It has become commonplace now for me to take a while between chapters, so no excuse this time. I'm just a lazy turd. Here we go!

In the comments below, vote yay or nay for Harry eventually having a love life and who Harry should be with (and why they're the best for Harry) assuming yes is the majority. Voting will be going for a while yet, so keep them coming in.

I'm using a 1980's Sam Elliot as my mental picture for Mr. Sandusky, feel free to do so as well.

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"You need to learn Occlumency. A Legilimens like Dumbledore or Snape can see cursory thoughts just from brief contact of the eyes. If either of them learns that I'm free and that I live here, I'll be forced to run so they can't imprison me again." Sirius was, for once, acting seriously. "I'll hire an Occlumency master to teach you; it might even help you control your allure. It's good that Dumbledore got separate rooms for you, but you'll need to learn to control the allure if you'd ever like to have civil conversations with most women. Not that getting a girl's knickers wet is a bad thing, just that it's not always the task at hand." Sirius finished his speech off with considerable eyebrow waging.

"Ugh, Sirius! You know that girls still have cooties, right?" Harry replied, beet faced.

"Except for Daphne, yes, that remains true. Say, Daphne's-" Sirius rebutted, only to be stopped by Harry.

"No! Daphne's like a sister. I couldn't see her that way if I wanted to, and I don't want to." Harry was now devoid of all prior embarrassment, instead filled with righteous indignation. "I'm going to bed before you can insinuate one more thing. Wait, can my friends join me for Occlumency lessons? Daphne tried to teach us but couldn't really articulate it well."

"Sure thing. You're going to have to explain to your friends how you're here, in the Black family's London estate, though. Have nice dreams." Sirius then knocked back the nutrient potion that he had made earlier in the day in his attempt to self-medicate and remove the effects of Azkaban and prolonged starvation from his system.

-Fast forward-

Mr. Sandusky was originally from the southern USA, where he learned magic from the school called A-BI (American Boys Institution). The four 'houses' there were the Johnny Appleseed house for the entrepreneurs and businessmen, the Paul Bunyan house for the adventurers and explorers, the Davy Crocket house for combat-focused students, and the Benjamin Franklin house for the more intellectual students. In America, you took classes only with the other students in your house and took classes that were determined by the goals of the house you were in. You could choose what house you wanted to be in each year, and Mr. Sandusky had alternated between them all. All in all, it sounded like a nice school, if a little strict, from Mr. Sandusky's stories.

"Relax and take deep breaths. You're trying to clear your mind of all conscious thought. Close your eyes if that helps, whatever works. Just breathe and lose focus of everything. Let thoughts come into your mind and let them leave. When you have achieved a blank mindscape, your magic should move your consciousness into there. For most people it's a white room with your memories floating around in it, but there have been other happenings before. Don't envision the mindscape, just let it come to you."

Mr. Sandusky was the name of the Occlumency instructor that Sirius had hired for Harry and his friends. He talked in a deeply boring and eerily familiar monotone voice. Harry absently wondered if he was related to Binns, but then mentally kicked himself for straying away from the task at hand. He needed to clear his mind.

Daphne was already in her mindscape, she had taught herself Occlumency when she was young, but getting a rank nine Occlumens to verify what she had and guide her next steps would be highly beneficial. She walked around the castle she had erected to protect her thoughts, making sure everything would be ready for when Mr. Sandusky assessed her defenses.

Padfoot was drooling slightly on the carpet in Harry's living room while he dreamed of fornication with other dogs. He was showing his excitement outside the realm of dreams too, much to Harry's chagrin.

Neville found the voice rather calming and soothing. Neville had already had his mindscape inspected by Mr. Sandusky. Neville had been the only one of them that Daphne had succeeded in teaching Occlumency to; Neville took to the art like a fish to water. Mr. Sandusky had said that Neville was a prodigy the likes of which he had never seen before, and that Neville was likely to catch up to Mr. Sandusky's rank within a year or two.

Terry was somewhere deep in the Amazon jungle, as part of a vacation paid for by Huiraqoca, the Brazilian foremost school of magic. They were currently trying to convince Terry to go to their school through the strategy of "look at our backyard! It's so pretty it could eat you alive!" While Terry was not transferring to Brazil, of all places, they didn't need to know that until he was back home after his free month-long vacation. Ah, the joys of being a genius. They really were pulling all the stops out, they had offered free schooling for Terry, so long as they could advertise that he had gone to their school when he achieved his great accomplishments later in life. They were so sure Terry would be the next Dumbledore that when the subject of his friends came up, the offer was extended to all of them too.

Huiraqoca truly was a magical school; the school had a mind of its own. Huiraqoca had been constructed in 300 BC by the early Alamachi people, a purely magical empire that lived entirely outside the muggle world, deep in the Amazon rainforest. By effect, Huiraqoca was almost 1300 years older than Hogwarts and thus had been stemming in the ambient magic of its students for far longer. This led to a consciousness of the school, which could talk to students and create rooms where there had been walls. Hogwarts was getting closer, Peeves being the manifestation of the student's rebellious and childish tendencies. All in all, it was an amazing plan B if anything were to go wrong with Hogwarts.

