Disclaimer: If you subscribe to the belief that all fiction is really a non-
fiction that is taking place in another universe/dimension, no author owns
anything, JKR included. Unfortunately, there is no space as of yet on the
US Census for this belief, so I doubt anyone seriously subscribes to it.
Either way, nothing belongs to me.
A/N: And on with the show! One Occlumency lesson coming up.
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By the time the appointed hour for Peter's first lesson clanged out on the clocks of Hogwarts, the euphoria of beating Snape so soundly had begun to wear off, though Mary especially enjoyed the story. Peter had finished Hamlet a mere five minutes before Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville came pouring through the door.
They extended a few compliments to Peter on his doings earlier in the day, but seemed more eager to figure out how to do it themselves. Everyone, that is, except Harry, he hung back a little.
"What's the matter?" Mary asked from her seat in the corner with her third book of the day.
"Er...," Harry said, "I hate Occlumency."
"Oh, I heard about the fiasco of last year," Peter said quickly, "that won't happen this time. Even if Voldemort was still actively trying to force his way into your mind, then our lessons still wouldn't affect it."
"My scar hurt worse each time, last year," Harry pointed out.
"That," Mary said, still immersed in her book, "is because our dear Professor Severus Snape was going about everything a bit backwardly."
"So he was doing it on purpose, making my scar hurt and all?" Harry said, shocked.
"No," Peter assured him, "not by a long shot, the way he was teaching you was the way he learned. Did you...did you ever see one of his memories?"
Harry nodded glumly, thinking of his father.
"One of his home life?" Peter clarified.
Harry's first instinct was to shake his head, but then he remembered a little-boy Snape curled up in a corner while what looked to be his parents screamed at each other. He nodded.
"Then you know it wasn't the best of possibilities. Snape's life was bad, but that, please remember, isn't an excuse for the things that he did. At any rate, he tried to make up for them. That is not the point, though. The point is that he learned Occlumency by being repeatedly hit with 'legillimens' and slowly learning to close his mind."
"What's the other way?" Harry asked, eager to get away from the subject of a child Snape.
"To learn first how to clear your mind and then how to keep it that way under the spell," Mary answered.
"Who's teaching this class?" Peter called jovially.
"Professor Padfoot jr.," Mary said.
"Exactly," Peter said, puffing himself up mock-importantly, "and you would do well to remember it."
"Or you're going to do what, pray tell?" Mary sighed, finally looking up.
"No idea," Peter shrugged, "but I would appreciate it if you would stop interrupting me and just go back to...whatever you are reading."
Mary nodded obligingly. "It's Victor Hugo's Les Miserables."
Peter turned from his "class" to stare at his friend. "Don't you have enough misery in your life?"
"Said the boy who just read Hamlet."
They argued about whether Hugo's book or Shakespeare's play was more tragic for a while, Hermione inputting every few sentences. Harry, Ron, and Neville were lost within words. Finally Neville said timidly, "Ummm...aren't we supposed to be learning Occlumency?"
That brought Peter back to reality.
"Oh, right, sorry," he said, looking abashed, "we are going to learn how to meditate tonight."
"Meditate, like as in guru-on-the-mountain meditate?" Ron said skeptically.
"Nothing so strange, real meditation can be done in any position and virtually anywhere. Just let your thoughts blow out with your breath."
"How?" Hermione asked.
"Let's see. How should I explain it? Think of something small...a Snitch for you, Harry, maybe. It should be something that relates to you, but not an animal. Create the picture and then force your mind into it. If it was a Snitch, for example's sake, imagine moving, whipping through the air faster than a human can see, but never caring where you go. If you do it right, the rest of your mind will become blank. If you do it right, you will become the thing that you imagine in a metaphysical sense." [Disclaimer: this is the gist of the explanation of meditation given by Tamora Pierce in her Circle of Magic books; I don't own that.]
"Then our minds will be closed?" asked Harry.
"No," Peter said, "then your mind will be empty, and that is infinitely better than safe, though it takes more time to achieve. It is harder than it sounds though; try it."
Harry closed his eyes, and, as Peter had suggested, he tried to force his mind into the shape of the ever-flitting Snitch. Deep in the back of his mind, though, the thoughts continued. He opened his eyes after a few moments in disgust. He saw that Ron and Hermione had done the same, but Neville, as in abysmal-at-everything-except-sometimes-Herbology Neville, was quite obviously in a meditative state. Harry would have thought the boy to be asleep, but there were no snores.
