She/Her | Poly | Fuck JKR - Support Trans Youth
I love long ass meta posts, character analysis, etc.
Under 16s/18s: I am a sex enjoyer, don't talk to me about it.
Vers. 1
I've tried to collect every relevant description of Lycanthropy or Werewolves in the books, to get a clear understanding of what this condition is, what it does, how it works and how it is seen.
There are also some of my own thoughts and theories in here - I'll try to make it clear what is my own thoughts and what is canon.
If I have missed anything please mention it. I'd like this to be a thorough exploration of the topic. I will edit the posts.
Part 1: Physical Symptoms of Lycanthropy
Part 2: Social Perception of Werewolves
Part 3: Regarding the 'Full Moon'...
(^In which I claim POA's transformation didn't happen on the Full Moon^)
Part 4: Long-Term Lycanthropy: The Case of Fenrir Greyback
Part 5: Wolfsbane vs Wolf - Theories of Treatments
Part 6: Pottermore and More
Part 7: Collected Summary
Note: Prisoner of Azkaban used is the Australian paperback from 2000.
I typed out every quote by hand, it sucked ass.
Order of the Pheonix, Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows were all from internet sources of American versions so I could copy and paste.
Other 'Meta'
How Powerful is Albus Dumbledore
Dumbledore Was Never Mean to Tom Riddle (Part 1)
How friendly were Sirius and Remus? (1971 - 1981) (part 1...?)
Meta I wanna do so I don't forget:
- Alastor Moody character study
- Centaur
- Vampires/Vampirism
- Pre-Statue of Secrecy Wizarding World
- What the fuck were you doing in book 1, Albus?
- Non-Human Spirituous Apparitions - Boggarts, Dementors, Poltergeists... and more...?
- Arthur Weasley character study (the best character in the books)
- Snape vs Lupin's teaching styles
fyi the point of fucking up your data patterns isnt to avoid suspicion. it’s to make EVERYONE suspicious. same logic as the bloc, pals. protect your comrades, be suspicious. ESPECIALLY if you aren’t doing anything likely to get you arrested.
the state is less omniscient and significantly more incompetent than you’d think. overextend their resources at every possible opportunity. make them cry wolf repeatedly. run their data analysis agents fucking ragged. and strike. attack.
YES
i’m a postgrad statistics researcher and i can tell you that the state honestly has NO IDEA what to do with the data it collects, it has an obsession with big data but it’s almost impossible to work with in practice. the traditional statistical approaches that are used can’t be scaled up, the adapted approaches are substantially weakened, and the machine learning approaches have the same problems and often tell them nothing. data scientists are only just coming around to these issues too, most still just push on with it anyway - incompetence is the word.
above all this though, like you say, the biggest issue for the state is at the point of data collection. they will NEVER get anything useful if they’re collecting shitty messy data. they will eventually figure out that the real solution is working how to collect accurate and meaningful data, we should make it as difficult as possible for them to do that
Ad Nauseum is an adblocker that stores the ads it blocks and continuously generates fake clicks, fucking with analytics and costing the ad companies money
TrackMeNot automatically does randomly generated searches on a variety of search engines to obscure your real searches and fuck with analytics, and you can set it up to work with anything that has a search bar (including facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc)
WhatCampaign replaces analytics parameters in links with the string “FuckOff”. I thought there was a similar extension that used random strings, but I can’t seem to find it
Privacy Possum is a fork of Privacy Badger with a focus on costing tracking companies as much money as possible, and idk if my limited tech knowledge is enough to understand what it does but the description does say it falsifies some data so that’s good enough for me
The results are here and the winner is the one I expected!!!! I ran this poll because I have this idea in my head that POA is the universally most loved one but could not really find anything to back this up.
i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users
would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.
‘Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin,’ said Dumbledore. ‘However, recent events must be taken into account.’ The room went very still. The Slytherins’ smiles faded a little.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
— Chapter Seventeen, The Man with Two Faces
I was reading and enjoying an amazing Dumbledore meta, and it got to a point where Dumbledore's Legilimency is mentioned, and how fanon exaggerates how much he uses it on Harry and the students.
And it got me thinking on that topic in general, and my conclusion is an escalation from that point.
