Worlds can be shattered in an instant. Children go from experiencing new things in blissful innocence, to adults facing the harshness of ever-changing existence in the span of a single moment. Those who see the truths of the world are presented with...
Weeks came and went. Artemis found herself gazing out windows at the dreary autumn sky more than once in each class. Her thoughts changed with the brisk winds. She wondered about Emma, her mother, her father.
She'd received no word from any of them.
Distracting herself with work had been one of the few things that kept her from spiralling into her thoughts. When she wasn't helping Madame Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, she was working on her extra credit potion for Slughorn, or nurturing her own small crop of White and Cretan Dittany at the back of Greenhouse Seven. They had many uses, one of which being a crucial ingredient in her potion Essence of Dittany.
When she'd asked her Head of House Professor Sprout about using a small corner of the greenhouse, the squat witch had been more than ecstatic. She'd even given Artemis a key.
Artemis misted the stalks absently, her mind wandering to Ginny's plan to resemble the DA as she also flipped through a book on Legilimency. Her days were so often filled to the brim with multi-tasking that she seldom completed anything.
Protection Charm Your Mind: A Practical Guide to Counter Legilimency by Franciscus Fieldwake.
" — A tired and true technique to counter Legilimency is to clear one's mind," Artemis murmured the words, yawning suddenly, "Not bloody likely. Oh! Christ."
Her Dittany plants were drowning. She raised her wand and banished the excess water with a sheepish smile. If Sprout had seen her she'd have gotten an earful from the older witch.
Artemis stood on shaky legs and brushed the dirt and leaves from her robes. She replaced the watering can on the shelf and shoved the useless book into her bag.
The ground crunched as she existed the greenhouses and wandered up the grounds intending to go to the library to find a better book. Or perhaps Neville. She was fairly certain he'd begun teaching himself some form of Occlumency because he'd stopped coming to the infirmary for potions.
After weeks of research whenever she had a spare hour, the only method of Occlumency that had stood out to her was a rather rudimentary one. That's actually why it had stood out to her. After reading a book on Advanced Occlumency she'd quickly realized she'd never excel at the magical art, but it didn't matter when the Carrows were the interrogators.
The method that Artemis had found was rather frowned upon from many sources. In Maxwell Barnett's Guide to Advanced Occlumency, he'd called it unsophisticated and primitive.
Artemis begged to differ. When one had a mind as full as hers, there was no organizing it or emptying it or clearing it. Instead, if someone attempted to invade her mind, she would throw every painful and overwhelming memory in her arsenal to overwhelm the Legilimens.
And Artemis had plenty of overwhelming thoughts.
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