Chapter Two: Clear Your Mind
Harry enters the dank office, prepared for another round of torturous occlumency training. Professor Snape doesn’t bother greeting him, unless one counts a curse as a greeting, which Harry doesn’t. “LEGILIMENS!” the dour-faced Professor barks.
Harry screws his face up in concentration, attempting to keep his head clear if only to avoid the massive headache he left his previous lesson with. Harry might have studied the textbook Professor Snape shoved angrily at him the previous lesson, but more important thoughts had been there, such as thoughts of the Death Eaters escaped from Azkaban and Cho’s curves. Unbidden, images of the Daily Prophet and Cho and Ron and Hermione appear in flashes seen by both Harry and the Professor. Harry attempts to clear his mind again, but the only result is that he sees things that once frightened him: Voldemort’s body rising from a cauldron, a sixty-foot basilisk, Professor Quirrell’s blistering body, Voldemort telling his mother to stand aside.
Suddenly, the Professor pulls out of his mind, paler than usual.
“Potter, if you show the Dark Lord your fears when he enters your mind, he will use them to torture you. If you show your weaknesses like this, you will be dead within minutes. CLEAR YOUR MIND!”
Harry feels about ready to lose his dinner, but attempts to clear his mind anyway. It’s no use, he’s still shaking as the professor shouts “LEGILIMENS!”
The meager defenses Harry manages to raise crumble under the brute force of the spell, and Harry succumbs again to his memories. Voldemort killing his father, the smell of Aunt Petunia’s lilacs, Dudley shoving his head in a toilet, looking into the Mirror of Erised to see his parents.
Harry screws up his eyeballs, sweating and clenching his fists. That’s private. He tries again to toss Professor Snape out of his mind, with mild success. Professor Snape, panting, withdraws from his mind.
“Meager progress. If you continue to work at this rate, you will learn occlumency several years after your graduation, assuming you are detained for a few years in accordance with your absolute incompetence and that you survive that long. Neither assumption is one you can afford to take for granted, Potter. You must learn to clear your mind, Potter. Leave, and don’t come next week if you can’t be bothered to crack a book open, Potter.”
He gives Harry a glare that suggests that if Harry doesn’t learn to clear his mind by the following week, he will regret it, whether or not he bothers to show up for the session. Of course, Harry has tried to learn occlumency, he really has, but really, he’s got other priorities and he can’t bloody figure out exactly how he is suppose to clear his mind. Outside the Common Room entrance, Harry notices a copy of a new Educational Decree, number 26, forbidding teachers to impart information to students outside classes. Either she’s discovered his lessons with Snape, or she is makinAg a preemptive strike against the professors and the DA. He tries to read some of the text when he returned to his dorm, but finds that he is too angry and tired to clear his mind, and instead falls into a fitful sleep, dreaming of a mysterious corridor. He will forget his dreams when he wakes up.
