I don’t quite have time now to go back to Eliezer’s text to check, and I never read the original Harry Potter, but based on my memory of how occlumency is explained, I don’t think it’s that simple. I thought occlumency was something like the ability to present a totally convincing false image to a legilimens. It sounded like the legilimency analogue to being a truly excellent liar—no one can ever completely trust anything you say, even if you promise real hard that you’re telling them the truth, or are threatened with horrible things.
I was not under the impression that you could tell whether someone had dropped their occlumency barrier, and therefore becoming a skilled occlumens renders them forever opaque.
I don’t quite have time now to go back to Eliezer’s text to check, and I never read the original Harry Potter, but based on my memory of how occlumency is explained, I don’t think it’s that simple. I thought occlumency was something like the ability to present a totally convincing false image to a legilimens. It sounded like the legilimency analogue to being a truly excellent liar—no one can ever completely trust anything you say, even if you promise real hard that you’re telling them the truth, or are threatened with horrible things.
I was not under the impression that you could tell whether someone had dropped their occlumency barrier, and therefore becoming a skilled occlumens renders them forever opaque.