“I can’t believe this! How could you do this to me!?”

Ginny stared down her brother as he paced back and forth shouting at her. “Well maybe you wouldn’t be shouting if you realized I haven’t done anything to you at all!”

“Yes you have! First Harry, and now YOU! He’s dangerous Ginny! How could you want to be around someone like that piece of filth!?”

“He’s not filth!” she shouted back, finally raising her voice to match Ron’s. “And besides that, you’re my brother, not my parent! It’s not up to you who I love and don’t love!”

Ron shot her a look, and moving closer he lowered his voice and said, “Oh, I’m your brother am I? Are you sure about that? Because anybody who would step over the line and betray me like this sure isn’t family of mine.”

He stomped off down the empty corridor and left her there crying. She had told herself that she wasn’t going to let herself care what he thought about her and Draco, but here she was in tears over what he had said to her. It had always been her and Ron together growing up because they were the youngest and closest in age, and now it was just her all alone at Hogwarts, the only Weasley left.

Setting off in no particular direction Ginny tried to get her tears to stop, but couldn’t. She and Ron had had some big fights before, but none so bad as this one. For the first time she truly began to understand how Harry must have felt after Ron had disowned him.

“Ex- excuse me dear, but is everything all right?” Ginny looked up as a woman approached her carefully, as if not to set off a bomb.

Ginny shook her head. “It’s my stupid brother. He caught my boyfriend and I kissing in the hall and now he’s disowned me.”

“Oh, come now, I’m sure it’s not that bad,” the woman told her, putting a hand on Ginny’s shoulder in a motherly way that reminded her of her own mom.

“It is,” Ginny told her. “It’s just because he doesn’t like my boyfriend. He disowned his best friend earlier this year because he became friends with him, and now he’s told me I’m not his sister because I’ve started to date him.”

“Hm… it sounds to me like your brother has his own problems to deal with. I wouldn’t worry myself over it right now. So long as you’re happy.”

Ginny nodded. “I hate that he has to be like this. He’s just pushing everybody away from him. He thinks he owns me or something and can tell me what to do.”

“Brothers are like that sometimes dear. Be thankful he wants to watch out for you and protect you. My older brother didn’t like my husband until we had our first child three years after we were married. Besides, you look old enough to make your own decisions. You must be a sixth or seventh year. What year is your boyfriend?”

“I’m a sixth year and he’s a seventh year, the same year as my brother. I just can’t believe he’s being so childish is all.”

“It will work out dear, you’ll see. In the mean time just remember that it’s your relationship, not his. Don’t let anybody tell you what to do with your life, especially when it comes to love.”

Ginny nodded again. “I won’t. Thank you.”

The woman smiled kindly and left Ginny there.

It was Monday after classes, and Ginny wiped the last of the tears from her eyes, thankful that the woman had been there to talk to when no one else had been. Suddenly Ginny was homesick and wished her own mother was there with her now. She missed the rest of her family as well, still feeling alone without them.

In the room of requirement Ginny found Harry and Draco talking avidly about something. Both of them gave her their full attention when she walked in and Draco moved to put his arms around her when he saw her red-rimmed eyes.

“What happened?”

“Ron happened,” Ginny said. “He got angry because he caught you and me snogging before lunch.”

Harry bit his lip. Draco had informed him of the encounter, and Harry had wondered that Ron hadn’t drawn down on him there and tried to hex him senseless.

“Don’t worry about him,” Draco said. “Who needs him anyway huh?” This seemed to be the wrong thing to say, although he realized it too late as Ginny gave a sniffle and her emotions threatened to overwhelm her again. Draco pulled her into a tight hug though which seemed to steady her. She loved that he had that effect on her.

After a few minutes of sitting on the couch next to Draco, the two boys picked up their conversation again without missing a beat.

Draco seemed eager to find out all Harry knew about Occlumency before his first lesson with Snape that evening after dinner.

“Ok, go over it with me again, I do what now to block out images when he’s sorting through them like in a book?”

