Chapter 3: Assailant

"The first objective is targeted defense. Choose a piece of parchment off this stack and read its contents. I will enter your mind and you should do everything you can to prevent me from finding out," Julien instructed.

It was Monday, finally time to put her reading to the test. Ginny had Apparated to the Ministry with a rare sense of excitement, keen to apply what she'd learned. Julien, too, had greeted Ginny with more enthusiasm, looking quietly pleased to see her again.

Ginny nodded her understanding to his instructions, and he turned around, his back facing her.

She pulled out a piece toward the bottom of the stack — it was a debrief on a criminal interrogation.

Name: Henrick Kogan

Nature of Suspected Crime: Mass Murder of Muggles

Interrogation Results: Level One Evidence to Convict

Details: Kogan was sent to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for an interrogation on 24 August, 2000. Kogan was uncooperative and given 3 doses of Veritaserum but did not answer any questions while under its influence. It is likely he developed some immunity to it through his Occlumency training with the Triad in Belgium. He was sent to Mysteries.

M was able to successfully extract the memories. Due to the force of the Legilimency required, Kogan was unconscious for three days after the interrogation. He was treated under 24-hour surveillance in St. Mungo's Hospital.

Ginny grimaced. Julien's Legilimency knocked out the criminal for three days straight. Would Kogan have been killed if his shields had refused to budge? Would Julien have stopped? From the rumors she'd heard, Unspeakables had license to kill, but as part of the Ministry they had to operate within some ethical boundaries. Would breaking Kogan have been within that boundary?

She shivered, considering the man in front of her apprehensively for the first time. I wouldn't mess around with the Department of Mysteries, Lee had said. Maybe he knew more than he could let on.

She shook her head. Where was her Gryffindor bravery? Julien had been immensely helpful so far, listening to her hypotheses, explaining Occlumency. She was simply getting distracted, letting exaggerated rumors get to her head.

He won't hurt me.

I think.

Forcing aside her hesitation, she slid the sheet of parchment back into its original position and prepared her own mental shields, conjuring up the shield she had been practicing.

"I'm ready," Ginny said calmly, and Julien spun back around. From the corner of her eye, she could see Julien studying her. Legilimency was much more powerful with a direct eye-to-eye connection, but she wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"Look at me," Julien ordered. She shook her head, lips quirking upwards. She wasn't falling for that one. Julien chuckled softly. "You're not going to make it easy for me, huh?"

Ginny stared pointedly at her fingers as she brought her visualization forward. A white door. Perfectly rectangular, sealing the entrance to her thoughts. She felt a tickle in her head, seeing flecks in her vision — pinprick spots similar to the ones she saw when she stood up too quickly. She held on to the door, choosing to reinforce it again with a metal vault door.

"I think I know which piece of parchment you chose," Julien dropped casually, like he was commenting on the weather. "It was an interrogation debrief, wasn't it?"

How does he know?

Ginny felt a sudden barrage of panic. With the panic came a lapse in her focus, and suddenly she found memories pouring through her shields uncontrollably.

Playing in the rain and getting scolded by Mum.

Seaside vacation at Bill and Fleur's. The heavenly smell of the pancakes.

Defense with Umbridge, her pink frilly sweater, her disgusting perfume.

Hermione's unwilling tears on Ginny's couch after her breakup with Ron.

Then she felt Julien containing the waterfall of images, pushing away the barrage of memories until her mind was void of any pictures, any sound. He quickly imparted an image of an empty piece of parchment into her head.

The debrief. The mass murderer. The traitorous thoughts swam into Ginny's consciousness, and she felt a shove into the pool of information on the parchment.

Gritting her teeth, she tried to conjure the door once again, but Julien's presence in her mind assailed her defenses.

What was the name? Don't think of it! Think of the door! Don't think — Kogan?

"Bloody hell," Ginny muttered. The built-up pressure in her head suddenly released as Julien receded from her mind, and for a second she felt buoyant, like she could jump through the ceiling if she simply imagined it.

"Not bad," came Julien's voice, grounding her back in the Ministry office. He tapped his wand and bright blue numbers splayed out in the air. "That took sixteen seconds."

"It felt like forever," Ginny said, massaging her temples.

"You would have held me off for longer if not for my guess."

"You… guessed that it was an interrogation debrief?"

