Chapter 26 – Awakening the Mind

Ginny Weasley woke up with the same nausea in the pit of her stomach as when she had fallen asleep. It had never been her intention to betray Harry, but it had been explained to her by Professor Lockhart that she would have certainly done so if Harry hadn't had a gut feeling that something was wrong. How was he supposed to trust her now? She would be seeing him again in less than an hour and was, in all honesty, dreading the confrontation.

She dressed herself and sauntered slowly down into the Gryffindor common room. Rather sooner than expected, she encountered Harry, who was sitting in an armchair talking to Dale Tulstan. They both looked up as she approached, but with a nervous smile, she gestured for them to carry on their discussion.

"Are you alright?" Harry asked her, as Dale stared awkwardly at the floor.

"Yes, I…I'm fine," she replied, heading towards the portrait hole, "I'll see you later."

Before Harry could say so much as "Yeah, see you", she had disappeared. He slowly turned back to Dale, trying to look as casually dismissive as he could.

"Don't ask," he said, "Anyway, what were you going to say?"

Dale looked gloomily back at him.

"I really don't think I belong here."

Harry couldn't say that he had heard such talk from any other student in the past, no matter who may have been thinking the same thing at one time or another. However, he was able to reply without a moment's reflection.

"If you didn't belong here, you wouldn't be here at all," he said, "It's only been a week. Just give it time."

This didn't seem to cheer or encourage Dale in the slightest. He pulled out his wand and regarded it with a look of helpless confusion.

"I don't even know if this works properly," he muttered with disdain, "Any magic I've managed to do must've been by accident, and everyone else here seems to know it all."

This was something with which Harry could truly identify. He had been feeling exactly the same when he himself began his education at Hogwarts, and it had taken him long enough to accept that he had magical blood, especially after having been brought up in his aunt and uncle's household.

"Well, I'm not much of a teacher," he began modestly, "but I could show you a few basic ideas to follow."

Dale's eyes lit up at this. He had become sure that the great Harry Potter could put him on the right path.

"Now," said Harry in a very official tone, "it's a little cold in here, so why not start with a small fire?"

He pointed his wand into the fireplace and return to the verbal spell for the sake of the demonstration.

"Incendio" he said, and a roaring fire burst to life in the grate.

Dale had often seen his father perform such magic, but had never thought of it as something that those closer to his own age could do. He continued to gaze in wonder, even after Harry had extinguished the flames with a flick of his wand.

"You try," Harry urged.

With a certain amount of apprehension, Dale pointed his own wand towards the warm coals.

"In…Incendio!" he stammered.

The faded embers glowed brighter for a moment, and a small wisp of smoke rose amongst them, but nothing more. The boy was looking discouraged once again.

"Say it with confidence," said Harry calmly, "Try and picture the fire that you're trying to create. Take a breath, relax, and try again."

Dale did as he was instructed, and this time, sparks flew from the end of the wand and a small candle-like flame ignited. Harry was already impressed at the progress, as he had often taken weeks on end to learn spells of one kind or another.

"Alright, once more," he told Dale excitedly, "and this time, get some feeling behind it. See if you can get a real blaze going. I know you can do it."

The boy focused determinedly and imagined that the entire room was in fact burning around him.

"INCENDIO!" he yelled.

There came a flash from his wand which struck the fireplace with a vengeance and exploded in a raging inferno, the blast from which sent them both flying backwards in their chairs, halfway across the common room. Within seconds, a number of Gryffindors had come running from the dormitories with wands at the ready, and were gasping in amazement at the flames that billowed up past the mantelpiece.

As the fire was brought under control, Harry and Dale emerged, coughing and spluttering from underneath the stricken armchairs. Harry removed his glasses, revealing two clean eyes encircled by a face full of black soot. He surveyed the damage; a slight blackening of the surrounding wall and singe marks on the furniture and hearth rug. Giving the scene an appraising look, he returned to Dale who was now rubbing the dust out of his eyes and looking a little dishevelled. There was a brief silence as he attempted to verbalise an evaluation of the young man's handiwork.