“You have to picture what you want him to see,” Harry said. “So, say you want him to see nothing, then you just picture blackness like you’re in a darkened room, or picture pure white light like you’re staring at the sun. You can picture anything really, a box, a wand, anything. It’s hard though because it’s like he’s turning pages in a book and each page has a different memory on it, and of course they’re memories you don’t want him to see, because the second he starts looking into your mind, you start thinking about all the stuff you don’t want him to know about.”

“Great,” Draco said unenthusiastically.

“I don’t understand,” Ginny said. “How can you not think about something you don’t want to think about?”

“Ok,” Harry said. “Don’t think about zebras for thirty seconds. Go.”

Harry waited for a few seconds and then said, “What were you thinking about just now?”

“Draco riding a zebra.”

“Oh God,” Draco rolled his eyes and ran his hand through his hair. “I’m going to fail miserably and the whole time I’m going to be picturing Snape riding a zebra…”

Harry and Ginny burst out laughing and Draco shook his head burying his face in his hands.

“Well, if all else fails,” Ginny said, “that could be your last resort. If he’s looking in on a memory you don’t want him to see, start thinking about him riding a zebra through the Quidditch pitch or something.”

“Or you could think of him riding a Zebra in a circus,” Harry put in.

“Or maybe sitting on a zebra while he teaches class…”

“Oh, you’re not helping at all thanks, if that’s what you were trying to do,” Draco said through his hands. Harry and Ginny laughed again.

The three of them walked into dinner late, and when they sat down Hermione hurried over to them and brought them a copy of the evening Prophet.

“They’ve already named a new Minister,” she told them, handing Ginny the paper. “It turns out Fudge planned ahead and authorized a new minister in case he died.”

Harry nodded in approval. “For once he did something right then. Who did he name?”

“A senior auror named Agustus Finch. I guess Finch was trained by Moody… he must not be too bad because Ron received a letter from Mr. Weasley saying that they were glad Finch had been named.”

“Finch helped dad out of a tight spot a few years ago in the Ministry,” Ginny said. “They caught dad with a horde of Muggle plugs… you know, the electrical kind. Nobody believed him that they were for electricity but Agustus was Muggle-born and he told them what Dad was saying was true.”

Draco eyed Ginny. “Your family sounds a little strange. Muggle plugs?”

Ginny turned slightly red and Harry said, “You should see the car he bewitched to fly. Too bad it’s running wild somewhere in the Forbidden Forest right now.”

Hermione shook her head, remembering the incident where Harry and Ron had flown the car to school, and bade them goodnight as she made her way back down the table toward Ron.

After dinner Harry and Ginny bade Draco good luck as he solemnly made his way down to Snape’s office. He didn’t have much hope for the lessons because he vividly remembered his last few lessons with his father before Lucius had given up on him and sent him out of the room covered in boils. That had been years ago.

“Come,” was the reply given to Draco’s knock on Snape’s office door. Draco went inside closing the door with a snap behind him, and plopped down in a visitor’s chair in front of the Potion Master’s desk. All through dinner he had been practicing blacking out his vision in his head with little luck because Ginny’s hand on his leg kept bringing his mind back around to her. He definitely didn’t want Ginny to pop into his mind during these lessons.

“What do you know of Occlumency?” Severus asked him.

“My father told me about the basics, and Harry tried to give me some pointers, but every lesson I had with my father went pretty badly.”

Severus nodded. He stood and motioned for Draco to do the same. “Forgive me for going over the basics again then. I will start out using lower power then one normally would. You must clear your mind of all thought, memory, and emotion, or else I will see, think, and feel what you do. Is that understood?”

Draco nodded. “Prepare yourself then.”

Closing his eyes, Draco envisioned blackness, but the memory of his father trying to teach him just as Snape tried to teach him now encroached on his concentration as Severus said the spell and delved into his mind.

Suddenly Draco was back at Malfoy Manor in his father’s drawing room, and his father was throwing a heavy goblet at him, and cursing him for failing yet again.

“Damn you Draco! This is so easy! How is it that you cannot master the simplest of tasks?!”

