Chapter 8
Fall 1995
It was clear from Harry’s first class with Dolores Umbridge, his new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, that he and his schoolmates would not be learning any practical Defence from Umbridge. So Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to start their own Defence group—naming it Dumbledore’s Army to mock the Ministry’s intense fear that Dumbledore was training a private army to take over the Ministry.
They had their first meeting in the Hog’s Head, but Mundungus (whom Aberforth had banned from the Hog’s Head, but who was disguised as a witch to follow Harry for the Order) noticed them, which Andromeda pointed out to Harry later (having heard it from Sirius, who was in the Order). She suggested that Dumbledore’s Army should meet instead in the Room Of Requirement, a room in Hogwarts that became equipped for the seeker’s needs. Andromeda said that when she herself had been in school, the Room Of Requirement had transformed into a closet where she and Ted (who you will remember was Muggle-born) could make out without being seen by Andromeda’s sister Narcissa. Andromeda joked that she was literally and figuratively a “closeted” blood traitor. Dumbledore’s Army used the Room of Requirement for every meeting that happened after Andromeda offered the suggestion to Harry.
December 1995
Dumbledore would have a hard time maintaining his position that Harry should know nothing about what Voldemort was known or suspected to be doing by anyone in the order, not even Dumbledore himself. Harry and the Weasleys left for London to see Mr Weasley after he was attacked by Voldemort’s snake Nagini, for which Dumbledore made a Portkey for them. Mr. Weasley was being treated at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, which happened to be in London. I was on the window sill listening, regretting that I had to wait even longer than I already did to publish the first Harry Potter book; if I published anything after Hermione found out that I was an unregistered Animagus at the end of the previous school year, she would expose me to the Ministry as an unregistered Animagus, and I would be sent to Azkaban.
July 2007
And indeed, Andromeda said that Hermione also had a right to know what I did. I knew Hermione would be more upset at me than she ever was, even when I wrote a falsified account of her. Harry said he was going to go into the Leaky Cauldron and Floo to Hermione and Ron’s house.
Winter holidays, 1995-96
In any case, when Dumbledore thought he was alone in his office after Harry and the Weasleys had left, he said that he needed to make an important request to Andromeda. I was able to fly to Andromeda’s office as a beetle before Dumbledore was able to walk there, so I heard exactly what Dumbledore said to Andromeda. “Andromeda,” he said, “You were trained in Occlumency as part of your training to be a Wizarding therapist. Now I need you to teach Harry Occlumency. He reported to me and to Minerva that he involuntarily saw into Voldemort’s mind, something that I’m sure Voldemort is doing deliberately. He saw Arthur Weasley attacked by Voldemort’s snake. If he hadn’t seen it, I do not believe we could have saved Mr Weasley.”
“Sure, I’ll teach Harry Occlumency. I’ll come to Grimmauld Place as soon as I can—Sirius will be happy to see me. Should I explain to Harry why that’s what we’ll be working on in our sessions until he masters it?” “No, it’s best for him not to know,” said Dumbledore. “Well, then how can you be sure that he’ll take it seriously?” asked Andromeda. “Harry has been seeing you for years. He trusts you more than anyone else he knows—mostly because of the confidentiality to which you’re legally bound,” said Dumbledore. “You have taught him a great number of other coping skills—some of which involve magic and some of which do not—so this will be nothing new to him. And as for the real reason—it’s because of Voldemort.” Andromeda shuddered at Dumbledore’s use of the name. “Even though it worked out well this time that Harry saw into Voldemort’s mind,” Dumbledore continued, “Voldemort could very well abuse the connection between himself and Harry, use it to get Harry to put himself in danger—he could even plant a false vision in Harry’s mind.”
“What exactly does You-Know-Who want Harry to do that he would break into Harry’s mind in order to accomplish?” asked Andromeda. Dumbledore replied, “The Department of Mysteries keeps records of every prophecy ever made. There was one made about the downfall of Voldemort, which he interpreted as referring to Harry. Someone was eavesdropping while that prophecy was being made, but was caught before they could hear the full prophecy—but they still reported what they had heard to Voldemort. Voldemort interpreted the prophecy as referring to Harry, like I said—so that is why he wanted to kill Harry. Voldemort now wants to hear the full record of the prophecy, but clearly he will not risk going into the Ministry and proving that he really has returned—you can see how it would work out well for him that the Ministry refuses to believe that he has returned. Only the people to whom a prophecy refers can lift the record of it off the shelf without suffering madness—so, besides Voldemort himself, the only one who can get the prophecy for Voldemort is Harry. But you must not tell Harry any of this.”
