The very quote you gave:

It's quite explicit: Voldemort is kept out of Harry's mind by his "love allergy", the same as at the end of OotP. Harry simply has learnt how to focus on that feeling to keep Voldemort out. But of course, it's only Voldemort who has such an extreme reaction against feelings of love. Any normal legilimens could get past it fine.

The line "the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape" refers to the result of keeping Voldemort out of his mind, not the methodology of occlumency, as he is employing a different method.

 

Voldemort is the greatest Legilimens in the world though. Perhaps at the end of OotP, yes, there was some 'love allergy' at play, but I think it is more that Harry's grief is the only state of mind that gives him the focus he needs to keep people out. Love is his only defense against Voldemort.

Legilimency works by seeking to expose memories, thoughts, and emotions, taking the victim's consciousness out of their present space and into whatever memories etc. the Legilimens is looking for. When Harry is focused so totally on his own state of mind, he cannot be possessed and his mind cannot be read. Love just happens to be the only thing that can get Harry into such a state of mind where that is possible.

If Snape had tried to use Legilimency on Harry right at that moment, he would have failed.

 

Disagree; it quite clearly states that Voldemort is driven away by feelings of grief, then directly compares it to the possession in OotP. It's not that Harry is beating Voldemort in a battle of mental focus, using love as a source of focus. Rather, he's beating him with a particular anti-Voldemort trick that actively repulses Voldemort.

Focusing on love would not affect someone other than Voldemort, because they wouldn't be driven away by it. A normal legilimency attack at that point, from Snape or from anyone else, would have the same effect it always did in the past when Harry tried to focus on something specific rather than clearing his mind. Emotion is the death of occlumency, which is the art of being coldly detached and in rational control. If anything, Harry trying that tactic on Snape would make him even more vulnerable to attack, as he's opening himself up to Snape, broadcasting his emotions.

I would love for Harry to have mastered occlumency, as his inability to do so was one of my greatest disappointments through OotP, HBP and DH (along with his lack of ability with non-verbal magic). But alas, I think this is wishful thinking.

Edit:

We have no reason to doubt Snape's teaching regarding occlumency:

1. Snape had a vested interest in Harry learning it.

2. Snape continues to mock Harry for his inability to clear his mind well after they stop lessons, most notably at the end of HBP. This indicates further that it is indeed the basis of occlumency, not some trick Snape was playing.

3. Dumbledore, who undoubtably was aware of what was going on during their occlumency lessons, was resigned to Harry not being able to learn it by HBP. He wouldn't feel that way if Snape had taught Harry incorrectly.

We also have no reason to doubt Dumbledore's explanation for the OotP possession: that Voldemort was driven away by Harry's feelings of love, which he cannot endure feeling. It wasn't some kind of indirect route to occlumency which Harry temporarily mastered, it was the feelings themselves that drove Voldemort away.

Dumbledore's the highest authority on magic we know, if we start ignoring him we can scrap every other piece of information we're given about magic too.

 

Hm, then I suppose we'll have to disagree. I'm not saying Harry was focusing on his grief for Dobby, and the passage even says that he's not, when he's "subsuming his grief in sweat, denying the pain in his scar." I'm saying that his intensely personal feelings of grief "diminish" his vulnerability to the influences of Legilimency. He's not focused on the emotion: the emotion keeps him focused on his present situation, rather than allowing for his consciousness to be swayed by Legilimency, whether it is Voldemort or not.

EDIT:

Yes we do. Dumbledore himself admits that it was a mistake to ask Snape, specifically Snape, to teach Harry occlumency. Precisely because Snape could not overcome his personal feelings of hatred for James and Harry.

I'm pretty sure Snape is capable of stretching his pettiness over the course of two years. "Clearing his mind," or thinking nothing, is impossible, and Snape never offered any better explanation because Snape is an asshole. Dumbledore admits this. Snape mocks him for not understanding something he never tried to teach. Snape knows he's being full of shit when he says that, and so does Dumbledore. If that is part of Occlumency, it's just that. A part.

