03. Beginner's Occlumency
Ginny remembered hesitating the whole way through the Department of Mysteries. Stopping to stare at every fantastical invention, flailing at her attacker in the Space Room until Luna won the fight with her first bad idea, screaming for someone to help Ron and almost losing him in her panic. The tension when Ron took a hex from a Death Eater and started laughing up blood, demanding, cross eyed and delirious, why Ginny always said Loony Lovegood if he wasn't allowed.
Luna examined her like a frog with its guts out on a Potions table. Then a Death Eater attacked and Luna cracked Ginny's ankle using the Reductor Curse on a model of Pluto that helped her blow up a Death Eater's face. Luna apologised and apologised and all Ginny said was she did great, really.
All she felt was a sick relief, like they were even now.
/
To the confused horror of the household, Severus Snape made a house call to the Burrow in June. Mrs Weasley greeted him, clearly torn between the impulse to offer tea and a distaste for prolonging the visit, but he swept inside rather rudely and advanced to the nearest table.
"If the Order had urgent news-" Arthur inquired, startling as he entered the kitchen.
"It does not. That will not be necessary," Snape informed Molly, who had pointed a wand at the doorway.
"They're not casting an Imperturbable?" Ron whispered. Three of his siblings swatted him in unison from their eavesdropping position on the stairs.
"You're in the Order, just go down there," Ron hissed at the twins.
"If you wanna have brunch with Snape you can go down yourself-"
The empty nasal tone returned to full volume. "Professor Dumbledore has asked me to take on several new responsibilities this year. The least consequential of these is a request that I tutor your daughter in the art of Occlumency, per her interest."
Ginny wanted to jump for joy, but prioritised hiding their position from her parents, who were unlikely to go down without a fight. It seemed to take a bit longer for Mr and Mrs Weasley to process meaning from Snape's admittedly peculiar manner of speech.
"That is, most interesting. I had no idea our Ginny had any interest in magic like that," Arthur said carefully.
"That is fascinating," Snape declared without a drop of interest. "However, it was not news for me. By the end of last year, she had approached my office no less than four times with appeals that I provide her practical instruction. She led me to believe she had obtained and studied several books that I know to cover the art of Occlumency, and her arguments suggested she had some measure of the basics."
Ginny noticed her brothers trying to get her attention by poking hard in her arm, but ignored them.
"Why does Dumbledore believe our daughter should take on so much extra course work?" Molly asked, threateningly sweet.
"As a relative of so many in the Order, it cannot have escaped you that your daughter would benefit from mental protections," Snape drawled, "lest our enemies be tempted to examine her thoughts more closely."
"Ginny is underage. She knows nothing of use about the Order. Wouldn't these extra defences, perhaps, draw extra attention? The unwarranted sort?" Ginny's mother suggested, that last detail so sharply spoken, Ginny pictured Molly Weasley with a sword to Snape's throat.
"She resides in its headquarters for part of the year and has contact with half its volunteers. Even if you could guarantee her ignorance, it may not be believed." Someone shifted loudly in their seat with a crack from the old chair. "Occlumency can provide protection against the Imperius Curse, among other things. Your daughter would learn a useful skill that would prevent her from becoming a liability. If there was more interest, I would suggest more of your children take up the practice."
Victory was a sweet high. Someone shook her shoulder and Ron hissed, "Ginny, what the fuck?"
For several months of humidity and Ron's consternation, Snape visited the Burrow and Ginny began her sporadic lessons.
/
Ron described Harry's fifth year Occlumency lessons to Ginny at length while trying to talk her out of the idea, warning of repeated brutal attacks with no time for rest. More importantly, Snape was a Death Eater. He'd most likely spent the First Wizarding War torturing and killing people for pleasure and politics, as opposed to the present, where he condoned if not committed these things for his image. There was no predicting what he was capable of.
The following week, Ginny showed up to the first lesson still steeling her nerves. She was not expecting Snape to put his wand away and start a lecture.
"For Occlumency to be effective, it must be practised over time, until control becomes a habit." Snape kicked a pile of unused books two inches away. Rather than use a bedroom, he and Ginny had been banished to the Burrow's attic. "Today you will exercise fundamentals, only. I will return in two weeks, and if your progress is sufficient, our lessons may continue." After toeing a stretch of lint away so carefully it didn't brush his robes, Snape took position and faced her standing. Ginny ridiculously wondered if even Snape was afraid to cast too much magic around an old wizarding family's equally old junk. "If you are not serious enough to maintain diligence, Dumbledore tells me I will be free to go," he threatened.
