Chapter 21

Christmas Day

Christmas at Hogwarts was, as always, a quite pleasant affair, although the castle was almost entirely deserted. Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione had agreed to meet down in the common room before any of them opened their gifts, as they wanted to be around to gage their friends' (or girl- or boy-friend's) reaction to the presents that they had had spent so much time in picking out.

Ron had gotten Hermione a book called "The History of Political Protest in the Wizarding World." He explained, "I figured it might be helpful for you if you wanted to really get your voice heard on the House-Elf issue. Not that I necessarily agree with you..." he trailed off.

"Thanks Ron, that's really awesome!" said Hermione.

Harry, who could not help reflecting that "awesome" was a really odd term to be throwing around where books about political protest were concerned, ignored the irony and simply opened Ginny's gift.

She had gotten him a cloak, and he was confused about this until she explained that the cloak had been charmed (in connection with some extra lessons Ginny had asked for from Professor Flitwick) to protect the wearer. "It's not all that strong, but if you're wearing it, it will deflect one unforgivable curse before giving out." She hesitated for a moment, as if considering whether this topic was really fit for Christmas-talk, before saying, "I just figured it might come in useful, since you-know-who is bound to come after you again."

Harry was shocked. "How'd you know?" he asked quickly, before he actually put a lot of thought into what he was saying.

"How'd I know what?" asked Ginny confusedly.

"About the pro-" Harry cut himself short, suddenly realizing that maybe he had jumped the gun in assuming that Ginny already knew about the prophecy.

"About the what?" asked Ginny, concernedly.

But Hermione, it seemed, was once step ahead of the game. "You were going to say 'prophecy' weren't you?"

"What- I- no," denied Harry unconvincingly, having figured out that he was still the only one of the four of them who knew what the prophecy said, and desiring to keep it that way.

"You were talking about the prophecy, weren't you? The one about you and you-know-who, that the death-eaters were after in the Ministry of Magic building last term. You know what it says, don't you?" asked Hermione.

Well, there was no use denying it now, Hermione had figured it out, and both Ginny and Ron were now eyeing Harry suspiciously. If there was one thing worse than having Ron, Hermione and Ginny worried about him, it was having them suspicious that he was lying. So he conceded, "Yes, I know what it says."

"Why haven't you told us then?" asked Ginny, sounding offended.

"Well, I just didn't want you guys being overly concerned about it," said Harry, defensively.

"Trying to protect us again? Why do you think that you're the only one who can handle knowing? Why can't you let other people try to help you?" asked Ginny, her temper flaring.

"I..." Harry trailed off. "Look... are you guys sure that you want to know?"

They all nodded fervently, and so he recited the prophecy for them, and then looked around at the group again, to gage the collective response.

"Wow," said Ron. "I was kind of hoping we were done with the dangerous stuff, but I guess things are only going to get worse. I'm game though. If you get to kill the Dark Lord, maybe that means I'll get to kill Lucius Malfoy or something." Harry grinned. He could tell that this joke was Ron's way of showing his support.

"I knew there must be some reason he was always after you," said Hermione. "It's really not all that suprising."

Well, I'm somewhat surprised. But, Harry, I'm still here for you. I just wish you had felt you could trust me with this and that it hadn't just come out accidentally," said Ginny.

"Well... Maybe if you open your gift from me, it'll reassure you a bit," said Harry, smiling.

She opened a box of what appeared to be assorted chocolates.

"They're a new invention of the twins'," explained Harry. "If someone eats one, it has an effect like a mild dose of Veritaserum. Each chocolate is strong enough to force the eater to answer three questiosn with absolute honesty. And, even though I know what they look like, I'll eat one any time you want me to, if you feel you can't trust me about something. I want you to know that you can always trust me. Oh, and, since this gift was rather sentimental, I also got you some more practical supplies from the twins' shop as well." He gestured to the box that had been beside the box of chocolates, which contained assorted goods from the twins' store.

"Well, I think I can trust you without making you eat any of these, but I'll keep some handy just in case," said Ginny with a smile that confirmed that she had decided not to get mad at him. "Although it really might be interesting to slip these to some unexpecting housemates once term start back up. There's a couple of people who I think like each other but won't admit to it... Seamus and Parvati Patil, for instance." she smiled mischeviously.

They opened the rest of their gifts before heading down to the Great Hall for the Christmas day feast.

