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Bella doesn't find a spare moment to practice with Feral again for a week and a half, which is just as well, since he does need time to try his hacked-together Occlumency strategy. Bella fills the time by reading her Philosopher's Stone book, twice, and following up on the leads in it, but apparently either the author did her research very thoroughly and there's nothing else to be found, or the ACAAM library just isn't that great.
The library is pretty great in some other respects, though. Whenever Bella finds herself at a loose end, she reads ahead and outlines essay assignments for the courses that are kind enough to offer syllabi so she'll be able to dash off and work on other things if the fancy takes her. She is strict about holding herself down to no more than one hour of outside-class flying a day, two on weekends, even when the weather is really nice (which it virtually always is). She got sufficiently nasty (and, for that matter, pleasant) surprises about features of the wizarding world in her first few days of immersion that she thinks it's probably a higher immediate priority to get a lot of reading in.
Then it's a Wednesday afternoon, Bella is between books, and she spots Feral at dinner.
"Hey, did you practice?" she asks him brightly.
occluminous
"Kinda sorta!" he says. "I'm as ready as I'm gonna get, anyway."
occluminous
"D'you think you managed to do anything? I mean, we'll test it, but how has it been going?"
"I can't really tell if anything works without, you know, trying it," he shrugs.
"Yeah!"
occluminous
And lo, after dinner, they retreat to his room; it's Wednesday and she's staying out of her room till curfew. She sits and produces her vine wand. (She's developing a fairly good intuitive sense of when she'll get better results with one or the other, though she doesn't consider herself to have mastered a spell till she can do it with both.) "Ready?" she asks, looking into his eyes.
He nods.
occluminous
She blinks, so she'll be able to maintain the read long enough to learn anything about his success or failure. "Legilimens," she says.
He tries to... be not there, wherever she is.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
occluminous
She looks, curiosity bridging seamlessly and unobstructed into seeing - what is he trying to hide?
He's trying to hide a lot of things. Most of his memories, for a start.
The one that comes up first involves him running in terror from his father.
His father caught him.
What followed was not pleasant.
The one that comes up first involves him running in terror from his father.
His father caught him.
What followed was not pleasant.
occluminous
Bella jerks her head backwards and closes her eyes. "Nng."
"Aww, shit," he says with a wince. "Sorry."
"Yeah," he says. "I mean - no, but yeah. It's not fun to remember what he was like, but I'm used to it."
"Nope," he agrees.
occluminous
"Can you tell me more about what you were trying exactly?"
"I, uh... no," he says. "Not really. I mean, I was trying to do what you said the books said - clear my mind, move away from where you were."
occluminous
"I mean - what were you trying when you tried to clear your mind?"
"...Not... think things?"
occluminous
"I don't think that's - I'm making this up, but I have a sort of idea that what it's supposed to be is more like not feeling things? Like, focusing really hard on nothingness and if you have feelings about stuff then it just paints big arrows at stuff I could look at."
"...I am going to be so bad at that," says Feral. "So, so bad."
"I have a lot of feelings," he says with a wry grin.