Several classes ahead of Dorcas', one auror stopped speaking to another. They never spoke again because of something that no one else could know about because neither of them would or could speak about it. Unspeakable. Every year someone would get sick all over the floor right there. This had happened every single year and that was hardly the worst thing that happened. What of the aurors who never made it to the field? What of the ones that did not treat other aurors as family? The Ministry believed then as now that this was a risk worth taking. Dorcas felt sick like the dark spaces between the atoms were prodded at with light. It was unnatural for her. She, like many others, quietly put more energy in blocking the spell, developing the counter measure than developing the skill to do legilimency on other people. As a result, in her class, there were very few good enough for them to ever be exceptional at occlumency.
After the tutorial and presentation, on their first day on practicals, she thought that being in group B would be easier. It was worse. It made her sick and threw her into a shaking fit and a rash spread under her shirt on her right side on her ribcage. She was rooting in someone else's things like a pig, sniffling and getting herself dirty. They had analogies and other more colorful sayings to illustrate the idea but for the purposes outlined here, it was like having just taken a shower and being asked to put on someone's stinking, dirty, sweaty clothes. Just foul. Just so foul. Even the thought of figuratively having to pull on anyone's sopping wet anything. Every month, at least once a month, they did this and it didn't get easier, though they got better at it. Some better than others. Some learning faster out of necessity or skill. She built other skills around this one knowing this was a weakness, but figured the likelihood of meeting someone like this in battle would take a talent not worth training for anyway. And others too voiced their indignation: If someone could do this, they were most likely a goner. This training was a technicality to be sure. They didn't sign up for this. Who has time to stand staring someone in the face in the field to read the others mind? etc And still every month without warning. Group A: name, name, name and so on. Group B and they knew they would have to do it all again sometimes for days. Until Group A and B assignments, they had to train for field assignments. They studied like never before. They were sent to St. Mungo's. They became used to the idea they might die young. But no one could really communicate the idea that one could stoop so low, not really. The group sessions were just the beginning. To be a powerful occlumens meant to be less vulnerable to the imperius curse. To be less vulnerable meant that you could not be turned into a weapon that used all of the skills of the wizard doing the cursing and the skills of the one being cursed. That an auror's mind was to be protected over the body and they had the death-rate to prove it and as much was said out-loud to no one's surprise.
Dorcas would experience the unforgivable curses with the exception of the one obviously but- Again, it hadn't felt so smooth in school when someone told her what to do. There was always an apprehension or a gracelessness and the ability to shake the curse off, so to speak, made too many of them overly confident. Being under the imperius curse wasn't so bad at all! The training department as eager as they were to prioritize one curse, could not bring themselves to adequately teach the other, so people who should have been more afraid when they were sent to apprenticeship weren't. The war was still going on. Aurors and curse breakers were needed to fight and not teach. So as dedicated as everyone was it was all they could do to spare these gifted aurors to lecture first and then host a tutorial and then monitor and correct and coach during a practical and then send these same people off to the field for apprenticeship and then and then and then. Some of the training wasn't as thorough. Some of the checks couldn't be checked again. Everyone's life depended on it but there just wasn't enough time or enough lives.
An auror would encounter the curse in the field would recognize, some of them too late, what was happening. One of them, in the class years behind Dorcas, walked clean over a cliff and didn't start screaming until mere seconds before he hit the gr-. Just foul. So foul.
She shook again and was back in the room. She turned and saw that one of her colleagues was on the ground face up, slowly blinking away tears. Another was on all fours laughing as if this was the single funniest thing that anyone could ever do. She said that's what helped her break it. This auror felt something warmer, something stronger than she was and she and her brother had this inside joke and she explained it in a convoluted way and she started laughing again to herself, less enthusiastically, but after they had heard it before they couldn't stand to hear her laugh ever again.
But whatever she had done, worked. Dorcas went to her after the practical. Teach me to do what you did, she implored. Tell me the story, tell me the joke you and your brother had. But the other auror couldn't conjure up the energy to even cast the spell. The next practical, by the luck of the draw, Dorcas was in the group to cast the curse. She felt her arm glow warm from inside and she felt almost happy and so close to this same auror she had spoken to the day before. Dorcas led her around in straight lines and found how difficult it was to get her to approximate natural movement. Dorcas wondered how people were able to get someone on the floor, to get them to jump. Her arm felt warm still but it became steadily heavier like she was holding up an anvil and not her wand. She no longer felt as happy, in fact when did she become so tired. She just couldn't hold her arm up any longer but she had driven her colleague straight into a wall and she was walking still. Dorcas arm burned now and she felt like she might collapse and so she released the spell letting her arm drop to her side barely keeping her wand pinched between her fingers. And she felt so much better. Dorcas didn't register and might not have even cared that for all of the awkwardness of the other auror's walking, this same person who could untangle herself from the imperius curse less than a day ago, had not been able to do so today. There was no laughter. Her colleague after a startled awakening backed away from the wall and, after a strange but brief delay, reached for her bleeding nose, cursing.
Dorcas walked the rest of the way home, she had things to do, could have found things to do and instead of getting on the bus or anywhere she relished walking and stopping and starting again on her own volition. Somewhere she believed she wasn't quite herself and yet there she was. She felt the same smile she had on earlier and didn't change it out of tiredness or out of superstition. In truth, she always had a slight smile on her face. Where Philippa beamed, Dorcas' face said 'hmm, this is nice'. She had just not noticed until, well. There was nothing in her training to help her with this so she walked and walked and built the old walls in her head. She knew it was unlikely to work against the man in the bowler and the woman but Dorcas tried anyway. She started with a brick in a corner and paved it over with mortar. She set another next to it and stacked another brick on top of those layering the joining compound between each. She did not consider this magic even though, in the mind of a witch, it very much was.
