Legilimency, Occlumency, Snape, Harry

[laylalast]

No: HPFGUIDX 80250

Annemehr wrote:
<snip>
The times when Voldemort, Dumbledore, and Snape seem to be able 
to "read minds" are when they are being secretive about it. True, 
Voldemort says something like "Don't lie. Voldemort always knows," 
but even he isn't saying how. And Harry has had several moments of 
thinking that DD or Snape were reading his mind when he was looking 
into their eyes. I believe these are examples of using legilimency 
in a very gentle, subtle way just to glean a sense of either 
truthfulness or deceit, or maybe courage or fear -- whatever is on 
the "surface" of the subject's mind, without making it obvious 
what's happening. It is also, perhaps, partly limited in its 
efficacy by being done without a wand.

Lilian here:

Legilimency is presented to us in OOtP as the WW equivalent of a RW 
lie detector. It is used to detect whether you lie by discovering the 
memory/emotion that comes with it. I don't have the books here, but I 
believe it was described as "the memory that belies the answer" or 
something similar.
LV/DD/Snape only use it when they want to find out if Peter/Harry-
Kreacher/Harry is lying to them. From the way legilimency is first 
described by Snape and later by DD, when reciting his interrogation 
of Kreacher, I get the impression that it is a rather accurate means 
of lie detecting (as opposed to the RW lie detector).

>Annemehr again:

On the other hand, in the lessons Snape was putting Harry through, 
he was giving the spell full power. He used his full force; he used 
his wand; the concentration was evident on his face and he was 
muttering. This took Snape beyond Harry's immediate thoughts and 
feelings and allowed him to rifle through his memories. Such a use 
of legilimency is, of course, completely obvious to the subject. 
<snip>

Lilian:

Maybe Snape needed to give the spell full power because Harry was not 
doing anything, so Snape needed more power to penetrate Harry's mind. 
In addition to making Harry clearly aware that his mind was being 
penetrated.

>Annemehr again:
I don't think this "full powered" legilimency is pointless. I don't 
think it only brings up jumbled images. Snape seems to have been 
bringing up memories that were painful, yes, even the one of kissing 
Cho because she was crying so much. I think that is at least a hint 
that Snape was able to control the spell; he was trying to give 
Harry an incentive to succeed at Occlumency. After all, if these 
were truly random images, we would have seen Harry doing things like 
riding the Hogwarts Express, vegetating in History of Magic, eating 
lunch, catching the Snitch, whatever.
<snip> 

Lilian:

I think that the painful memories were in fact brought up by Harry's 
continual angry/angst status. 
To use an example: if I go to bed in an annoyed mood, I may have 
difficulties in falling asleep, because memories of other things, 
completely unrelated, that have annoyed me will crop up. Just because 
I'm in that mood, not because I'm willing those memories to come (I'd 
rather not). In fact, I have to work very hard sometimes to get out 
of this negative spiral, by forcing my mood and memories to more 
happy events. I think we all have experiences like that.
In Harry's case, it is, IMO, therefore likely that the negative 
memories are caused by his negative mood. If he had been in a 
pleasant mood (not really easy in a one-to-one situation with Snape) 
more pleasant memories would have come. 

And that is what Occlumency is in fact about, thinking of memories 
and experiencing the emotions that come with it, that belie the 
actual emotional situation you're in.

Then Salit remarked:
> I would go further than that. I think Snape had control over what
> images came in. They all had the common theme of Harry in a 
helpless,
> scary, embarassing or humiliating situations. Notice that we never
> see Voldemort in these sessions. Snape avoids memories that can
> hurt or affect himself, but I think he pulled especially memories
> of schoolmate type humiliation, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not.
> I think he took some pleasure in these, and that is partly why he
> was so incensed that Harry saw his memories - he probably assumed
> that Harry takes the same pleasure at seeing Snape humiliated as
> he did at seeing Harry in a similar situation.
> 
> Salit

Lilian:

Like I said above, I think that it's Harry's emotional status that 
brings those memories on. And perhaps Snape has pleasure that the 
same happened to Harry as to him, but I doubt it. On the contrary, I 
think that seeing (flashes of) memories that deal with abuse and 
bullying, forces Snape relive his own memories and emotions of abuse 
and bullying. To quote Harry on this: that's no pack of laughs!

Just imagine: you have to teach a branch of magic which almost 
entirely depends on the pupil's aptitude for it. You have to teach to 
a pupil you don't like (whether the dislike is valid or not is 
irrelevant here), in your spare time but you grudgingly do so. As a 
bonus you are confronted with that pupil's memories which bring out 
memories and emotions of yourself that you really would rather 
forget. I'm not so much surprised that things go wrong here 
eventually between Snape and Harry. Snape cannot become lenient with 
Harry because of their similar experiences. For Snape, 'things' come 
to close to the surface for that. 
It's like trying to listen to someone telling about his/her traumatic 
experience while you have been in the same situation. At some point 
your own memories and emotions will come to the surface in a more 
painful way than you would like.

Lilian