Peter waited half a minute longer, staring at Neville confusedly, then began to talk again. Neville did not open his eyes.
"Stop trying," Peter told the others. "The harder you try the less it will work. You have to want to meditate because you want a clear mind, not for any other reason."
"Well, you know, if You-Know-Who is about to read my mind, then I doubt that is going to be my most pressing concern, clearing my mind," Ron said.
"Once you learn how to do it, you will be able to fall into the process whatever your motive," Peter said tiredly. "Now, meditate."
Harry took one more look at Neville. The usual embarrassed, nervous frown was replaced by a look of absolute peace. Harry wondered what it would be like, to not have to worry for a time, to be free of his problems, to not have to care. The image of the Snitch came unbidden to his head; Peter had said that the Snitch was always mindless. Fly this way and that, fly left and right and up and down and never, never care.
Suddenly, he was in this intricate dance of nothingness, but he did not remark upon it. Later, he would realize that Peter had been right. He *was* the Snitch, and any other thought was absent.
From a very long way away, Harry felt Peter shake him.
"You were very nearly there," the boy-professor said with a smile, "very nearly, but not quite. You were still planning your next movement."
"You mean there is more nothing than that?" Harry said incredulously.
"Yes, but the fact that you were able to do that your second try is mind-boggling. Keep going. You'll have it soon, before the week is out, I imagine, assuming that you practice."
Harry went back to becoming the Snitch, but he did not come so close to "nothingness" as he had that one time.
Hermione and Ron, on the other hand, were much less successful. Peter knew exactly what they were doing wrong, but the only way for them to stop it was by exercising away the bad habits.
"Ron," he said for the fourth time, "if you keep opening your eyes and looking around to see if you've done it, then you haven't. Just close your eyes and pretend like you're falling asleep."
Less than two minutes later, Ron's eyes were staring around the room again.
Hermione was concentrating too much still.
"It's not a book or a spell that you'll be able to understand if you think hard enough, Hermione," Peter said. "That's the opposite you want to do."
"I can't think of anything small that relates to me!" she cried.
Peter thought for a moment, then said, "Do you know anything from a book by heart? You know, a poem or something, but not the whole book, that's too much."
"I know some poems from muggle stories," Hermione supplied, "but I also know potions recipes and essays and spell theories..."
"Imagine being the ink on a quill writing the poems."
By the end of the hour, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had all achieved marginal success. Neville had still not come out of his trance.
"See you whenever Dumbledore wants us to meet again," Peter said after praising their efforts for a few minutes. "Practice, please, if you have time. It will make it easier. Meditation is a habit, not a skill. Goodnight."
Neville snapped awake.
"Thanks for the lesson," he said, "I'll see you later."
He left without another word, and the other three followed. Peter waited a few minutes, until he suspected that they were nearly to the Common Room and started to leave as well.
"Where are you going?" Mary asked her book.
"To see Dumbledore," Peter replied, "and you know why."
****
"The boy doesn't need Occlumecy lessons. He could teach better than I!" Peter cried upon seeing the professor.
"What are you talking about?"
"Neville! Neville Longbottom! Was that your idea of a joke, Professor? He's a walking, talking Occlumens!" Peter said forcefully. "Why would you send him to learn what he already knows?"
Dumbledore's hands dropped in surprise, a surprising show of emotion from the old man. "What do you mean?" he said sharply. "Neville already knows Occlumency?"
"Have you ever read A Little Princess, Professor?" Peter asked after a moment.
The headmaster nodded.
"Do you remember the part where Miss Minchin hires a French tutor for Sara Crewe, and Sara tries to tell her that it is pointless, but will not listen until she tells the French teacher, in absolutely flawless French, that she already knows the language?"
Again a nod.
"Well, I felt like that teacher."
At another time, Dumbledore might have wondered where on earth this boy had picked up the knowledge of Muggle literature, but he was too busy digesting the fact that Neville was an Occlumens.
"Look," Peter said, taking the silence for disbelief, "maybe I overreacted, but I told them to meditate and Neville was immediately gone!"
"You didn't overreact, Peter. Sit down for a moment, and let me think," Dumbledore said. It was the first time he had ever seemed hesitant about anything.
Peter obeyed, using the time to practice his own meditation. He came back quickly as the headmaster began to speak to himself.
"It's strange...very strange. I had heard, but I had not thought it was possible. I thought it was just a myth...just a tale to frighten children...a legend."