"Better," he settled on, before adding, "Perhaps a little more control and restraint next time, but none of us are perfect."

For the first time in over a month, Dale Tulstan looked and felt genuinely happy.

After wolfing down a modest breakfast, Harry made his way along the corridor to Professor Lockhart's classroom. Ginny was already seated at the table in the middle of the room, and jumped a little as she heard him enter.

"Ah, Harry," said Lockhart, rising from his chair, "I've just been explaining to Miss Weasley here that Professor McGonagall has given permission for her to be taught Occlumency. I trust her presence will not affect your concentration, nor vice versa?"

Harry and Ginny exchanged glances.

"I, er…I shouldn't think so, sir," he replied.

The professor took his seat once more, just as Harry took his, and contemplated the pair of them.

"Well," he said, "let us hope not. Now Potter, I hope you won't mind just observing for the time being, while I go through the basic outline of Occlumency once again."

Harry shook his head.

"Excellent," he continued, turning his attention to Ginny, "Now, Miss Weasley, we shall begin the process of guarding your mind. I shall be using Legilimency at every stage, just to see how well you are able to conceal your thoughts from others, so if you would be so kind as to close your eyes and allow yourself to be comfortable with your situation. You must be comfortable with your surroundings, comfortable around those with whom you are sharing this room, and most of all, comfortable with the subject you are being taught. Then, let your thoughts drift where they may, and we shall begin."

With one last nervous glance at Harry, Ginny closed her eyes and attempted to follow these instructions to the letter. Lockhart began to speak again, but she could only hear a deep, booming voice drowning him out. It sounded both wise and reassuring, but she couldn't help shivering a little as it sounded loudly in her ears.

"Through centuries, the spirit has lived, but remained in slumber. The torch must be passed; Let the blood of Gryffindor awake."

Ginny shook herself, opened her eyes and looked desperately around, utterly oblivious to the fact that Lockhart was still talking.

"Who's there?" she interrupted sharply.

This prompted Harry to look around as well. Seeing that there wasn't another soul in the room, Ginny began to feel foolish. She looked back to the professor, who was now regarding her with both suspicion and annoyance.

"When you're quite ready, Miss Weasley, there is much to learn. As you were, please."

Reluctantly, she closed her eyes again. As Lockhart fixed her with the familiar gaze of a Legilimens, Harry could shake the feeling that something was amiss. This wasn't the same look of calm that he wore when trying to explore Harry's thoughts. Instead, it seemed to be struggling in some kind of conflict. Before long, he could see creases of fierce concentration in the professor's face and even a bead of sweat running from his forehead. He began to shake all over and grabbed Harry by the wrist in panic.

"Professor?" said Harry, watching Lockhart grow paler by the second.

Ginny hadn't the slightest idea that her mind had been inflicting such distress on her teacher, and so remained calmly cooperative with a flicker of scepticism on her face. Her eyes then shot wide open as she heard Lockhart cry out like a wounded animal. He tore his gaze from hers and hid his face in his hands.

"No…I don't believe it…" he muttered, shaking his head and breathing heavily, "It's not…possible!"

"What's going on?" enquired Ginny, looking expectantly from one to the other.

Harry was staring in bewilderment at Lockhart, who wasn't acknowledging the presence of either one of them and simply continued to babble feverishly to himself. Feeling suddenly impatient and thoroughly sick of being kept in the dark, Ginny rose to her feet.

"Will someone please tell me what's happening!" she exclaimed furiously.

Lockhart slowly and cautiously lifted his head, but refused to meet her eyes. After a few moments of tense silence, he spoke.

"Ginny, have you been schooled in Occlumency or Legilimency before?"

"Of course I haven't," she replied, shaking her head in confusion.

"Does your family have any history of exceptional talent in these fields?"

"I haven't got a clue. Mum can usually tell if any of us are lying, but that's about as exciting as it gets. What exactly are you getting at?"

Lockhart gently rubbed his eyeballs with the tips of his fingers in the manner of one pondering the very meaning of existence.

