hh_mirror | owl to Professor Snape, warded with the usual sigils of light

Dear Lezard Valeth,

I shall be in my quarters after luncheon, should that prove convenient for you. I will look forward to resuming our studies.

Yours truly,
Prof. Severus Snape.

He smiles in satisfaction, feeding Damon the smoked ostrich, a special treat.

Lezard, who is unaware that a message from him occasions smoked ostrich for the lucky owl, has actually been rather late in writing to Snape. He knows he ought to have written weeks ago, after the bizarre luau party.

However, he is confident that this shouldn't matter much. Time doesn't matter much to anyone at Hogwarts, he has found. And why should it? Lezard has idly wondered whether there might not be something strange in the flow of time here. As long as it works in his own favor, he is amenable to temporal anomaly.

He's tolerant of all manner of anomaly, really.

He shows up at Snape's quarters in the afternoon. If he seems a little late, well, luncheon is an odd time-marker for a person who no longer requires food.

He knocks at the door, as if he couldn't simply materialize on the other side. Courtesy is important.

"Come in, please." Severus smiles as he opens the door, revealing a glimpse of his teeth, which again looks unnatural, but he is genuinely glad to see his student. Again the chairs are set facing one another. "I will take tea, and you are welcome to join me if you wish. Have you any new thoughts on occlumency, on revelation and clandestinity?"

"None whatsoever, I'm afraid," says Lezard, his tone striking the proper note of regret and ameliorating a remark that might otherwise sound flippant. He takes his usual seat. "I would be happy to take tea with you." He enjoys the collegiality of tea; enjoys, too, the respect that Snape accords him. For it is quite possible there are things in this new universe that Snape, a native, knows better than Lezard, and for this reason Lezard finds it useful to maintain the professor-student relationship that the school structure dictates. Yet the young mage has made no secret of his immense power, power enough to build or break worlds, and Snape is more than smart enough to acknowledge it.

So very different from the last school Lezard attended, and the last professor whose authority he pretended to respect. That ended rather badly. Has Lezard told Snape about Lorenta? He cannot remember, now. He said so very many things at his Sorting, not knowing it was an evaluation, half-mad and reeling from the composite Valkyrie's final blow. He may well have spoken of Lorenta's death.

"Mostly I have found myself frustrated that I remain entirely incapable of legilimency. I do mean entirely incapable. It's enough to make me wonder whether there may not be some limitations inherent in the power I, ah, inherited."

Odin's power. Not really an inheritance so much as a usurpation.

Glad of the companionship as Lezard agrees to the tea, he goes about the small spell to heat the kettle, leaving it to steep, warming the cups. Small rituals. He offers his student a chair and again sits across from him, as glad of the opportunity to learn and talk as to teach.

"Now, I have told you that we do not teach Dark Arts here at Hogwarts. Legilimency is the invasion of another's mind. I may teach you occlumency, the defence against the invasion of your own mind, or another's. Legilimency is not an unforgivable curse, as are some spells of dark magic - you have seen me perform it, and I believe I told you I had used it professionally. Have you tried it and been unsuccessful? The best thing to do is to practice occlumency and to find the ways in which another could enter your mind - to play and contemplate the chess game after one has mastered the preliminary steps. As occlumency wanes, legilimency waxes."

He tries to regain the acceptable balance. He can only teach legilimency in one way, and that is through occlumency. He further fears, albeit with a slight amusement, that Lezard is involved in some foolish fledgling relations with Silmeria, who he had previously suspected of being capable of some otherworldly type of legilimency against him. He likes Lezard, and admires him, but there is this attachment to these fools unworthy of him. On the other hand, Silmeria may still be sinister and have somehow influence Lezard. He will address that presently. He had allowed her to touch him familiarly, Severus had seen, and he had seemed pleased rather than nervous.

Severus himself must be careful, for temptation is there and even in private, his behaviour must seem impeccable. His time before the Wizengamot and the debt he owes Dumbledore is still with him.

Lezard shrugs aside the rote objection. "Surely you can't be held responsible for what I study. Or would you be expected to prevent it?" He laughs a little, not maliciously. "By the way, I do hope the former headmaster's injury is fully restored to health. I have heard nothing, so I assume my cure was efficacious."

The implication here is that Dumbledore, and the authority he still represents, must know something of Lezard's abilities. It would be grossly unfair to expect that Snape should stop Lezard from doing anything he chose.

"I see no reason why I should accept the quibbling formalities of this 'wizarding world', though I realize you must pay them tribute. To be quite honest with you, I had entirely forgotten there might be any reason I shouldn't learn the so-called Dark Arts here. In any event, you needn't worry I will press you to teach me legilimency. As you say, the principles of occlumency and legilimency are fundamentally the same. To learn the one is to possess the key to the other. Yet I can perform the one and not the other; and I do not think it's for lack of teaching. Certainly it's not for lack of trying."