Peter waited. The next words seemed to be directed toward him.
"You know the story of the Longbottoms."
"Sir, it is one of the banes of my existence," Peter sighed.
"Yes, but it should not be. At any rate, there were rumors and concerns of what might happen to Neville after all of it. How does the Cruciatus curse affect the womb? There were no studies, no known precedents, except for the old, unfounded myth."
Peter thought for a moment. Lore and old magic, that was his specialty. Old magic had been a thing the Dark Lord hated, therefore his foe had learned about it. His mind sifted through old manuscripts and dusty volumes pilfered riskily from Death-Eaters' libraries. He found the match.
"They used to do it to pregnant witches to make their babies stronger. They used to torture them because, supposedly, the pain would make the baby immortal, invincible. Of course, it was a lie and a lot of women suffered for an old folktale," Peter spat bitterly. "We are not so different from Muggles in that way."
Dumbledore nodded once more, though this time with an air of gravity and sadness.
"But there was some truth to it, wasn't there?" Peter pressed, trying to piece the puzzle together without the pieces.
Dumbledore said, his voice barely above a whisper, "It must have changed Neville into something harder, having to withstand all of that pain. Even Alice could not have kept it to herself, it would have leaked to her baby. The pain must have made him impervious to penetration of the mind. It made him a born Occlumens."
"I don't understand."
"Neville is conditioned for torture. His very gestation was filled with it, so his body would not crack under it. He is an Occlumens as a secondary aspect. Firstly, his mind will never break."
"An invincibility that he would give anything to share," Peter sighed, thinking of the way Bellatrix would gloat over the insane Longbottoms.
Dumbledore nodded this time with a seriousness that made Peter's heart ache. Peter waited for the headmaster to tell him what to do next.
"Go back to your books," he said. "I have to speak to Neville."
Peter turned to leave, but as he neared to doorway he called back, without turning around, "If he's an Occlumens, then he might be a Legillimens, right?"
"Yes, almost certainly."
"Whatever you do, Professor, don't tell him that. Don't make it any easier for him."
Peter left, not waiting to see if Dumbledore had understood the warning.
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A/N: The "it" thing for Neville will become clear in less than two chapters, I promise. I love Neville, but I suspect that JKR might kill him off in the next book. I hope not. I think this is sort of my ode to Neville. Anyway, review! Please! The little button is right there and it is calling out your name.
A/N: And on with the show! One Occlumency lesson coming up.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------
By the time the appointed hour for Peter's first lesson clanged out on the clocks of Hogwarts, the euphoria of beating Snape so soundly had begun to wear off, though Mary especially enjoyed the story. Peter had finished Hamlet a mere five minutes before Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville came pouring through the door.
They extended a few compliments to Peter on his doings earlier in the day, but seemed more eager to figure out how to do it themselves. Everyone, that is, except Harry, he hung back a little.
"What's the matter?" Mary asked from her seat in the corner with her third book of the day.
"Er...," Harry said, "I hate Occlumency."
"Oh, I heard about the fiasco of last year," Peter said quickly, "that won't happen this time. Even if Voldemort was still actively trying to force his way into your mind, then our lessons still wouldn't affect it."
"My scar hurt worse each time, last year," Harry pointed out.
"That," Mary said, still immersed in her book, "is because our dear Professor Severus Snape was going about everything a bit backwardly."
"So he was doing it on purpose, making my scar hurt and all?" Harry said, shocked.
"No," Peter assured him, "not by a long shot, the way he was teaching you was the way he learned. Did you...did you ever see one of his memories?"
Harry nodded glumly, thinking of his father.
"One of his home life?" Peter clarified.
Harry's first instinct was to shake his head, but then he remembered a little-boy Snape curled up in a corner while what looked to be his parents screamed at each other. He nodded.
"Then you know it wasn't the best of possibilities. Snape's life was bad, but that, please remember, isn't an excuse for the things that he did. At any rate, he tried to make up for them. That is not the point, though. The point is that he learned Occlumency by being repeatedly hit with 'legillimens' and slowly learning to close his mind."
"What's the other way?" Harry asked, eager to get away from the subject of a child Snape.
"To learn first how to clear your mind and then how to keep it that way under the spell," Mary answered.
"Who's teaching this class?" Peter called jovially.
"Professor Padfoot jr.," Mary said.
"Exactly," Peter said, puffing himself up mock-importantly, "and you would do well to remember it."