I don't think he uses it on Harry... ever, like in the whole series, or to be more precise, I don't think the evidence is quite as clear cut as people make it out to be, and that at most it could go either way.
(The brackets with the numbers near the quotes is there so that I could reference them again without bloating this post with too many repeated quotes.)
The evidence for the Legilimency theory:
The main evidence is that you can do Legillmency wandless and with only eye contact....most probably
“Time and space matter in magic, Potter. Eye contact is often essential to Legilimency.”
This is the quote I found, and what I want to remark on is that all this said was that eye contact was often required, not that it was the only thing needed.
But that point is moot, because the next quotes here heavily imply (and to not be purposefully obtuse, they basically confirm it.) that you could do it wandless and with only eye contact.
There was a pause and then Snape said quietly, “Ah… Aunt Bellatrix has been teaching you Occlumency, I see. What thoughts are you trying to conceal from your master, Draco?”
It's important to note that Harry can't see anything and is only relying on his sense of hearing, but you'd think that something would give away that Snape started pointing his wand at Draco suddenly, like perhaps the sound of the wand being drawn, or Draco making a surprised sound or a complaint at a wand being suddenly pointed at him, but no such thing was hinted at.
So we can say that it was done wandless.
And these is the damning quotes for me:
“Yeah… that’s what my friends call me,” said Harry.
“I understand what a nickname is,” said Snape. The cold, black eyes were boring once more into Harry’s; he tried not to look into them. Close your mind… Close your mind… But he had never learned how to do it properly…(1)
“No,” said Snape softly. “I mean the one concerning a man kneeling in the middle of a darkened room. . . .”
“It’s . . . nothing,” said Harry.
Snape’s dark eyes bored into Harry’s. Remembering what Snape
had said about eye contact being crucial to Legilimency, Harry
blinked and looked away.
“How do that man and that room come to be inside your head,
Potter?” said Snape.
“It —” said Harry, looking everywhere but at Snape, “it was — just
a dream I had.”(2)
.
“Really?” said Snape, showing his first, faint sign of interest as he
looked around at Harry. “Well, it doesn’t surprise me. Potter has never shown much inclination to follow school rules.”
His cold, dark eyes were boring into Harry’s, who met his gaze un-flinchingly, concentrating hard on what he had seen in his dream,
willing Snape to read it in his mind, to understand . . .(3)
Of course these are all purely Harry's thoughts that could be wrong... and in the first two scenes Snape was holding his wand, but still there was no mention was made about Snape pointing his wand at Harry again.
I take it as narrative confirmation that wandless Legilimency is possible as why else would those lines be included?
Honestly, letting go of the whole "can you do it wandless" point which is really just there for arguments sake, these three quotes are the main reasons for why I think the constant Legilimency theory has merit (at least for Snape), thrice now Harry, and thus the narrative, has given us quotes that very much imply that Snape could be trying to read Harry's mind to find information. And that gives a small opening to claim that Dumbledore does so too.
Along with that, we have examples of Snape's eyes 'boring' into Harry when he's trying to find out information, so it would be another point to the Legilimency theory, and you can then link that to whenever Dumbledore was staring into Harry's eyes, particularly with his X-ray vision.
Snape's eyes were boring into Harry's. It was exactly like trying to
stare down a hippogriff. Harry tried hard not to blink.
"Mr. Malfoy then saw an extraordinary apparition. Can you imagine what it might have been, Potter?"(4)
“Don’t lie to me,” Snape hissed, his fathomless black eyes boring
into Harry’s. “Boomslang skin. Gillyweed. Both come from my
private stores, and I know who stole them.”(5)
Another point of evidence that I've seen people use as a smoking gun is this quote:
“I’m coming,” said Harry, almost before Dumbledore had finished speaking. Boiling with anger at Snape, his desire to do something desperate and risky had increased tenfold in the last few minutes. This seemed to show on Harry’s face, for Dumbledore moved away from the window and looked more closely at Harry, a slight crease between his silver eyebrows. “What has happened to you?”
“Nothing,” lied Harry promptly.
“What has upset you?”
“I’m not upset.”
“Harry, you were never a good Occlumens —” The word was the spark that ignited Harry’s fury. (6)
And well, it looks like either Dumbledore is threatening to read Harry's mind, or he has already done so and is informing Harry that he knows, right?
