Chapter Thirty-Six: Occlumency

Harry did not sleep very well that night; his mind was darkened with the knowledge that he'd have to endure Snape's presence in their lesson the next morning. The worry caused him to toss and turn all night, so by the time he reached Grimmauld Place the next morning he was in a bad mood.

His parents gave him some room when he approached the kitchen door, heading off upstairs to go find Sirius, so Harry entered the room alone. Snape was already in there.

"Close the door behind you, Potter," he told Harry.

Harry did, feeling a dark sense of doom as the door closed behind him with a click.

"I'm going to teach you the art of Occlumency," Snape told him. "Am I right to assume that your mother or father has explained the basics to you?"

"Yes," replied Harry tightly.

"We may not be in a classroom, but you are still to refer to me as 'sir' or 'professor'," Snape said. "Are we clear?"

"Yes," Harry said, then as an afterthought, "Sir."

"Very well." Snape looked at him calculatingly. "If you are familiar with the basics, I feel no need to waste my time to go over them again."

He stood, and motioned that Harry should move away from the kitchen table. Harry did, and with a flick of Snape's wand, the table and chairs lifted themselves and stacked to the side of the room, leaving space where they had vacated. The action was a bit unnerving; Harry had not thought that what they would be doing would take so much space.

Snape looked at him and raised his wand arm. "Well, Potter. The purpose of the lesson is clear. I will teach you to shield your mind. I will attempt to penetrate your mind, and you will attempt to resist."

Harry stared at him. What did Snape expect him to do? To curse him? To throw up a shield charm? Unsure if he should wait for Snape to explain further, or if Snape was even going to explain further, he raised his wand as well.

"Prepare yourself," Snape said.

"With what?" Harry said.

"Clear your mind," the potions master instructed.

From what? Thoughts? Emotions?

"Legilimens!"

Suddenly, memories were replaying in his mind: Uncle Vernon locking him in his cupboard… him seeing the Great Hall for the first time… having detention in the Forbidden Forest… Buckbeak flying away with Sirius on his back… They began to move quicker and quicker, until soon Harry lost track of them. He was beginning to get dizzy and lose focus…

"You lost control," Snape barked when he released the spell and Harry found himself kneeling on the kitchen floor. "Focus, Potter. You need to work on repelling me."

"You haven't told me how!" Harry said.

"Sir," spat Snape. "Manners, Potter."

"Well, then can you tell me how, sir?"

"Clear your mind," snapped Snape. "Control your emotions, Potter. Even you should be able to do that." He raised his wand, and once more Harry found himself floundering unprepared. "Ready. Legilimens!"

The memories returned. He was reuniting with his parents, embracing his mum… his dad was giving him the mirror… Voldemort was receiving news about the Azkaban breakout… he was trailing along the Department of Mysteries floor… the door opened, but though he raced to it, he could not reach it to see inside…

"You lost control," snapped Snape when he had released the spell. "You aren't fighting back."

"I am fighting back," argued Harry, the memory of the Department of Mysteries stirring up his frustration. He was no closer to figuring out the mystery of what was behind the door, though he dreamt of it almost every night.

"You must prove that you can control your emotions – sentimentality and feelings cannot help you here. Only the pathetic have no power over such trivial matters-"

"I'm not pathetic," Harry insisted.

"Then prove it," snarled Snape. "Control yourself. Shield your mind."

Harry worked to stifle his frustration and anger towards Snape, but just found it bubbling up again when Snape's sneer became more pronounced.

"I told you to clear your emotions," he said.

"Well, I'm finding that a bit hard right now," snapped Harry.

"Discipline yourself, Potter," snapped Snape. "I don't have all day. Legilimens!"

The Department of Mysteries returned.

"How'd it go?" Lily asked him later when he entered the Manor study an hour later, fuming and with a splitting headache. She stopped flipping through a book to look at him.

"Awful," he grumbled, flopping moodily down on the study couch. He hadn't even known it was possible for his head to ache like this. It was like it had been compressed. "He's awful. It's awful. And I'm rubbish at it."

"It was that bad?" she asked him.

"Worse," he said.

"…What happened?"

"Well, I'm rubbish at it, apparently," he said, casting an arm over his eyes to block out the painful amount of light in the room. "So nothing happened. Nothing productive anyway."

She didn't respond. Harry suspected it was because she had most likely never experienced this type of moody behavior from him. He waited until he felt a hint of remorse, and added, "He tried to get me to clear my mind, but I couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't… I…" he began. "I dunno. I was angry with him. He just kept goading me, provoking me. I don't know why he hates me so much." He thought for a moment, then amended, "No, I know why. It's because he despises Dad, isn't it?"

"They had a bit of a rivalry in school," Lily told him.

"Yeah, I picked up on that."

She was silent for a moment. "They were always a bit jealous of one another," she said.

Harry removed his arm to look at his mum. "Dad was jealous of Snape?"

"In a way," she said.

"How could he have been jealous of Snape?" Harry said. "Was Dad lousy at potions?"

Lily smiled faintly. "Not quite." She slipped a book back into one of the shelves behind the desk. "Believe it or not, Snape and I were childhood friends."

"What?" he said. "You were?"

"It was before his interest in the Dark Arts, because I know you'll ask that," Lily said. "He was the only on in the neighborhood who could explain why I could do strange things. Magic."

"What… what was he like?"

"He was a good friend for a while, believe it or not. He was the only one nice to me when my sister refused to talk with me."

"So you two… saw each other on the weekends?" Harry said uncomfortably.

