Day 29

Bugger. I just realized I meant to continue my critique of Mimir's Well today. Hmph.

Anyway, I wasn't going to post this, but then I thought I would so you folks know I'm not slacking. It's Harry Potter fanfiction, so please bear with me. ;)

***

With that over and done with he returned to his studying. He located a spare bit of parchment and a quill and pot of ink, set them up on his desk, and sat down. At the top he wrote “Mental Landscape.” He thought for a moment, the tip of the quill hovering above the parchment, then started to write.

Environment must be either familiar or easy to fix in my mind. Hogwarts, maybe? No, too complicated. Perhaps an aspect of Hogwarts, like Gryffindor Tower. But it must be a place/environment in which I can imbue aspects with emotions and memories. I suppose I could hide things in my trunk. But what would the defensive and distracting elements be?

Something familiar… what about Quidditch?

Harry stopped and read the last sentence. It had just been a passing fancy, but as he thought it over it began to have more appeal.

Defensive element: Bludgers imbued with anger and negative emotions. If I’m in these mental landscapes, I could direct them with a bat towards the attacker.

Harry frowned in thought. In the margins he scribbled: Would the attacker show up in the landscape? He flipped through the book to a description of one person’s mental landscape. It seemed like an attacker would show up as some sort of entity, so Harry wrote a bolded YES underneath his scribble.

Distracting element: the Snitch, imbued with whatever I want the attacker to know—unimportant things, or misleading memories and emotions.

The book said that distracting elements worked well if they were either large or bright and shiny, or both. The Snitch, while shiny, was small, but if he directed it to fly around his attacker’s head it should work. That only left the protective element. Deciding to continue his theme, Harry returned to his parchment.

Protected element: the Quaffle, imbued with anything I don’t want the attacker to see. I can hold it myself, or maybe lock it in the Quidditch trunk.

Leaning back in his chair, Harry reread the parchment. Satisfied that it was at least a good place to start, he folded it twice and slipped it into his book. Having whispered “Grawp” to its spine he set it aside and moved to his bed. Once sitting comfortably, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine the feel of his Firebolt underneath his hands, the sound of the wind rushing past his ears, and the distinct glint of the Snitch.

Concentrating was difficult; the sound of a car honking several streets over jolted him out of the landscape, and not long after a cramp in his foot brought him out again. Gradually, though, he got a feel for it, and soon he had managed ten minutes of flying around on the pitch in search of a Snitch. It felt amazingly real, and Harry smiled, thinking it would have been a cool skill to have during some of the most boring of Binn’s lectures.

The book said it would be a while before the mental landscape would be strong enough to imbue with emotions and memories, and even longer before he’d be able to defend himself without falling into the visualization completely, but for the first time Harry felt he had a chance at mastering Occlumency. He snorted. Even if it didn’t get rid of his visions, a scenario he didn’t want to contemplate, it would be worth it just to prove Snape wrong.

***

Probably doesn't make any sense, since it's in the middle of Chapter Two, and an AU story to boot (it disregards books 6 and 7). Ah well. ^_^