Harry and Hermione were working on their self control, which sounded a lot easier than it was turning out to be.
Appparently there was a reason teachers avoided this until people reached adulthood. Emotions were the mindkillers, one of the few things guaranteed to allow someone access to wherever you didn't want them to go.
And Harry had a lot of things he didn't want Hermione to find out about. Not that he was deluded enough to think he'd been really bad off. He hadn't had his aunt or uncle try to kill him (Dudley on the other hand... always too incompetent to actually manage it.), unlike Neville. Oh, sure, Harry'd heard Neville talk about bouncing on the way down, and all. But, the thing of it was, if he'd really been a squib, he'd have died. And they wouldn't have shed a single tear. Harry often wondered if Neville's gran would actually have been all that upset, even.
Harry'd mostly just been told to be quiet, and tuck himself into his cupboard. That was doable, right? In fact, his life didn't look so different from Hermione's - he'd read a lot too.
Focus.
He needed focus, and so did Hermione. Her worst memories focused on being humiliated in school by stupid morons, and Harry tried to say... well, he would have said something, if only he could think what to say.
Eventually, he settled on, "Don't listen to them, Hermione."
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.
"All those kids, what they said about you. Teacher's pet, all that sort of thing." Harry got a quirky smile on his face, leaning back and continuing, "What kind of teacher's pet sets fire to a teacher's robes, of all things?"
Hermione looked around frantically, beating Harry over the head with a piece of parchment as she shoved him, "Harry!"
They both laughed, though, because Harry'd made a good point.
Aside from scouring each other's brains until they were clean, Harry and Hermione just worked hard on it. Hermione had discovered some books on meditation, and she'd had them doing exercises.
Predictably, Ron had joined them for one session, declared himself bored halfway through, and never come again.
He hadn't even asked why they were doing it, and he nearly always did so when he complained.
[a/n: Leave a note or review! I'm not sure most people who write about kids learning difficult mental disciplines really take into account that They're Kids. They will learn this, but it'll take a LOT of time and effort.]