Dabbling With The Dark

Chapter 3

" regular speech "

Italics is telepathic talking between Harry & Voldemort

Bold is Parseltongue
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When September 1st arrived, Harry was more than glad for the train full of other students to arrive. Other students being there meant that everyone, that being Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, would leave him alone more. It also meant that others, namely Snape and Filch, would stop watching his every move so much. Between all of them, the past month at Hogwarts had felt more like being in prison than being in school.

It hadn't always been easy, but he'd still managed to learn loads more from those nine books hidden in the bottom of his trunk. He'd also managed to get four more. Those took some careful maneuvering to obtain. Two he got by going flying at the pitch, then when sure he wasn't being watched from a window anymore thanks to a very useful monitoring spells from one of the previous nine books, he covered himself with his invisibility cloak and flew to a clearing not too far inside the Forbidden Forest to meet an owl waiting there. Another book took an entire day to get since it was hidden in the Chamber of Secrets. The last, well, that one was the hardest to get since he'd had to steal it out of Snape's office, use a copying charm on it, and return the book before Snape found out it was gone. He'd managed it, though, and the spells in it were worth the risk in getting it, all of them were.

For as much as he'd learned from his 'psuedo teacher' and the books he'd received, what he'd learned most is Occlumency. He didn't consider himself a master at it, not by a long shot, but he could push Voldemort out of his mind at the drop of a hat now. By extension from 'seeing' Voldemort do it to him, he'd learned a bit of Legilimency, too. Not enough to pick at Voldemort's brain for the evil bastard's future plans, but he wondered if he could do it well enough to get into some people's heads, like Crabbe and Goyle, to see if they'd overheard anything their Death Eater fathers had said around them. Then there was always Malfoy, but there was a good chance that Draco's mum, dad, or Aunt Bitch-atrix had taught the fucking ferret Occlumency so that might not be a good idea to try. Still, he's wondered if maybe he should if only so he got better at it.

The thing he'd been wondering about most lately is why he hadn't had to really push Voldemort out of his head. Yes, there'd been the few times Voldemort had 'talked' to him in his head, but Voldemort hadn't even tried to push harder into his head when he did lock down his mind. At first he thought it was because Voldemort just couldn't get inside his head anymore, but that theory was shot out the window when he'd been eating breakfast and the first clear picture of the clearing in the Forbidden Forest crossed his mind. His next thought was that maybe Voldemort could send brief images, but couldn't speak to him anymore. That didn't pan out either when Voldemort talked to him about how to get into Snape's office to copy the book. No, it seemed to him like Voldemort was keeping an eye on him through the one weakness his still had with Occlumency, that being maintaining it all day and night. He could feel it when Voldemort tried to brush against his mind from his scar more than anything, but Voldemort hadn't really been pushing at his mind like the bastard used to. In fact, mostly when he felt Voldemort trying to access his mind was right around when he was done with one of the books. And as much as he hated-HATED-to admit it, if Dumbledore had hired Voldemort as the DADA professor all those years ago, something he'd learned from Voldemort and not Dumbledore as usual, he doubted any student in all the years since would have failed a DADA O.W.L. or N.E.W.T. If he was even the slightest bit confused about something, it just happened to be covered from another angle in the next book he read. Yes, the bastard was only teaching him anything to protect the Horcrux he held, but he couldn't deny that Voldemort was brilliant at DADA. None of that answered his question, though.