Harry had said that he would be learning Occlumency first, but there were levels of mastery in the field that were currently beyond him, and Apparation was too useful to ignore the chance to gain even a rudimentary understanding. It helped that he was trying to make an appointment with Snape, which took him to a store in Hogsmeade he had never visited, and after scouting out some rare plants with Neville, as well as Ernie, oddly enough, he was not near a floo. Anticipating that he might not be going back to Hogwarts, he had already tried short distances, and he could do that most of the time when he held his breath, but going across the country was too much for him.

"Perhaps a more manageable goal, like getting back to the manor would be a good place to start."

"Yeah, thanks," he said, not entirely sarcastically. The other two could get back on their own, could they not? With a tap of his wand to his head, he apparated as close as he could to the stately building itself before running inside, where he ducked into the fireplace. He knew he was cutting it close already, and Snape was not a man who liked to be delayed. As he went through the motions of instantaneous travel, he supposed his haste would probably confuse a previous version of himself.

In school, he always hated going to potions, and he would try to delay it as much as possible. There was no sense in getting a point deduction for being late, but he would never be early, and he would get out of there as soon as possible. While he would follow the rules of the class and make an effort to learn something, he did not have any genuine concern for what the teacher thought of him. His future abilities in the subject was not truly important; he had more or less given up on making any kind of job out of it. In a reversal of fortune, he was doing all that he could to appease the wizard.

"It seems your proclivity for tardiness extends even to those lessons which you requested, Potter." He said his surname like the greatest insult he could have produced.

"My apologies; I was trying to learn to apparate."

"I care nothing for your attempts at amends, or to hear of your other extra-curricular avenues to some degree of magical competence. This meeting interrupts my work and I tolerate it only because I was ordered to teach you." By his work, it could be assumed that he referred to his spying for the Order. What was the point of keeping up the pretense of being a Death Eater even when in private, though? Did he expect to have Voldemort go through his mind?"

The store in which they were meeting was a luxury goods supplier. Though Harry had some gold himself, he had never been interested in buying his own Pensieve, or his own house elf, and it was somewhat disturbing that they were just standing there holding signs indicating their prices. Though he knew they were pieces of property, he had never seen them getting bought or sold. Had he always thought that they just sort of lived with families permanently? What, then, did the Blacks do when one of theirs died? Had all those heads mounted to the wall been relatives?

"Does the scenery disturb you, Potter? Should I have chosen somewhere else for the sake of your delicate sensibilities?"

"I just thought someone might walk in on us," he said, denying the obvious point blank. Perhaps if he said it with a sufficiently resolute stare, he could convince himself. "Where's the shopkeeper?"

"Out," Snape said. It was like he was trying to be annoying. All of a sudden he had a thought that his vexation could have a greater purpose, but the attempt at mental assault started before he could get to the end of his train of thought. Sure enough, the teacher was more powerful than Hermione or anyone else who only dabbled, but his shields had become stronger as well. Fundamentally, there was a way of going about it that could be described as casting mental shield charms with his mind, and if he had to explain the theory of it, the result would not be terribly different. As the attacks on his head continued, he became more convinced that his reading and practice with his friends was an essential first step that could have served him well, but at the time he was busy forming the DA. He regarded his 'Remedial Potions' lessons as an afterthought even when he was of a mind that Occlumency was even useful.

His mind went reeling in some other direction and he knew that the older wizard had succeeded at something. It was like an attack from the side; it caught him completely off guard, though it was hard to explain what exactly it was. The two of them went into a memory, this time something in third year; it was a random day out on the grounds that he could hardly believe he recalled; there was no Quidditch match, there was no exam, and there was no threat that was about to destroy the school. At the time, he probably had this looming sense of danger that Sirius was out to get him, but if he remembered correctly, he never took it terribly seriously, sneaking out to Hogsmeade whenever he had the opportunity. Somehow his recollection was allowing him to regain his footing and push Snape back. The leaves changed color in the trees around them in a hundred times the normal speed. Was he trying to go back to the present?

The attack came again and though he expected it, he felt like he could not have done anything. He was spiraling off in some other direction; they were in the sitting room at the Dursley residence, giving him a large span of time to try and guess when it was; he lived there for roughly ten years uninterrupted, and the days blended together. All the same, he could see the same bizarre time lapse as he tried to fight it. Was his teacher trying to take him further back? If that was the case, was it a confirmation that going forward was the way to go? What would he do differently if the attack came again?

Acting almost on instinct, he changed the scene around him to outside right when he felt the attack coming. They were on the front walk to the door, and he could see a decent distance around him, but it was not time to focus on the memory. The Legilimens regarded him coldly and only stared as the days moved more and more quickly around him. Was he contemplating his next move? Had Harry's strategy really worked? He hardly had the words to describe what was going on except by the memories around him, and yet, it seemed he was taking the initiative.

