Draco furrowed his brow further and then shook his head slowly. He knew that Harry was asking for access to his mind, but for once he wasn't trying to hide anything. "Go ahead."
The words were barely out of his mouth before Harry's eyes locked on his and Harry dived into Draco's mind with Legilimency. He hadn't even bothered to raise his wand or speak an incantation.
Harry had gotten quite good at this during the war, entering the minds of any death eaters that they had managed to capture. He had become quite the adept. Harry was honest enough to admit to himself that he had been a complete failure in learning the defensive side of the mind arts, at least consciously. Now, no amount of work he put in would allow him to learn occlumency. He was aware that only a combination of his freakishness and constant mental assaults had caused his mind to protect itself.
On the other hand, he had become a master of the offensive side of mind magic.
Harry found himself inside Draco's mind, before a set of firm occlumency barriers. Testing them, Harry pressed here and there at them looking for weaknesses Finding none, he then gathered his strength and hit Draco's shields with a blunt force strike, putting a large deal of power behind the impact. Draco's shields shuddered under the blow but held firm.
Harry had to admit that Draco's shields were strong against that sort of attack. He could sense Draco gathering concentration to repel him. Then Harry shifted tacks slightly, and focused his attack to a pinpoint and thrust forward. The barriers barely slowed this thrust. Harry found himself in Draco's mind for several seconds. It was easy to read Draco's shocked response before Harry pulled back out of Draco's mind and memories.
This all happened in the span of a few seconds. One moment Draco was giving Harry permission, and the next he felt a presence in his head, feeling around the edges of his occlumency barriers, pushing here and there. Then Draco felt Harry hit his barriers like a beater bat, but his barriers held. He tried to push Harry from his mind completely when suddenly he felt Harry burst through his barriers in one sharp thrust and enter his mind.
Draco reeled with shock. After he had progressed to proficiency in occlumency, even his father had never been able to breach his barriers like that. Certainly never without a wand. Harry pulled out after a few seconds. When Harry's presence left his mind, Draco staggered back and put his hand to his head. "What did you do?!" He demanded of Harry.
Harry watched Draco with concern. "I wanted to see how strong your barriers were."
"How did you get through them so fast?" Draco demanded, actually angry at much at the ease of intrusion as the intrusion itself. Draco was rubbing his forehead from the after effects of the pain of having his shields being breached.
Harry shook his head, "I learned during the war. I'm very good at Legilimancy. Otherwise your barriers are strong, and you should be able to hold off Dumbledore and Snape without too much problems. And you'll definitely notice their presence in your head quick enough to get away." Draco shuddered a bit, as he patched the hole in his defenses. "I'm going to hold you to teaching me how to defend against that." Draco rubbed a hand over his forehead and murmured, "What about you? I assume you have occlumency barriers then?"
Harry chuckled, "I assure you, my mind is well protected from any assault. Not so much occlumency though. I can't exactly show you, or do anything more than describe how to guard against attacks like I just used. But we ought to be able to practice until you get the hang of it."
Draco frowned but let the comment pass, deciding to change topics. "So you're really going to break into Azkaban tonight?"
Harry chuckled, snapping his wand into his hand and with a quick gesture a small wordless incendio torched the parchment that Harry had the message on to ashes. "That's the plan. C'mon. Let's get back to the common room and get washed up."
Draco nodded and turned to follow Harry back inside. "I'm coming with you tonight."
Harry tilted his head to observe Draco thoughtfully as they headed back up the path to the castle. He didn't agree, but didn't disagree, instead chose not to comment as he thought about the pro's and con's.
They were walking in silence and approaching the castle gates when Harry, acting on instinct, pushed Draco one way as he rolled the other, just as the red energy of a spell passed through where they had been standing a moment before.
While Draco sprawled to the ground from the sudden push, Harry came out of a roll with his wand already in his hand. He remained in a crouch as his wand swept the area that the spell came from. His senses on high alert. His wand already sparking as he prepared to fire a blasting curse.
It took him only a moment to track the source of the spell, and another few moments to realize that it wasn't an attack of any sort that was aimed at him. Instead he found himself staring off a little distance away, near the side of the Beauxbatons coach. There two people were engaged in what Harry quickly determined based on their movements and facial expressions was a duel rather than any sort of real combat.
Harry kept his wand in his hand as he waited for Draco to scramble to his feet. Harry idly noted that Draco had found the source of the spell as well and had his wand out. Harry watched with curiosity, he noted the two people, women clearly, were circling each other, and he noticed the one facing them had her mouth moving. Harry easily understood that they were behind a silencing spell,
It took him only a moment to recognize one of the two people circling each other was the blond haired Fleur, and the second was a dark haired woman of about the same age. However the dark haired woman had circled to face them and clearly had seen them, or probably more likely had seen Harry's wand out and sparking. Harry watched as she held her hand and wand up to end the duel, saying something. Fleur immediately turned around to look at them with a look of surprise on her face.
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