Before Draco could dodge the second item thrown at him though, he found himself back in Snape’s office. Severus crossed his arms and said, “Concentrate harder. Once I am in a memory do not give up and simply re-live it. Picture whatever you must to get me out of the areas of your mind you do not wish me to see. I will not lift the spell next time.”

Draco nodded. “Yes sir.” Severus lifted his wand and again Draco was back at Malfoy Manor, only this time he was a little younger, and he was sitting in a kitchen chair as his mother tried to heal a bruise over his left eye where his father had thrown something heavy at him and hit him solidly.

“You must be more careful Draco. Do not anger him so.” Draco tried to darken the image as if the lights in the room were going out, and he managed to darken it considerably before his mother spoke again, and he longed to hear her words because he had not seen her for so long.

“I know it isn’t your fault Draco, but this is our life and we must live it.”

Again Draco was back in Snape’s office, and Severus stood there with his arms crossed. “You are not trying because you wish to be there.”

Draco shook his head. “I wish she was here, but I don’t want to be back there living through all of that again.”

“Then don’t. Concentrate and force me out of your mind. I will begin finding more unpleasant memories to motivate you if you do not concentrate harder.”

Nodding that he understood, even if he didn’t like it, Draco allowed himself to be hit with the spell a third time, and the unbidden images of his father shouting at him in the living room and pulling out his wand to aim at Draco crashed down on him. Luckily for Draco, something in the background caught his eye. It was black and white and striped, and he was reminded of a zebra. Forcing himself to change his thoughts to that of a Zebra, he forced the image of his father hexing him out of his mind, and found himself seeing Ginny standing on top of a zebra in the darkness. Wondering at why Ginny had appeared there, and standing on the zebra no less, Draco lost his concentration and found himself back in Snape’s office.

Snape raised a brow, and said, “What, may I ask, was that?”

Draco bit his lip. “A zebra sir?”

“And why did you choose to picture a zebra with Miss Weasley on its back?” Draco shook his head.

“I- I don’t know. I saw something in the background of the living room and it made me think of a zebra. I don’t know why Ginny was there.”

“But you did not show me this image on purpose?”

“No sir.” He shook his head again.

“While the end goal was reached, you must work on the means with which it was obtained. When the Dark Lord enters into your mind uninvited there will not always be something in the background to allow your mind to stray to something else.” Severus paused, and then continued, “I know you to be stubborn Draco. Use that stubbornness to your advantage. This skill takes willpower. Sometimes you must work to achieve that.”

Draco nodded, and readied himself as Snape raised his wand again.


“How did it go?” Harry asked apprehensively, knowing that his own first tries at Occlumency… well, his first several dozen lessons in fact, did not go well at all.

“Badly,” Draco told him as he fell into stride with him in the hallway on their way to Potions the next morning. Several small children darted past them in the Entrance hall and Harry and Draco dodged them as a frazzled mother ran after them.

“Oh, that good huh?”

“I just couldn’t get it. I saw a zebra once,” he caught a glimpse of Harry from the corner of his eye as Harry sniggered, and then continued, “really, I did, with Ginny standing on top, but it was on accident. I couldn’t get the image to come up again. Every time he entered my mind I kept seeing something awful from home.”

Harry nodded his understanding. “It tends to be the awful or embarrassing memories that come around like that. It just takes practice. It took me months of lessons and I still don’t have it down all that well, but I can push somebody out of my mind if I really try hard. There’s definitely got to be motivation involved.”

“Yeah, well I hope I find some before the next lesson.”

“When is it?”

“In three days.”

Harry slapped him on the back. “Like I said, you and I can practice if you want. I know the spells and I’ve never actually tried it going the other way to look into somebody’s mind before, so it probably won’t be all that powerful if I use it on you.”

“Maybe,” Draco said as they walked into the Potion’s classroom and took a seat.

At the front of the room Snape stood looking out over the class, his gaze not stopping on Harry, Draco, or Hermione who took up her now usual seat beside them. When the class had gathered he tapped the board with his wand and the word NEWTs appeared there with a list of difficult looking potions.

