@Averis yes I read it and found it funny. I'm more looking for a complete fourth year fic where the tasks and training are rewritten or different in someway.

@Mordecai Yes I've been plotting out my plot ideas for a while now. What would you recommend as far as length and splitting up the chapters.

 

Well, personally as a reader I prefer chapters to chapters to be 7-15K words. Shorter than that is ok, though nothing less than 4K or so. Longer than 15K is only readable if I'm really into the fic. I'd rather have an author put up two chapters than a single longer one. But thats just personal preference. Of course the important thing is to keep them at a reasonable length for the content. Break when there is a reasonable stopping point, don't just randomly stop writing.

 

I just finished polishing and shifting some of the content of the prologue around. Sitting at 7.6k right now with a slight cliffhanger.

Is there somewhere I should/can ask for a beta?

 

If you want to, you can send it to me. I'll give it a go over for you. PM me if you want contact details.

 

Alright. I'll do that thanks

 

I like to think of Occlumency as basically what it translates as: hiding the mind . . . or to expound, being able to control what a legilimens sees such that they see only what you wish them to see.

This idea that your mind would be blank during a legilimency probe would make occlumency pretty useless since:

1) if the probe is being done supposedly without the knowledge of the occlumens, then the legilimens would be alarmed to find someone walking around with a metaphorically speaking empty skull - it doesn't happen . . . or they must be an occlumens, so anything they say is totally suspect.

2) if the probe is being done with the knowledge of the occlumense, again, an empty skull is a dead giveaway that you're hiding something.

Same with shields/walls/barriers, or whatever the fuck else people think it is. They're all dead giveaways.

The whole premise of "I tried to legilimense him and he had the strongest occlumency barriers I'd ever seen" is ridiculous.

Still, I'm sure that since Snape "attempted" to teach Harry occlumency with step one being "Clear your mind" my guess is--and I'm giving Snape the benifit of the doubt that he actually was trying to teach Harry occlumency--that while step one is in fact "clear your mind," step two--which Harry never got to--is "fill it back up again with shit you want your opponent to see and with none of the stuff you don't want them to see."

 

I agree though that is not to say you can't have barriers protecting things such as secrets they just have to be hidden within all the chaff you have to clusterfuck the legilimens.

Now as far as the fic goes I'm still awaiting word whether mordecai was willing to continue betaing as we both agreed that the first 800 words or so were a bit rambly (idk wth happened with that) I've since removed it