I'm serious, I will, Ginny felt more than thought. Then she remembered the whole clearing your mind thing and started trying it. Snape interrupted.
"I am familiar with your previous texts, but you should know they are outdated. If you have not lost interest by now," he tacitly accused her, "please give me a solid idea of what you think you have learned."
Ginny twitched her toes and took a breath, focusing on the heft of shifting her weight over the floorboards. "That the mind can be cleared by dispersing thought and sensation, that there are various techniques that I'm sure I'm behind on, that Occlumency is wandless magic and sort of works the way kids cast magic, based on emotion." She remembered losing her wand around the time she broke her ankle in the Space Room and how desperate the Department of Mysteries fiasco had been after that.
Snape stood tall, miraculously just enough that his scalp didn't brush the ceiling beams. "Wandless magic requires great focus when performed intentionally. Not all are suited to perform a certain spell wandlessly. As individual as people's natures are, there are emotions that simply do not come easily to most. Summoning charms are attractive in theory, but require the sense of command. So then does the strongest Occlumency arise from stillness and self control."
Ginny thought of something she'd never pulled off herself, and took advantage of Snape stopping to breathe. "So what does it take for someone to fly, being convinced they're above the world?"
Snape paused. He watched her unmoving despite the interruption. "True flight is linked to the sense of superiority, yes. However, stillness is a mental state that comes to no child instinctively." Still likes the sound of his own voice alright, Ginny thought to herself as Snape became once more so consumed by his own speech he ceased to mind her.
"Your mind must be cleared every night to prevent dreams from letting them run loose, your reactions in every context must be chosen with caution. At all times you must consider which reactions can be used and which require discarding. Never can impulse alone rule."
Ginny could live with that.
She let her mind wander before bed, wander where it kept going between chores and the Burrow's endless conversation. Back inside a wall of doors that spun all the way around her, drifting through a darkness lit by false stars, or flying over forests and cities with nothing but the world under her to see. Let her mind wander and then let the scenery flow away.
Ginny knew it wasn't their fault Sirius died, or the prophecy broke. She was just sick of being used.
/
It would be one thing if the Gryffindor girls she used to hang out with had apologised to Ginny before asking her to find a compartment with them at platform nine and three quarters, no matter how politely they smiled at her. It wasn't like Ginny felt great saying she was going to hang out with her boyfriend Dean after a year of not hanging out with these specific girls.
She regretted it more when she was being interrogated about what happened at the ministry by Smith, Zacharias Smith, renowned prat, while Dean joked with Seamus instead of helping her out of a corner. But Dean had been part of the DA last year, not keeping his head up a place the sun didn't shine like he was now, and Ginny couldn't forget the look one of those girls had given Neville when he almost dropped his cactus on the train steps and let out an unusually high pitched yelp.
She hexed Smith until bogeys were trying to eat his face and it got her invited to a teacher's party that turned out to be another interrogation. Ginny was having a real day when Harry declared himself off to do something mysterious and important. Neville and Ginny questioned him right as he brandished the invisibility cloak on and left them talking to air.
Ginny stared at the empty spot, letting her ego boil down.
"I hate it when he runs off like that," Neville announced, glum.
"I know," she agreed venomously. They shared another moment of wounded friendship before he sighed and they turned the other way.
"Did you see Dean?" Neville asked meaningfully as they looked for another compartment.
Ginny twitched her nose with annoyance. "Yeah, and he's catching up with Seamus. I can pass on their intimate bonding sessions. All they're going to ask me about-"
"Cute boyfriend, Ginny!" a girl from earlier simpered, sizing up Neville in passing. Ginny made a rude arm gesture back and a whole compartment of girls burst out laughing. Neville made a valiant effort at looking like an invisible short, chubby teenager. Ginny's insides churned.
They got a move on to the next car. No awkward silence was going to improve the mood. "Ugh. Do you think Luna's got a compartment open?"
"Yeah, me and Harry were sitting with her. It's all the way at the back again."
