Order Only - Hols and Legilimency

[alt_hydra]

I'm sorry I'm only just now writing about this, only none of it seemed really useful to the Order. If it were, I would have told everyone straight away, of course. But I already did share a little at Tea Appreciation, so most of you know that I spent much of hols going to MLE with Mummy. I was hoping to learn something top secret, of course, but nothing like that happened. She was busy a great deal of the time and then I would just end up reading in her office. I thought about having a snoop around, but that would be a bad idea. She's not the sort to leave anything incriminating out, and I'm sure she has all varieties of monitoring devices, too.

What I did learn, which might be useful (if obvious), is that a lot of people who work for MLE aren't very happy. Much of the time they're afraid, but often they assume that since everyone else seems fine, they shouldn't show it or talk about it. And of course, most of them don't like Mummy. That doesn't bother her. I think she likes it, even.

She wanted to test my legilimency skills, so she would summon some lower-level worker to her office and ask me what he was thinking. We tried different methods, like having me look into the person's eyes, or having them turn their back to me. I didn't notice a very big difference between the two. What was interesting was that we sometimes saw different things. Or, more rightly, Mummy tended to pick up on one strong, singular image and thought, while I would pick up on several at once. Mummy said this is because I'm inexperienced, and that with more practice I will learn to filter through the "insignificant noise" and get to the truth of a person's mind.

I asked her how you could be sure of the truth of a person's mind. A person's mind has an imagination in it, after all, and if I've had a fantasy about stealing from a shop, that doesn't mean I've actually stolen from a shop. Sometimes we also have hateful, fleeting thoughts, too, that we don't really mean.

Mummy insisted that there was always a truth, that you just had to learn how to pull it out of a person.

I just don't know if it's that simple. But if it is, I suppose I need to learn. How to get to the truth of a person's mind, I mean.

Comments

[alt_alice]

I wonder.

Perhaps when someone thinks in absolutes, that is what one sees?

There are so few people who are truly as talented as either you or your mother -- it may very well be that there are different strengths to either approach, and that the way you currently see things is equally valid and just as useful -- simply more nuanced.

[alt_hydra]

I never thought of different legilimens seeing different things. I just assumed that what she would see would probably be more accurate than what I saw (and she seemed to think that was the case, as well).

I don't think she picks up on emotions the same way that I do. One man she brought in, she asked me what he was feeling, and I said that he was feeling fearful and stressed, and thinking about his family and was wondering if he'd been brought in before Bellatrix Lestrange because he'd given a couple of knuts to the neighbour's ill-treated mudblood servant (that's the word he was thinking, "mudblood"). But even though he was afraid he also seemed a bit touched with awe and admiration, like he could scarcely believe how powerful Mummy was, and oh, her daughter, too! How amazing.

But when I said all that to Mummy she said that his admiration was false, a lie that came directly from his fear of being legilimised. But how can she know for sure that it's a lie? That's what I don't understand. She said that I'll just have to learn to spot them.

[alt_alice]

Hm. I agree with you, Hydra. I'm not sure it was a lie, or if you can truly simplify things that much and not lose something in the process.

What you've just told me seems to point a great deal more to this man's character and inner thoughts than it would if you had to narrow it down to a single 'truth' -- if that's even the right word for it.

Perhaps we might have you practice with some people who are deliberately trying to lie to you in their thoughts, to see if you can tell what that might feel like?

[alt_alice]

I'd imagine that if your mother tends to be suspicious of others, and take pride in their fear, she might be more likely to see that in everyone, regardless of what they might actually be thinking, or take what she saw and make it fit what she was expecting to find. To simply assume everyone was lying.

[alt_hydra]

Well, she is an Auror, I don't know if she cares so much about a man's character so much as getting to the bottom of things. And she believes I need to learn to work the same way.

But would seeing things the way I already do be more beneficial to us?

Yes, that's a good idea. To have someone lie to me to see if I can tell.

[alt_alice]

I can certainly see the benefit in nuance. I can also see how there might be occasions where we may need a quick, decisive read on someone, however, without extensive time to gain the information we need.

