I've come across several stories over the years that have included more than just a passing understanding of Legilimency or Occulumency, with many variations between stories.

My favorite use of Legilimency is from this story: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3123807/1/In-Light-of-Silver-Memories by Taliath.

I don't have a favorite for Occulumency as most seem to over complicate it and it takes away from the overall flow of the story. Some stories do 'Minescapes', others do 'mental walls'.

Anyway, how do you prefer stories implement these aspects of magic, and what are your favorite stories that use them.

 

Occlumency books are very rare.

 

I don't have any particular stories that come to mind, but I prefer that occlumency does not involve "shields". The entire premise that someone can know when you're using occlumency completely defeats the point of occlumency. Even etymologically speaking, "shields" are wrong: occlumency comes from combining occlude (to hide) and mens (the mind). If I were LV, and I couldn't freely rifle through Snape's mind as I pleased because he had his super-duper 500-foot-thick solid diamond occlumency shields tightly shut around his mind, I would tell him to "lift" them, or I would AK him there and then. In fact, no, scratch that. I'd just AK him there and then.

If I were presiding over a trial and some suspect on trial were protecting his secrets with his ultra-impenetrable occlumency shields, I'd summeraly declare him in contempt of court and have him thrown in Azkaban indefinitely until such a time as I just happen to feel like hearing his case again. Maybe the dementors will do wonders to soften those shields, eh?

See, you never see that shit in fanfics. You see people singing the praises of some eleven-year-old with his "natural" occlumency shields. Basically, unless I've invested a lot of time in a fic already, and it has otherwise kept me yearning for more, the moment I see occlumency shields, I X-out. Sorry. It's a deal breaker.

 

Also Mindscape. Like a boss. With dragons. And Powerthirst. Manscape.

 

Yeah, that's the point. The stereotypcial bad indy!Harry has Dumbledore stumble back in shock when he runs against Harry's unbelieveable strong Occlumency shields.

Nevertheless that might be kind of a first stage or 'Occlumency for Beginners': Stop the one entering your mind from entering - and only advanced or really skilled wizards might be able to hide the fact that they are hiding something.

Actually that's kind of canon: Somewhere in HBP Snape notices that Draco is able to hide his thoughts - so Draco has some abilities in Occlumency, but he isn't able to pretend he isn't hiding anything.

 

I kind of believe that Legillimency (L)* and Occlumency (O)* are a lot more complex than that.

I always understood it as a sort of multi-layer and multi-purpose thing. There's showing what you one wants to see, which, should be, probably the most difficult of the ways.
There's showing one information, but purposefully leaving out some details, that should be slightly easier. There's misdirecting the stream itself, not allowing to focus on specific bits, which should be the easiest.
And, there's the, maybe possible, shutting out the access somewhat, a thing that's noticeable, and what would be the reason to kill the one who tries it against you. Yet, it is something I always imagined Voldemort employed against the Harry's connection stealing information from him as soon as he knew about it.


In general, the question, I believe, should't be about any walls nor mindscapes, or mind-games, but the whole complexity of the mind itself.

Whenever L contact is initiated, it connects a part of your mind to your opponents.
You don't have access to any secrets, any thoughts, just his mind.
That is, according to Snape, not as a muggle sees mind reading - it is a connection that allows you to catch some information, and interpret it as you see fit. The problem is that you can't really hope the oponets mind to focus about anything else at that time.

The basic L, is touching the surface of your opponent and looking for signs about lies, things he is focusing about and guessing the next spell he is going to cast. Reading it isn't like reading the book, but rather impressions, feels and guesses on the L user part. The basic O, here would be not thinking about the next spell on the surface, not focusing on the lies and the like. A mind that can trick the L way.
Kind of a subbranch of this would be 'clearing your mind' or something - not really thinking about anything. And it's not like there's a wall or a barrier, simply your thoughts are deeper, more primal and less readable. Here, the wizard using L would see that O is being used, what could, theoretically lead to the confrontations Rin mentioned, or if O is more advanced, L would probably write it down on the foreignness of the mind - reading every other person should be a different story altogether.

Advanced L would be pushing deeper - (probably while being undetected with the very advanced forms, but I kind of doubt it) - what Snape was perfoming on harry - looking for something, searching through the information stream you can feel, see and taste, and trying to grasp at anything usefull.

