. This tree too was covered in marking but unlike the others none of these glowed or sparkled.

"Harry?" Hermione asked, when he had paused for too long. He reached out a hand.

'Don't ask questions!' Petunia snapped. 'Get to your cupboard.'

Hermione gasped.

"I always told myself that nothing they did truly mattered," Harry said softly. "That they didn't matter. I guess they did more damage than I thought."

It didn't take long before they came to the edge of the forest. It dropped off sharply. One second he walked through dense forest, the next a vast landscape spread out before him. The blue river he had been following continued on out into the blank landscape before joining up with a much greater waterway. So vast, it stretched out into the distance, it was an enormous tumbling raging river in shining white, utterly colourless before a tiny piece of it split off to flow through the forest he was standing in.

Looking at it filled Harry with indescribably awe.

Then he noticed it.

A little way to the left was a deep jagged ravine, cut into the ground, outside the forest. It struck out directly from the river, then cut sharply back and to the right before turning back and reaching another forest in the distance. A shallow river ran at the bottom of the ravine, this one a dull red, the colour of blood.

Some of the red flowed into Harrys' river and a lot of Harrys' river is drained off into the red one.

"That does not look natural."

"That ravine," Hermione noted with a touch of fear. "It's the same shape as your scar."

"That must be where the visions are coming from. The headaches, the dreams. That is my connection to Voldemort."

"How is that even possible?"

"I don't know, but I want it gone."

Harry concentrated and the water swelled. He pushed out, and the water rushed toward the walls of the ravine.

That when he noticed movement in the passageway. A figure was crawling over the walls surrounding the red river. Like an enormous deformed spider, the thing scuttled to the edge where the two rivers met.

'Horcrux.' The word drifted toward him, he didn't know what it meant. But even the name caused him to shudder in revulsion.

It looked like it might once have been a man, but all defining features had been washed away. A vague head shape sat above where the first two limbs met the body. Limbs with joints in strange places. Just looking at it made Harry nauseous. Just before the water would have struck the creature it was sucked up the abyss.

The thing laughed.

He tried again and again but any magic he cast was immediately diverted into the ravine. Anything he did just seemed to make the creature stronger.

Frightened, Harry pulled himself out of the mindscape. The laughter followed him.

For the next few days Harry drifted, depressed and scared while Hermione plunged furiously back through the library for anything that might help.

She reread everything on the ritual and anything else that might have been relevant. But with every failure she became more desperate. Any magic they threw at it would only make it stronger.

In the end it's Harry who came up with the idea.

It was Malfoy of all people, when he accused a muggleborn of stealing magic, who cut through Harry's depression. His tirade didn't last very long as a spell had come out of nowhere and left the Slytherin fending off a swarm of bees, but it was long enough to spark an idea.

If the thing in his head fed off his magic, then he had to deprive it of what it needed. If he dammed the river at the source, he could cut off the power keeping the monster in his head alive.

Hermione called him crazy and dismissed the idea out of hand. Everything that happened in the mindscape had a corresponding effect on reality. If he were to cut off his magic, even if such a thing were possible, he would be left a squib. If it didn't kill him out right. Not to mention he would have to leave his own mind forest to do it. Out of body experiences like that were not to be taken lightly.

The argument lasted for days but Harry was determined. If she won't help it, he'll do it by himself.

Back in the Room of Requirement Harry once again entered his mindscape. He quickly made his way to the edge of his forest. Around the edge, he found brambles and thorn covered bushes growing thick but parting easily as he approached.

"Harry, please. You don't know what this could do you," Hermione pleaded. "Let me keep researching. There has to be something."

"I believe in you Hermione," Harry answered looked out over the plain before him. "But you don't know what it like, having that thing in my head. Now that I know it's there, it can feel it. Every spell I do feeds it, and I can feel it growing. I refuse to live with it any longer."

"You may not be able to come back," she whispered.

"That's a chance I'm willing to take. Thank you Hermione, for all your help. This is something I have to do."

That first step outside his mind was the hardest thing he'd ever done. The ones after didn't get any easier. Every time he glanced at the river flowing toward his forest he would get distracted and lose focus. He lost count of the times Hermione had to yell to get him back on track.

When he got a few steps passed the diversion he stopped.

Using all his will, he pushed against the blue waters, stopping the flow toward him. It was like using his hands to stop the tide. The water spilled around him, running over him, around him, through him. But he kept going.

He forced some of his magic into the shape of a dam, and built it bigger, piece by piece until not even a trickle of magic flowed through him.

He can feel, as well as see the effect of it on him. The river bed dried up below him. His mindscape grew darker, the horizon with the other forests in the distance vanished. The trees started drooping and began losing of their leaves, the brambles at the edge of the forest dying away entirely.

Outside the mindscape, Hermione noticed his nose start to bleed.