The Great Hall was nearly empty, as was usual for this time of year. Aside from the staff who had remained, there were only Harry, Ron, Hermione, two 4th year Hufflepuffs, and a Ravenclaw 1st year.

They were all sitting at the same table, as Dumbledore had, like in third year, decided that house tables were superfluous in such circumstances. The first year Ravenclaw, who ended up sitting next to Ginny, turned out to be named Lucy Smith. Unfortunately for her, sitting on her other side was Snape. Ginny, who felt sorry for the nervous-looking first year, made an effort to include her in their conversation. They found out that the reason that Lacy was still at the school was that her parents were off on important Ministry business in another country, and she was not able to come along.

After dinner, Harry bade goodbye to his friends, and explained that he had a lesson that he had to attend.

"What? It's the holidays, remember?" asked Ron.

"Yeah, but remember I told you I've got to start my Occlumency back up with Dumbledore today?" asked Harry.

And so, fifteen minutes later, Harry was once again in Dumbledore's office.

"All right, I had a chat with Professor Snape about what exactly he taught you while he was in charge of your lessons. Overall, he wasn't too far off-base, although I think that he may have been slightly impatient with you. I will now give you a few tricks to help you clear your mind, so that you will be able to withstand a mental attack."

Harry nodded in agreement, so Dumbledore continued.

"All right. For our first lesson, why don't you focus on one of the portraits on my wall?" Harry picked out a portrait of a particularly decrepit-looking former headmaster. "All right. Now, I when I tell you to begin, I want you to close your mind and focus all of your mental energy on visualizing every detail of that portrait Then, keep trying to push every thought that is not related to visualizing that picture out of your mind. This portrait should have no emotional significance for you, so if you're doing this right, your emotions should be fading at that point. Now, when you've gotten to that point, you should try to take the portrait out of focus. Erase details of the portrait until all you are visualizing is a framed whiteness without a portrait in it. Once you are at that point, your mind should be, for all intents and purposes, blank. And when I attempt to read your mind then, I should be unable to recover anything other than the blank portrait. Are you ready to try?" he asked.

Harry nodded.

"Good. Begin now. I will give you 30 seconds before I perform the spell to read your mind."

Harry followed the instructions, and by the time Dumbledore shouted "Legilimens!" Harry was vaguely surprised to hear him, as he had been focusing so hard on the blank portrait in his mind that he had forgotten where he was. But he quickly recovered from the shock and started focusing on the portrait again. It was something like 10 seconds before Harry's concentration broke, and that was only because one of the portraits hanging on the wall had commented, "He's doing better than I thought he would."

At this, Harry lost focus, and began to think about the portraits. That brought to the forefront of his mind the other times when he had looked at the portraits, all of the other times that he had been in Dumbledore's office. And as these visits to Dumbledores office had usually come at some of the most emotional moments of Harry's life, Harry soon lost his emotionless state. Soon, Dumbledore had broken into his thoughts.

When Dumbledore broke contact, he said, "Well... Not perfect, obviously, but still an improvement over your last lesson, I daresay. That was quite good for your first try after such a lapse in practice. Do you feel up to one more go tonight?"

Harry nodded, and so they tried it again. This time, Harry was able to concentrate for about 15 seconds before he felt an uncontrollable nagging voice at the back of his mind that said "Well, if you had only been this good at Occlumency last year, Sirius would still be here." Harry immediately realized that the thought had been unfounded, and knew that it would do no good for him to start feeling guilty again. But the damage had already been done and his concentration broken. Dumbledore had been able to break into his mind.

Dumbledore dismissed him for the night and said that he was making good progress, and that they would meet again the next night. Although it was still rather disconcerting allowing someone else to read his emotions, Harry was rather pleased at his progress. It was good to be on good terms with Dumbledore once again, and even better that he was doing something which might eventually give him one more advantage in the fight against Voldemort and his death-eaters. Harry reckoned he needed all the advantages he could get.

A/N: All right, I know some other people have included some similar mind-clearing tactics for Occlumency in their fanfictions, but I think mine is original enough to be justified... Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this chapter. Also, I'm rather curious as to whether anyone is actually reading this far in this story. If not, there's really no reason for me to continue. Just to be clear, this is not a review-ultimatum (I hate it when people do that), so I will continue either way. However, I like writing my other fic a lot more than writing this one (because it's better, and much funnier), so I'm not all that motivated to update this one too often, and I think it would help me to be motivated more often if I knew that I had readers... That's all I'm saying.