Here O would be misdirecting the stream or dulling it to the point, where both users know what each other is doing, or, as would be more reasonable, trying to trick each other in a complicated game of mind-chess.

In any case, there is no mindscape and no direct contact with the information from either side, just the control of the stream.
Here, L could be finding information that O is feeding him, or letting O user believe that he is - this game of minds has some potential to be fully explored, and not in a barrier sense.


And all this was to say that L and O is complex and should be treated as such, judging from the rarity of the O books.


*I keep misspelling the and am too tired to copy and paste full names.

 

If you have to spend more than a few paragraphs in story explaining the magic, then it's probably not going to be good. Sometimes less is more, and that's definitely the case for Occlumency. Just remember that there really isn't all that many people that know Legillimancy, so unless you spend an inordinate amount of time raising suspicious around Voldemort or Dumbledore, you don't really need it. Any story that really tries to go beyond that and say that it helps for learning retention, or that pretty much every wizard knows some form, or are born with it... it loses my attention quickly.

 

My opinion is that occlumency is being aware of your own mind and what is going on in it, and being able to hide thoughts, guide legilimency probes, and create false trains of thought. The basic skill is to be able to detect other people's thoughts and try to throw them out, which is what Harry just about clumsily manages. Whereas an advanced one will immediately know what are their thoughts and what aren't, and be able to have a fake train of thought going at all times.

Clearing your mind is thus useless for most occlumency. It stops you more than it hinders the legilimencer. You don't need a clear mind to be an expert occlumencer, just mental awareness to be able to notice intrusions and enough control to guide them. A clear mind is basically just for beginners to learn, and a basic defence where you clear your mind to make it easier to detect and remove legilimency probes.

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I hate occlumency mindscapes. I really, really don't understand how having a mindscape where all your memories are locked away makes it easier to remember things. One of the most amazing things about the human mind is how all the different memories are interconnected, so something as simple as sitting down with the smell of the varnish used on the desks of your old school can make it easier to remember what you learned in school.

Compartmentalising all your memories and magically locking them away will both make it slower to remember things and mean you can't make associations as easily. Not good things for everyday thinking, or simply just being able to understand puns. People who in real life make mindscapes have them as well as the network of interconnected memories.

As well as the fact that as soon as you have mindscapes you can enter and interact with then you are into Inception territory. It can be really cool and all, but as soon as you have the option available then you have no idea whether anything happened at all and the story might as well not exist.

 

Albus: What do you want?
Harry: Inception. Is it possible?
Snape: Of course not.
Harry: If you can read an idea from one's mind, why can't you plant one there instead?
Snape: Okay, this is me, planting an idea in your mind. I say: don't think about potions. What are you thinking about?
Harry: Potions?
Snape: Right, but it's not your idea. The target of the Legillimency can always remember the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.
Albus: No, it's not.


Albus: How complex is the idea?
Harry: Simple enough.
Albus: No idea's simple when you have to
plant it in someone else's mind.
Harry: Voldemort is an old half-blood who wants to live forever at all costs. Yet, he wages war for the power with the help of a lot of allies. I need him to decide to break up his growing empire. Against his own self-interest.



Nicolas: What’s the idea you need to plant?
Albus: We want the immortality-seeking Dark Lord to break up his followers and his rising empire.
Nicolas: See, right there you’ve got various political motivations, power stuggles, the remains of humanity and race for power and so forth. But all that stuff’s at the mercy of the subject’s prejudice - you have to go to the basic.
Albus: Which is?
Nicolas: His wish to keep all the power to himself.
Nicolas: Do you have an Alchemist?
Albus smiles.

 

The best way to cover Occlumency is to show how futile it is to guard against it if you're unprepared... for example, Voldemort ripping through the mind of a wizard supposedly more talented than Harry. The key element is that Snape would not show that he's hiding something from Voldemort or even try to fight him, he would simply misdirect or make it seem he's plotting something Voldemort would appreciate. Thoughts of murder, torture, picking on Harry Potter in class... etc.

If Voldemort saw some type of wall he would break it down. Failing that, he would just murder your ass because you could 'possibly' be a threat.

 

I think it's wrong to think of Legilimency and Occlumency as connected in some deep way.

Occlumency is the defence of the mind in general. Not just from Legilimency, but from all external forces, including Veritaserum. It seems to be nothing more or less than the control of your own thoughts: the ability to resist them being guided in unusual directions, the ability to think of something other than what a spell is trying to force you to, etc.

