He was already slightly late to Snape's detention, they'd walked back from Hogsmeade more slowly than he'd realised, but Harry didn't particularly care. Dumbledore was not going to expel him for being five minutes late, and since he was already in detention for what would conceivably be the rest of the year they no longer had anything to threaten him with.
He walked past the Great Hall and down towards the dungeons and Snape's office at a casual pace, taking the time to watch the lower years edge away from him. Katie would have been pretending to recite the words to some dark spell by now.
Harry wasn't really tempted. It was funny when she did it, or when they did it together, but not while he was on his own.
'You're late, Potter,' Snape drawled when he eventually reached the office.
'I got held up because of Professor Umbridge,' Harry replied, which was very loosely true. The meeting had been held to make up for her lack of teaching.
Snape's office looked very similar to the potion's store, only the ingredients on the walls looked a good deal rarer. Harry spotted a few things he was fairly sure Snape shouldn't have in jars on the wall, including Ashwinder eggs and something that looked quite like dragon's blood.
'The headmaster is concerned by your recent spate of behaviour,' the potions teacher told him, looking down in the same strangely neutral expression as before. 'He believes there is a connection between you and the Dark Lord, and that his emotions are influencing you through it.'
A connection? Harry thought acidly. Are you sure he didn't mention anything about a piece of his soul being inside me?
'He has decided it would be prudent for me to teach you the mind arts and show you how to block out the Dark Lord's influence.' Snape fixed him with a piercing stare, something Harry avoided meeting given the subject of his detention. The potions master lips curled into the slightest of smiles. 'He mentioned that you had something of an interest them, though I'm sceptical that you have the emotional discipline for them.'
'How will you be teaching me?' Harry asked. If it was anything more than theory, then he'd have no choice but to occlude Snape from the very beginning. There were too many things that he couldn't let him, or Dumbledore know.
'I will attempt to breach your mind and you will try and keep me out.' Snape sneered slightly at the thought of not being able to penetrate the thoughts of a fifteen year old.
'Clear your mind, Potter,' the potions teacher ordered, drawing his wand. Harry emptied every thought from his head, focusing on the feeling of nothing, on the emptiness he had used to be, feeding every emotion and thought in his head into it.
'Legilimens,' Snape hissed, and a stabbing pain erupted from his temples. Harry ignored it, and let the nothingness consume him further.
Snape visibly flinched, but continued to press his assault, driving the ache in his head to new heights. Harry hurled himself into it, recalling the disassociation from everyone and everything, the aimless, meaningless hollowness that had been him, and letting everything else drown within it.
Snape swore and broke the link. Harry looked up, curious, he had never heard the man curse before.
'That was not proper occlumency, Potter,' he spat. 'I have never met a wizard who defends his mind by using creating such an unbearable feeling in which to trap their opponent.' His lips curled up again into that faint smile. 'It is quite unorthodox.'
'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied, wary now of where this conversation would head. If Snape thought he was competent enough to keep Voldemort from influencing him, then he and Dumbledore would realise that Harry's actions had been purely his.
'How long have you been practising the mind arts, Potter,' Snape asked, his tone cool, but not overtly hostile.
'A little over a year,' Harry answered honestly. 'The basics of clearing your mind help with focusing to cast spells, and I continued learning once I discovered more about it.'
'Then you have come a very long way in a very short time,' Snape told him flatly. It wasn't quite a compliment, or congratulations, just a statement of fact.
'It seems to come to me naturally,' Harry shrugged, 'maybe I inherited a knack for it from my parents.' He knew for a fact that an aptitude for the mind arts had been inherited from somewhere on his family tree.
Snape's upper lip curled. 'If you have, it was not from your father,' he sneered. 'James Potter did not have the discipline or the subtlety that the mind arts require.'
'My mother then,' Harry responded calmly, not let letting Snape antagonise him.
'You should be thankful that you appear to be more like her than anyone realised,' Snape said, his tone subdued.
Did he know her?
Harry knew that they must have been in the same year, his mother and father had been in the same year as each other and Snape was the same age as his father would have been. He supposed it didn't really matter, they were both dead.
'So what now, sir?' Harry asked.
'I was supposed to teach you how to occlude your mind from the influence of the Dark Lord, but it seems you are completely capable of it already as long as you remember to do it.' Snape looked briefly thoughtful, a surprisingly placid expression his sallow face. 'I have to keep you in detention for at least an hour every week until Christmas to avoid external repercussions for your actions, so we shall continue to practice your occlumency regardless. We must be certain that you can keep the Dark Lord out.'
'Thank you, sir,' Harry replied, keeping his tone even, despite his irritation. He'd rather hoped Snape would just stop giving him the sessions altogether.
'You can go for today, Potter,' Snape instructed, waving a hand at the door. Harry turned to leave, glad he could go early and more glad that it seemed Snape was not capable of stealing his secrets as long as he was careful.
'Potter,' the potions teacher called, just as he stepped out of the office into the corridor. Harry turned back, but Snape didn't speak immediately. He seemed to be struggling with something. 'It's reassuring to see that you have not wasted as many years here as I thought,' his face tightened uncomfortably, 'your mother would be proud of your recent improvements, don't slide back into acting like your contemptible father.'
So he did know her.
A younger Harry would have asked about her, might even have begged, but he only gave Snape a neutral look in response to his backhanded compliment, then continued on his way. His parents were dead. He wished they weren't, but Dumbledore had warned him in front of the Mirror of Erised how dangerous it was to dwell on unachievable dreams.
Snape does have a point about wasting time, he realised.
He'd improved a vast amount last year, but relatively only a little this year. Granted, he had less time, there was no excuse not to go to lessons, or not to do his homework, and he was not so far ahead as he had been then, but he'd still managed far less than he ought to have.
It's time to push things on, Harry decided.
He'd offer to teach Neville occlumency, start improving his duelling by learning to deflect hexes like Riddle and by practising with Fleur, and he would talk to Sirius again. Hopefully his godfather might have learnt something about Dumbledore's plans that would help Harry implement his own. If he wanted to find about that prophecy it was likely he would have to leave Hogwarts, and it really would be best if both Dumbledore and Umbridge were unable to interfere.
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