My first impulse would be to advise you to work on what comes naturally to you, and what your personal strengths are, rather than forcing your abilities into a more narrow mold. The more comfortable you become with understanding and interpreting complex thought and feeling, perhaps the more decisive you could be if you were required to act quickly.

However, I truly am not certain what would be best. Of course, you are certainly more informed about this than I am, so should you feel differently, that is entirely valid.

Severus, have you any thoughts?

[alt_severus]

Interesting.

That is not at all my experience in using Legilimency; of course, I do not have the natural talent to rely upon, and must cast the spell anew for each attempt to probe someone's thoughts. It may indeed be different for those who do have the ability as natural gift.

But when I am viewing someone's thoughts with Legilimency, it is highly dependent upon the individual, and on the way in which their mind stores and processes thought and memory. Some people think in images, some in words; sometimes I see memories in full, as though they have been recorded like a film, and sometimes I see them in fragments stitched together and indexed by colour, or scent, or by no means I could perceive and in no usable fashion. Sometimes I perceive words or phrases, or a snatch of song that triggers a seemingly unrelated recollection, and once I found someone — an experience that left me distinctly unsettled — whose thoughts were so alien I could not make useful sense from them.

When we were both present for an interrogation, Bellatrix and I frequently argued about the interpretations of what we had seen; she was always convinced there is an absolute truth to the individual impressions from someone's mind, while I was more convinced the truth of what had been read rested in a more metaphorical direction. It sounds as though she has grown even more certain. I suppose it is a method that has proven fruitful for her in the past, or else she would not hold the conviction so firmly, but I always believed the human mind was a more complex notion.

[alt_albus]

Perhaps it would be of use to compare notes, indeed.

My experience is most often similar to stained glass, where the light shines brightest through a handful of panes of most interest.

[alt_hydra]

Stained glass, I wouldn't have thought of it being like that. Mine feels more like what Mr Snape describes.

[alt_severus]

If it would suit, and one of your cohort is willing to be the experimental case, I would be amenable to allowing you to watch what I perceive as I employ the skill, and allow you to compare it to what you yourself receive. I am tolerably competent at quieting my mind enough to pass those perceptions through without being coloured by my own thoughts.

[alt_justin]

Hydra,

Have you asked her what her colleagues think? It might be instructive to gain the perspectives of other legilimens, what, such as that Penderyn chap.

-Justin

[alt_hydra]

No, I haven't. I suppose I might write to him, though.

Private Message to Hydra

[alt_justin]

I don't fancy Sally-Anne's visions of you or me, though. Let's just hope neither of them is true, what.

-Justin

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_hydra]

Even the one that's probably about me taking the mark?

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_justin]

That part may be inevitable but it doesn't mean I have to care for it. But no, it struck me as a future in which we're no longer on the same side, somehow. Though it's well impossible to say just from what Sally-Anne was able to describe.

-Justin

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_hydra]

Well there might be an existence out there where we were never on the same side at all,

The boy with the dark hair and the rabbit. It's Tom. I know that it is.

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_justin]

I'd prefer that to an existence where you die.

Tom from when he was at the orphanage? Or here at school? Was that something he showed you in the diary?

I wish

-J

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_hydra]

I mean I think it's Tom from the diary. Tully - my rabbit, he made me kill him. So the rabbit is Tully, or maybe the rabbit is me.

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_justin]

Yes, but what makes you say that?lo

Was it because of something he showed you or because of something you remember from when he was possessing you?

I say, sometimes a rabbit is just a rabbit. It's not you, though. Draco's right that most of it's rubbish but it's well unsettling, nonetheless.

-Justin

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_hydra]

When I read that bit I just felt like I recognised him.

I don't remember everything Tom and I talked about. I wish I did, it might be useful. But what Sally Anne described just seemed so familiar. It might be something that he showed me that I didn't remember until now.

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_justin]

No, I know you don't remember it all, what, only that if this were something he'd shared with you, it might go a long way to authenticate other parts of the vision. Not that the whole could ever possibly be correct, since there are scenes that directly conflict with one another, if you follow me.

I hope you can get some sleep after thinking about that. You've got Jack, he'll help.

Professor Dolohov will have my arse if I'm not ready by six, though, so... so I'll say goodnight.

-J

Re: Private Message to Hydra

[alt_hydra]

Goodnight then.