The effect on the Horcrux though was even more pronounced. It screamed profanity at him, almost causing him to lose focus. It tried to send some of its own red magics out to attack Harry but he was too far away and the attack fell short.

Without the blue magic of Harrys' river, its own magic red is not enough to sustain it. With a blood chilling scream the beast withered away.

Harry held on until every drop of red magic was gone and the ravine that was draining his own magic started to crumble and collapse in on itself. Then he used the last bit of strength he had and right before the landscape turned completely dark, he smashed the dam and released the river.

With a thundering roar it came crashing through the dam in a tidal wave, and swept Harry along with it.

With the tidal wave of magic, the mirror Hermione was using to watch shattered and she was left blind to what was happening.

She would only watch helplessly from the outside as Harry started to glow a brilliant white. His eyes also glowing white, opened and he threw his head back and screamed.

The scream reverberated around the room and was even felt throughout the rest of the castle as a small tremor. Nobody noticed.

Inside Harrys' mindscape, raw unfiltered magic was forcing itself through his mind. The river bed was carved out wider than before and the trees, already large, grew huge, their roots digging down into the river. New leaves covered the branches.

The markings on the trees changed too, some were carved deeper than before, new one appearing. Some of the marks changed colour until all of them are the same blue of the river, other marks vanish entirely. Flowering vines grew up to cover the damaged trees, which sprouted new leaves of their own.

Harry himself was lost in the tempest, being forced along by the river. It was a strange thing, being immersed in Magic. He was just on the edge of unconsciousness but some things still registered. He could hear an extraordinary type of singing. He was calm. He never bumped against any rock or the root. It was as if the water stretched on in all directions. As if there was nothing else. He registered the sounds of words, but not what they were saying. The memory of the world before slipped away, unimportant, as Magic held him in its embrace.

He was almost completely lost when he felt a force rise up beneath him. He couldn't tell where it came from before it made contact but he was pushed out of the water, carried from the flow of Magic, up out onto the bank.

Coughing and spluttering on the bank of the river, he lay for a moment as his bearings returned. He opened his eyes. The brambles grew, only an inch from his nose.

He looked up to see just what it was that push him out of the river. An enormous stag stood over him, shining white.

Prongs.

The patronus chuffed his muzzle at Harry and shook his head before turning and vanishing back into the river.

Hermione was beside herself with worry. Harry stayed unconscious for most of the weekend. It took hours before he even stopped glowing. She paced the room, not leaving for anything. Dobby brought her meals and the Room provided a place to sleep and books for her to study.

It is mid-afternoon on Sunday that he opened his eyes again. For a moment all he could do is stare at the ceiling. His thoughts were calm.

Hermione shook him, hysterical, trying to get him to respond. He blinked and focusing on her.

He smiled, and just for a moment his green eyes shined white.

NOTES

I had no plans to continue this story really. Its creation was a response to the numerous stories out there where Harry learns Occlumency, becomes really good at it and rebels against the system and so on. You know the ones I'm talking about. Everyone's read them, some are even really good. For the most part I enjoy them. But I was reading up on the Harry Potter Wiki, can't remember what for now and came across the Occlumency page. In the Behind the Scenes section I read this;

"On the subject of Occlumency, J. K. Rowling has discussed why Draco Malfoy would be skilled at it while Harry Potter was not:

"…I think Draco would be very gifted in Occlumency, unlike Harry. Harry's problem with it was always that his emotions were too near the surface and that he is in some ways too damaged. But he's also very in touch with his feelings about what's happened to him. He's not repressed, he's quite honest about facing them, and he couldn't suppress them, he couldn't suppress these memories. But I thought of Draco as someone who is very capable of compartmentalising his life and his emotions, and always has done. So he's shut down his pity, enabling him to bully effectively. He's shut down compassion — how else would you become a Death Eater? So he suppresses virtually all of the good side of himself.""

Reading this completely changed my view on Occlumency. When you look at the list of Known Occlumens, it tells the same story.

Maxwell Barnett

Barty Crouch Jr.

Albus Dumbledore

Bellatrix Lestrange

Draco Malfoy

Severus Snape

Horace Slughorn

Lord Voldemort

Gellert Grindelwald (possibly)

Narcissa Malfoy (possibly)

Sirius Black (possibly)

It very much seems to me that Occlumency is, if not dangerous in and of itself, at the very least a symptom of something far more sinister.

While Occlumency may not be a Dark skill but it seems like it would be very easy for it to go wrong. To use the analogy in this story, an Occlumens would have no barrier around their mind. But they would have no trees either. By shutting everything away they would lose all feeling, their minds would be barren. Literally, clearing their minds.

If learning Occlumency mean shutting off your emotions and allowing yourself to become a bully then I, and Harry, would want nothing to do with it. Better to feel pain than nothing at all.

That's just my view on it anyway. Feel free to send me a review if you don't agree.