"The very essence of Occlumency is actually the combination of 'Will' linking with magic to build a wall in one's mind. This wall can block entry and prying through magic, and those who excel can even construct false memories on the outside of the wall as a way to confuse the memory stealer, with no way to tell if the memories they see are real or not."
While explaining to Jon, Slughorn didn't forget to grab a piece of Crystallised Pineapple from a cardboard box and pop it into his mouth.
"The Occlumency magic has mostly been learned in two ways, one is a simple and brutal method of forcing one's way into the learner's mind and making him constantly remember the feeling of being broken into, and his body will subconsciously resist and his 'will' will actively mobilise his magic, this is the most primitive way of learning the Occlumency. But I don't like this, it's just too crude, and it's not exactly healthy for a wizard to snoop into another's memory too often."
As he said this, he laid his eyes on the stone basin on his desk.
"So I will be teaching using the second method, which is less crude and much more flexible in comparison. I borrowed this magical item from Dumbledore, I actually owned one before, I just forgot where I left it later on during a relocation. Foolishly, I actually kept the memories of where I hid things, in that same magical item of mine, for safekeeping, but without finding the Pensieve I couldn't get the memories, and without getting the memories I couldn't find the Pensieve."
Slughorn chuckled with a self-deprecating shrug.
"I would never be able to find that Pensieve again, good thing Dumbledore's Pensieve was taken out from that castle with him, or I wouldn't know how to start teaching you. Pensieve is a magical item that is used to store thoughts and memories, and to recreate memories so that they become re-liveable."
Jon asked in confusion as he looked at the stone basin with an empty interior.
"So how would we begin? Teacher."
Slughorn cleaned the icing that had stained his hands from the snack he had eaten while holding his wand.
"Now you are going to recall a memory in your own mind, any memory will do, and I will extract the memory that you are thinking about."
Jon took a series of deep breaths as he began to go through his thoughts to find a memorable scene that was fresh in his mind.
"Are you ready?" Slughorn asked.
"Ready, teacher."
He pointed the tip of his wand at Jon's temple, and then the next instant, some kind of silk thread had attached itself to the tip of the wand, Slughorn twirled his wand and pulled a bright silver thread out of Jon's mind!
The sensation Jon felt now was strange, he could clearly perceive a force pulling his memories away from him, it was not a good experience and his body instinctively resisted the act.
Although his body did not move, the feeling of resistance in his mind was very strong, it was like some robber had snatched something from your hands right in front of your eyes, and your first reaction to it would be to get your stuff back.
At the same time that Jon had this reaction, the silver thread that had been pulled out of his head was suddenly halted as if it had taken root in his head, and the movement became difficult and slow.
But in the end, the wand still pulled the silver thread out in one whole piece.
Slughorn stored the piece of memory he had extracted from Jon's mind into the Pensieve, and he smiled at Jon who was a little lost in thought at the moment as if he was recalling the feeling he had just felt.
"Did you not like that feeling and instinctively wanted to resist it?"
Jon nodded as he frowned.
"My mind wants to disrupt that sensation uncontrollably and... It's almost as if it was acting on its own?"
"Not as if." Slughorn said approvingly, "Your body's instinct to defend itself was very strong, it made a spontaneous resistance of its own volition indeed, and that resistance had some effect."
"That's a very good start, Jon, the Occlumency was created in the beginning after someone registered the feeling of constantly having their memories forcibly read, which reinforced their natural instincts and eventually evolved into magic. Some people are naturally not exactly sensitive to this act of reading memories, and such people would have an exceptionally difficult time learning Occlumency, and you clearly fall into the opposite category."
Slughorn showed his delight.
"This is a perfectly good thing, and it shows that we would probably make good progress after this." With that, he looked at the bright silver, mist-like mass of memories in the Pensieve and asked Jon, "Is this memory something that can be viewed by others?"
Jon, of course, had no reason to refuse, and he entered into the memory that had been extracted from his own mind with Slughorn.
***
The sea was calm under the night sky like a sleeping baby lying in its mother's arms.
On both sides of the long table filled with delicious food and delicacies, students and professors alike rose to their feet, and a melodious chorus followed, led by the bearded old man who sang the opening notes of the school song.