Well, I disagree with all those points, here's why.
My Counterarguments:
Here's my biggest one, if Snape and Dumbledore are reading Harry's mind, then why do we never get any sort of indication of extra knowledge that they gained from Harry? Why do we never see them use said knowledge?
Even assuming that wandless Legilimency grants you much less information than using the wand and incantation, say maybe just what someone is feeling, it still would be very circumstantial evidence by itself, since all the deductions that the characters make don't require mind reading at all, and even more, Harry is described by Snape as someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, so you would not even need Legilimency to read his emotions if you're adept as Dumbledore in reading people's emotional states.
To prove my point, let's look at some instances of eye contact. (I'm not saying all instances since I could easily have missed some.)
Off topic, but since I mentioned him let's start with Snape, plus it would help corroborate my point that eye contact from a Legilimens=/= assured Legilimency
(1)
What extra information do we see Snape gain here? He already knows that Harry has his book due to the Sectumsempra incident, and "That's my nickname" is a bad lie, especially given that Roonil Wazlib bears much more of a resemblance to his best mate's name, Ronald Weasley.
And no mention of Snape getting any sort of hint that he shouldn't have known about, like the room of requirement or something.
(2)
Similar situation as the one before, Snape is already inclined to think the worst of Harry, and he already had evidence from their previous Legilmency session of Harry having a Voldemort related dream and not sharing it with Snape.
(I would also say that Harry is doing the tell of doing his darndest to avoid looking at Snape's eyes, but that could be excused as him not wanting his privacy breached more given their unique situation of it being an occlumency lesson.)
(3)
Snape showed no reaction when his eyes bored into Harry, in fact the only reaction he ever showed was when Harry mentioned Padfoot, honestly this is more so evidence of Snape not reading Harry's mind.
(4)(5)
I'm repeating myself a lot here haha, so I'm grouping these two together. Once again it's the same situation, Snape is already predisposed to not believe Harry.
In POA, he has testimony from Draco about it and Harry is conveniently sweating like he has been running for dear life.
In GOF, the ingredients had been stolen, and Harry has used Gillyweed in the second task. and once again we have no mention of any extra information that Snape could have, he did not mention people helping Harry, like a house elf or Hermione.
Now (finally!) onto Dumbledore.
I'm going a little out of order here for the first quote
‘I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you’d like to tell me,’ he said gently. ‘Anything at all.’
Harry didn’t know what to say. He thought of Malfoy shouting,
‘You’ll be next, Mudbloods!’ and of the Polyjuice Potion, simmering away in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Then he thought of the disembodied voice he had heard twice and remembered what Ron
had said: ‘Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even
in the wizarding world.’ He thought, too, about what everyone was
saying about him, and his growing dread that he was somehow
connected with Salazar Slytherin …
‘No,’ said Harry, ‘there isn’t anything, Professor.’
I've seen people link this flash of memories to the same ones that Harry gets when Snape uses Legilimency with both an incantation and a wand and eye-contact, and...I don't get it?
For the memory recollection, this is a bit of a reach, in here Harry is thinking of those events, exactly as one would do when they are lying about something.
It is very different from the experience of having your mind read, in the occlumency lessons it was much more visceral, Harry wasn't just thinking of those memories, he was kind of re-experiencing them, he could no longer see where he was and was somewhat inside the memories
Snape had struck before Harry was ready, before Harry had even
begun to summon any force of resistance: the office swam in front of
his eyes and vanished, image after image was racing through his mind like a flickering film so vivid it blinded him to his surroundings. . . .
Even if you hand wave that away by saying that it was 3 books and a tone shift apart, that the intent was to link those two experiences together.... Come on, Dumbledore wasn't even looking at Harry's eyes here, no mention of X-ray vision or piercing eyes, not even just simple eye contact.
Sure you could say that eye contact is always implied with Dumbledore unless it's stated otherwise, but then this is falling into a slippery slope, since now you can claim that in any scene where there is very little to zero evidence, that Dumbledore was reading a character's mind.
You could at least expect the text to mention the eyes as a tell for the reader to look out for Legilimency or something.
Onto the next quote.
