Draco and occlumency - WAS Re: Is Lupin a Legilimens? Spell vs Skill

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 157363

Eddie wrote:
> 
> > All this makes sense except I can't reconcile any of it with
Draco's ability to block out Snape's Legilimens.
> 
> <snip>
> 
Aida responded: 
> <snip> The Mugglenet/Leaky Cauldron interview explains it:
> 
> http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview2.shtml
> 
> JKR: <snip> I had an interesting discussion, I thought, with my
editor Emma, about Draco. She said to me, "So, Malfoy can do
Occlumency," which obviously Harry never mastered and has now pretty
much given up on doing, or attempting. And she was querying this and
wondering whether he should be as good as it, but I think Draco would
be very gifted in Occlumency, unlike Harry. Harry's problem with it
was always that his emotions were too near the surface and that he is
in some ways too damaged. <snip> But I thought of Draco as someone who
is very capable of compartmentalizing his life and his emotions, and
always has done. So he's shut down his pity, enabling him to bully
effectively. He's shut down compassion - how else would you become a
Death Eater? So he suppresses virtually all of the good side of
himself. <snip>

Carol responds:
I've snipped most of the stuff on Harry, who had other reasons for not
learning Occlumency besides an inability to compartmentalize emotions,
notably, he distrusted Snape and he wanted to have the dream, not
block it, not to mention that he was exceptionally angry and
uncooperative all that year, not even trusting Dumbledore, who had
ordered Snape to give the lessons. (I don't think that there was
anything wrong with Snape's teaching methods: He told Harry to use any
means he could think of to block the Legilimens spell and actually
praised him when he accidentally cast a Protego that bounced the spell
back onto the caster. He also implied to Harry that he was standing in
for LV--"You are handing me weapons!"--which I believe is his usual or
at least frequent teaching method with Harry. We see it again in HBP
in the DADA lesson and in "the Flight of the Prince." He wants to
provoke Harry into defending himself. Or so it seems to me.)

As for Draco, I think JKR's response is somewhat misleading since
"good at Occlumency" *seems* to mean that he's mastered the skill, yet
he clearly hasn't reached the same level as Snape. I *think* she means
that Draco has a natural aptitude for Occlumency and has learned how
to do it fairly quickly (over the summer). But he certainly isn't "a
superb Occlumens" like Snape, able to block the penetration of his
mind without being detected. It takes Draco a moment to block Snape
("I know what you're doing! I can block you!") and he can't conceal
the barrier he's created in his mind from Snape by showing other
thoughts and memories. (He'd be very foolish to attempt such crude
Occlumency on his "master," the Dark Lord.) IMO, Bellatrix, who seems
to have taught Draco, is probably not a "superb Occlumens" like Snape,
either, given her propensity for revealing her feelings. I'm surprised
that she ever learned it. (Why would she? Who would she be concealing
her emotions and memories from? Surely not her beloved master, Voldemort.)

Anyway, Draco didn't block Snape's "Legilimens," only his attempt at
Legilimency through eye contact. I think that Snape could have used
the Legilimens *spell* to blast through the crude barrier of Draco's
Occlumency and reveal the thoughts he was concealing but that he chose
not to do so because it would undermine Draco's trust in him
completely and ruin the fragile relationship he still had with his
favorite pupil (whose faith in him Bellatrix had probably undermined,
given that he had learned Occlumency to keep Snape from interfering
with his plans).

As I've mentioned to Eddie offlist and as Steve has also mentioned,
there are degrees of skill in Occlumency, and Draco at sixteen is
still just learning. If he survives to adulthood (and I don't mean
seventeen, since he's apparently just days away from his birthday in
the tower scene), maybe he'll become a "superb Occlumens" like Snape,
who can lie to a powerful Legilimens like LV undetected, but Draco
isn't there yet, IMO.

On a side note, I see a gleam of hope for Draco's redemption in JKR's
words "the good side of himself." She said something similar about
Snape on her website, IIRC (Sirius Black is unable to see the good in
Snape, which, by implication, does exist).

Carol, apologizing to Eddie for essentially repeating what she's
already said offlist