Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jason sat down next to Harry, “Alright I talked with Snape about your anti-mind reading practice and I’ll be taking over for a couple weeks to try teaching you a different way of building up a defense.”

“But you’re a muggle? How could you teach me anything.” Harry winced hearing the words exiting his mouth.

Jason snorted, “Well I am already teaching you magical defense as a muggle, but for this I actually have experience with mind-readers. Not exactly this spell but I had Severus perform it on me and I got a good idea of how to get you started.”

“You managed to stop him? Dumbledore said he’s one of the best at casting that spell.”

“Considering I had him throwing up in a bucket the first time, the second had him cut the spell of screaming in pain and the third had him blushing like nothing else. I say yes I stopped him. Actually I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of someone that skilled with mind reading acting as a teacher.”

“What did you do?”

“To prevent him from getting to stuff I didn’t want him to? I projected something I was willing for him to see that would deter any sane person from trying to push through.”

“What did you use?”

“Well the first, where he started throwing up. I used some of the memories from when I first went back to Gotham. See I needed to make a statement to the gangs in the area to get them to follow me." Jason snorted, "I cant believe that Snape didn’t even get through the memory of getting the first head off.”

“First… head?”

“Yep, dropped a bag with the severed heads of all the gangs second in command on the table at one of their meetings, did no one mention the duffle bag of doom to you?”

“Uh,” Harry scratched the back of his neck, “They did, I just uh, forgot.”

Jason snorted, “That’s not something people tend to forget, but you are dealing with a lot of stress with Voldie trying to kill you and Snape breaking into your mind without giving you any actual training. I was pretty high on the whole evil magic juice so I don’t do anything like that anymore.”

“Evil magic… juice?”

“Part of my resurrection involved getting dumped in a Lazurus pit which basically looks like a neon Polyjuice potion, but the polyjuice definitely smelled better than the pits.”

“Pits?”

“Right you might not know the specifics of the whole Red Hood origin story, not sure what you may have heard of that not, but that leads into the second defense I used. When I was fourteen I was tortured to death by a mad man and then blown up. That and a lot of other sucky shit I went through is what I projected, specifically the pain portion. Thus the screaming in the pain.”

“Tortured?”

“Yep apparently all mixed together it was comparable to the crucio spell, calling the spell less painful.”

“Wait, you have experienced pain worse than crucio?!”

“If anyone ever tells you heroes have it good, laugh at them. Moving on to the third method I used is, well not one you’ll be able to pull for a long time.”

“Why?”

“I have had some interesting relationships, projecting the most interesting bits of that gets people all the time. That’s what I usually project to people that are annoying but not malicious, to people doing it on accidentI just send a rough mental shove, but we aren’t working on that for you. In the magical world accidental mind reading isn’t going to happen.”

“How can you accidently read someone’s mind?”

“Some alien races actually naturally communicate mind to mind and occasionally accidently slip into this and they seek responses to their questions or statement from your thoughts. Or mind readers coming first into their powers, they tend to slip up as their control wavers..”

“Oh.”

“Now to focus on you. My technique is actually pretty advanced so we're going to start somewhere easier.”

“Easier?”

“Yep, a lock. I’m going to walk you through some mediation methods that involve clearing your mind. If you want to succeed at being able to develop a defense against Severus and eventually other people that actually wish you ill.”

“Pretty sure Professor Snape wishes me ill.”

“Eh, he’s got some problems that he really needs to work through but he doesn’t actually want to harm you, just, well, he’s really not suited to being a teacher. Dumbles pretty much forced him into the job after some rather brutal shit happened to him. Now I don’t expect you to forgive him or (redacted) like him. Keep hating his guts, just remember people can hate you but still not want to hurt you, and that for reasons I will not be explaining Severus Snape would stand between you and a killing curse. No matter how he talks or does, if it came down between him and you, he’d pick you.”

“WHAT? Why?”

“I’m not explaining, it’s personal to Severus, but it’s also part of the reason he greatly dislikes you so yeah, he has some issues he really should work through but back to you. Your childhood bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs right?”

“Yeah.”

“There were like a dozen locks on that thing, which excessive much, but what we’re going to do is place your memories and thoughts behind that door with all those locks on it. Which will at least slow them down. So we’re going to go over some meditation techniques and I want you to start taking time to also image that door with the locks on your side a couple times a day, just visualize it. Your big task is to use the meditation techniques to clear your mind whenever you have a chance. Remember that is the first big step to learning to defend yourself. It wouldn’t be bad for your friends to start practicing meditation techniques as well and starting to learn to protect their minds. So lets start with the first meditative technique.”

Harry nodded, filing most of that information away for later. Instead focusing on finally learning something to protect his mind from Snape.

-

Harry looked at his friends. “So that’s why I want to teach you guys how to do these meditative techniques as well.”

Ron groaned, “Great more work.”

Both boys turned to Hermione expecting her to already have jumped in, but she just looked confused.

Harry frowned, “Hermione do you not want to learn?”

“I want to learn, Professor Hood is right, it could be very important for us especially as we face V’s forces.”

Ron tilted his head, “Then what’s got out of sorts?”

She turned to Harry, “Did you ever tell the professor about your home, or how you grew up? I mean this is the first I heard about the Dursley’s locking you in, which is rather horrifying.”

Harry’s brow furrowed, “No I never told him why?”

“Then how does he know your childhood bedroom was the closet under the stairs? Or that it had multiple locks on it?”

“I… don’t know.”

Ron frowned, “Maybe Professor Hood is a mind reader?”

Hermione shook her head, “No, if Red Hood was a mind reader he wouldn’t have to work so hard to get information. If he was a mind reader he could just look into an untrained goons head and know everything he wanted to.”

“Well,” Ron frowned, “You said Red Hood protects kids right? Maybe he can sense what happened to Harry.”

“Maybe,” Hermione frowned, “I just, it seems very odd that he knew a random detail about your childhood home. But back to these meditative techniques. What should we try first?”

-

Jason hummed while he cleaned his favorite weapons, explosions always left him in a good mood. It was well worth having to visit the suburbs. Harry wouldn’t be going back to live with his relatives now.