"Or you're going to do what, pray tell?" Mary sighed, finally looking up.
"No idea," Peter shrugged, "but I would appreciate it if you would stop interrupting me and just go back to...whatever you are reading."
Mary nodded obligingly. "It's Victor Hugo's Les Miserables."
Peter turned from his "class" to stare at his friend. "Don't you have enough misery in your life?"
"Said the boy who just read Hamlet."
They argued about whether Hugo's book or Shakespeare's play was more tragic for a while, Hermione inputting every few sentences. Harry, Ron, and Neville were lost within words. Finally Neville said timidly, "Ummm...aren't we supposed to be learning Occlumency?"
That brought Peter back to reality.
"Oh, right, sorry," he said, looking abashed, "we are going to learn how to meditate tonight."
"Meditate, like as in guru-on-the-mountain meditate?" Ron said skeptically.
"Nothing so strange, real meditation can be done in any position and virtually anywhere. Just let your thoughts blow out with your breath."
"How?" Hermione asked.
"Let's see. How should I explain it? Think of something small...a Snitch for you, Harry, maybe. It should be something that relates to you, but not an animal. Create the picture and then force your mind into it. If it was a Snitch, for example's sake, imagine moving, whipping through the air faster than a human can see, but never caring where you go. If you do it right, the rest of your mind will become blank. If you do it right, you will become the thing that you imagine in a metaphysical sense." [Disclaimer: this is the gist of the explanation of meditation given by Tamora Pierce in her Circle of Magic books; I don't own that.]
"Then our minds will be closed?" asked Harry.
"No," Peter said, "then your mind will be empty, and that is infinitely better than safe, though it takes more time to achieve. It is harder than it sounds though; try it."
Harry closed his eyes, and, as Peter had suggested, he tried to force his mind into the shape of the ever-flitting Snitch. Deep in the back of his mind, though, the thoughts continued. He opened his eyes after a few moments in disgust. He saw that Ron and Hermione had done the same, but Neville, as in abysmal-at-everything-except-sometimes-Herbology Neville, was quite obviously in a meditative state. Harry would have thought the boy to be asleep, but there were no snores.
Peter waited half a minute longer, staring at Neville confusedly, then began to talk again. Neville did not open his eyes.
"Stop trying," Peter told the others. "The harder you try the less it will work. You have to want to meditate because you want a clear mind, not for any other reason."
"Well, you know, if You-Know-Who is about to read my mind, then I doubt that is going to be my most pressing concern, clearing my mind," Ron said.
"Once you learn how to do it, you will be able to fall into the process whatever your motive," Peter said tiredly. "Now, meditate."
Harry took one more look at Neville. The usual embarrassed, nervous frown was replaced by a look of absolute peace. Harry wondered what it would be like, to not have to worry for a time, to be free of his problems, to not have to care. The image of the Snitch came unbidden to his head; Peter had said that the Snitch was always mindless. Fly this way and that, fly left and right and up and down and never, never care.
Suddenly, he was in this intricate dance of nothingness, but he did not remark upon it. Later, he would realize that Peter had been right. He *was* the Snitch, and any other thought was absent.
From a very long way away, Harry felt Peter shake him.
"You were very nearly there," the boy-professor said with a smile, "very nearly, but not quite. You were still planning your next movement."
"You mean there is more nothing than that?" Harry said incredulously.
"Yes, but the fact that you were able to do that your second try is mind-boggling. Keep going. You'll have it soon, before the week is out, I imagine, assuming that you practice."
Harry went back to becoming the Snitch, but he did not come so close to "nothingness" as he had that one time.
Hermione and Ron, on the other hand, were much less successful. Peter knew exactly what they were doing wrong, but the only way for them to stop it was by exercising away the bad habits.
"Ron," he said for the fourth time, "if you keep opening your eyes and looking around to see if you've done it, then you haven't. Just close your eyes and pretend like you're falling asleep."
Less than two minutes later, Ron's eyes were staring around the room again.
Hermione was concentrating too much still.
"It's not a book or a spell that you'll be able to understand if you think hard enough, Hermione," Peter said. "That's the opposite you want to do."
"I can't think of anything small that relates to me!" she cried.
Peter thought for a moment, then said, "Do you know anything from a book by heart? You know, a poem or something, but not the whole book, that's too much."
"I know some poems from muggle stories," Hermione supplied, "but I also know potions recipes and essays and spell theories..."
"Imagine being the ink on a quill writing the poems."