The passage of time only seemed to accelerate more. If he could keep it going, sidestepping every time another attack came, how would Snape respond? He waited for an attack, however, and an attack never came. The years progressed more and more and he found himself staring up at a pitch black sky when an enormous green skull appeared in it. It was his turn to have no response other than to stare at his teacher.

"Do not gawk, Potter. You might invite a Death Eater to wonder if your tongue is so easily accessible as your head." He strode forward under the green glow.

"This never happened," he said, still wanting his unasked question answered.

"Empty as it may be of rational thought and respect for your betters, your mind contains more than memories of your personal sob story," Snape answered, continuing as if he had never been interrupted. "There are also fears. This turn of events may have never happened, but there is a ray of hope in that you can be convinced that it can. That is the reality that the Order faces, Potter. Your hopelessly incompetent little friends will be executed if their luck exceeds all sensible expectation. I can personally guarantee that the Dark Lord is not concerned at all about the country being destroyed in a foreign invasion if he has his way in the next few years. None of your father's precious gold will matter in any other land if you pull a runner-"

"I'm not running," he said.

"This newfound seriousness with which you treat the subject of Occlumency will not matter unless there are results," the teacher continued to predict. "I can scarcely imagine the woeful inadequacy with which you attempt to defend yourself from a resting state. Since I have learned that even the simplest, most insulting advice is often warranted in your case, I would not recommend simply not sleeping. At the moment, when Lord Voldemort attempts to gain access to your secrets, if he meets the slightest resistance, it will only convince him you have learned something worth the effort of learning for himself. You will then, I expect, know that your mind is being invaded, but it will be too late to do anything."

"Thanks for the warning," he said.

It was strange. The way he had rebelled against the Potions master in the past was by falling in line to accomplish nothing more subversive than injecting a modicum of sarcasm here and there. It was a pitiful, pointless resistance when he thought about it, not even terribly brave; all the Gryffindors were doing the same thing. What seemed to be throwing the older wizard off was his present tendency toward respectful remarks, delivered without a hint of ulterior motives. He could not deny that Snape's timely actions had saved both his life, and the life of his long-hated godfather, so at the very most cynical, he at least had to be perfectly obedient to Dumbledore, and he could not deny that the man was an expert Legilimens. As he had not been assigned to teach Harry on how not to be a petty, cruel abuser of authority, there was no reason to worry about his negative character traits.

The young wizard left without waiting to be excused, but on his way out he did not want to take the floo straight back. It had been a few days at least since he had been in Hogsmeade, and he wanted to see if there was any news. He cast a few simple charms on himself to change his appearance, grateful for having helped Neville and a few of the others with them only recently, grateful in turn that his policy had been to help the others learn rather than focusing on himself. Though he was sure that some people would think it best to develop his magical prowess above all else, but realistically all that mattered was the number of wands; each one was inestimably valuable if held by someone with some amount of training. It was hard to estimate how many it would take to bring down Voldemort, but if he did not have enough at the moment, even once everyone had studied and practiced, it was much easier to try to increase the number rather than come up with some new training method to take everyone to an entirely new level of proficiency- if it was an easy thing to go from the average graduate to a great witch or wizard, everyone would do it.

He overheard a conversation at the entrance to the Hog's Head and decided to hang around, acting like he was waiting for someone himself.

"Nasty business, that special council-" a middle-aged witch was telling the old barkeep. There was something familiar about his appearance, but Harry was sure it was just that he had been in the establishment a few times before and saw him without really noticing. "-if you'll believe it, they think they can investigate the Forbidden Forest."

"That's where I'm getting my Bowtruckle Blood."

"Aye. That's where I'm getting my blue nettle leaves. It was one thing when they were talking of doing something about the centaurs, but if they intend to have everyone out of the Forest-"

Harry had no further interest in the conversation; his thoughts were consumed instead with something like regret. How could he not have known who was giving wizards a bad name; it was the smiling shopkeepers of Hogsmeade, not ancestors who died in some half-remembered war. Each one of them, as if imagining to himself that he had invented the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons, and that the supply of magical resources would never run out, but if it did, it had to be someone else who ended up holding the bag. Had they gone about it cleverly? That was really all it would have taken to avoid getting hit with an arrow or two unawares; the whole reason Umbridge failed to survive was because she had gone about it as ignorantly as she could have. The centaurs, however, even if they missed the thieves, would realize that things were disappearing. It was easier to understand the temptation to just shoot anyone who came into the woods on sight.

He managed to apparate as far as the floo when he focused on doing only that, though he knew that he would need to get it down better than that if he wanted to use it in combat, and it seemed like an irreplaceable advantage. Practice seemed to be the key to pulling it off more quickly, and that was fundamentally where he distinguished between training and study. In the beginning, learning any discipline was almost entirely mental, and the DA had been over that with its members; joining was not a way out of reading. Generally, Hogwarts did a good job of presenting the material for those of different learning styles by incorporating practical demonstrations at every step in the process of learning a new concept, but even in that case, it was still mostly study and application of the theory; if a student had the wrong wand movement because something 'felt right', points would be subtracted. Training was the drilling of skills for practical use, and that encompassed more than just casting the spells correctly.