Dumbledore was giving Harry a searching look. His twinkling
light-blue gaze made Harry feel as though he was being X-rayed.
‘Innocent until proven guilty, Severus,’ he said firmly.
Reversing what I said above about Snape, Dumbledore has already started to love Harry here, he has a good idea of whom Harry is as a person given his actions in first year and what he saw in the mirror, I think he trusts that Harry really wasn't going to be harming people to that extent.
But most people point to the piercing X-ray look as some sort of tell for Dumbledore using Legilimency, and I honestly found no correlation for it.
Dumbledore frequently had that look during moments where he had little reason to read Harry's mind.
“Professor,” Harry said at last, “do you think he’s getting stronger?”
“Voldemort?” said Dumbledore, looking at Harry over the Pensieve. It was the characteristic, piercing look Dumbledore had given him on other occasions, and always made Harry feel as though Dumbledore were seeing right through him in a way that even Moody’s magical eye could not. “Once again, Harry, I can only give you my suspicions.”
Dumbledore sighed again, and he looked older, and wearier, than ever.
Dumbledore was currently engrossed in his other task of checking over his memories for to try and make the situation with Barty Crouch make sense, Harry is already being open with him and telling Dumbledore of his dreams, what reason could Dumbledore have to read Harry's mind here? Does he suspect that Harry had another dream and is hiding it? It's possible, but once again we get no indication of Dumbledore gaining any sort of knowledge from this and knowing anything he shouldn't.
“Ah,” said Harry, brought up short. What with Apparition lessons and
Quidditch and Ron being poisoned and getting his skull cracked and his determination to find out what Draco Malfoy was up to, Harry had almost forgotten about the memory Dumbledore had asked him to extract from Professor Slughorn. “Well, I asked Professor Slughorn about it at the end of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn’t give it to me.” There was a little silence. “I see,” said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles and giving Harry the usual sensation that he was being X-rayed.
Dumbledore here is scolding Harry.
From Harry's mannerisms and plainly, his lack of a memory and what he says, we can guess Dumbledore already knows the situation.
Dumbledore has no reason to read Harry's mind here, and once again, no hint of knowledge that he reasonably shouldn't have.
His tone was light, but his blue eyes pierced Snape as they had
frequently pierced Harry, as though the soul they discussed was
visible to him. At last Snape gave another curt nod.
I suppose you could say that Dumbledore is gauging Snape's emotions to better convince him, but firstly, Snape is the occlumency of the series here, and secondly there is once again no evidence of Dumbledore knowing something he shouldn't have, and the piercing look isn't evidence at all by itself, it's just how Dumbledore's eyes are described as you'll see in the next few quotes.
Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old headmaster’s face. Dumbledore’s long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything was as he had remembered it. And yet . . .
“But you’re dead.” said Harry.
Dumbledore is either dead and is here to give answers to Harry, and thus he has zero reasons to read Harry's mind, or he is a figment of Harry's imagination and not real, at which point take the point of him having no reason to read Harry's mind and and multiply it by about a billion.
This is my main point, Dumbledore's piercing X-ray eyes are not evidence of him using magic, it's instead just evidence for his personality, it's how his eyes regularly look and it shows how inquisitive he is about people and how he frequently can understand them.
Time for a COS quote before returning to DH.
Professor McGonagall gave him a piercing look, but he was sure she had almost smiled. Her mouth looked less thin,
Minerva also gave out piercing looks in the first two books, once to Dumbledore in cat form in PS, and the second time to Harry here in the quote above.
Of course this isn't a particularly strong point, the same looks could convey wildly different things for different characters....except for if the books directly compare them, Aberforth and Albus share the exact same eyes to the point where Harry cannot tell the difference at all.
Aberforth's eyes are described as piercing 3 times in the books, and as X-raying one time to bring the combined total to 4 times in DH, just one less than Albus's total in the whole 7 books.
He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it,
because he had been thinking of his dead headmaster. If anything
was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore
would never pierce him again.
.
Dobby would never be able to tell them who had sent him to
the cellar, but Harry knew what he had seen. A piercing blue eye
had looked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come.
Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.
.
The barman grunted. Harry approached him looking up into
the face: trying to see past the long, stringy, wire-gray hair beard.
