Though she agreed that a connection to the Dark Lord and the visions that ensued could have a tactical advantage, Saturnine insisted that Harry try to learn Occlumency again.

“It’s about choice, Harry,” she’d said. “I want you to be able to decide whether you want him in your head or not.”

And Harry had to admit she had a salient point. Voldemort had used those visions against him once. And he knew that were he ever to be captured by the Dark Lord, he would want to keep his secrets to himself.

“Isn’t there any other way than Occlumency?” he’d asked, hoping against all odds.

There hadn’t been. And thus, it was on the morning of the sixth of July that they had begun their first class. And Harry could see, from the setting itself, that Saturnine’s lessons would be different from those forced on him by Professor Snape.

Instead of his dimly lit dungeon office, the witch had moved the living room coffee table to one side to make room in front of the fireplace. Instead of doing the lessons standing up, she’d asked him to sit cross-legged on the throw rug she’d transfigured from a tea towel. Her tone of voice was the one she always used with him: calm and measured. And Harry let himself be fooled into thinking that perhaps this would work—until she uttered the dreadful words: “Clear your mind!”

“Not that crap again,” he complained, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

That seemed to catch Saturnine by surprise and the eyes she’d closed, while they took a minute to relax, flew open. “I’m sorry?”

“Snape kept saying that. ‘Clear your mind, Potter. Clear your mind!’” Exasperation was slowly giving way to anger. “How does one clear one’s bloody mind? What does that even mean?”

“Language, Harry,” she admonished quickly before readopting a calmer tone. “Just empty your thoughts. Think of nothing—that sort of thing.”

“That’s just more of the same rubbish,” he complained, unable to keep himself from balling his fists.

“I think you’re taking it too literally,” she said softly. “It doesn’t mean having an empty jar for a brain. I only meant for you to quiet your thoughts for a bit.”

That didn’t help more than Snape’s convoluted explanations had.

“Let’s try something else. Close your eyes,” Saturnine instructed, and Harry did. “You like flying on a broom, yes?” A nod from the young wizard, and she continued. “Now picture yourself flying over a forest. You’re all alone... it’s just you and your broom. Can you see the trees zooming past below you, feel the air around you as you slash through it?” Harry nodded; he conjured up such a scene quickly enough. “Keep picturing that, and think of nothing else. If it gets too monotonous, change the terrain, or start doing loops or some other figures.”

Thinking that this was, by far, the most straightforward assignment he’d ever been given. Harry decided to add a meandering stream to his imagined promenade so that he could fly along its length. On a whim, he threw in the occasional Quidditch hoop to fly through.

“All right, Harry. Whatever happens next, try to stay in that forest, okay?” she advised. “Even if your mind takes you away for a little while, try and come back to it.”

Harry nodded. He had no problem doing that; thinking of flying and Quidditch hoops while sitting comfortably by a warm fire was a pleasant way to pass the time.

When he felt a soft tug at the back of his mind, he concentrated harder and planted a few more hoops along the river bank. When the tug started to feel more insistent and distracting, he varied their sizes and heights to make his flying path less linear and more complicated to navigate. When the tugging got more insidious, as if someone had taken a drill to his brain, he changed the topography, adding mountains and valleys, smaller trees and larger ones, and even more hoops left and right. So, eventually, he had to slow down his flying if he didn’t want to impale himself on a tree or hit one of the wooden circles. And his leisurely forest stroll quickly became one of the most technically challenging flying sessions he’d ever had in his life—but he loved it nonetheless. He loved the challenge it presented, loved the feel of his reliable Firebolt beneath him as it took each sharp turn and steep incline as Harry willed it. He felt like nothing could stop him, and—

The world shifted around him. The forest vanished in a flash, and Harry was jolted to a standing position, his stomach lurching at the change of pace. He was back in the Dursleys’ home and the tiny cupboard under the stairs—dark, damp, cramped, and way too small. The cot beneath his back was too thin and itchy; the dust-covered sides of his small prison were too close and felt as if they were pressing in on him. And then Dudley’s heavy feet sounded on the staircase above him, running up and down, then up and down again. The sound of his sturdy boots reverberating around his ears as sawdust filled his eyes. Thump, thump, thump, and then—

The scene shifted around him with another blinding flash, jostling him to an even darker location: Harry was outside this time, slightly out of breath, his back covered in sweat from all the running he’d been doing in the maze. Voldemort was there, as was Cedric Diggory. And Harry knew what would happen, but he couldn’t move—couldn’t stop the terrible events of that night from repeating themselves.

“Kill the spare,” a high, cold voice said. And Harry wanted to scream, to shout in anger. He wanted to pull out his wand and fight the Dark Lord himself, but it was as if his feet were rooted to the spot and his body made of stone.

Wormtail’s wand lifted, his lips opening to form the words: “Avada Kedavra!” And it was too late, and the only thing Harry could do was watch as a blast of green light blazed through the graveyard and the light went out from Cedric’s eyes, and he—

Harry couldn’t hold back the vomit that rushed up his throat, and an instant later, his breakfast splashed all over the throw rug. He was dimly aware of a hand running up and down his back, and another holding onto his shoulder firmly, keeping him upright. He was back within the safety of Cove Cottage, and Saturnine was there. She spoke to him in a soothing tone, but he couldn’t make out her words over the sound of him retching up everything he had.