Mr. Sandusky noticed from a sudden relaxing of the facial muscles, that Harry had achieved access to his mindscape. He looked Harry in the eye and cast the spell that would allow him to enter Harry's mind. "Legilimens!" Upon entering Harry's mind, Mr. Sandusky was rather surprised. Memories normally floated around, each a different color blob to tell what emotions they portrayed the most. Harry's memories, however, didn't float around. They were already arranged in a grid-like pattern with each emotion being in its own rectangular prism with the other emotions of similar colors. It was great that Harry already had his emotions under control, it would make everything a lot easier for them when they moved onto creating mental shields.

"Harry, where are you?" Mr. Sandusky called out in his deep southern drawl.

"Over here, Mr. Sandusky! I was seeing how far back the memories went. What's the first thing you want to do?" Harry was a little out of breath, as he was running back from the far side of the room. Was it a room? Did it have walls, or did it go on forever? If it had walls, wouldn't there be something behind those walls? These and many more questions flew through his mind-wait, wasn't he in his mind already? Harry shook himself and waited for his instructor's instructions.

"I'm glad that you've sorted all your memories. I do have to ask though, what are those grey ones?" Mr. Sandusky intoned in his deep southern drawl as he gestured to the rows of memories, all a grey monotone, no color to define the emotions that they resembled.

"Would you mind keeping a secret for me? It's supposed to be a family thing." At receiving Mr. Sandusky's confirmation that the secret would remain as such, Harry continued. "My great grandfather, Jonathan Potter made the Potter family grimoire. Unlike normal grimoires which are books though, Jonathan made a hat. Inside the hat, he stored all his memories of learning and performing magic. From doppelganger illusions to incantations that can summon demons, Jonathan learned it all and then stored it in his "Potter Helm of Knowledge." When a person places the hat on their head, the memories are copied and placed inside the wearer's mind. You gain intrinsic knowledge of how to cast every spell that Jonathan ever cast, brew every potion that Jonathan ever brewed, and everything else that he did with his magic. My great grandpa was no slouch, and so I have a ton of memories, and while they probably had emotions in Jonathan's mind, the helm seems to have not carried that aspect over." Harry then sat down, forgetting that he was in his mindscape, and instead fell on his rump.

"Very interesting. While this has been great fun, I suggest that we get on with the Occlumency. There are a few avenues that we can go down. I'm goanna explain them in a nutshell, and you'll decide on which you want to use." A wooden dining room chair appeared into existence and Mr. Sandusky sat down on it. "This is one way. The chair I'm sitting on is a figment of my imagination. It is something I imagined, down to the finest detail. I specified that it was tangible in this mindscape, I imagined that it was made of a sturdy oak wood, capable of supporting my weight. Your memories are already arranged, if you make a wall around them, then the legilimens can't gain access to your memories. They could, however, imagine a siege weapon to break your wall and then access your memories. Basically, you construct some sort of defense to protect your memories. It'll take a lot of time, but it can work." If Mr. Sandusky's facial expression was any indicator, he wasn't a fan of this method.

"Another method is to hide them. If the legilimens enters your mind, but can't find your memories, then you have successfully beaten them. My occlumency master used this method. Her mindscape contained the entire Rocky Mountain range in western North America. There was one obscure cave which held all her memories, but it would take years of arduous hiking in his mindscape to find it. The upside of this method is that you don't need to enter your mindscape to defend your mind. While the legilimens is busy looking for your memories, you can beat them in the corporeal world. Stun them, maim them, kill them, what have you. Nonconsensual legilimens is a capital punishment in all countries except for magical Palestine, so do with that what you will." Mr. Sandusky trailed off and left his sentence open for Harry's interpretation.

"The final way of protecting your mind from assault is to well, not protect it. If you let them access certain memories that you don't care if they see, you'll be able to stall them or maybe potentially hurt them. While they experience your memories, you can make them see it from your perspective, and thus have them harmed in the same way as you were in the memory. Damages sustained here aren't transferred into the corporeal world. If a legilimens were to die in another's mindscape, it would essentially be the same as a dementor's kiss; they'd lose their soul, though their body would remain intact. Anything short of death would be a headache of varying intensity. I, in my stupidity as a youth decided that it would be a good idea to willingly expose myself to the cruciatus curse so that I'd have that memory to then use if ever attacked by a legilimens. It was stupid, to say the least, but if I was ever attacked, the attacker would be subject to unbearable pain with no way to retaliate or escape. All I'd have to do is clear my mind of all thoughts other than that memory. In my mindscape, the legilimens would be living through the memory repeatedly. The memory doesn't need to be a painful one, but if they aren't sufficiently distracted, then you'd be fighting their will to keep that memory in place instead of the memories that they want to see." Mr. Sandusky finished his speech and awaited Harry's answer.

Harry answered after considerable thought "I think that I'll go with the offensive memory strategy."

"Okay. Next time we'll get to working on that. Until then, practice accessing your mindscape, and think about which memory you plan on using. I suggest a very emotional one, be it joy, pain, anger, or whatever, just one where emotion consumes you to the point that you can't think straight. That's probably the type that will work the best." And with that said, Mr. Sandusky left Harry's mindscape.

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A/N: So, how'd you like this chapter? Anything you want to see in future chapters? Remember to vote, and as always, stay safe and happy!