He wore spectacles. Behind the dirty lenses, the eyes were a piercing, brilliant blue
This is Harry seeing Aberforth's eye and mistaking it for Albus's, was Aberforth a Legilimens? Was he trying to read Harry's mind through the mirror? And further more the last sentence in the first quote is suspect, since it could be seen as Harry referencing his grief for Albus, so in here the book would address that grief as "Man, Dumbledore will never read Harry's mind again?" Instead of just treating it as an inquisitive look which would fit much better as "Dumbledore would never give Harry his usual look again?"
But here's the actual best quote for this issue.
He met Aberforth’s gaze, which was so strikingly like his brother’s: The bright blue eyes gave the same impression that they were X-raying the object of their scrutiny, and Harry thought that Aberforth knew what he was thinking and despised him for it.
Give this quote to Albus, or hell, just any character that was even vaguely hinted at being a Legilimens, and this would be taken as 100% proof of them using that ability. Not just for the X-ray, but for Harry directly mentioning the feeling like they knew what he was thinking.
But again, is Aberforth a Legilimens? It was not hinted at for us at all.
This is my favorite proof that the X-ray vision and piercing look was never a sign for Legilimency, but just Albus's natural look for his eye when he was focusing on someone or something.
I've saved the HBP quote for last,
(6)
To disprove the emotions bit, Harry was currently feeling boiling anger, he himself mentioned how something must have shown on his face.
This seemed to show on Harry’s face
I like to think that when Harry is really angry, you could see it on his face.
As for knowledge, I don't think Dumbledore read Harry's mind, why else would Dumbledore only react after Harry shouted about Snape and not before?
Dumbledore’s expression did not change, but Harry thought his face
whitened under the bloody tinge cast by the setting sun. For a long moment, Dumbledore said nothing. “When did you find out about this?” he asked at last.
If he had already knew this from reading Harry's mind, then he would have reacted before then, no?
Unless someone is suggesting that Dumbledore read Harry's mind, told Harry about it, but then felt the need to act surprised when Harry shouted about Snape, and had such control over his facial features to not show any reaction except for his face whitening??
And I don't think Dumbledore was threatening Harry here too, Dumbledore has never threatened Harry with magic before, and for such a situation too? Where Dumbledore could have easily said "Tell me why you're angry or else I wont let you come with me"?
So The threatening interpretation doesn't make a lick of sense too.
I think it's just Dumbledore telling Harry that he doesn't hide his emotions well
We already have this quote from Snape linking Occlumency with emotional control
“Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”
And I think Dumbledore was kind of referencing a part of the same notion here, he was saying "Harry you wear your heart on your sleeve"
This is amazing yo
(to be clear: this a 'yes, and…' post)
Love pointing out how Aberforths eyes are described in the exact same way - I haven't picked up on that before!
And the comparison between the intense memories Snape brought in OotP up vs. Harry just thinking about all the things he was about to lie about in CoS...
Like… CoS is a book for 10yr olds.
That isn't a bad thing it just means it is a bit more overt with things that might be insinuated in a book for older teens.
'Harry thought very hard. He remembered all the things he felt a bit unsure about… but decided not to tell Dumbledore any of them. What if he got in trouble?' Just isn't the same thing lol
As described - the fault of the idea that Albus is a mind-invader, using Legilimency to be extra informed… is that he would then be shit at it.
Not a single successful pull from even an unaware little kid???
Unless he did pull and just pretended he didn't…?
Allowed things to go dangerously wrong, acted mournful or surprised at events he secretly planned, constantly lying about his feelings and intentions… all because he is a heartless-super-genius and most-powerful-man-wizard-ever.
An interesting crack theory. But it's odd that in a YA series that already features 'this character was something you didn't expect the whole time! you can go back and see all the hints everywhere!' - such a reveal is absent for Dumbledore.
And it would be odd for OotP's emotional climax to not feature an honest heart-to-heart, after a story full of secrets and evasion - and instead an incredibly dark escalation that is never resolved. I dunno… that doesn't really stack up satisfyingly.
That's a bit of a ramble lol
But yeah - Severus never managed to learn shit from Harry despite trying more overtly.