"Nice, she must still be alone! We can get some peace from this lot," Ginny cheered scaldingly. She lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows at Neville as they made it to a clear part of the corridor. "Did you see McLaggen's backside?"
"Uh, I definitely wasn't looking, no," he responded in flat bewilderment.
She clocked his shoulder with an elbow. "You should have! Had more substance than anything coming out of his mouth."
Neville sputtered forward, laughing.
"You see anyone you did like around?"
"I'm not looking to date. Don't you have a boyfriend already?"
"We can look at whoever we want! Besides, Neville, we're bonding. Bond with me."
"Oh, is that what we're doing," he deadpanned.
"Yes. Anyway, I miss looking at Roger Davies. Behind him. And don't tell me you never saw that, because it's impossible to miss." Neville was struggling to meet Ginny's imposing look.
"Well. . ." he muttered. "When he's on a broomstick, you're not wrong."
Moments like this made Ginny tell herself she was born for victory.
/
"Ginny!"
Katie Bell found Ginny while they were headed for the carriages. She noticed Ginny wasn't alone. "And you are. . .Neville and Luna, from the DA, right?"
Neville and even Luna looked alarmed to have a random upperclassmen address them. Ginny felt a wave of gratitude and grinned. "Good summer, Katie?"
Katie laughed, her hair swaying across warm pitch eyes. "Quiet, which is lucky these days. You're staying on the team, right? With Alicia and Angelina gone, we need a strong lineup."
"Wouldn't miss it! I've been waiting for years to play chaser. Hope someone else sticks around long enough to catch the snitch this year," Ginny added with a smirk.
Katie laughed a bit nervously. "Oh, that would be a nice change. You're sixth year, right?" She acknowledged Neville a second time. "Keep an eye on him for us, would you?"
"U-uh, anything for the team," Neville laughed. Luna giggled along. There was a lot of that giddily polite laughter between people excited to know each other going around.
"See you on the field, Ginny!" Katie shouted as she chased her own clique down once more. A girl from Ginny's year saw her and they waved at each other.
"She's very cute, isn't she?" Luna said excitedly. Ginny felt warmer and lighter than she had all day.
Between milling students, multiple carriages were being boarded at once. Dean appeared and waved her down, Seamus still tailing. "We waited to see if you'd come back!" Dean shouted, "What was-uh, hi." He blanked at the sight of Luna and Neville.
"Hi, guys. Good summer?" Neville smiled. Seamus started talking, but so did Luna.
"Oh, Ginny, I'll see you later!" Luna cried, waving as Ginny turned to her in confusion. "I'll find another carriage, say hi to Hermione for me!"
Ginny said, "You don't have to-" but Luna'd already skittered off to help the next group move their bags, skirt bouncing with her gusto.
"That's nice of her," Dean said, taking Ginny's hand and leading her off to their carriage. Ginny glanced back as she climbed in, but Luna was nowhere to be found. "So what happened with that teacher guy?" Dean asked when they sat and Ginny felt her mood sink and land with a plop.
"It was bad." Ginny seethed, lawling back into her corner. "It was, like, a social lunch or something."
"I thought it was gonna be about our grades," worried Neville. "Like he was there to tell us the school got our letters wrong."
"What'd you do, though? What kind of teacher is this guy?" Dean asked eagerly.
"He made everyone talk about their career prospects, and their families," Ginny complained to the roof. "Not that he wanted to know about my dad, cause he's in Muggle Affairs, but he made everyone sit through Blaise Zabini's life story and fawned over Harry like the press." A bump in the road shoved her skull away from the carriage wall, and Ginny accepted her mistake in putting it there. She turned back over to Dean. "Well, he's got bad taste, but he might be a normal teacher for once."
"A normal defence teacher?" Seamus exclaimed and rolled his eyes. Dean snorted and slid a hand around Ginny's waist when she sat up. She twitched away as Seamus continued, "What would that be like?"
Dean seemed hurt, but quickly laughed it off when Ginny leaned on his shoulder instead. She wished he'd stop randomly grabbing her, but at least he smiled pretty. "Well, boring, probably. If he's not a werewolf or a vampire, what's the point? Dumbledore should hire more part-humans, I think they know more about Dark magic than us."
"Werewolves aren't part humans, they're humans carrying a curse." Ginny corrected him. "And Scrimgeour is pushing a bunch of laws that make it hard for them to get employed anywhere."
