Occlumency lessons WAS: Slytherins come back

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180422

Mike wrote:
> Try this one, Anne. :) Dumbledore said he saw the shadow of
Voldemort behind Harry's eyes after the Arthur-gets-bit episode. So
when Dumbledore says "open your mind even further to Voldemort" was
he> referring to the soul bit or the newly embodied LV? 
>
<snip> Dumbledore could have been afraid of giving the soul piece more
incentive to take over Harry's mind, if it perceived DD as trying to
block it from connecting to the father ship. An incentive that it
probably wouldn't have if Harry was being taught by Snape, a perceived
ally.
> 
> If this was the case, the two-way connection to LV wasn't the reason
for the lessons arraingements, and Snape was never in danger of being
caught out by Voldemort. It was the danger from within Harry that 
Dumbledore was worried about. Furthermore, this makes Dumbledore 
wrong on two counts: 
> 1) Occlumency was never going to shut off the connection. The mind 
> penetration was the condition, with the soul piece inside of Harry. 
> The only way to block it was to remove the soul piece, not something 
> Occlumency was going to do.
> 2) Harry's ability to see out of Voldemort's mind/eyes was both 
> exploitable, as Harry used it in DH, and not a danger per se to 
> Harry. Even if DD was referring to the parasite growing stronger, he 
> was underestimating Harry's strength while at the same time
extolling and counting on it, imo.
> 
> And we still wouldn't know if the lessons made Harry more suseptable 
> to inputs from the embodied Voldemort.
> 
> What did I miss? I know I missed something, but can't for the life
of me figure out what it is?

Carol responds:
I agree with you about the connection being (mostly) one-way and Snape
not being in danger. But what you're missing, IMO, is that LV
could--and did--exploit the connection by putting his own dream of
getting into the MoM into Harry's mind so that he, too, would want to
find out what was in the Prophecy, and when that failed, he sent Harry
the false vision of Sirius Black being tortured in the MoM, knowing
that he would think it was true, having had a similar, true vision of
Mr. Weasley attacked by the snake.

Had Harry actually used Occlumency, perhaps he could have blocked the
dreams and, more important, the false vision. But Snape was not
allowed to tell him about the Prophecy (DD didn't want him to know).
All he could do was tell Harry to close his mind and try to force him
to learn to do so, meanwhile reporting those dangerous glimpses into
Voldemort's mind (dangerous because LV was trying to lure Harry to the
MoM) to DD. That's why Snape became angry when "that man and that
room" were in Harry's mind and "unnerved" when Harry asks him what's
in the Department of Mysteries.

Carol, who thinks that Harry's ability to control when he does and
does not see the visions in DH is both a form of Occlumency and a good
thing