Imperius Resistance and Occlumency was Harry's anger (was Re: Draco's anger.)

[Amanda Geist]

No: HPFGUIDX 122809


Okay, this is very long. It's a summary of canon points dealing with 
Occlumency and Harry's resistance to it, with some interpretation 
interleaved and following.

Horridporrid (great name) said:

> > I also take issue with the lessons not working.
> > In the very first lesson, Harry pushes Snape
> > out of his mind.  

Eggplant riposted:
> Yes, things went downhill from the very first lesson. 

Okay, I've been wanting to do this for a while. Here goes.

In the very first lesson, Harry himself shows he understands the 
stakes:

[Snape speaking of Voldemort]: " '..he has realized that he might be 
able to access your thoughts and feelings in return --'
" 'And he might try and make me do things?' asked Harry. 'Sir?' he 
added hurriedly.
'He might,' said Snape.... [OoP, p. 533]

Immediately following this, the incident where the Death Eaters 
escaped and Voldemort was happy occurred, and Harry apparently 
decided that the Occlumency had weakened him. [542]

Harry comes to feel he's getting worse with every lesson [553]. He 
finds himself dreaming about the corridor almost every night [554]. 
However, what he says about this shows his focus is not on improving 
in Occlumency, but in solving the corridor puzzle: " 'I'm getting 
bored walking down that corridor every night....I just wish the door 
would open, I'm sick of simply staring at it...' " [554].

So instead of fighting the dreams, he's still a willing participant. 
And I'm also willing to bet that the first foray into Occlumency, 
when Harry did resist Snape to a degree, did strengthen Harry's mind 
a bit, and so Voldemort (now aware of Harry) upped the intensity of 
what he was showing Harry to overcome this. And it works; Harry 
focuses on the dreams and not resistance.

The next mention, we see just how much Harry is not applying himself: 
"After a few minutes, however, he remembered that he was supposed to 
be emptying his mind of all emotion before he slept, as Snape kept 
reminding him at the end of every Occlumency lesson.
He tried for a moment or two, but the thought of Snape on top of 
memories of Umbridge merely increased his sense of grumbling 
resentment, and he found himself focusing instead on how much he 
loathed the pair of them."...
[there is another dream of the corridor]
"..Harry awoke abruptly with his right hand stretched in front of him 
in th edarkness, to open a door that was hundreds of miles away. He 
let it fall with a feeling of mingled disappointment and guilt. He 
knew he should not have seen the door, but at the same time, felt so 
consumed with curiosity about what was behind it that he could nto 
help feeling annoyed with Ron...If he could have saved his snore for 
just another minute..."[577]

So here, Harry seems to have completely succumbed, to the extent that 
he has evidently forgotten that Voldemort is aware of him and very 
likely in control of these dreams now. He still behaves and reacts as 
if he's an unknown observer. And he devotes "a moment or two" to 
Occlumency and then allows himself to fall asleep in an emotional 
state.

Then comes the scene where Harry is "in" Voldemort for the 
conversation with Rookwood. [584-586]I can't see that it would have 
helped Voldemort's purposes, so I postulate that Harry did see this 
one by accident--but he left on such a violent note (after 
seeing "his" reflection) that I think Voldemort has just been 
forcibly reminded of the connection. He rejects Ron's solution to 
talk to someone (Ron does not specify a name):
" 'I haven't got to tell anyone,' said Harry shortly. 'I wouldn't 
have seen it at all if I could do Occlumency. I'm supposed to have 
learned to shut this stuff out. That's what they want.'
"By 'they' he meant Dumbledore." [587]