Throughout the winter holidays, I followed Harry between Grimmauld Place and St Mungo’s; it was not safe for him to go anywhere else, and even when he did go out, there were always some Order members with him for his protection. In fact, as you saw, when Harry went to see Mr Weasley at St Mungo’s for the first time, Andromeda’s daughter Nymphadora was one of the Order members who went with him. (Harry chose to tell Nymphadora that he was one of her mother’s many clients.)
On the day before Harry returned to Hogwarts, Sirius heard Andromeda’s voice in his fireplace. Andromeda said, “Sirius, I’ll be coming to your house in just a minute.” “Andi!” said Sirius. “I haven’t seen you since I left your house.” “I need to talk with you about Harry—and also with Harry,” Andromeda explained. “I’ll be right there.” She soon came out of Sirius’ fireplace.
She said to Harry, “Professor Dumbledore requested that I teach you Occlumency over the course of the next school term. We really do need to continue our regular sessions, but I’ll have extra sessions with you once a week after I’m done seeing all my other patients for the day.” “Would you mind telling me why you’ve decided to teach Harry Occlumency, Andi?” asked Sirius. “Not in front of Harry,” said Andromeda. “Dumbledore told me not to tell him.”
January-June 1996
I spied on every session Harry had with Andromeda—including the extra ones in which she taught him Occlumency. She tried to explain as much as she could without revealing the exact reason why she was having Harry learn Occlumency. “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who always let their emotions show, will find themselves easy prey for the Dark Lord!” she explained. “You can block him only by controlling your emotions. So your homework is to clear your mind of all emotion every night before you go to sleep.”
Through breaking into Harry’s mind (“ Legilimens! ”) and having him practice resisting, Andromeda did a very good job of teaching Harry Occlumency—although it must be mentioned that he willingly did his homework and emptied his mind of emotion before bed every night. I fictionalised Harry as not being willing (and not even thinking he was able) to do this for Snape; I even fictionalised Snape as Harry’s Occlumency teacher so I could hide Andromeda’s involvement in this part of Harry Potter’s story.
But Harry really did see a memory of James and his friends bullying Snape, in which Snape called Harry’s mother Lily a Mudblood and she stopped being friends with him in response. Harry did not actually see this memory in the Hogwarts Pensieve in Snape’s office, however; instead, he saw a memory belonging to Severus Snape on one of Andromeda’s shelves. He could not view the memory without Andromeda around, but he wondered what was in that memory, and whether it had anything to do with Order business of which Dumbledore had continued to keep him out. If he had only seen a different memory of Snape’s, as I have just revealed in Deathly Hallows , he would indeed have found out much earlier that Snape was secretly protecting him for Dumbledore and was a double agent for the Order.
But I also wildly fictionalised the events of Harry’s next Hogsmeade trip. It actually ended because Cho remembered that she had a session with Andromeda, who was helping her cope with the death of her boyfriend Cedric Diggory during the previous school year. It was actually in memory of Cedric that Cho had joined Dumbledore’s Army, a Defence Against the Dark Arts group led by Harry; she knew that, under slightly different circumstances, the considerable self-defence skills gained by Cedric in training for the Triwizard Tournament would have helped him against Voldemort.
After Harry’s next Occlumency lesson, he and Andromeda went downstairs. But after Andromeda Apparated home and Aberforth went upstairs to his own bedroom in the inn, Harry put on the Invisibility Cloak that he had secretly left under the stairs. He then went back up to Andromeda’s office, said, “ Alohomora! ” to unlock her door, went inside, took Snape’s memory off the shelf, poured it into Andromeda’s Pensieve, and went inside the memory. You saw what was in that memory; I accurately recounted the memory itself in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , if not the circumstances under which Harry saw it.
But—even though he was in Andromeda’s office in Hogsmeade rather than in Snape’s own office at school—Harry still wanted very badly to talk to Sirius about what he had just seen. He could not do it at that moment, however, because Hermione found him at Andromeda’s office and brought him back to the castle: “Do you know how much trouble you’ll be in? Umbridge knows you’re already late getting back from Andromeda’s office.” When he finally got the chance (by sneaking into Umbridge’s office, where the fire was not being monitored by the Floo Network on Umbridge’s orders like every other fire at Hogwarts), Sirius promised not to tell Andromeda. “Let’s keep it a secret between us guys,” he had said.