chapter 14

"He zipped up his briefcase again and picked it up "I have everything I need to continue researching this matter. Mr Potter, I want you to read the first two chapters of that book and begin practicing the techniques that are discussed within them. If you are stuck or don't understand something, I'm sure either Madam Bones or Healer Abbott will be able to help you out as their respective professions require the both of them to have some degree of competency in occlumency. In a week's time, I will come back and use a gentle bit legilimency to see how far you have come in protecting your mind. If you have made sufficient progress, we will begin working through the rest of that book in order to build up your levels of protection, okay?"

"That's fine," replied Harry with a nod.

Greengrass left, with Madam Bones following on to show him out. Sarah remained behind.

Out in the hall, Amelia grabbed the man by his arm and said in a low voice "Just after arriving here, Harry told me a little bit about the events at the end of his second year at Hogwarts. He mentioned that a bewitched diary was influencing the mind of a student, causing her to set Slytherin's fabled monster upon the school."

Cyrus frowned "It is highly unusual for an item to possess someone, but what does that have to do with this?"

"Harry claims that the diary belonged to a certain Tom Marvolo Riddle when he was sixteen years old."

Cyrus' eyebrows rose "Now that is interesting. Where is the diary now?"

"Apparently Mr Potter destroyed it with a fang from the Basilisk that was responsible for all those students being petrified," replied Amelia "According to him the diary's hold on the student it was possessing was so strong that an image of Tom was able to emerge from the diary walk around and talk to Harry. The more time passed the more solid the image became."

"Merlin's beard!" exclaimed Greengrass "I guess we were lucky Mr Potter was on hand to destroy the thing before it was too late. I'd have liked to have gotten a good look at the thing though."

"Are the diary and the scar related?"

"Almost certainly."

"And do you have any real idea as to what they might be?"

"Oh, I have an idea alright. And no one is going to like it. But just let me confirm the theory for certain first, alright?"

Amelia nodded and sent Cyrus on his way.

Harry was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed and his hands resting in his lap. The book on occlumency was lying open beside him, but he was paying it no mind. He had read the first two chapters as Greengrass had requested and understood the basics, though he had had to ask for help from Madam Bones and Sarah on a couple of occasions.

Two whole days had passed since Cyrus Greengrass had recommended Harry begin studying the art of occlumency, and Harry was now making his next attempt as calming himself enough to enter his mindscape.

According to the book, before you could to anything else to protect your mind, you had to learn to pull all your thoughts, feelings and memories to a central point, thus enabling you to pull them away from a potential attacker.

To do this required practice in the field of meditation. Only by learning to calm yourself could you gain the necessary control of yourself required to being protecting your mind.

Late into the previous day Harry had made five attempts at this before giving up. Going back to the book he had discovered that each time he failed he had gotten a little more frustrated with himself. And the more frustrated he got with himself, the greater the chances were that he would fail.

So he had given up for the evening, and had just spent his time relaxing. The next morning he had made four more attempts, each one ending in failure. Again the cause was himself getting frustrated at his repeated failure (although admittedly the first attempt had been interrupted by that thrush singing in the tree outside his window.)

Now it was the afternoon and Harry was trying once again.

As the book required, he was sitting comfortably, his eyes were closed, his breathing was calm and even, and he was doing his best to block out everything around him.

Somewhere outside a Rook began caw several times, but Harry's ears barely heard it. He ignored the sound as he was ignoring everything else. A wave of peacefulness had come over him, and that was all that he had intended to do for now. However, when he opened his eyes, he was not sitting comfortably on the bed in his room at the Bones family house anymore.

In fact, although he was still in a sitting position, Harry was not actually sitting on anything. He was, in fact, floating. Immediately around him, things were lit up and visible. However the further away things were, the more they were obscured by darkness.

Harry himself appeared to be the source of light, although one look down at himself proved that he was not glowing or anything.

All around him, and in every direction for as far as he could see, there were scattered a great array of what appeared to be crystal balls, only they were all different sizes, with the largest being about three feet in diameter, and the smallest about an inch.

There were a lot more of the smaller ones, and the largest ones seemed to be scattered the furthest apart.

One of the larger ones was near to Harry and he approached it. As he watched what appeared to be a white mist swirling within thinned out and parted, and Harry found himself watching the events of the reptile house at Chessington Zoo.

Harry could not help but smile as the boa constrictor he had helped to escape snapped playfully at the feet of his cousin Dudley, and Dudley's friend Piers Polkiss. There really was something immensely satisfying about seeing two of your childhood tormentors receive a little payback.

Harry stepped away from the memory and saw that one of the smallest of the spheres was nearby. He reached out and picked it up. He did not see a memory this time, but he distinctly heard his own voice say "Stupid greasy git," which he quite rightly assumed then that this sphere contained a thought the he had had rather than a memory of an event he had experienced .

Harry began to move around, checking the different spheres for what they contained. It turned out that the smallest spheres, the ones below a foot across in size, were thoughts, their individual sizes a reference to how long the thought was. Above a foot in size and the spheres contained memories. Again differing sizes represented the differing lengths of each memory.

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