But here, Harry is using the existence of the Occlumency lessons to 
give himself an excuse not to talk to Dumbledore. He does *not* apply 
himself any harder. He didn't mean what he was saying, because when 
Hermione says the very same thing, he reacts very angrily:
"Then, quite abruptly, she said, 'But you shouldn't have seen this at 
all, Harry.'
" 'What?' he said, taken aback.
" 'You're supposed to be learning how to close your mind to this sort 
of thing,' said Hermione, suddenly stern.
" 'I know I am,' said Harry. 'But--'
" 'Well, I think we should just try and forget what you saw,' said 
Hermione firmly. 'And you ought to put in a bit more effort on your 
Occlumency from now on.'
"Harry was so angry with her that he did not talk to her for the rest 
of the day." [589]

When Snape discovers the memory of the conversation with Rookwood, he 
is quite angry as well.  Harry *lies* to Snape about the number of 
dreams he has had. [590-591] I feel Snape pegs him accurately--Harry 
does want them to continue, because he feels they are a valuable 
channel into Voldemort's doings. Possibly because, like Sirius, he 
wants to be involved; possibly because he does not want to lose 
his "specialness" after a summer of being totally ignored. Canon does 
not tell us this.

But Harry still seems to have forgotten that as of just before 
Christmas, Voldemort is in the driver's seat, and neither Snape (who 
knows) or Hermione (who probably figured it out) have explicitly 
reminded Harry of this. I do believe if Harry realized he was being 
controlled all this time, he would have mastered Occlumency quite 
rapidly indeed; but Harry is not the master of his own mind anymore. 
Voldemort's manipulations have been almost constant.

After Harry sees Snape's memories, Harry anticipates a reaction from 
Snape very much in line with the context Eggplant seems to apply: as 
a personal milestone in a personal struggle. Snape's reaction, 
however, is not personal in the slightest. He recovers and continues; 
this was a risk he accepted when he took on the job. [591-592] This 
is borne out by Snape's anger following the next casting of 
Legilimens, when Harry gets to the corridor. He is angrier then, than 
a few minutes before when Harry saw his own memories:
"For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two 
minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories." [593] 

Harry just doesn't get it. Harry continues to have a limited vision 
of this as an issue just between them. But Snape is about the 
business at hand, not some one-on-one power struggle. He also may be 
angry because Voldemort was making himself aware of Harry's mind mere 
minutes after Snape has said to Harry that he, Snape, was responsible 
for spying on the Dark Lord. Harry, because he has failed to apply 
himself adequately, may just have put both the spy effort and Snape 
himself at risk. I'd be angry myself, in Snape's position.

Shortly after this, the D.A. is discovered and Dumbledore is no 
longer available to Harry as a resource, even if Harry *were* willing 
to let go his childish resentment and approach him.

In Harry's next dream, we finally see a faint sign of resistance:
"There was something in this room he wanted very, very much...
"Something he wanted ... or somebody else wanted...
"His scar was hurting...
"BANG! Harry awoke instantly, confused and angry." [635]

This is the first instance in any of these dreams of Harry realizing 
on any level that he was not the sole dreamer of the dream. Something 
*somebody else wanted.* And his scar hurts, and when he wakes on this 
very thought, he wakes confused and angry. Not disappointed and 
guilty. He was, finally, on some level of his mind, fighting back. 
And it's *hard.* Alas, he doesn't seem to have realized what 
happened, or he might have been encouraged in his Occlumency.

And he falls almost immediately back into the feelings Voldemort has 
prepared for him:
"He lay quite still and silent while the pain in his scar subsided 
and disappointment washed over him. He felt as though a wonderful 
treat had been snatched from him at the very last moment...He had got 
so close that time..."  ...
"His stomach gave a sickening jolt as he remembered that he had 
Occlumency the following evening..." [636]

I have wondered if his "sickening jolt" was a little gift from 
Voldemort, who I have no doubt was aware of the efforts to strengthen 
Harry's resistance, and was resisting them by manipulatng Harry's 
feelings. Because Harry so easily could have interpreted his 
realization that "someone else" wanted what was in the Department of 
Mysteries as a positive milestone in his Occlumency.