By the end of the hour, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had all achieved marginal success. Neville had still not come out of his trance.
"See you whenever Dumbledore wants us to meet again," Peter said after praising their efforts for a few minutes. "Practice, please, if you have time. It will make it easier. Meditation is a habit, not a skill. Goodnight."
Neville snapped awake.
"Thanks for the lesson," he said, "I'll see you later."
He left without another word, and the other three followed. Peter waited a few minutes, until he suspected that they were nearly to the Common Room and started to leave as well.
"Where are you going?" Mary asked her book.
"To see Dumbledore," Peter replied, "and you know why."
****
"The boy doesn't need Occlumecy lessons. He could teach better than I!" Peter cried upon seeing the professor.
"What are you talking about?"
"Neville! Neville Longbottom! Was that your idea of a joke, Professor? He's a walking, talking Occlumens!" Peter said forcefully. "Why would you send him to learn what he already knows?"
Dumbledore's hands dropped in surprise, a surprising show of emotion from the old man. "What do you mean?" he said sharply. "Neville already knows Occlumency?"
"Have you ever read A Little Princess, Professor?" Peter asked after a moment.
The headmaster nodded.
"Do you remember the part where Miss Minchin hires a French tutor for Sara Crewe, and Sara tries to tell her that it is pointless, but will not listen until she tells the French teacher, in absolutely flawless French, that she already knows the language?"
Again a nod.
"Well, I felt like that teacher."
At another time, Dumbledore might have wondered where on earth this boy had picked up the knowledge of Muggle literature, but he was too busy digesting the fact that Neville was an Occlumens.
"Look," Peter said, taking the silence for disbelief, "maybe I overreacted, but I told them to meditate and Neville was immediately gone!"
"You didn't overreact, Peter. Sit down for a moment, and let me think," Dumbledore said. It was the first time he had ever seemed hesitant about anything.
Peter obeyed, using the time to practice his own meditation. He came back quickly as the headmaster began to speak to himself.
"It's strange...very strange. I had heard, but I had not thought it was possible. I thought it was just a myth...just a tale to frighten children...a legend."
Peter waited. The next words seemed to be directed toward him.
"You know the story of the Longbottoms."
"Sir, it is one of the banes of my existence," Peter sighed.
"Yes, but it should not be. At any rate, there were rumors and concerns of what might happen to Neville after all of it. How does the Cruciatus curse affect the womb? There were no studies, no known precedents, except for the old, unfounded myth."
Peter thought for a moment. Lore and old magic, that was his specialty. Old magic had been a thing the Dark Lord hated, therefore his foe had learned about it. His mind sifted through old manuscripts and dusty volumes pilfered riskily from Death-Eaters' libraries. He found the match.
"They used to do it to pregnant witches to make their babies stronger. They used to torture them because, supposedly, the pain would make the baby immortal, invincible. Of course, it was a lie and a lot of women suffered for an old folktale," Peter spat bitterly. "We are not so different from Muggles in that way."
Dumbledore nodded once more, though this time with an air of gravity and sadness.
"But there was some truth to it, wasn't there?" Peter pressed, trying to piece the puzzle together without the pieces.
Dumbledore said, his voice barely above a whisper, "It must have changed Neville into something harder, having to withstand all of that pain. Even Alice could not have kept it to herself, it would have leaked to her baby. The pain must have made him impervious to penetration of the mind. It made him a born Occlumens."
"I don't understand."
"Neville is conditioned for torture. His very gestation was filled with it, so his body would not crack under it. He is an Occlumens as a secondary aspect. Firstly, his mind will never break."
"An invincibility that he would give anything to share," Peter sighed, thinking of the way Bellatrix would gloat over the insane Longbottoms.
Dumbledore nodded this time with a seriousness that made Peter's heart ache. Peter waited for the headmaster to tell him what to do next.
"Go back to your books," he said. "I have to speak to Neville."
Peter turned to leave, but as he neared to doorway he called back, without turning around, "If he's an Occlumens, then he might be a Legillimens, right?"
"Yes, almost certainly."
"Whatever you do, Professor, don't tell him that. Don't make it any easier for him."
Peter left, not waiting to see if Dumbledore had understood the warning.
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A/N: The "it" thing for Neville will become clear in less than two chapters, I promise. I love Neville, but I suspect that JKR might kill him off in the next book. I hope not. I think this is sort of my ode to Neville. Anyway, review! Please! The little button is right there and it is calling out your name.