Jon stood on the beach and watched in silence as his own self from three weeks ago was infected by the atmosphere at the dinner table and joined in the chorus.
Slughorn, standing beside him, suddenly sat down on the beach, also looking at the entire student body and faculty of this little Hogwarts with a serene expression.
"What do you remember most about this night?"
Hearing his question, Jon followed suit and crouched down, grabbing a handful of sand from the ground, this memory slipping through his fingers as the sand slipped away, while his gaze remained fixed on the students and faculty who sang with joy and sadness.
"This is perhaps the most memorable day of my life, teacher."
Slughorn rested his left hand on the back of his right, placing his arm on his knee as he raised his head to look up at the sparkling night sky.
"I'm with you on this one Jon, I'll never forget the night when Dumbledore first brought me to this Hogwarts before I even agreed to become a professor here, that sly old man begged me to come without having to give him any exact answers, he said all I had to do was follow him around to see and attend the orientation dinner that year once. "
"That day was just like the night you experienced, a night filled with despair and the last bit of hope that one couldn't even bear to look at, and that's how I was pulled by him to sit down at the table, surrounded by students happily asking me if I am the new professor, and they said that they have way too few professors in the school and were really grateful that I was actually willing to come and teach them. I was actually thinking in my mind at that moment that this was probably scripted by Dumbledore to keep me in the company on purpose, but I just couldn't help but feel a sourness in my nose."
"When that dinner was over, Dumbledore took me by the arm and stood up without any prior notice and announced to the dozens of children that I am the new professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts and the History of Magic, I was pissed off, thinking that I must scold him loudly on the spot, ruin his image, and then turn around and walk away. But in the end, all I could say was 'Hello children, I am your Professor Slughorn.'"
His voice was soft, yet filled with an immense weight of emotion.
"After those words were said, I thought I would regret it, but what my mind actually thought at the time was that it would be nice to just agree to stay and be a professor."
-------------
Thanks for all your love and support.
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Thanks for all your love and support.
Read advance chapters on P@treon. If you have some extra pocket money, Support me at P@treon: www.p@treon.com/Crazy_Cat.
Happy Reading!!!
After Halloween had passed, the temperature in England had dropped significantly.
Hogwarts prepared winter coats for the students, and although the wagon is constantly moving around in exile, living supplies are not scarce.
The fireplaces in the common room were all warmed up too, and Jon and the class were working on their charms class homework there.
Well, to be precise, it was Neville and the three of them who were writing, while Jon was helping them by answering their doubts.
Ron gripped his quill and couldn't even able to put together a single sentence over half a day, he looked at the five or six inches of blank space remaining on the parchment to meet the requirements, and he couldn't help but look at Jon pleadingly.
"Show me your finished homework for reference, Jon, I'll just glance at it, without copying it as it is, it's simply to get some ideas."
To which Jon merely refused in a firm tone.
"Don't even think about it, don't forget what Professor Flitwick told you and me last time in private, you only used it as a model for the last homework too, but the professor still found out about it, if you get caught once more, both you and I will have to write the homework you copied ten times."
"You should better write it yourself, Ron, even if Jon could give you the homework to copy now, can you expect him to write it for you when you take the charms class exam?" Neville also quipped in a serious tone.
"Okay, okay, stop your lecturing, I'll write it myself."
Ron sighed and returned his attention to the parchment with a sad face.
It wasn't that he couldn't really write at all, there were no stupid people in the Weasley family, it was just that he just couldn't focus his mind on something like writing homework or studying.
As the new students spent more time together, they had become much closer than they had been at the beginning of the school year; after all, none of the five has any bad personality.
Although Jon didn't talk much at the beginning, he was always a reliable source of help to the others, both in their studies and in general, which led to him being at the centre of the circle, and even when Neville was unsure about something, he was always the one to help out.
Halloween is widely celebrated in the UK, but for safety reasons, the wagon did not stop at a fixed location for the Halloween feast, instead, the great hall was decorated, and a feast was served inside the wagon.
The passing of Halloween means the arrival of the Christmas season, the most important holiday for all Westerners, is just a month and a half away.