The whole carriage exclaimed concern at this, Dean loudest. "Man, I wonder what Professor Lupin is doing, then. I wish we just had him again."
"What do Defence teachers do when they're not teaching defence, anyway?" Seamus leaned over his knees. "Ya think Professor Lupin's for real a dark magic hunter instead of just pretending to be?"
"Dunno, maybe just some low profile muggle thing," said Ginny. She didn't have to wonder, and felt awkward when the conversation lapsed.
Neville cleared his throat. "So, are you guys both gonna try out for Quidditch again?"
"Are you gonna be any better this time?" Ginny asked, and Seamus and Dean erupted with complaining
"Hey you only got picked for seeker cause you're smallest-"
"We'll see who makes chaser this year-"
/
Occlumency was not terribly interesting, but that made it Ginny's favourite lesson. Between teachers hammering students into OWL-readiness, she had a designated hour for quiet and stillness. Hufflepuffs were happy to study with her, as well as the Gryffindor girls once more; three of them confronted her, apologised and pointed out that she shouldn't blame the whole dorm for one or two badmouthing her. Ginny got them to put a ban on saying "Loony"-enforced it in person if she had to-and they welcomed her back like nothing had changed.
Ginny couldn't relate. Preventing dreams came to consume her focus; every time Ginny dreamed of Him, she woke up in a frenzy believing it was a vision sent to dement and repossess her.
After throwing off the continuous curse version of Legilimency a few times, her lessons became weekly instead of monthly. Not all Legilimency worked the same, and Occlumency subtly employed several half magic, half mental techniques, as in both of those things at once. Grounding, her old technique, summoned defensive magic at the same time that it emptied your thoughts of anything but your immediate surroundings. Visualisation wrapped emotion into images that permeated the mind, distracting or obscuring any onlooking lens. Daily meditation kept Ginny stable in the first place. Supposedly, this deep focus would also increase her ability to use magic without a wand. Apparently there were plenty more steps ahead, but it was still way too normal for Snape.
Was he going easy on her? Would that be any use when she needed it? After Katie got cursed out in Hogsmeade, Ginny's self preservation against ultimate evil won out over self preservation against Snape. "How were you protecting Harry? With the same stuff as this?"
Snape paused his distillation of some root with raised eyebrows. "We are reviewing your performance in Potions," he said, because this was what they were pretending to do over his desk.
Ginny ignored him. "It just didn't seem to work for him. Is this more or less effective?"
"Your performance is flawed but adequate for an amateur out of direct danger, rather than abysmal for even a small child." It wasn't Harry's fault, but that was why Ginny had to pay attention. Snape seemed for a moment he wanted to continue along this bent, then reconsidered her. "However, you do stand to work on controlling your emotions," he said, eyes narrowing, "which Potter has never achieved."
Ginny straightened a bit on impulse, but let go and relaxed. Her mind was empty. She let Snape gaze upon blank eyes.
"Ready to learn, I take it," he drawled and wrinkled his nose, which seemed pretty fake when he was doing it over a Potions textbook. For her new lesson, he wrung out insults one after another. "It might interest you to know you possess more of your house's famed qualities than Harry Potter, who flails in terror as a schoolteacher raises his wand. Or perhaps cowardice is a quality you prefer in your company." Was that a dig at N- "Your closest brother is no shining example to your family, is he? Though Thomas is no better. The only one of those boys who dares ask me a single question is Finnigan."
Misdirect or not, Ginny got the point.
"That was quite the failure," Snape remarked dourly. "I just bore witness to something new. Prepare ahead for the next time, please. Though you should know Dumbledore did not think you suitable for this level of practice at all."
I can do this, Ginny had to toss out. Be still and set her own bait. Solid face of her chair. "You know, Ron made it sound like you were performing some kind of torture on Harry."
"Fortitude in the midst of struggle is the sole purpose of Occlumency. Real torture would serve well as practice." Snape paused. "The Dark Lord was invading Potter's careless mind and I did what I believed necessary to prevent the worst case scenario of the boy's possession." He purposely drew out the final word. It wasn't the first time he'd done so.
"Yeah?" Ginny prodded. "And I bet you didn't have Tom Riddle personally assaulting your mind when you had just started."