Lily laughed. "We did what friends did. Yes, I guess so." She pulled down another book. "But the point was that we were close throughout school… through the first few years, at least. Your dad was jealous that he was so close to me. Snape was jealous of Dad's talent with Quidditch… and I think he suspected that I found your father attractive, though I wouldn't confess it. I'll be the first to admit that your dad was a bit of a jerk, especially to Snape, in his first few years. It took him a little while to mellow out. But he did eventually. That's when we started dating."

"So… so you two were friends," Harry said.

"Yes," she said, laughing. "Is that hard to picture?"

"Yeah," he said, completely honestly. The thought of his mum and Snape walking to class or sitting together to eat was disturbing enough. "So what happened?"

"Well…" She thought for a moment. "…He was interested in the Dark Arts; he and his friends eventually grew more and more radical with their ideas. They planned on joining up with Voldemort after they graduated, and were talking about what they wanted to do. He was still friendly enough to me, but the differences between his treatment of me and his treatment of other muggleborns were becoming more pronounced… I didn't like the double standards, or what he was beginning to believe about wizarding blood, or the way we were holding things from each other, and the friendship was turning toxic. So after a few heated arguments, we just stopped talking."

"And that was it?"

"That was it," she said. "We still haven't talked since then."

"Do you think he hates you for it?"

"I think he probably feels guilty," she said.

"Guilty?" he echoed. "Really?"

"I think so." She looked thoughtful. "He tried to apologize multiple times, but I didn't want to listen. I knew it was getting unhealthy, and our values just didn't match up anymore."

Harry was silent for a while, sensing that his mother still felt a bit sensitive about it all. "You didn't… you didn't love him or anything?"

She laughed. "No, I didn't have any romantic feelings for him," she said. "I never have."

"Oh," he said. It was a bit of a relief to him.

"Does your scar hurt?" she asked him suddenly, and he realized he had been massaging his forehead.

"Yeah," he admitted reluctantly, lowering his hand. "Guess it's a side effect or something."

She approached and placed her wand tip to his head. A moment later, Harry felt his forehead cool, and the ache begin to lessen. "Better?"

"Yeah," he said gratefully. "Much."

Lily smiled, and went back over to the desk, shifting through some of the papers. "He probably doesn't hate you," she said, after a long silence.

"I think he does," Harry said. "He tells me all the time how much I'm like Dad. He hates Dad."

Lily took a long time flipping through the papers.

"Does he hate me because Dad saved his life?"

She looked surprised that Harry knew that. "No," she said eventually. "Not quite. There's more to it than the fact that he and your father were cruel to one another, but that's for another day."

"You can't tell me?"

"I respect Snape's privacy," Lily said. "That includes his feelings, past and present."

"Even though you're not friends any more?"

"He's put up a lot of barriers to protect himself," Lily explained. "I don't want to reveal his secrets just because we are no longer friends. Some things are meant to stay hidden."

"Does Dad know?"

"…Yeah," Lily said softly. "He's known all along."

Harry was silent for a long while, sensing that his mother would say nothing further on the topic. He could not help but wonder if there were deeper emotions at work, but didn't say anything. He didn't know if he wanted to learn about the workings of Snape's mind, at least not yet. He was still trying to process the knowledge that Snape and his mother had been friends as children. It was difficult to picture when all he could imagine was the same callous adult he had come to loathe.

His mind instead drifted back off to the Occlumency lesson, to the idea of clearing his mind, of the memories that had circled around in his head when Snape had entered in. Looking suddenly at his mother, who had once more bent over the parchment on the desk, he asked her, "What's in the Department of Mysteries?"

She looked up abruptly, seeming a bit unnerved. "What?"

"What's in the Department of Mysteries?" he asked her. "There has to be a reason I keep dreaming about it. Voldemort thinks about it all the time. And you and Dad admitted that the Order took part in that Death Eater incident a little while ago."

Lily was watching him carefully. "Harry, your father and I explained that this was one of the Order dealings that is best left as a secret."

"But why do I keep dreaming about it?" Harry asked her. "Voldemort's practically obsessed, but it's almost like he's putting the dreams in my mind."

Lily was silent for a long time, before replying carefully. "Harry, listen to me. It's for your safety that we keep this a secret. Please don't try to go looking."

He shook his head. He knew that she would say something like that. "But it's almost like he wants me to."

His Occlumency lessons over the next few weeks back at Hogwarts did not improve at all. If anything, they just got worse. Harry was tormented with visions of the Department of Mysteries at day as well as at night now, as Snape made him relive them during their lessons. He was finding that his control was weakening with every try. With each abysmal lesson, he would come to the following with even lower expectations. And with the spring fast approaching, his growing worries about the Department of Mysteries and his upcoming O.W.L.s did nothing for his calm. This lack of progress only aggravated Snape and Harry, setting them even further against one another. Though Lily's confession about her childhood friendship with Snape had been shocking, it did not change Harry's low opinion of the current man, who continued to insult him, his father, and his dreadful performance in their lessons. Though it was only a few hours of his time, Harry dreaded the lesson every week.

And, though he was not quite willing to admit it, a part of him didn't want to shield his mind. A part of him wanted to keep dreaming about the Department of Mysteries. He could not help but hope that one of the days, the door would open and he would finally see what was hiding behind that was so mysterious. What could possibly be so secret that not even his mum would confess? Harry was determined to find out.

I feel that this is going to be another controversial chapter. Oh well. Hope you all enjoyed it! Please review.