When he returned, he decided he was glad that the centaurs had agreed to relocate, but it was unacceptable if they stayed away from their home forever. At some point, perhaps when there was time, perhaps when there was enough support for it, he wanted to at least give them back their wood, and that was after everyone who had encroached on them had been appropriately punished; if Hermione was right about anything, it was that wizards had done the other races wrong, even if the stereotypes about them were sometimes correct. Were the centaurs reconsidering what they believed about the wizards because of his actions?

"Harry, we were hoping you'd be back around now," Neville said, this time with Hannah, who had managed to curse herself and was having to grow a magical plant for the potion that would cure her. Her own herbology skills were excellent, easily on par with his, but at the moment she had no tactile sense and it was hard to do anything without a wand, which she was gripping for dear life.

"Yeah. I don't rightly know how much time has passed, sorry."

"Well, it's about time for supper, so for those of us who are still here, we're having roast Mangadora as a vegetarian option; everyone else is having Vivecta-Ouini."

"Don't tell me that's the name of your house elf."

"It's the name of a dish," Hannah said, a note of annoyance in her voice. Lying on her back, on a table, it was probably hard to feed herself unless she could do that by levitation, and even that was not something most people would relish doing with company. "Basically, it's a charmed thestral rump."

"People eat that?" he asked. "I've seen thestrals and they... don't look that appetizing..."

"Do cows look appetizing?" Neville asked. It was not a counterargument; he was curious.

"More than something that looks like an Inferius in horse form," he responded. It was hard not to be derisive. He supposed, though, that his response was still exaggerated. A thestral had a strange, dried out look to it, but it was clearly alive and not falling apart.

"That's what they look like?" Hannah asked. "Now I know I made the right choice going for the vegetarian option."

"Yeah; I think I'll have that too," he said. It was not as if he wanted to create a divide between the purebloods, who occasionally had a really odd cultural thing stand out, and those who grew up in the muggle world, but acting like he liked everything they did was just pointlessly insincere. He liked to think that if it were something less automatically objectionable, he would have given it a shot. He went over to their host and quietly suggested that they leave their temporarily disabled guest to her own devices unless she requested assistance.

"I didn't think it would be embarrassing," Neville said as soon as they were out of the room. "I wasn't going to spoon-feed her or anything."

"Er, well, I think you don't think about yourself much," Harry said. "It's not a bad thing, really. I think she knows you're just trying to keep her company, but she doesn't like being seen like that. She must not expect to be helped whenever she's having trouble with something."

"Oh, so that makes you think that if someone is helping you, it's an insult?"

"That's... well, that's basically it, but people also don't necessarily like those kinds of things being pointed out."

"I don't think it's a bad thing. It's just the way you are."

"This is something I've had to figure out along the way. Didn't make that much sense to me either, not right away. I was showing Dean how to do a wand motion once and he didn't snap at me, but I got a sarcastic remark out of it. There wasn't much to do but leave him to it as long as that was all he wanted." He sighed a bit. "Sometimes I think it's just that they don't want people to think that they're full of it, and that's why they don't like it pointed out."

"How did you learn all this?" Neville asked as they went to the kitchen to get the food from the elves. "I hate to admit it, but most of my life, I barely ever spoke to anyone."

"It's the same for me. I wouldn't... er, normally say this, but when I first got to Hogwarts, I couldn't give a damn what most people thought about me. I don't think that was out of any strength of character like my friends think, but because I couldn't keep track of everyone if I tried, and once I had my friends... I mean, I know how this sounds, but I thought I didn't need anyone else. They were the best I could have gotten anywhere, and when Hermione got petrified, I lost half my friends."

"It must have been nice to have two," Neville said, smiling. There was not a trace of bitterness in his voice.

"Well, if you ever want, we could be mates," he said. "It doesn't have to be all business between us."

He was sure that if Ron were there, he would never hear the end of it. At the same time, he felt a strange sympathy for his new friend, and there was something about the fact that everyone assumed the best of him. When he asked a question like he was just asking, no one assumed he was being rude or patronizing. No one ever thought he was humble bragging; he was just humble. There was no sense in asking how he did it; everyone thought he was incompetent and Harry had to admit that at least to him, the juice was not worth the squeeze. Had no one respected him, he never would have been able to start the DA. Was there any way at all to have it both ways, or did people just attack whatever they could attack, and if Neville ever became generally well-regarded, would they start to assume he was full of it like everyone else?

"I'd like that Harry," he said, sticking out his hand. "I've always thought of you as a friend, though."