"No, I inadvisably began by testing my mettle against those with expertise inferior to my own, posing its own risk." Ginny felt shame flare, but pictured letting it effuse out her head like a steaming pot that evaporated empty. Even facing Snape, she felt no disturbance in her mind, and he made no further comment here. So it went. So it had to go.
/
February was finally over.
It was objectively the worst month of the year, Seamus believed, though March 1st wasn't much better. It was the day of McLaggen's awful Quidditch match. Still, the air was crisp, the spring mud was drying rather than freezing, and Seamus was up in the stands where he wasn't liable to slip and bang something. Harry wasn't so lucky; he managed to do the reverse, flying bang into a bludger and slipping off his broom so it floated away empty.
The authorities conferred. The teams retreated to their locker rooms and conferred. Lavender and Parvati sat off to Seamus's right conferring on Parvati's quiet break up. Also, Mars.
Dean was down on the pitch. Without Seamus.
They agreed it wasn't ideal. But Dean was ecstatic to be playing at all and without Dean to distract him, Seamus was starting to mull. They'd talked for years about trying out as chasers once the old ones graduated. The billionth Weasley suddenly being the best flyer was almost unfair.
Even today, Ginny had followed her fifth goal with a kiss blown to the commentator's podium, where Lovegood had finally stopped insisting Zach had some paranormal quaffle-dropping disease in favour of announcing to the stadium at large that Ginny Weasley was "really very dashing!" Dean had laughed, and Ginny had flown a loop de loop around Demelza, the tinier chaser, and they were enjoying themselves. However long that would last.
Crows cawed on the dormant pitch. She was witty about it, but Ginny'd become increasingly temperamental about her own boyfriend touching her. Way she talked, Seamus began to wonder if Ginny wanted Dean to just stand around waiting for her to grab him. Dean never complained about this, exactly. Just winced as he recounted vague details of their arguments.
"Dean and Ginny ain't long from splitting off," Seamus informed Neville, who occupied the last seat to his left. "Dunno how so many people get on with her, temper like that."
"You don't know how to talk to girls," Neville suggested generously, because Neville Longbottom was turning into a little shit. Which, whatever.
By March, even Dean had been saying he should just apologise to Harry and get it over with so he could join the DA. It was just that Seamus had spent that whole summer after Cedric Diggory dying trying to defend Harry and Dumbledore and whoever else against his own mother and the latest gossip she'd discovered. So that she'd let him go back to Hogwarts, but also just because-because. Then they'd come back in the fall and Seamus had asked a single question about Cedric and Harry had thrown it all back in his face.
Seamus maintained he'd been right about Harry, if not Dumbledore. Seamus had only asked because he and everyone else wanted to understand the danger Harry kept yelling vague details about. Harry had been being a mad prat.
"Harry's grieving, he must be having a rough time," Neville had pointed out when Ernie asked Seamus and Dean if they were going to Hermione's Hogsmeade thing.
"Y'know you don't have to stick up for him just cause he remembers to be nice to you once every two years," Seamus had pointed out.
For a moment, he'd thought Neville would cry. Dean and Ernie went quiet. Only because Seamus had been right.
"I wonder if they'll really cancel the match," Neville whispered.
"McLaggen will be a dead man then," Seamus shot back. Maybe if Ginny got expelled for assaulting some guy over Quidditch Dean would break up with her. Nah, Ginny was smart. If she was serious, she'd do something petty and make it look like an accident. . .
Speak of the devil. She emerged from the lockers, red hair dull under the overcast sky. She unhinged her jaw.
"SEAMUS FINNIGAN!"
Ginny bellowed with an unholy force that filled the stadium. Or magical force, though she held no wand. The way the sound hung physically in the air made Seamus think it could be what banshees sounded like. The whispers from the crowd of Gryffindors had ceased. Everyone stared at Seamus or Ginny in silent terror, like making a noise would set off an explosive chain reaction.
"You're a CHASER!" Ginny yelled, sounding more normal but still. . .her. She made a backward wave clearly saying "get over here" and moved off toward McGonagall, Snape and the referee to update them. Snape already looked incensed.
Seamus did not move.
Seamus had not been to a single Quidditch practice that year, just the tryouts he failed. He hadn't been on a broom in months.
"Good luck!" Neville declared to him intently.
This wasn't how he'd planned to be reunited with Dean.