After almost a month of work, and more on a whim than any real hunch, Harry had decided to make himself coldly angry and then try the book’s Occlumency exercises again. At that point he’d mostly given up hope on that sort of thing, but it had still seemed worth a quick try -
He’d run through all the book’s hardest exercises in two hours, and the next day he’d gone and told Professor Quirrell he was ready.
His dark side, it had turned out, was very, very good at pretending to be other people.
It was good at pretending to be other people, he just didn’t know enough to make sure that the other person was the only one that Legilimens saw when reading his mind.
Unless he’s a perfect Occlumens by now.
Or rather, unless his really really dark side is. Which I find quite plausible, really.
Nah, “what use is a mysterious dark side that doesn’t even give him super powers?”
Chapter 27
Which, to clarify, it turned out that it wasn’t. Quirrel saw right through it.
Do you mean Mr. Bester?
It was good at pretending to be other people, he just didn’t know enough to make sure that the other person was the only one that Legilimens saw when reading his mind.
I don’t remember at this point which one it was, but the GGP text suggests Quirrel was in fact the one to test him then.
As for the mechanics of it—you may be right, I mostly recall that it didn’t actually work.