But he did feel that Snape taught Harry incorrectly. He was aware of that, and gave them a year to get over it. They couldn't.

He simply states that it's unnecessary for Harry to learn anymore because Voldemort has taken up Occlumency instead, and he realizes what happened at the end of OotP: Harry's love is his greatest weapon against Voldemort because Voldemort doesn't know how to overcome it, and so long as Harry can manage to focus on those he loves, Voldemort will never be able to possess him. Voldemort fundamentally misunderstands love, and cannot overcome Harry when he feels it intensely enough. He also knows Voldemort won't try to use Legilimency through their connection the same way again, because it backfired so spectacularly at the Ministry in his attempt to acquire the prophecy.

I don't think Voldemort was driven away because he 'cannot endure' love, but because he doesn't know how to overcome it.

It's not like he was actively trying to use Legilimency in DH. So he couldn't have been 'driven away.' There is no 'allergy' in that case because Voldemort isn't even aware of what's happening in Harry's mind. The connection tries to assert itself and drag Harry into Voldemort's thoughts, and it's implied that Harry's personal experience of grief allows him to enter a state of mind where he can suppress the mental/spiritual influence of the scar. It's an active attempt on Harry's part to push Voldemort's consciousness away, to close the link. Grief 'drives [it] out' because Harry 'shuts his mind' by focusing on his own grief.

EDIT #2: Again, I'm not saying that he mastered it. But something more like what Pers once mentioned when he said Harry had a knack for learning things on his own, and he even referenced this incident, saying Harry had managed to teach himself, 'auto-didactically,' some method of Occlumency.

 

The problem is, we're never told how Snape learned Occlumency. Snape could have learned it at Hogwarts though doubtful. There's a slight possibility that he would have learned it from Dumbledore later on, but that more problematic than helpful (Gee, Snape, you're not an open book anymore. I wonder why?)

My guess would be Voldemort or another Death Eater. And that is the equivalent of potty training at gunpoint, which also explains his methods with Harry.

 

I imagine it would have been Dumbledore, and the reason no one noticed is because it's impossible to tell the difference between a good Occlumens and someone who is simply telling the truth.

EDIT: Though there does seem to be some difference between passive and active Legilimency. The lie detecting is probably passive, so if Snape could make it seem like he was telling the truth all the time, he never would have had to deal with Voldemort riffling through his memories.

 

I always thought Voldemort was the type to only use legilimency when he already expected treachery, or on his opponents. You don't get many loyal one of kind potion prodigies by insisting on painfully reading there mind all the time.

 

Voldemort like Dumbledore used it all the time it seems. At least enough to tell basic lies and deception. Maybe not "deep" readings like what Harry accidentally did to Snape.

 

You're mixing up pedagogy with reliability. There's no doubt that Snape is a bad teacher. His pedagogy is terrible: he's cruel and impatient. But that is an entirely separate issue from whether or not Snape actively lied about what occlumency is.

The former is something that Dumbledore would allow, as it still remains within Harry's power to ignore Snape's jibes and do the practice. Indeed, being able to suppress his emotional response to Snape's antagonism is the essence of occlumency. Snape explains as much in their lessons: that Harry can never master occlumency so long as he lets his emotions rule him.

In interview JKR has repeated this, explaining that Draco Malfoy was able to perform occlumency when Harry could not because he is good at mental compartmentalisation i.e. putting aside your feelings and remaining cool-headed:

So we have JKR confirmation that being emotional and occlumency are opposed.

Unfortunately Harry was neither able to remain cool-headed with Snape, nor bring himself to practice, so Harry's failure with occlumency is still largely his own fault.

As much as Snape wasn't able to put aside his grudge, neither was Harry. At least Snape has an excuse: antagonising Harry is justifiable in the context of training him to remain cool-headed. But he should have explained what he was doing before hand, not after many lessons had already passed, and therein he is a bad teacher.

