Occlumency was RE: Sirius vs. Snape

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 99539

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" :

> Dumbledore says at the end that it was a matter of great urgency 
> that Harry master Occlumency and that it was a mistake for him 
> not to have taught Harry himself. So I think the lessons were a 
> genuine attempt. But I also think they were stopped purposefully.
> 
> I mean, the more I think about that set up with the Pensieve, the 
> more it smells. Harry is careless, and so he never thinks it's 
> significant when someone else makes a careless mistake. But 
> Snape is obsessively *not* careless--it's what makes him an 
> excellent potion maker and a successful spy. Do we really 
> believe that he was so distracted by Montague's plight that he 
> ran out of his office leaving Potter and a Pensieve full of highly 
> dangerous memories behind him?
> 
> There's a lot about the Occlumency lessons that we don't know. 
> Harry was having them every week, but we see only three or four.   
> The impression is that Snape discovered Harry's vision of 
> Rookwood, Dumbledore decided Occlumency was more 
> important than ever, and Snape threw him out the very next 
> lesson. 
> 
> But in between is the chapter about Firenze, where he tells Harry 
> that Hagrid's attempt is not working and it should be abandoned.  
> Dumbledore is forced from office. March blurs into April.  Harry is 
> still constantly dreaming about the corridor and still dwelling on 
> his dream of being Voldemort. And there may have been more 
> than one. Canon is vague about it. We don't actually know how 
> many lessons or visions there were between the Rookwood 
> vision and Harry's look into Snape's past. 
> 
> But we do get a hint that an attempt which is not working may be 
> abandoned. It could be that Dumbledore  realized the lessons 
> weren't working and instructed Snape to find a way to abandon 
> them without causing Harry to ruminate on why they had 
> failed--lest Voldemort dwell on this too. Why reveal a weakness 
> to the enemy?

Marianne:
Or, perhaps Snape really didn't want to be forced to teach Harry 
Occulmency, and set up the entire pensieve situation to ensure Harry 
would precipitate an incident that Snape could use to end the 
lessons, especially if he'd been giving Dumbledore a running 
commentary about how poorly the lessons were going.  (Let's hear it 
for run-on sentences!)

If Dumbledore thought these lessons were that important, and he 
himself is not in a position to be teaching them, I'm not sure why 
the only other teacher available to provide this instruction is 
allowed to walk away from it.  Somehow, Dumbledore and Snape putting 
together a plan to end the lessons seems to indicate that they were 
not of such dire importance in the first place.

Marianne