"Most of these are, so it wasn't too far-fetched," Julien said, a glimmer in his eyes.

Ginny rolled her eyes. How did I fall for that? But her focus returned to the debrief, and she found her curiosity speaking again.

"So Kogan was a strong Occlumens. Is that why he was immune to Veritaserum?"

"He was very strong, yes," Julien replied. "But it likely took him years of additional training to develop a tolerance to the potion. Veritaserum is a very specialized use case of mind magic."

"Should I learn that?"

Julien tapped his chin. "Not yet. You can't evade Veritaserum until you have the foundational Occlumency."

With that, he stood up and charmed the wall into a chalkboard again. He drew a big circle, with the word "SELF" etched inside.

"This is you, your mind, your thoughts. And this…" he drew a star outside the circle. "This is where you should be when you're Occluding. You let your emotions, you fear take control for a second, and that was when I was able to sneak into the circle. You can't be attached to your emotions when you're Occluding — you must be an impartial participant, an unattached mind."

Over the next hour, Ginny learned more about Occlumency than she had even thought existed in the field. While the book had been a good primer, it was completely different to learn from someone who'd practiced the art for years.

However, Julien's fine-tuned Legilimency knocked the concepts right out of her head. Reading parchment after parchment, Ginny tried repeatedly to Occlude the details, but each time Julien was able to tweeze them out.

"Visualize your strategy beforehand," Julien reminded Ginny. Five attempts later, Ginny's head was aching like crazy, but she had yet to try a few new tactics.

"Okay, ready," Ginny said a few moments later. This time, she would attempt Layering, where she would stack memory upon memory to prevent the focus from shifting toward the parchment. Her previous attempt at Duplicity had failed completely, as Julien had sniffed out her deceit with ease.

Julien nodded, and Ginny felt the now-familiar pricking at the edges of her white door image. As he forced away the door, Ginny replaced it with a strong memory of her first year at Hogwarts.

Huddled in the corner of her four-poster bed at Hogwarts, she writes into the diary with a newly sharpened quill. Her housemates giggle in Lavender's bed, no doubt poring over the latest owl-order trinkets.

Words pour out of her in scribbly cursive: "Harry is ignoring me and Ron is too. I thought Ron would help me talk to Harry but he's making it worse! He jokes about me liking Harry and Harry's probably going to think I'm nutters!"

Tom's reply comes almost immediately, ink spiraling out from the page: "Why do you think they're ignoring you?"

Julien tore at the memory, demanding something else, so Ginny hopped to another.

The first thing she smells is the sharp bite of water on stone, like she's in a cold cave deep underground. Maybe she's died and become a mermaid in the ocean — she'd always liked the idea of breathing underwater. The second thing she smells is smoke.

She vaguely hears a boy's voice in the distance — is that Harry? Her heart drops as she confirms his voice. Had Tom made her do something again? What did Harry see her do? Did he read the diary?

There was an uncomfortable pressure on her temples, and in a split second Ginny felt the memory being shoved away. No! I have more! But she could feel Julien getting impatient from the unrelenting pressure.

She's tumbling through a nightmare — in her dream, Tom Riddle has appeared beside her in the Forbidden Forest.

"Do it," he commands, his wand trained on Ginny. There's a beautiful unicorn in front of them, lapping languidly at a stream. Ginny shakes her head, realizing she can't talk. She's holding a bloody knife upright in her fist, and the blood is dripping down, down, down onto her hand, hot as boiling water, scalding her skin.

Before she can scream, the knife turns into a wand. And the Forbidden Forest whirls away until it becomes a drab, windowless room. Tom Riddle has transformed into a middle-aged man with short, graying hair and a severe expression on his face and the unicorn has become a wide-eyed, lanky teenager wearing a telltale red Durmstrang uniform.

"Do it," the middle-aged man orders gruffly, a Russian accent in his voice. The teenager in the school uniform flinches and looks away. The man's face clouds with anger. "Jordan, you are not leaving this room until you do it."

Julien whipped them out of the memory, turning Ginny's thoughts into a vortex with dark space whirling around them in free fall. He exited her mind quickly — too quickly. A bolt of pain slammed into her, like a Bludger cracking into her skull. The initial impact shocked her and she heard a loud gasp, then realized it had been her own.

She could feel the cool wetness of tears dripping down her cheek and squeezed her eyes shut tighter. She strained to say something, to ask Julien to help, but could only let out an anguished moan.

