From friends to this -Year six (re-uploaded) Book 1/4

Entry 4, Febraury 25th 1995

After the task and before Cedric's party I had a longer than usual lesson with moody; this one lasted about two hours.

When I went inside his office, there was a pensive on his desk. He asked if I knew what it was, naturally I answered. I had seen them before, Mum has one. It was shiny with his memories. We spoke for a bit about what Occlumency  and legilimency and what it is; essentially-to my understanding anyways- it is mind reading, although Mad Eye says it is very different and then legilimency is the ability to to extract memories and feelings from another individuals mind, occlumency is blocking your mind.

After a while of talking through the theory of it, we practiced. He wanted me to block my mind off from him. He told me its like fighting off the imperius curse, but worse. (Yeah, I didn't understand that one either) I didn't really know what to expect, but the whole thing felt....a little off, intrusive-but then again I guess that is the whole point, right?

He told me, to not forget why I'm here, that I will feel like I am no longer the master of what I allow myself to dwell on and what I don't want to swell on. He told me it would feel disorienting, it certainly did. The only way I can even think to describe it was like a dream, you don't even know is a dream.

Suddenly, once he had pointed his wand at me the office was gone from view and I saw everything, like I was reliving it. He saw it too, he saw my last minutes with my father before I left, he saw me getting tortured, getting tried....he almost saw all my biggest secrets. But that's when my head actually came back to me and I stopped it, after that it was easy. After that he stopped.

When he was done it felt weird, like I had just fainted or something. There is this theory that after you die, for seven minutes all your life replays in front of you, I imagine that's what it feels like. I had no control of anything, it's like I forgot what I was meant to do, what was happening- everything went by too fast for me to even think of what was going on.

Mad eye told me that I had to let go off all emotion, he said that at first it will be easier to do so when you are expecting it but as time goes on and if you begin to become familiar with the feeling of when someone is about to penetrate your mind that the instinct to do so will be natural...easier said than done in my opinion.

But after a couple more tries, I managed it fair enough-not blocking out entirely but not letting him get half as far, we attempted it about ten times and each time the amount he saw halved until all he got was the first memories I had ever had.

There were times when I just wanted it to stop, there was times when it no longer felt safe...he had access to everything, but luckily I managed to stop him every time he got anywhere near to the memories I wanted to keep private, needed to keep private.

I don't like it.

But I have to just push through it and move on, try harder next time. After we were done he sat me down and told me I had done better than he thought I would, however he did inform me that it was overwhelmingly obvious where the section of my mind that I barred off was; he told me he knew where to look every time. My biggest weakness was that, letting him get my mind too much, like I had not learnt my lesson the first time.

It was not a pleasant experience. Honestly if this wasn't for my career and with Moody I wouldn't want to do this. I see why they don't use this in trials, its ruthless.

Next lesson I am going to try disarm him the moment I break out of it, this lesson I felt too drained. But next time we are gonna work on that.

-Tara