Monday, Sept. 9

This was what Harry had felt. Every time he sat in this classroom, and watched as the man who murdered his family and wanted him dead stuttered and stumbled around looking perfectly unthreatening, this terror was what Harry felt.

This urge to flinch every time he moved or looked in her direction. This need to always have her eyes on him, but never look him in the eyes, and certainly not the back of his covered head, this was what Harry had felt.

This dread that coiled in her gut like a snake, waiting to strike.

Three hours had never felt so long.

*****

“We need a room that has everything we need to learn occlumency,” Harry said, walking back and forth, and Hermione just took the time to breathe in relief once more.

Defense had been... terrible. But as much as she wanted to stop thinking about it, her naturally active mind just wouldn’t let the memory go. It was like her mind had saved every moment of the three-hour long lecture in perfect detail, and felt the need to play back every moment for her.

At least, she wouldn’t have to go back there for two more days, and, more importantly, she and Harry were finally taking their first step in the plan to being capable of defending themselves.

Hermione had had a very frank conversation with Harry about their chances of resisting Voldemort on their own, so she knew that this wasn’t much, not really, but it was something. And, like her mother always said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

This was that step. And she believed with all her heart that it was a good first step. Even if the dread and disgust that accompanied the thought of having Voldemort or Snape riffling through her thoughts was a very big part of it.

Harry finished his third pass, and to both their surprise and relief, the door appeared.

Harry had been planning to sneak into the Restricted Section of the library when they discussed learning occlumency, because he had been unable to find material on it in Diagon Alley. It had been Hermione who had thought to check the Room of Requirement first, just in case, so she was glad that it seemed to have been the right call.

Harry pushed open the door, and they walked in to the exact same copy of the common room the Room of Requirement had provided them with the last time they’d been here. The only difference was that the table was set in front of a sofa and not between two seats, and also, that it had an old, worn notebook on it.

“Well, this is odd,” Harry said looking around, as though to spot something else that was different from the last time in the room’s current design.

“You did ask for a room that has everything we need to learn occlumency,” Hermione said, but she was surprised too. She’d been expecting a library or something similar.

A bookshelf, at least.

“And that’s it? One ancient book that’s falling apart? And why’d it give us a sofa this time?”

Harry was right, the book was ancient and looked like it was coming apart. The cover was old, cracked leather, and the edges of the pages she could see were all yellowish and looked like they’d been soaked in water and then set by a fire to dry sometime long ago.

All of that was irrelevant in Hermione’s opinion though, it was a book, it wasn’t how it looked but the contents that mattered. More importantly, it was the book the Room of Requirement had given them when they asked for study materials for occlumency, so Hermione reached to open it.

“Stop!” Harry near-shouted, and Hermione jumped. “What if it’s cursed or something?” He asked.

Hermione’s reflexive response to that was an annoyed eye roll and an “of course it’s not cursed, Harry. Don’t be silly.” But then, Harry, knowing what her reflexive response would be, already had a cocked eyebrow and a very dubious expression waiting, before she even began speaking.

This caused Hermione to take a moment to think through everything that she’d experienced in Hogwarts over the last week, as well as the conversation she’d had with Harry on Saturday about Riddle’s diary. Finally, she pulled back her hand and took several steps back.

The book suddenly looked ominous.

“Well, how are we going to get it open?” Hermione asked Harry.

She considered using the Gust Spell, but dismissed the idea as soon as it came; with how old the book was they might lose half the pages if she did.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, then his face brightened as he got an idea. “Hedwig, you open it.”

“Harry!”

The owl, who had been sitting quietly on Harry’s head this whole time, gave the boy a look that would have made a tiger curl up in terror. Harry meanwhile, looked unfazed.

Surprisingly, Hedwig actually did it. She flapped to the table and opened the cover gently with a foot.

Personally, after easily finding the horcrux and what The Letter said, Hermione suspected that Hedwig was able to somehow sense curses, meaning that the owl must have been reasonably safe.

The girl said none of that though, she just patted Hedwig on the head instead and thanked her for how brave she was while throwing Harry a stink eye. Then she sat and gently picked up the notebook.

Harry, completely unbothered, came to join her on the sofa.

“What does it say?” He asked.

Instead of answering, because she actually had no answer to give, Hermione opened the first page after the cover and saw words written in very fine penmanship.

This book is the property of Armando Dippet, it said. If found, please return to the owner.

“Armando Dippet,” Harry mused. “I feel like I know that name.”

“He was the Headmaster before Dumbledore.”

“Ah, yes, the one who refused to hire good old Voldy,” Harry said, and Hermione paused in her flipping of a page.

“What?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you? Well, Voldemort is basically living his dream right now. He auditioned—”

“Applied, Harry.”

“—same difference—for the position of Defense professor twice, once with Dippet and again with Dumbledore, before finally getting it through Quirrel. Actually, the second time was supposedly when he left his tiara behind. I think.”

Hermione took a moment to process that; it was easy to forget sometimes, but Voldemort had actually spent more time in Hogwarts than both she and Harry had. He’d done all the same subjects they were, walked the same halls, sat in the same classes. Hermione was just glad he’d been a Slytherin, because she didn’t want to know how it would feel to know that she was living in the same tower Voldemort had for seven years.

With some effort, she shook off the thought and focused back on the book. Armando Dippet’s book.

“Harry, do you think this book could have come from the Room of Forgotten Things?” Hermione asked.

