Occlumency lessons WAS: Slytherins come back

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 180459

>> Mike previously:
>> What did I miss?

> Carol responds:
> But what you're missing, IMO, is that LV could--and did--exploit
> the connection   <snip>    he sent Harry the false vision

Mike:
But I didn't really miss that, Carol. I mean, that doesn't change my 
guess that the connection was one-way. And I see that you agree with 
that position.

> Carol again:
> Had Harry actually used Occlumency, perhaps he could have blocked
> the dreams and, more important, the false vision. 

Mike:
My thoughts were that Occlumency could not possibly work in Harry's 
case. I understood Occlumency as blocking outside penetration of 
one's mind. Certainly that's how Snape is using it against Voldemort, 
and how Draco used it, albeit poorly, against Snape. Do we have any 
other examples of successful uses of Occlumency that work in an 
alternate fashion?

I envision the soul connection between Voldy's 'home soul' and the 
soul-bit in Harry as outside of anyone's ability to control, except 
for the owner of the soul pieces - Voldemort. Since the soul-bit is 
already inside of Harry, Occlumency wouldn't work, as that is meant 
to block outside penetration not what your own mind perceives. 

See the difference? Harry wasn't trying to block Voldemort from 
penetrating his mind, Harry was suppose to be stopping his mind - 
through the soul piece - from penetrating Voldemorts. Not the same 
thing at all, IMO. YMMV.



> Annemehr:
> 
> I believe I covered Snape's vulnerability in my original post.

Mike:
Yeah, I saw that, Anne. I was just going for a different angle so I 
thought a brief recap was in order. :)


> Annemehr:
> 
> My assessment of the effect of Occlumency lessons depends 
> pretty much completely on what we get in OoP.
> <snip>
> 
> Ah, but YES, I am sure the connection in OoP was a two way street,
> to at least a certain extent.

Mike:
Don't forget Draco using it in HBP. But let's discuss the OotP 
examples.


> Annemehr:
> First of all, it's the only way LV would have known when Harry 
> actually got the vision of Sirius being crucioed, so that Kreacher
> could be notified to get Sirius out of the way of any inquiries 
> from Harry -- and the DEs notified to clear the Ministry of
> personnel.

Mike:
I think it was Dumbledore that said Voldemort "sensed your presence", 
but it may have been Snape. In any case, it seems Voldemort was able 
to *sense* when Harry was penetrating his mind, when the incursion 
was strong enough. 

So Voldemort did whatever he did to project that false vision of 
Sirius and waited to *sense* the incursion from Harry. That became 
the GO signal for his plan.


> Annemehr:
> Beyond that, we have another example in ch. 36, when Harry and 
> Bellatrix are in the MoM atrium, and Harry tells Bella that the 
> prophecy is smashed:
> 
> >>>  <snip MoM canon> <<<
> 
> And then, of course, LV actually appears in the atrium in response
> to this.  Because Harry, in his rage, roared to Bella the one fact
> she would hate and fear to know, and his rage carried that fact to
> LV's mind.

Mike:
I can't say that you're wrong. All I can say is that I thought LV was
already in the Atrium when Harry got the spikes in his scar pain. 
Just that Harry didn't know it because he was concentrating on Bella.



> Annemehr:
> It's also why I accept the plain-English sense of DD's explanation 
> for why he didn't give the Occlumency lessons.  And this is one 
> thing that seems quite clear to me.

Mike:
There is also this section in OotP:

[Snape]: "He has deduced that the process is likely to work in 
reverse; that is to say, 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....
"He might," said Snape,...
<OotP, Ch 24, p. 533, US Ed.>

Mike again:
Yet the only thing Voldemort was able to make Harry do, it seems, was 
to accept the false image of Sirius' torture. I looks to me that 
Dumbledore, and hence Snape, was wrong on this count. Which makes me 
think DD was wrong on process working in reverse. 

But I can't definitively rule it out, maybe Harry's feelings was all 
that Voldemort was able to receive. That would explain your MoM 
example, while still satisfying the DH condition where LV didn't know 
what Harry was up to. 

This, of course, still makes Dumbledore's reason for not teaching 
Occlumency to Harry wrongly decided. I'm still unclear if his 
admission of his mistake was just over asking Snape to teach it, or 
did that include an admission that he was wrong about not teaching it 
himself?



> Annemehr:
> (A possible explanation for why LV seems to sense nothing in DH is
> that he never stopped using Occlumency against Harry and thus 
> blocked himself from receiving anything from him.  But, since Harry
> had a soul piece within himself, he was able to learn to overcome 
> the "block" on his end whenever he accessed LV on purpose -- 
> because LV couldn't, in effect, practice Occlumency on himself.  
> *shrug* It makes as much sense as anything else I've come up with.)

Mike:
This is similar to what I said above. You're right, it makes about
as much sense as anything else I've heard. Anyone else got a better 
idea?


> Annemehr:
> 
> But the soul piece Harry carried seems to have had precious little 
> influence on the way Harry acted of its own accord -- it seemed to 
> have less of an effect on his personality than wearing the locket 
> did, for instance.

Mike:
Interjecting here to say that this LotR parallel annoyed me to no 
end. 
Back to Anne:

> So I find it hard to imagine that DD was that worried about it 
> apart from its connection to LV.  After all, he spent so much time
> with Harry and his little passenger in HBP.  If the soul bit had 
> such a sense of self, why did it not act up then, regardless of
> whether LV was using Occlumency?  No, I'm afraid I don't find 
> this idea convincing.

Mike:
Well, it wasn't one of my stronger theories. I thought I'd throw it 
out there, but your argument is much more convincing than mine. So 
scrap the "DD was worried about the soul piece taking over Harry" 
part of my theory. :D



> Annemehr:
> 
> Maybe it was how LV knew when Kreacher needed to distract Sirius 
> and how he knew that the prophecy was smashed? ;-)

Mike:
Kreacher I think I had an answer for. The smashed prophesy, eh, I 
think you've got a better explanation. ;) That might be the one.