Had Snape simply completely misrepresented occlumency then Harry would have had no chance of learning. It would be tantamount to siding with Voldemort. Snape is Dumbledore's creature, completely and utterly, there's no way he'd defy Dumbledore to that extent, nor would Dumbledore have allowed it to continue.

Undoubtedly, though I don't think he'd compromise the entire war effort for it. That's not the point though. The point is that if Snape wants to be petty, mocking Harry for failing to master a fictional skill doesn't make sense, especially as the time has now come that shit is getting serious and Snape is actively trying to help Harry. "Haha your godfather is dead because I lied to you" would be a far more effective jibe than the advice he was giving Harry at the end of HBP disguised as insult.

No it's not, and even if it was, so is magic.

Snape explains plenty: put aside your emotions, clear your mind. Plus we have no idea what else he talked about in the other occlumency lessons we didn't see. Regardless, I find it entirely possible, and indeed likely, that this is the sum total of occlumency. It's not a skill or technique, it's a state of mind that you can learn to adopt. But Harry just had completely the wrong temperament for it.

This is your headcanon, not actual canon.

No, he felt retrospectively that having Snape and Harry try to overcome their differences was futile. He says nothing to the effect that it's entirely Snape's fault, nor does he at all imply that what Snape taught was false. He merely states that Snape and Harry are incompatible, that the grudge between them is too great.

This is outright contradicting canon. It says right there in your quote that Voldemort was driven away. Those exact words. Further, Dumbledore explains it explicitely in OotP:

Harry's love is not a passive defence that keeps Harry immune from Voldemort. It's something that actively harms Voldemort; something the mere presence of which causes him to recoil. It's not a wall, it's a minefield.

No, he isn't, you're correct. Nor is Harry using legilimency on Voldemort. Rather, the connection between the two of them is deepening. The text is clear: the scar connection is imposing itself, and it's happening more frequently. It's not that Voldemort is entering Harry's mind or Harry entering Voldemort's. It's like their minds are coming together from both sides because the connection is growing stronger. On Voldemort's end, his ability with occlumency protects his mind from this, from being drawn into Harry's thoughts. On Harry's end, his ability to repel Voldemort's mind enables him to remain himself.

To sum up:

- From Snape and JKR interviews, we know occlumency is opposed to emotions.
- While Snape is a bad teacher, there's no reason to think Snape was lying about the nature of occlumency. Especially with JKR interview confirmation.
- It's not that Voldemort is simply unable to bypass love, he is actively repelled by it.
- Harry's survival of Voldemort's possession in OotP was by repelling Voldemort with feelings of love, not an expression of occlumency.

Further, the DH text is clear:

- Harry closing the connection to Voldemort is based on feelings of grief, based in love.
- These feelings close the connection to Voldemort because they drive Voldemort's mind away.
- This driving away is directly likened to Voldemort's possession in OotP.
- As in OotP, this defence is Voldemort-specific and does not amount to mastery of occlumency.
- The feelings, and thus Harry's defence, is temporary:

Harry's mind being shut to Voldemort is a condition that lasts only while he is mourning for Dobby. Further, later on in the story Harry once more has visions imposed on him outside of his control.

All this is based on literal reading of the text, taking characters at their word. To argue against it you have to come up with excuses based on speculation to interpret away what characters have explicitly said to be the case.

 

If he's not explaining the whole of Occlumency or giving Harry a chance to really learn how to do something before going ahead with raping his mind, I'd say his teaching method is actively getting in the way of Harry learning anything useful.

This is true. During Harry's fifth year. We were talking about DH, though. Or at least I was.

We have JKR saying that Harry not being in control of his emotions is what keeps him from mastering Occlumency, not the emotions themselves. Because Snape is so unemotional, right?