"Miss Weasley, would you mind waiting outside?" he asked, his voice quieter still, "I need to have a serious talk with Harry."

"What is there to tell me that she can't hear?" asked Harry, very annoyed.

"Look, the two of you will just have to trust me for now. There are things I still need to understand. Miss Weasley, if you please?"

Looking daggers at Professor Lockhart, Ginny walked past them and out of the door without a word. Harry's eyes followed her out of sight. He couldn't help feeling sorry for her, after all, he had had a lot of secrets kept from him in the past. He turned back to Lockhart and made it perfectly clear that there had better be a good explanation for this.

"I have no intention of wasting your time, Potter," the professor began, "so I'll get straight to the point. What I just witnessed was nothing short of a miracle, and a rather startling one to say the least."

"What do you mean?" he replied, taken aback.

"I mean that what I saw in that girl's head was a phenomenon only written about in books, and even then simply passed off as wishful thinking. It was a gift the likes of which I never thought I would see in my entire life."

Harry was beginning to wonder when the professor would be getting to the root of the matter.

"Well, what did you see?" he asked.

"To begin with, there was a dull mist rolling across my mind's eye," Lockhart continued, "I thought at first that this was simply an excellent first attempt at Occlumency, but what I saw when the mist cleared was far, far beyond anything I could teach you. I saw in my head what I saw with my open eyes, Harry!"

This hardly shed much light on the subject, but Harry was undeterred in his curiosity.

"So what does that mean?"

Lockhart fixed him with a looked that could have been placed somewhere in the middle-ground between an ecstatic genius and a lunatic.

"That was the only thought that she was allowing me to see! Don't you understand? Having never studied Occlumency or Legilimency before, she was attempting to employ both simultaneously without the slightest clue as to what she was doing!"

The professor spun round and paced a circle around the room.

"And that's not all!" he said, stopping in his tracks and turning abruptly to face Harry again, "A competent Occlumens would be able to use their mind to conceal fact and reveal fiction to others, but when all is said and done, both are still there to be found. That girl was not only reflecting my own thoughts, but also showing me that neither fact nor fiction even existed in her mind; as though there was nothing there to be hidden in the first place. I suppose the only comparison I could make would be an impenetrable wall of mirrors with nothing behind it…if that makes sense – and there is only one way I can imagine that anyone could be capable of such mental stubbornness."

There was a pause as Harry tried to digest all this. It was only after a few seconds' careful thought that he even realised the question at the end that had remained unanswered.

"And, err…how could that happen?" he asked.

Professor Lockhart calmly sat down and looked as though he were deciding upon the best way to break a piece of tragic news to the boy.

"Only…if they happened to be dead."

This was a lot to take in. Evidently, as Lockhart had pointed out, Ginny was unaware of what she had been doing, and every time Harry thought about it from a different perspective, he felt inclined to agree with his teacher that something like this just wasn't possible. He had yet more questions on his mind.

"But…" he began, "…but what about in the hospital wing? You said she was being used to get information from me, but if she could close her mind off that well…"

"Believe me, Potter, I've been thinking the very same thing over and over," interrupted the professor, "It also prompts the question why an individual with such a gift as this could have been lured into the Chamber of Secrets."

Harry murmured in agreement and racked his brain for an answer. The minutes of silence ticked by, with not so much as the ticking of a clock to disturb the nearly painful concentration of thought in the room, until Lockhart finally spoke.

"Unless…what if this were all down to the power of suggestion?" he said slowly and cautiously, "Perhaps today was the first time she had actually been warned that certain powers of the mind would be used against her, and some kind of dormant defence was triggered somehow. It's certainly a possibility."

This was something that Harry was really having a hard time getting his head around. He could have told anyone who asked that Ginny was special. She would have been special to him even if magic hadn't existed. It was the fact that so much had happened to her at once, and it seemed only fair to him that she be allowed to deal with one thing at a time. When the lessons had finished for the day, he would need to have some alone time with her. No matter what Lockhart thoughts were on the subject, Harry wasn't about to keep one single secret from her. Then it occurred to him that keeping secrets from Ginny would now be impossible anyway.