“These are the potions you will all have mastered before your NEWTs arrive. From this point on this class will move toward independent study. While I will be here to answer questions, I will not be teaching you how to brew these potions. Part of brewing is knowing where to find the instructions and the ingredients, and how to create a successful potion. There is no order in which these need to be completed in, but you must each complete each potion before the end of the year.

“NEWTs take three days to complete. Some of these potions are one-day potions, some of them will take all three days. Your NEWT instructor will pick one of these potions at random on your first day of testing and you will be graded on its quality upon completion. While all of the necessary ingredients will be provided for you at testing time, instructions will not be. If you have any questions before NEWTs arrive, come to me. I will be unable to help you after the tests arrive.

“I suggest you copy down these potions and take the rest of this class period to begin your search for the texts in the library where you will find brewing instructions and necessary ingredients. I will assign each of you a private brewing room at the beginning of the next class period where you will brew your over night or multiple day potions. All one day potions will be completed in class starting in two days, so I suggest you come with the necessary instructions for each one day potion each time you come to class. Dismissed.”

Hermione was already scribbling down the forty potions on the board, biting her lip so hard that to Harry it looked painful.

“That’s a lot of potions,” Draco commented as he pulled out a quill and parchment.

“At least we don’t have to memorize them,” Harry said.

“Oh, but we should!” Hermione said. “What if the book we need is checked out during testing?”

“Are you a witch or not?” Draco asked her. “I thought you knew how to do a copying charm. Just copy the instructions and keep them in your room so you can get to them during testing.”

A light seemed to go on in Hermione’s head as she started scribbling again. She was the first to finish and the first to rush from the classroom toward the library.

“Tell you what,” Draco said as he copied the list at his own leisure, “we should just wait until she gets all those instructions copied and then get copies from her.”

“Good luck,” Harry said. “He told us that it was part of the assignment for the rest of the year to be able to find the Potion’s instructions… that means its cheating to copy them down. Hermione will help us but she won’t help us cheat.”

“Too bad,” Draco said, “because I thought it was pretty ingenious to know to go to Hermione to find the instructions.”

Harry laughed and continued to copy the list as well.


Harry pulled text after text from the library shelf as he waited for Draco to show up a few days later. Draco had promised to come help him look through Potion’s texts after his Occlumency lesson, and Harry figured he’d get a head start right after dinner.

Hermione claimed to have all of the instructions copied already, and most of the other students hadn’t even started yet aside from their first one day potion they’d copied to do in class earlier that day, so the library was pretty empty in the Potion’s section where Harry stood looking through the tall shelves.

A sudden noise behind Harry made him spin around, but he found himself being pushed back against the bookshelf by Ron, who had anger in his eyes.

“You’ll be the ruin of me Harry,” he said, more upset than he seemed angry.

Frowning, Harry thought about hitting Ron upside the head with the heavy Potion’s text he held, but instead said calmly, “What are you talking about Ron?”

“This is your fault that my sister is dating the son of a death eater. If you hadn’t gone and become best mates with him, she wouldn’t be around him all the time.”

“Did you ever think maybe he’s a different person than you think he is if me and Ginny seem to think he’s ok? Since when has my judgment of people been so bad? I was friends with you wasn’t I?”

Ron let go of Harry’s shirt collar and took a step back. “You just stay away from me and my family, got it? It’s bad enough we have You-Know-Who out there… we don’t need good people mixing in with his type and getting things all confused.”

Harry reached up and scratched the back of his head. “Step back and take a look at yourself Ron,” he told him calmly. “You didn’t hang around anybody bad and here you are stealing things, spreading rumors, and trying to hex people with dark magic. You can’t tell me that’s my fault. Now look at Draco. He came from the bad sort, and here he is trying to do good with his life and trying to do good by your sister by being there for her when you aren’t.”

Ron looked away and down to the ground. “I’m at the bottom of the barrel Harry. Don’t you let my sister follow me down.” With this he turned and walked away, leaving Harry feeling empty for some reason. What had he meant, at the bottom of the barrel?