mind over matter [ability one-shot]

[Deleted]

THE first time Elliot had ever come across a book on Occlumency, it had been while doing research for a paper in Defence Against the Dark Arts. That what Occlumency was made for, right? To defend, against those using dark arts. He'd slipped it into his satchel, having pillaged it from the forbidden section, and poured over it for month. He had been a sixth year at the time. Still terribly shy, and lonely too. The idea of even needing an ability like that never occurred to him. It read like a super power. Even to a wizard. And anyway, who would want to peer inside of his head? He returned it a month later and earned himself a detention when he was caught trying to leave. After that, Elliot tossed the idea of Occlumency from his mind and it never did occur to him again until he was well in to his seventh year.

Seventh year Elliot was much different than sixth. A member of the school paper, he spent much of that year printing columns that incensed, entertained and offended the best and worst of his classmates. As it turned out, Elliot was something of a 'dark horse', or so the editor told him when he submitted a piece a week in to his membership. It was titled 'TEA LEAVES AND TARTS' the subline 'divination professor caught accepting edible bribes'. There was a picture he'd attached of the professor accepting a rather delicious looking strawberry tart. Conveniently present, an exchange of marked papers in return. The students face was not seen, but everybody knew. It spread like wildfire. After that, Elliot earned something of a name for himself. It wasn't long, of course, until he started earning enemies too.

The first time someone dipped in to Elliot's mind, he was doing an interview after the annual Christmas Ball. Scandals a-plenty. It was post his revelation piece on bullying among elder students. How 'First Year Treatment' was rife, and how the professors were allowing it to slide. Elliot hadn't made any friends over that. So, when he discovered that someone had indeed used Leglimens on him, he wasn't surprised. Just... embarrassed. The second time Elliot checked out A Guide to Occlumency, he did so with a certainty in his heart. He was going to be a journalist, and nobody was ever going to steal secrets from his mind again.

Elliot graduated before he mastered the art. It was harder than it looked, and he was doing it with a hired hand as help. Some greasy handed grifter who did his job, but only just. He was working at the Daily Prophet when he found his new teacher. The Editor at the time, he told Elliot that 'journalists leak secrets, but godforbid we have any skeletons of our own'. He was again reminded of his short-comings, but the Editor recommended a family friend of his, and Elliot attended lessons tirelessly. 

"A brain tumour, eh?" His teacher, Rodriguez, sniped. Elliot's eyes flew open, his jaw tightening as he realised what he had found. His mother's death, not just that she was gone, but the how. "And they... didn't tell you?" He tutted and Elliot almost flew from his seat, but he maintained that slither of anger and glared once, furiously. There was no shred of guilt or indecision in his clever friends face. Clawing his hands around the armrests of his chair, Elliot tossed his head back and burned every thought in his mind. Lighting a match and watching behind his lids as his anger, his sadness, his fear, it all went up in flames. In the ashes, there was nothing for Rodriguez to find but his own terrible, awful memories. Nothing but a wall of black, impenetrable glass when he probed at Elliot over and over again.

"Stay out of my head, please." Elliot said coolly, smirking as he tilted his chin and peered out through narrowed eyes. "Again," said Rodriguez, and this time he looked hungry.