Albus doesn't seem to either, and even if he does he only 'attempts' at unimportant moments and Harry never picks up on it.
Albus never seems to know specific things he couldn't have otherwise found out. That would be the obvious Mystery Novel move: set up mysterys you then reveal at the end of the book/arc/series.
It just doesn't make sense to me, Watsonian or Doylist:
There is little-to-no evidence in-world, and little evidence in like… why the author would be trying to imply it via the way it's written.
HOWEVER - while I am fully open to the idea Albus didn't ever 'read' Harry's mind… I believe that he did!
Just not in the way it is often presented (which you also are pushing back on) of 'going through memories to find a hidden truth.'
Legimency doesn't seem to work like that.
“Only Muggles talk of ‘mind reading.’ The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter … or at least, most minds are. …” He smirked.
He says plainly that you can't reach into someones head and pluck out what you want.
The mind is not a book. Thoughts are not etched inside skills. It is complex and many-layered - not for leisurely perusal.
I take this as meaning as like… invading a mind is like opening a .png as a .txt file. Raw information in the format of someone else's brain.
He was five, watching Dudley riding a new red bicycle, and his heart was bursting with jealousy. … He was nine, and Ripper the bulldog was chasing him up a tree and the Dursleys were laughing below on the lawn. […]
He felt a sharp pain in his knee. Snape’s office had come back into view and he realized that he had fallen to the floor; one of his knees had collided painfully with the leg of Snape’s desk. He looked up at Snape, who had lowered his wand and was rubbing his wrist. There was an angry weal there, like a scorch mark.
“Did you mean to produce a Stinging Hex?” asked Snape coolly.
“No,” said Harry bitterly, getting up from the floor.
“I thought not,” said Snape contemptuously. “You let me get in too far. You lost control.”
“Did you see everything I saw?” Harry asked, unsure whether he wanted to hear the answer.
“Flashes of it,” said Snape, his lip curling. “To whom did the dog belong?”
“My Aunt Marge,” Harry muttered, hating Snape.
Severus could only see flashes of what Harry did. He didn't get a complete picture. He saw a dog - he didn't know the context of when, where, how, who or why.
Harry experienced that context, he knows it was his aunt's dog Ripper, but Severus couldn't access that.
And this is an intense experience, as OP previously points out.
Harry completely loses himself, unaware of lashing out in self-defence - a normal reaction. Severus takes it in stride.
For Albus to invade Harry's mind with only a mild sensation of being x-rayed, to pluck out specific information within moments… holy shit
Severus' Skill
Severus is known for the amazing feat of concealing that he is lying from Voldemort.
This is exceptional, everyone agree:
what a clever boy is Severus Snee
That suggests that telling someone is lying - even a whisper of a lie - is easy for Voldemort to do.
Yet Voldemort rarely knows precise information about anything.
He relies on people telling him things. He doesn't grab people and go through their memories to get information.
The Dark Lord, for instance, almost always knows when somebody is lying to him. Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie, and so utter falsehoods in his presence without detection.
Telling if someone is lying in a general sense is far more reliable than finding what the specific lie is.
All you need is a feeling or a fragment that contradicts.
I think Albus is doing about the same.
He can tell 'he's hiding something…' and so thinks 'I wonder what.'
This leads to instances of seeming like he might know more than he should, yet never anything concrete.
Snapes boring vs Dumbledores penetrating (…..heh) can co-exist in this space of 'is the boy lying?'
“What has happened to you?”
“Nothing,” lied Harry promptly.
“What has upset you?”
“I’m not upset.”
“Harry, you were never a good Occlumens —” The word was the spark that ignited Harry’s fury.
This could sound like a threat. Or letting him know he already has seen into his mind (yet learned nothing).
I think it's a kind of apology:
'Harry… I can't help but taste the thick waft of bullshit radiating from you - you've never been a good Occlumens-'
…Though Harry is being so obvious he'd hardly need to, as rightly pointed out.
((note: 'you're a ruddy Occlumens' would be a great phrase to mean 'you're lying'; 'you're full of shit'))
In the shock of Fawkes catching fire, Harry had forgotten what he was there for, but it all came back to him as Dumbledore settled himself in the high-backed chair behind the desk and fixed Harry with his penetrating, light-blue stare.