Once he finished dry heaving, Saturnine banished his sickness with a flick of her wand, and she pressed a glass of water in his shaking fingers a moment later. Harry did his best to drink it, despite the tremors coursing through him.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Saturnine apologised from where she was still kneeling next to him. Her hand had not left his back. “I pushed you too hard.”

“It’s okay,” he managed over the shaking glass, “I was expecting it.”

Those same memories had come up during his lessons with Professor Snape, and he knew from the get-go that he was in for a rough ride. He hadn’t been sick to his stomach with the Potions Master, though—a small mercy, he figured.

“It’s really not,” Saturnine said. “You blindsided me again, Harry.”

He had to look up at that, wondering how he’d managed to do that when he’d failed so completely at Occlumency yet again.

“Your barrier was very well-fortified, Harry, and it held me off for a long time—lulled me into thinking you knew what you were doing.”

“Barrier?” he asked, having no idea what she’d meant. He hadn’t put up any barrier, had he? He’d been powerless to stop her from dredging up painful memory after painful memory.

“The forest,” she explained. “It was quite a sight—an impressive bout of flying.”

“You saw that?”

“Of course. For a while, it was all I could see. I had to use more strength than I thought I would need to break through. The harder I pushed, the more complex you made that obstacle course. That was some excellent thinking, Harry.”

“That was you?” he asked as the pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. “That nagging at the back of my head?” Saturnine nodded. “I wondered what it was. It was distracting me, so, I made it so that I had to concentrate harder on the flying.”

“An excellent reflex, indeed.” She rubbed his back with a little more force. “I’m sorry for the memories that came up, Harry. It wasn’t my intent to hurt you. I was going for inconsequential surface memories, but you forced me to use so much strength to break through that I got in deeper than I intended. My apologies.”

“You mean you can choose what you see?” he asked, curious about how one could do that. He had no idea what it felt like to go inside someone else’s mind.

“In a matter of speaking. It’s almost impossible to hunt down a particular memory, only the most skilled Legilimens can attempt something like that. But it’s possible to choose how far one wishes to dig, so to speak.” She paused, and Harry recognised the look of concentration on her face. She was looking for a way to dumb it down for him. “Think of someone’s mind as a large bowl, Harry. The memories floating near the surface are the easiest to access. They’re also the fresher ones—recent events and innocuous thoughts for the most part. But the deeper you go, the stronger the memories become. And at the bottom of the bowl, you can usually find either really old, long-forgotten memories, or the ones people have sought to hide.”

At her description, Harry couldn’t help but picture a Pensieve filled to the brim with silvery memories. It surprised him that the witch by his side had only tried to find his surface memories, and he felt it was kind of her to have apologised for going deeper than she’d intended. Anger rose in Harry’s chest as he remembered Professor Snape’s Legilimency attacks; he had never tried only to skim the surface.

“What is it, Harry?” Saturnine asked, having felt him tense up.

He forced himself to relax again. It wasn’t hard to do with Saturnine’s hand still rubbing circles between his shoulder blades. “Just remembering my lessons with Professor Snape.”

“Ah. Well—Severus Snape is a far better Legilimen and Occlumen than I can ever hope to be. Both skills came naturally to him, while to others, such as yours truly, it took hours of learning and practising to get half-decent at it.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry that you’re stuck with a second-class teacher.”

Harry snorted at that. “Don’t worry, I’d take your classes over his any day.” A flicker of her fingers prodded him to explain further. “He only went for the memories that hurt the most, and he certainly never apologised for it. His classes were brutal.”

That seemed to give Saturnine pause, and he felt as if she carefully weighed her answer before speaking. “I don’t think he had any ill intent towards you, Harry. Professor Snape only wanted you to learn quickly. But the fast way is also the hard way—and the way he himself was taught.

“Besides, as I said, Legilimency and Occlumency are talents that came easily to Severus. It must have been frustrating to him when you made little to no progress during your lessons. Perhaps he expected it to be the same for you as it had been for him.”

While her explanation had been interesting, and it was something Harry wanted to ponder further later, his curious mind chose to latch onto the one nugget of information that the mysterious witch he’d been living with for weeks had inadvertently let slip through her words. “You know him?” he asked.

Saturnine’s hand froze on his back before retreating entirely. And what followed next was one of the best demonstrations of Occlumency Harry had ever seen. All the life drained from the witch’s oval face until not a single trace of emotion remained. Her eyes became distant as fog fell over the land, misting over every prominent landscape feature to the point where nothing could be discerned anymore.

Feeling as if he should have shoved his foot down his throat rather than said that, Harry hastened to add: “I’m sorry, Saturnine. I shouldn’t have asked.” Merlin, but he wished he hadn’t inadvertently damaged their relationship beyond repair.

Saturnine had been nothing but kind to him. She’d let him go on about his life while keeping an eye on him from a distance. Not overbearing but present all the same—a reassuring companion and steadying presence. She’d been true to her promise of going over his homework, and she’d taken the time to discuss every single essay he’d finished so far. She’d told him what was good and what could be better, she’d helped him find the right chapters in his books to review what hadn’t sunk in, and she’d patiently explained everything he couldn’t understand.

And, as she’d promised, she had never once lied to him. And while she wasn’t an open book, and she valued her privacy, she’d been candid, forthright, and honest with him. Until Harry’s blasted curiosity had gone and upset their relationship’s delicate balance.

“I’m really sorry,” he repeated. But it was too late.

Saturnine stood up, and she was out of the cottage’s front door minutes later, leaving a desolate young wizard behind.