The pain could have lasted just seconds, but seconds expanded into minutes and minutes into hours. She felt her limp body sliding off the chair, and after what felt like an eternity, the pain undulated away in waves as she succumbed to blissful nothingness.


"Ginny."

She was flying through a lush forest, skimming along the top of the highest branches, when suddenly she heard her name from a cloud above. She glanced upwards and saw nothing but blue sky and the sun, but the sun was too bright, burning her eyes. She tried looking away, but a branch brushed her shoulder and she came hurtling down.

Someone was shaking her gently. Where was she? Ginny opened her eyes with a small groan and saw the source of the blinding sun. It was Julien standing above her, hovering his illuminated wand tip close to her face as she lay on a white couch in his office.

"Where — What happened?" Ginny mumbled. She patted the couch beneath her, checking that it wasn't an illusion. It hadn't been there before. Julien must have transfigured it. How long have I been here?

"How do you feel?" Julien asked, concern laced in his voice.

"I'm okay. But my head hurts," Ginny replied, pushing herself up slowly.

"You were out for around ten minutes. I was just able to Rennervate you, but some remaining discomfort is expected," Julien said. He took a vial of salmon pink potion off the desk and handed it to Ginny. "Headache reliever."

Suddenly, the moments before she blacked out flew back to her — the Forbidden Forest, the Durmstrang boy, the bolt of pain. Adrenaline shot through her, and she jumped up from the couch, facing Julien.

"What was that last memory?" Ginny asked. "What happened? Why did I black out?"

"I can explain — you should —" Julien cut off as Ginny's vision began blurring and she teetered to the left.

His hands shot out instantly to catch her, anchoring her waist as she stumbled. He half-guided, half-lifted her back to the couch before situating himself on the couch next to her.

"Sit, Ginny. You're still recovering. What happened is that I became too involved in your Layering memories and they mixed in with one of my own memories. This happens if the Legilimens is distracted, which I was."

Ginny blinked, reorienting herself as the room came back into focus. The feeling of his hands on her side lingered comfortably. "Wait. So you're saying, my Layering worked?"

"Yes. You picked memories you knew would catch my interest, didn't you?" Julien remarked, his lips quirking upwards. "But the effort it took you, combined with my quick exit from the memories, knocked you unconscious."

"Yeah, I'd like to never feel that again," Ginny said, even though a triumphant grin was sneaking onto her face. "So the last memory with the Durmstrang boy — it was one of yours?"

"Yes."

"What was the man asking you to do?" Ginny asked reflexively. She realized that she was being nosy, but her curiosity got the better of her, as usual.

"In school, I was forced to perform mind magic on other students," Julien said, staring through the window of the Ministry Atrium, watching the bustle below for a few seconds. Ginny stayed still, hoping the silence would push him to reveal more. Julien brought his eyes to hers and let out an almost imperceptible sigh. "It made me comfortable with violence early on. Too comfortable."

Ginny bit her lip, a million questions on the tip of her tongue. Julien seemed ready to change the subject though, so she let it go, listening instead to his analysis of her successful Layering attempt.


Julien dismissed her after that, claiming that her mind needed time to heal, but not before handing her another book — Against Offensive Mind Magics.

Ginny was still feeling ecstatic from her triumph in Layering, walking out the Ministry with a new bounce in her step.

She was walking down a familiar shortcut to her favored Apparition point, thinking about grabbing Valmai for a drink at the Three Broomsticks, when she heard heavy, fast footsteps behind her. She spun around, grabbing her wand, but she was too late.

"Expelliarmus," hissed a voice behind her.

Ginny's wand flew out and with no other choice, she turned to run. She dodged several spells, ducking behind rubbish bins and running in a zig-zag, but halfway through the narrow alley, she felt the zing of a spell making contact. Her stride slowed to nearly a halt as the air around her turned into a thick pudding.

"Help! Someone!" she screeched. There must be someone who can hear me. Please, Merlin. She turned backwards to catch a glimpse of her assailant, but there was no one.

Shite, he's disillusioned.

She continued shouting until she was hit by a silencing spell. She struggled against the magic, yelling until her throat burned, but the only sound she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. More footsteps, and then a rough hand on her neck. Ginny's stomach curdled with dread at the telltale jerk of Apparition.