Advanced Level: Lesson I on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Professor Levy

October 04, 2012 7:27 PM

Advanced Level: Lesson I by Professor Levy

“Good afternoon, class,” Erika stated, as the students filed into the classroom. She often gave the younger years a chance to settle down before beginning. However, the advanced class did not offer as much opportunity. She was under the firm belief that at this level of coursework, they should be prepared and ready to go, especially in this class. Advanced Defense against the Dark Arts required nothing less than the best one had to offer. And though, it was perhaps, not a reality quite yet, many of her students would probably go off to careers where more than just being fired from a job was at stake - the possibility of injury and death, whether it was theirs or someone else’s was real. It was an immense duty that fell on her shoulders to prepare them and try she would to prepare them.

Sitting tall on her desk, she brushed her dark hair out of her face. “Last year, we had a couple of weeks study on mindsets – positive and negative.” The timing was perfect, because her Intermediates were currently on this particular lesson. “At the time, many of you were probably a bit confused and wondering how this would actually ever impact your lives. Today’s lesson might help make a bit more sense of it. We are going to begin our study of legilimency and occlumency.” Erika gave the words a moment to sink in and her lips quirked at one corner for those who showed obvious understanding.

“Legilimency can loosely be referred to as ‘mind-reading,’ however, this is considered an insult to anyone, Legilimens, who practice the art. The mind is very complicated. To even attempt to navigate it can be quite trying and once anything is found, it can be interpreted incorrectly. Added on to this, any number of things can go wrong during the process and can do damage to either person.” The entire idea sounded quite frightening, but hopefully, the next part was a bit of a reassurance, if not somewhat disappointing. “Of course, only a small number of wizards and witches are even able to branch into this type of magic.”

“Unfortunately, we have to be aware of the ones that can. This is where Occlumency comes in to play. Occlumency is the practice of blocking the mind against such attacks. If we look back onto positive and negative mindsets, we can now get a better understanding of how they come into play. Both mindsets can be attacked, but a negative mindset is easier than a positive, because everything that can be used against the victim is lying on the surface just waiting to be used. While we can’t control our natural mindset, we can know it, accept it, and then focus our control so our mind is strong. A strong mind is harder to penetrate.”

Pausing she gave the students a chance to catch up in their notes, before continuing on, “With the practice of Occlumency, we can strengthen our minds and make them less vulnerable. An Occlumens, who is particularly accomplished, can even provide false information. This is why to a Legilimens interpretation is particularly important. All right, that said, many of you may be wondering how can you tell if someone is practicing Occlumency on you?” She knew this was the scary part. “It may not be noticeable at all if the Legilimens is of a high enough skill. Otherwise, one may feel the penetration in many forms. There may be slight pain or having memories brought up that you don’t want to think about to even just the feeling of something intrusive.”

Clapping her hands to break up the intensive talk, Erika said, “All right. Let’s break up into groups of two. There is a pile of cards on each desk. Using these cards, I want one person to try Legilimency on the other person and the other person to try Occlumency. The person using Occlumency should attempt to empty their mind, concentrating solely on one of the cards without showing the card. The person using Legilimency will try to figure out what the card is. After three cards, switch. Most of you may not accomplish much in terms of Legilimency, but just practicing the Occlumency will help strengthen your mind. If any of you feel that you have managed Legilimency, please let me know and if you wish, we can talk about further lessons. Okay, begin!”

OOC: Standard posting rules apply (grammar, 200 word minimum, etc.) The more detailed and creative the post, the more points earned. More information on positive and negative mindsets can be read in the Intermediate Lesson. Happy posting!

Subthreads:

My mind is a blank book, I swear. by David Wilkes, Aladren

You read my mind by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

0 Professor Levy Advanced Level: Lesson I 0 Professor Levy 1 5

David Wilkes, Aladren

October 17, 2012 4:01 PM

My mind is a blank book, I swear. by David Wilkes, Aladren

The Aurors and Hit Wizards and Magical Law Enforcement Squad people and so on and so forth were all, from what David had put together after five years and a lot of reading in the Wizarding World, generally pretty good and admirable fellows, but joining them wasn’t something that he ever expected to seriously consider. It was one thing, after all, to fantasize about being the great wizarding hero when he was eleven, and quite another to picturing doing it now that he knew the bad guys would be throwing around spells which could make his intestines violently eject themselves from his body by way of his nostrils. He thought his intestines did their job a lot better right where they were, just as his nostrils performed their function much better at their current diameter than they would at an intestine-sized one, and felt no desire to tinker with these arrangements whatsoever.