The mood inside Hogwarts became increasingly relaxed, with both the older and younger students looking forward to where Hagrid would take them for the Christmas feast this year.
The attack in September was rarely talked about by students or professors anymore, and it was clearly fading into oblivion for most in the wagon, with only a handful of people still remembering it all the time.
Jon's progress in learning the Occlumency under Slughorn was also steadily advancing forward.
He showed a high degree of talent and his progress was not slow, regardless of whether he was learning those basic magic spells and transfiguration in class or more advanced magic like Occlumency. Slughorn even deduced by his progress that he would be able to officially start teaching him about the spellcasting techniques associated with that ring before Christmas was over, and the year ended.
Just as Jon and the group were catching up on their homework, Filch, who always looked at everyone with a nasty look, came into the common room at some point and walked right up to the square table where Jon and the four of them were and placed a large brown cardboard box in front of Ron's body.
"Here's some stuff your family sent you, Professor McGonagall asked me to bring it over to you. Remember which things are not allowed to be carried around according to the school rules and if there's anything prohibited inside this box, hand it over to me immediately! Or I'll show you what you're made of!"
After saying these threatening words, he left with a stinky face, occasionally looking back towards the box in front of Ron as he walked away as if he wanted to see him open it and make sure there was nothing prohibited inside.
When Filch had completely left the common room, Ron made a face toward the door.
"'Or I'll show you what you're made of!'" He exaggeratedly mimicked the manner in which Filch had just spoken, "He's so annoying, isn't he?"
Justin nodded in agreement; he was just punished the other day for accidentally tripping and spilling ink all over the long corridor.
"He never failed to act according to the rules, despite the fact that he was indeed strict and vicious." Neville reassured.
Lavender, on the other hand, looked at the cardboard box in front of Ron with some anticipation.
"Come on, open it and see what your family has sent you!"
"It must just be some food Mum personally made along with letters telling me to do well in my studies at school, without fooling around like Fred and George, and to use Percy as a role model."
Ron muttered as he opened the cardboard box, and inside there was a large packet of homemade chocolates, and a box of brown fudge, with a letter on top of the fudge box.
He took the letter out and then unwrapped the sweets straight away ready to hand them out to Jon and the rest of the gang.
"Come on, try them all, my mum actually has always been a pretty good cook, although she doesn't get the chance to cook any extravagant feasts."
They were all quite ordinary, but there was a clear look of envy on Justine and Lavender's faces.
Even if it was simple, it was something made for Ron by his mother's own hands; the fact that one of their parents had fled to Iceland to escape the Ministry of Magic, and that the other's memory of even having a child like him had been erased, made them feel what considered as a trivial thing to Ron, a luxury to them.
The attentive Jon sensed the change of emotion in both of them and reached out to take the chocolate as well as the fudge to distribute.
"Both look good, so it ought to taste great."
With the tacit agreement, Neville also changed the subject to something else.
"I've been to Ron's house before and Mrs Weasley and Mr Weasley were both very nice people to be around."
"They just act all nice and easy around the other kids, just ask George and Fred, I don't know how many times both of them have been taught lessons by mum." Ron said as he looked at the letter, "Sure enough it's just as I guessed, Mum's once again telling me to learn from Percy properly."
While Jon was distributing the sweets, he suddenly noticed a thick layer of newspaper padded at the bottom of the cardboard box that Mrs Weasley had sent to Ron.
The front page photo of the newspaper showed people who could move around just like in the video, and a young man he knew very well, was smiling gently at him with a distinctive badge pinned on his chest.
With a slight gaze, Jon reached down and took the paper out of the cardboard box, and right above the photo was the headline of this front-page article.
[Professor of Hogwarts Charms Class, Special Inspector of the Ministry of Magic, and Outstanding Young Wizard of the Late Twentieth Century - Barty Crouch Awarded with Second Class of the Order of Merlin]
-------------
Thanks for all your love and support.
Read advance chapters on P@treon. If you have some extra pocket money, Support me at P@treon: www.p@treon.com/Crazy_Cat.
Happy Reading!!!
Thanks for all your love and support.
Read advance chapters on P@treon. If you have some extra pocket money, Support me at P@treon: www.p@treon.com/Crazy_Cat.
Happy Reading!!!
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