Besides, that was relative to the time before DH. In DH, we have an example where Harry is explicitly stated to be doing just that: mastering himself. It's even in the text I quoted. "Master of the pain," he had "finally learned control," etc.

This is again, during his fifth year. No one is contesting that this was also a failure on Harry's part to do the work.

Snape made it impossible for Harry to learn it by being a total dick about it, even if he wasn't misrepresenting Occlumency. He may not have been misrepresenting it, but if you don't teach a subject fully enough, it can be almost impossible for someone to learn. It's like saying he prepared Harry for his calculus exam by telling him "2 + 2 = 4." And Dumbledore did allow it. He's not God. Close, but not God. Nor is he perfect. When Snape threw him out, Dumbledore didn't do shit. And he was avoiding Harry that year anyway.

All Snape ever did in those lessons was say "Clear your mind," give him absolutely no time to do so, and then proceed to rape the shit out of it with deep Legilimency. Even if Voldemort had discovered those memories, he would have patted Snape on the back for doing a good job of torturing him. He was never going to learn it that way. Dumbledore admits that the lessons were a mistake for a reason.

You mean like he was doing when he was failing utterly to teach Harry anything? He would torture Harry to exhaustion then send him back to practice, and neither he nor Dumbledore ever truly explained why he should be doing it, which is something else Dumbledore admits. You keep defending these teaching methods, but they were shit methods, and shit teaching methods make for shitty learning. Harry wanted those visions to some extent, and Snape's lessons weren't giving him anything to go on but mentally excruciating experiences.

He's mocking Harry for failing to master a real skill, nor am I saying that he outright lied. Do you really think he'd ever admit to being a horrible instructor? Too much of his identity is bound up in being competent, and he would never admit to being totally incompetent at his job. What he gave Harry in that scene was an insult that referenced a terrible time for Harry meant to make him feel like a failure, not advice disguised as an insult. If he really wanted to help Harry with Occlumency, he would have taken the time to teach him properly.

Yes, it is. It's a commonly admitted fact that trying to think of nothing is a futilely paradoxical exercise that is impossible because you immediately think of something, and thinking the thought "think nothing" is already thinking. Even the greatest masters of meditation say that's the wrong way to go about it.

Putting aside his emotions is one thing, but "clear your mind" is a command that clearly requires some contextualization.

What was he doing in the rest of the lessons? Shouting "Legilimens" and making Harry relive his worst memories. Again, we have different ideas, obviously, about education.

Learning to adopt that state of mind is a technique, and Dumbledore explains it as one of the most complex, difficult branches of magic, IIRC.

He doesn't say that what Snape taught was false, but that Snape failed to overcome his hatred and teach Harry properly.

You're ignoring the parts that contradict your notion of some kind of 'love allergy' rather than contextualizing them with the parts that emphasize where Harry has learned to control his emotions and shut his mind.

No, it's an active defense that Harry uses to keep himself within his own mind.

What? Voldemort is never harmed by love (unless you mean Lily's protective enchantment), he simply rejects it. He can't get past it when someone "is consumed" by grief, because their pain won't allow them to cede control of their mind to Voldemort.

What Lily did was a form of Love that ended up acting as a shield for Harry, but that, I think, had more to do with self-sacrifice. It would have harmed anyone who tried to kill Harry at that point, not just Voldemort. That kind of love isn't the kind Harry uses to repel Voldemort in the instances we're discussing.

If we're to take that description is true, then it isn't the 'love allergy' that stopped Voldemort. It's not because Voldemort cannot endure something, but because Harry is so consumed with something that he cannot be possessed.

The primary action or responsibility is assigned to Harry and his consumption, not Voldemort and some sort of 'love allergy' that existentially repels him. Harry is so caught up in his grief that there is no room in his mind for Voldemort.

So we agree that Harry is repelling Voldemort's mind. Good. And he's doing it by staying focused on his present situation. Grief "diminishes" the influence of Voldemort's thoughts, but so does Harry's will to stay in his own mind. That's also made rather clear by the text (see: bolded portions).