Still, though, when the time had come to sign up for his Advanced classes, he had elected to keep on taking Defense Against the Dark Arts. Maybe it was because of a residual desire to become a fantasy hero sorcerer, or maybe it was because he’d gotten the distinct impression, from between the lines of history, that he might be in more danger on a day-to-day basis as an adult than someone with a great big family of wizards anyway, or maybe it was just sheer habit, but he hadn’t felt right leaving the course. And so here he was, learning that mind reading – though apparently that wasn’t the politically correct term for it – was actually possible.

Well, that was unsettling enough. David didn’t have any secrets, really, but the idea of someone being able to probe around in his head wasn’t one he liked, anyway. He didn’t see a need to privacy as a prerequisite for desiring it, which he did.

At least there was a way to block it. That, David thought, was the really interesting part of the lesson. He had read and watched enough sci-fi with telepaths in it to strongly suspect that he did not want to read anyone else’s mind, and he couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d need something out of them so badly that he’d put up with the inevitable learning of way too much about them before he found it, so keeping the rare other people who could pull off Legilimency out of his head seemed to him a much better use of his time than learning how to break into anyone else’s. He knew enough about things seeming pretty on the surface to know that it was usually better to stay in the dark about what went on beneath it all.

He grinned uneasily at the next chair over. “Fun lesson, huh?” he said, tapping his three cards against his desk. Empty his mind, and yet hold something in it. So they were showing the other person what they wanted to see, only it was real? That was…kinda bendy; he sort of liked it, as long as he didn't think about the part where the other person might see something. "You want to pair up for this?"

16 David Wilkes, Aladren My mind is a blank book, I swear. 169 David Wilkes, Aladren 0 5

David Wilkes, Aladren

October 17, 2012 4:01 PM

My mind is a blank book, I swear. by David Wilkes, Aladren

16 David Wilkes, Aladren My mind is a blank book, I swear. 169 David Wilkes, Aladren 0 5

Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

October 17, 2012 7:56 PM

You read my mind by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

Jane was still not sure what, if anything, society in general thought of her for doing so, but she had never seriously considered giving up Defense Against the Dark Arts after she took her CATS. By then, she had already been betrothed for half a year, and with that taken care of, with her future as secure as it could be, she really didn’t see why she should give a toss if a few people in society were truly bored enough to discuss her class schedule at their teas. If bad ever came to worst again, she had no intention of being helpless and afraid, or of trying to depend on one of the men in her life, all three of whom were now…deficient, in one way or another. She was going to know how to take care of herself.

Sometimes, though, she did wonder what her professor and her classmates thought of her presence here. It was, she knew, silly to care even slightly about one group’s opinion and not another’s, but she excused herself on the basis of proximity. These were the people she had to interact with. So far, though, none of them were telling.

She remembered the lessons Professor Levy was talking about at once, recalling her brief paranoia about Imperius as she read up on resisting it during those few weeks. No one alive wanted to hurt her, specifically, anymore, but…maybe it was just this class, Professor Levy’s emphasis on training those who were going to go into active Defense after school, perhaps, but she couldn’t help but think, when something in class caught her attention and she did become worried about it, that when one Dark wizard fell, two more rose up to take his place. The Aurors went back to the days of the Roman Empire, in their basic form, and other groups and individuals had been fighting dark magic for centuries before that, and yet, it never quite came under control. Some times were better than others, now wasn’t a bad time to live, all things considered, but always, always there were those people in the background who wanted power or revenge or just to wreak chaos…She had done nothing to the one. For all she knew, she could become the target of another for as little cause someday. It was best to know as much as she could, to treat everything as though it could someday be a real threat, before she had to go out there, where the amount of time she had for learning and practicing would be substantially reduced.

All very negative of her, she supposed, but she thought she had it under control. She was not like…She was not weak.

Even so, the ideas the professor put forward were not necessarily comforting. Perhaps she would not be in trouble with the law if anyone ever found out what had happened, given her age at the time even if the circumstances alone weren’t enough, but the Smythes would most likely see her as damaged goods, and she did not see much of a bright side to being jilted because of someone else’s psychological disorders. Hearing that only a small number of wizards had the necessary talent, too, didn’t comfort her much; she was reasonably sure that Edmond’s former sister did, since it didn’t seem too likely that she could have done what she had to him after it was all over without the ability to see into and sort through his mind, and meeting someone with those skills just by chance made her think they couldn’t be that rare.

Still, it was better to know. It was better to practice. She smiled as though she didn’t have a care in the world as she picked up a group of cards and looked over at the seat next to hers. “Shall we work together?” she asked pleasantly. “You can pick which one you want to start with.” She would rather be the one attempting Legilimency, but she’d have to try both, so it didn’t really matter, she supposed, who started with what. Just that she succeeded in Occlumency and her partner didn’t become very good at Legilimency during the class.

0 Jane Carey, Teppenpaw You read my mind 0 Jane Carey, Teppenpaw 0 5