Then, in the final Occlumency lesson, Harry again *lies* to Snape 
about how much he's been working. [638] Why does he try to hide this? 
No wonder Snape is irritated with him; Snape has done many things to 
Harry, but nowhere in canon has he *ever* lied to him. In my 
interpretation of Snape, lying to a student would be beneath his 
dignity and offend his subtlety. So Harry lying to him must seem an 
insult on top of the frustration he feels that Harry is not working. 

Snape, as Eggplant has so often pointed out, does nothing to remove 
the Pensieve before he leaves the office on this occasion. I, though, 
don't feel he should have needed to. He is on the same side as Harry. 
He is extending a certain amount of trust to Harry, as he has to 
Sirius, at Dumbledore's request. This was an emergency; he was needed 
to attend a student of his House. And he had swept from the room once 
before without a backward glance to make sure Harry followed, and 
without emptying or securing the Pensieve, the night that Umbridge 
tried to throw Trelawney out. No, this was a reasonable expectation 
on Snape's part, and it was a failing of Harry's that he betrayed 
both Snape's and Dumbledore's trust by invading Snape's memories. The 
same curiosity that Voldemort is using to keep Harry on the hook in 
his dreams, makes Harry stick his face into Snape's memories.

Ah, creepy thought--I hope Voldemort wasn't behind *that* curiosity 
as well, or Snape surely is toast.

Then Harry lies to his best friends, about why the lessons stopped. 

He continues having dreams, and we see again that the Occlumency may 
have had an effect, although too late now for the lessons to have 
taken advantage of:
"...It had probably been then that he had spoken aloud...*Just a bit 
farther*...for he could feel his conscious self struggling to 
wake..and before he had reached the end of the row, he had found 
himself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of his four-
poster." [682]

His conscious mind is now trying to bring him out of the dream. He 
*is* fighting the infiltration. But now he is doing it alone and 
unguided, and is indeed easy prey for Voldemort, for later in the 
passage we read
" 'You are *trying* to block your mind, aren't you?' said Hermione, 
looking beadily at Harry. 'You are keeping going with your 
Occlumency?'
" 'Of course I am,' said Harry, trying to sound as though this 
quesion was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye. The truth was 
that he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room 
full of dusty orbs that he was quite keen for the dreams to 
continue." [682]

and later
"He also suspected that part of his mind--the part that often spoke 
in Hermione's voice--now felt guilty on the occasions it strayed down 
the corridor ending in the black door, and sought to wake him before 
he could reach journey's end." [682]

So the result of his Occlumency was a very slow-to-grow (likely as 
the result of Voldemort pushing back) ability to resist, but because 
he did not fully communicate with Snape and had decided very early on 
that the lessons were weakening him, he did not recognize it as such. 
By the time he becomes aware that a part of him is resisting the 
dreams, he is *resenting* that part of him, so enmeshed by Voldemort 
has he become. The Occlumency had been strengthening his mind, albeit 
very slowly, but Voldemort has been manipulating his heart. And Harry 
follows his heart.

So by this point, his mind and his heart are in conflict in the 
dreams. And Harry "sides" with his heart. So he is well-prepared 
ground for the vision of Sirius, which is the next dream-vision that 
occurs [727-728] And his reaction to it is entirely emotional, to the 
point of emotionally rejecting Hermione's logic [731-737], and we 
know what happened after that.

My point here, is that Eggplant's statement "Things went downhill 
from the very first lesson" is only correct in terms of Snape/Harry 
interpersonal relations. I think it is demonstrable from canon that 
the Occlumency lessons *were* producing results. But they were doing 
so very very slowly, possibly because Voldemort was resisting by 
manipulating Harry's emotions. Added to this, Harry has never been 
very good at acquiring skills gradually--the things he is good at, he 
is immediately good at (and I include the Patronus charm, for he 
mastered it very quickly, both we and Harry are told).

Probably Harry had no chance all along, if Voldemort was blocking his 
desire to learn Occlumency. But I disagree strongly that the lessons 
were of no good, or "went downhill" from the first one.

~Amanda