From Snape, we know that Snape is an asshole who is not giving Harry a full enough explanation. From JKR interviews before DH, we know that Harry need not be without emotion, only master it.

All that needs to be said has been said. Snape is a bad teacher.

Voldemort himself chooses to reject and avoid love. There is no weird metaphysical force of love that forces him away except Lily's, which he overcomes by GoF. He simply doesn't like it. We know from GoF and JKR that he could have chosen to understand and take love seriously, or repented. He simply chose not to.

W.O.M.B.A.T. implies differently, and besides, who says repelling someone's attempt to impose their mind on yours by being totally consumed with your own isn't an expression of Occlumency, when it might well be?

No one is denying this, either. First of all, I just said what Harry achieved was not mastery. So of course it was temporary. We just disagree about the nature of Occlumency. And that, again, is fine.

You're blatantly ignoring canon here, and the fact that Harry makes a decision later on to reopen his mind to Voldemort. And that doesn't mean the part I quoted wasn't Harry using Occlumency. It means he was only concerned at that time with keeping Voldemort's mind out of his own.

It's based on taking a terrible teacher, who you admit is terrible, at his word, and insisting on one interpretation of a part of the text that ignores contextual information from the rest.

EDIT:

I had forgotten this part. I suppose it was unfair to think Snape hadn't bothered to teach him anything. I can admit when I'm wrong, and I was wrong in this respect.

Perhaps it was wishful thinking after all, to hope he had learned some measure of this control in DH. I had just hoped that what we saw was the seed of some moderate proficiency with Occlumency, but I can see I was mistaken, and I went overboard in defending that position. My bad.

 

You clearly need to have to the last word; since there's nothing in there that I feel needs a new reply I'll let you have it.

 

It's not a need to have the last word, I clearly said, 'fine, we disagree.' At that point, you felt some further need to tell me about how you're interpretation is the only correct one and I'm ignoring canon.

 

Edit: We're now arguing about the argument, which is a sure sign to cool heads. And besides, Sesc will be throwing a fit right now as once again this thread turns into a debate XD

 

Sorry to waste your time. Thought it was an interesting topic of discussion. Didn't mean to anger anyone. Especially Sesc.

 

Hadn´t Barty Crouch Jr. in GoF any legal rights because he was officially dead and that is why nobody said anything about his summary execution ?

 

He had no rights, because the Minister for Magic said he didn't.

 

While there have many fics discussing the rights in the Magical World, were are told/shown of very few that actually exists.

Sirius is sent to Azkaban, just because.
Hagrid gets sent to Azkaban, just because.
Harry is slandered.
Albus is almost arrested in book 5 because kids named a club after him?
etc... etc... etc...

We can argue that a lot of our confusion is because the series is almost exclusively Harry's PoV, and frankly, when does Harry really question a teacher's right to do something other than grumbling about it.

 

What happened in HP isn't really any different than what happens in the real world. How many people get arrested in the USA or other parts of the world for a crime they didn't commit. Or because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sirius attempted murder during the last few hours of the war with tons of witnesses. Unreliable witnesses but even so they did witness something. Hagrid was framed for the murder of a little girl and just so happened to have acquired an illegal creature.
Harry and Albus were high profile people and while slander is wrong they didn't actually have proof other than hearsay.
I think that mostly this was a result of ignorant people being expected to do a thorough investigation, and ignorant people in charge of reviewing facts.

 

Do we know for sure that Sirius never had a trial, or is it one of those fanon things that people have perpetuated until everyone thinks it's canon? (Like Snape being Malfoy's godfather.)

We know he was taken to Azkaban straight from the scene of the crime, but that doesn't seem to rule out the possibility of a trial being held at a later date, maybe with Sirius absent.

Does an authoritative character ever explicitly say "there was no trial"?