[…]
‘You don’t think it was me, Professor?’ Harry repeated hopefully, as Dumbledore brushed rooster feathers off his desk.
‘No, Harry, I don’t,’ said Dumbledore, though his face was sombre again. ‘But I still want to talk to you.’
Harry waited nervously while Dumbledore considered him, the tips of his long fingers together.
‘I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you’d like to tell me,’ he said gently. ‘Anything at all.’
This part before the 'flash of memories' could be seen similarly:
Albus has sensed Harry's worry and guilt. But he chooses not to pry - instead leaving Harry instructions and overpowered tools to deal with whatever is happening.
He doesn't arm Harry with anything to specifically beat a Basilisk.
He leaves him the potential for a sword, a Phoenix (get-out-of-jail-free card; Fawkes can heal shit and even swallow the Killing Curse) and tells him he isn't alone.
‘However,’ said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly, so that none of them could miss a word, ‘you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.’
For a second, Harry was almost sure Dumbledore’s eyes flickered towards the corner where he and Ron stood hidden.
Whether Albus knows the issue's plaguing the school are:
16yr old Tom Riddle manipulating a little girl to do strange things (like kill chickens), and a Basilisk that killed a student 50 years ago but is now only managing to petrify them… is unknown, iirc.
But he certainly didn't give Harry any tips on how to find out, or how to survive a Basilisk, or where to look, or what to expect, or that he can probably talk to it…
Sometimes that is used as a reason why Albus is stupid, ridiculous, cruel and overly-testing of Harry.
But maybe he just actually doesn't know specifics??
So he gives him a magic sword, a living shield and instructions to seek help to face whatever is happening.
‘What are you doing, wandering around this late, Tom?’
Harry gaped at the wizard. He was none other than a fifty-year-younger Dumbledore.
‘I had to see the Headmaster, sir,’ said Riddle.
‘Well, hurry off to bed,’ said Dumbledore, giving Riddle exactly the kind of penetrating stare Harry knew so well. ‘Best not to roam the corridors these days. Not since …’
He sighed heavily, bade Riddle goodnight and strode off.
If penetrating eyes is a deep-dive memory-searching thing - then the fact he gleams nothing of Myrtle's recent murder, Tom's visits to the Chamber or images of the Basilisk - letting Tom wander alone...
that would be bonkers.
However, if it is simply tasting for guilt, worry, stress…
Tom didn't lie. He did have to see the Headmaster.
He wouldn't be feeling guilty about anything.
He was feeling most intensely about not wanting to go home.
Hardly a crime. It sucks that recent events have prevented him from staying at the school. But there isn't much to be done about it - the school is, evidently, dangerous.
So... Albus sighs and gives him some space.
Isn't this concept basically the same as Albus simply being able to read emotions well?
Yes.
So there isn't any particular reason why I'd feel he uses Legilimency beyond vibes?
Yes.
Am I just stubbornly attached to those vibes?
Yes. <3
My main argument for it being the case over no legilimency is that… it'd be weird to mention Dumbledore could have taught Harry Occlumency but didn't want to - thus putting him in a comparable space to Severus - then never have him do any at all?
You'd think the spooky penetrating xray-eyes would be something...
…I'm not pretending that's a particularly strong argument.
EDIT: in fact it is a pretty shit argument:
''We never see Dumbledore directly doing Legilimency true, but we do hear about him doing it to three people: Kreacher, Hokey, and Morfin, with all of those instances being integral to the plot, especially the latter two since it's the content of those memories that gave Albus crucial information he needed for the horcruxes.''
- OP in a comment, pointing shit out
But I am arguing that this is how Legilimency works - and that whether Albus was using it or not, he certainly wasn't opening Harry's mind up like a book to peruse.
I wonder whats driving the 1990s developments in Broomstick technology
The Wizarding World is very traditional. They aren't having massive technological upheavals every 10 or 20 years that change the shape of how they live. They've been keeping on pretty much the same way since the 1700s. Their latest cultural change was probably like... icecream.
And before that - toilets.
But suddenly every year for a bit it seems there's a significantly better broomstick out on the market
What happened? What discovery was made? What battle between Broomstick artisans was there to get the first and best version of this magical technology on the market...?