Legilimency, on the other hand, is a spell. Now, it might be a rather deep spell with a lot of expertise to be gained in its use, but it is still a spell. Not a mental technique, as Occlumency is.

I imagine that Occlumency is a rather rare and esoteric skill, something that is hard to teach and cannot really be taught by books (thus, their rarity...). That said, I also imagine that it's the kind of thing that wizards of a certain temperament stumble upon rather naturally, independent of knowing that others can do it. After all, if Occlumency is the mastery of your own mind, those reflective individuals who naturally have a great amount of self-control and order in their thoughts may be adept in its use without even knowing that it exists.

Legilimency, on the other hand, is something which I expect is a rare skill - but known. I think there are many more wizards with knowledge of (though perhaps not skill in) Legilimency than there are practitioners of Occlumency.

 

Check me if I'm wrong, but in canon we don't know jack about O. All that's shown is that when an L attacks someone's mind, scenes of the victim's life are shown and that's pretty much it.

We can assume that an L can search out a category of scenes (worst memories, tell if someone is hiding something, etc.) but that's all. Everything else is fanon.

What we know from canon.

1. L is not reading someone's mind.
2. Clearing your mind of emotion will allow you to O.
3. L is a wand and wandless talent, most likely.
4. L can be rebounded with a Shield Charm even during use.
5. Removing a memory to a Pensive will prevent someone from using L to obtain that memory.
*6. Allows a person to deceive even when dosed with truth potion.
*7. Used to plant scenes in the victim's head. (DoM corridor.)
*8. Used by Snape to predict what spell was being thrown at him.

Did I miss anything?

 

We also know that trying to think of something else is a technique: when Snape used Legilimency on Harry in HBP, after he almost killed Malfoy, Harry tried to resist thinking about the HBP's Potions Book, before the image of the book forced itself into his mind.

And we also know from the end of HBP that it can be used to predict what spell a person is about to use.

Your number 5 is also fanon. We don't know for sure that's why Snape removed those memories into a Pensive. In fact, by all indications a person still knows the things they put into a Pensive, so I'm not sure how it would help resist Legilimency.

We also know from OotP that Legilimency can be used to plant images in peoples' heads (Harry's dreams of the DoM).

 

I think it's a reasonable assumption given the scene. The only other reason that Snape would have the Pensive would be to remember/relive his worst memories and that would make zero sense. Perhaps doing so makes those memories cloudy or more difficult to recall, but that's pushing the envelope and making guesses where there's no evidence to support.

I also wouldn't call the thinking of something else technique valid since it was done spur of the moment and ultimately didn't work. It wasn't something that was taught. We can assume that it might be an avenue for advanced O, once the user is able to control his emotions.

 

Well, we don't know what happened during 99% of Harry's lessons. It's entirely possible it's something Snape taught him. The narration certainly didn't stress it as being a particularly novel way of attempting to fight Snape.

RE: the Pensive, I had always assumed Snape left them there deliberately for Harry to find, so that he could then get angry at Harry and stop the lessons.

 

I'm not buying that- Snape wouldn't have approached Dumbledore to borrow the Pensieve unless there was a practical purpose for it. There may be a specific feature of the device that protects the integrity of moved memories (as opposed to the copied ones like from Slughorn).

"Headmaster, you know that lessons of this sort can get... intimate. I don't relish the notion of Potter seeing certain memories, should he have a backlash. Such things are known to happen."

"Very well, Severus. I suppose you could use my Pensieve to hold onto the memories you think would be most likely be triggered by your lessons. Just be sure to wash it before returning it, alright?"

 

My memory is hazy. Do we know for sure that it's Dumbledore's pensieve?

 

Harry thought so, but we haven't seen any other ones. It could be a standard design.

 

They all look alike anyway. At least those found at the local Pensive store that's next to the Solicitor's Pensive store in Knockturn Alley. Be careful though, because they're very expensive if you aren't the Lord of several ancient families and have the rings to prove it.

Anyway, JKR made the whole thing too flimsy so fanon takes up the slack. I agree that the Shield thing is way to cliche at this point. Making up an entirely new way to defend one's mind with O would be ideal.

This reminded me of The Python Defense, which I enjoyed because it was a little different.