"It is merely that I may not teach it. You will remember a war has just been fought pitting Hogwarts against dark magic. It is not forbidden."

He had said what he must, saying some things, not saying others, subtle as he must be, and he had not said that Lezard should not learn legilimency. Perhaps, after all, he can show him, by demonstration, the way in which he himself practices occlumency by allowing him to try to enter his own mind.

He will the precaution of leaving his memories in his penseive of course, to demonstrate the balance. He only has one penseive, however, and they are not common. Nevertheless he decides to show it to Lezard. It is only fair that he be aware of it.

"Before we start, I wanted to show you this - before we go farther. One may put one's thoughts in this - to safeguard them temporarily. The thoughts can be entered then, if one looks into the water. It is almost as if one were scrying, but more vibrant, intense and personal.

"They are rare, but very useful. I know you are powerful. Perhaps you can duplicate it for your own use. For your privacy. I don't wish to be deceitful."

Lezard examines the Pensieve with curiosity. "I see." A strange device indeed. "I have never been partial to the sort of magic which involves placing a part of one's awareness or force into another object for safekeeping. It invites vulnerability, does it not? The mage who uses such a technique is then only as strong or as secure as his collection of vessels. Would your thoughts, stored in this device, not be then accessible to whatever person is clever enough to find the device?"

"I would never recommend leaving them there unattended. The pensieve has several uses, all of them very temporary and immediate. One may use it to show another one's experiences, or to revisit them oneself and reflect on the meaning of one's own actions, or the words and actions of others. The other use is to leave them there, protected by one's presence and near to hand in such situations as this where one would retain certain secrets but let another into his mind."

"I see," says Lezard again, and will say no more on the subject. His closed face and the finality of his tone might well suggest what he does not say: that he sees no use in such a device for himself, only an added vulnerability. He's fought or assisted in many battles where a given target on the battlefield that is quite apart from the foe's body will turn the tide of combat in one's own favor. A Pensieve, he thinks, is to Legilimency what such a target would be in battle. He would be distilling his own secrets, separating them out in the clearest possible way, for anyone with the ability to get hold of the Pensieve. For he doubts that the device could be inconspicuously used immediately before a raid by Legilimencers. If one could foretell such a raid in time to secrete one's memories, couldn't one simply avoid the raid altogether?

To induce another person to use a Pensieve, though -- now that might be useful indeed. Not Snape, of course. He has little interest in witnessing Snape's memories.

The young mage leans back in his chair. "Hmm. I don't know that you should wish to attempt entry to my mind today anyway. Let us confine ourselves to theoretical discussion, perhaps, Professor?"

"Indeed, I was presenting this as information - as a tool to technique. I was rather considering that you could attempt entry into my mind. Not tonight, as you suggest, but in order to see what memories I would select to show you. We could set up an example of something to hide, something to show in order to create verisimilitude of a whole person. But as I would be disinclined to do that without certain precautions, I wanted to present them to you rather than deceive you, and as occlumency is a discipline consisting of a continuum between two people, I wanted to offer you the same opportunity. It is prudent and courtious to offer. I would not insult you by suggesting you do not have secrets worth keeping from me."

Lezard nods. "I can understand this. There are moments no one wishes to share, perhaps moments of no strategic importance, that are prized nonetheless for sentimental reasons, or to preserve one's pride."

The teakettle begins to whistle, and Lezard is quiet until it too is silenced, whereupon he resumes speaking.

"Of course, those are the moments that an intruder may find most seductive ... isn't it the locked door, or the door marked keep out, that captures interest immediately? I wonder if it might not be possible to arrange one's memories in such a way as to mislead an intruder toward just such trivialities, and away from what one wishes for tactical reasons to hide."

Severus pours the water into his teapot. The aroma of Lapsang Souchong rises on its steam.

At Lezard's reasoning, he smiles, pleased. His teeth show. "That is exactly what one should do. If one follows those tactics, one's task is to convince one's opponent that these would-be hidden things are valuable or interesting. One must divert them from their original expectations. If they are inclined to reason that what is closely guarded is most useful, they may be lured as you wish. Focussing on lesser things, perhaps emotional things, also places your more critical secrets to the back of your mind from whence it is more difficult to retrieve them. Often they may go undetected.

"But one does not leave one's memories permanently, or even temporarily in a penseive. I offer it and would use it for pride and because not all secrets - neither those that are personal, nor those that were once tactical, are wholly one's own. The pensieve is more a tool to aid study, and a guard of privacy, as one may show one's face but closes one's door while bathing." Severus is a private person. He respects Lezard, so he has offered it to him as well.

"I will think on this, Professor," Lezard promises. "I simply do not think it's a good idea to try this ... right this moment. Perhaps at our next meeting ..." He watches the steam rise.

owl to Professor Snape, warded with the usual sigils of light

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