Harry’s expression went thoughtful. “Huh, I guess that would make sense, wouldn’t it? I mean, the room could easily conjure up chairs and paintings and whatnot, but, I guess actual knowledge has to come from somewhere.

“Well, good thing Armando Dippet was so careless with his property,” Harry said, and Hermione had to admit that, yes, it was.

They skimmed the book first before they properly read it. It contained detailed notes by the former Headmaster that Hermione suspected were research notes from several sources.

Since the notebook wasn’t exactly the biggest, and a lot of the pages had faded beyond repair at some point, only three of the topics the Headmaster researched were still readable; legilimency, occlumency, and freeform transfiguration.

Hermione and Harry both already knew about freeform transfiguration; it was the art of shaping inorganic to inorganic transfiguration without the need for learning specific spells.

Like, for example, instead of needing to know the individual spells for transfiguring a matchstick into a needle, and a needle into a figurine, with freeform transfiguration, all one needed to know was the spell for shaping metal, with which any inorganic material could be transfigured into meatal, and that metal shaped to the caster’s desire.

It was an advanced branch of transfiguration for NEWT level students, because of the level of magical skill that it required, which younger students often lacked.

The only reason they both knew about it was because they’d both bought books on Transfiguration and Charms far beyond their year.

Neither bothered with Headmaster Dippet’s notes on freeform transfiguration, considering it wasn’t what they needed right now and they already had entire textbooks on the topic, so they both focused on the reason they were here; occlumency.

Which they quickly learned they could not practice, because learning occlumency required them to have a legilimens trying to penetrate their minds.

And since they had no intention of asking any of the legilimens they knew for help, Hermione and Harry settled in to learn the fine art of not mindreading.

*****

Legilimency turned out to require more work than Hermione thought it would.

The act itself was easy; a simple spell, and if cast right, you were in your target’s mind. The problem was what came after; finding your way around.

Apparently, people rarely, if ever, thought about a single thing exclusively, and if they did, they didn’t do so for long, and since every thought caused emotions which always, even if only tangentially, connected to some memory, about three-quarters of the work of a legilimens was actually keeping control when in a person’s mind, so as to not get pulled along with its whims.

Harry groaned and sat back. “Look, Hermione, we can read about this all we want, but even Dippet said it here, practice is the only way to build control. And since we can’t start learning occlumency until we can both do this passably, at least, I think the sooner we start the better.”

Hermione hated to agree, but Harry was right. While she would have loved to do more research and cross-check Dippet’s notes with other sources, there were no other sources.

“Okay, you’re right. Look at me, I’ll try first.” The book had stressed the importance of eye-contact.

Harry turned to face her. “Sweet. Let’s gaze into each other’s souls and share our deepest secrets,” he said, and Hermione rolled her eyes.

They settled down, made eye-contact, and Hermione carefully casted the spell, “legilimens.”

They kept staring into each other’s eyes for several seconds, before Harry asked, “anything?”

“No.” Hermione shook her head.

“Oh, well,” Harry said, “my turn.” And he too casted the spell.

Nothing happened, and Hermione was about to speak when Harry leaned in suddenly, “hold on,” he said.

“It worked? You got it?” Hermione asked, trying not to move or blink.

“Oh, no, I just noticed that you have some darker flecks of brown in your eyes,” Harry said. “It’s beautiful.”

It took an immense amount of willpower to not swipe at him right then.

They kept trying, but it had become obvious by then that they were in this for the long run, so the next time Harry took a turn, Hermione decided to ask a question she’d thought about on and off since Saturday.

“Harry, how did you know how to cast The Killing Curse?”

“I didn’t,” Harry said simply. “I knew the incantation from the books, of course. Well, that and my—” a sigh “—Harry’s memory. It was also how I knew the wand motion for it.”

Hermione said nothing. There was nothing to say really; Harry had told her before about how whatever happened when he entered... well, had caused his memory of that Halloween to become crystal clear in his mind. Neither of them knew why. And to be honest, Hermione couldn’t really find a logical argument against Harry’s reasoning of ‘ROB’s an asshole.’

She kind of agreed. Even if she thought he could have done without the swearing.

Hermione tuned back in as Harry continued.

“You know, there were some theories back home about dark magic being easier to cast than regular magic. I’m glad they were true. I don’t think I would have managed that spell on the first try otherwise.”

Was that so? That was interesting. Hermione idly wondered why that was the case as she casted the legilimens spell again. And got another dud.

Darn it! She was doing every thing right.

To distract herself as Harry tried, she asked, “what did it feel like?”

Harry casted first. “Good,” he said afterwards. “Not like a high or anything like that. I just felt... power. For that one moment. Like, all I needed to do was pursue it, and it would give me power over all my enemies. It was kind of scary actually.”

Hermione dwelt on that as she looked into Harry’s eyes and tried the legilimens spell again, and then she was dying.

Her heart hurt, like someone had driven a spike into it. She collapsed to the ground, unable to breathe, panicking, knowing she was dying and wondering why. How?

Then she gasped her last, and woke up in darkness.

She reached out and her hands touched wood. Wood! A coffin! She’d been buried alive!

She began slamming, kicking, tearing, begging.

Please, get me out! Please, please, please...

Heavy thudding above. Footsteps!

Help! Please! Help!

A voice. Angry.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy!?”

Boy? What—

“Hermione!”

Hermione Granger blinked, shaking. She saw Harry’s worried eyes staring in slight panic.

Was that—?

Was that Harry’s—?

Oh, my God!

Oh, my God!

The hug she gave Harry then did more for her than it did for him, but that was alright.