wheresmytoad @ 2003-08-05 22:22:00

Meeting with Professor Black
I met with Professor Black tonight. He'd been doing some research on spells that might be able to get past my memory block, and he'd found some information on one that he thought we could try. I was pretty nervous when I got to his office, but it didn't turn out to be so bad, but that was mostly because we didn't quite manage to cast the spell he had in mind.

It's called the 'Redige' spell. Professor Black explained it's in the same class of spells as 'Expecto Patronum' which is used to repel Dementors. It's unusual because it takes two wizards to cast it, and because in order to do it properly, you have to use something that the muggles actually know about, which is called 'hypnosis.'

He tried to explain it to me, and I'm not quite sure I entirely understood what he was getting at. It seems to be sort of an altered state of consciousness, like a trance, only different than the kind of trance used in divination. A person can hypnotize himself, or guide another person into what's called a 'hypnotic state.' 'Sort of like paying deep attention while being totally relaxed,' he said. What he did was something he called 'guided imagery,' where he tried to describe something to me, and I was suppose to relax and follow along in my mind and imagine that I was doing what he describing. He explained it all before I tried doing the trance: I was to imagine I was going down a flight of stairs, and I was to relax more and more with each step I went down, so that I would be in the trance at the bottom of the imaginary staircase. And then I was to imagine seeing a curtain over a window in front of me. That was supposed to represent the block. And I would draw back the curtain in my imagination just as he said the word to activate the spell: 'Redige.' ('Redige' means to remember, or to call back to one's memory.) He explained that what was covered by the curtain was behind a one-way mirror. If there was a memory there that frightened me, I would be protected because there was (imaginary) glass between me and whatever-it-was, and I could see it, but whatever-it-was couldn't see me. He said the spell wouldn't work unless I managed to get into that hypnotic state. The way I could tell whether I was or not would be if I would stop hearing his voice with my ears and start hearing it sort of in my head. And I would see sparkles when I pulled back the curtain as he said the spell.

So we tried it, several times. I don't think I quite have the hang of hypnosis. I was supposed to be relaxed and somehow alert at the same time. Couldn't quite figure that out; at first I couldn't make myself relax, and then I just ended up sort of sleepy. But the last time we tried it, I think we might have gotten close. I 'saw' a few sparkles around the curtain. But that got me kind of nervous, and I fell out of the trance right away.

Anyway, it was interesting. I was worried that Professor Black would be impatient with me, but he was really nice about it. He admitted that he'd never tried to hypnotize anyone before, and he wasn't at all sure he was doing it right. 'I think I'm not quite explaining the state of mind you have to have,' he added. 'You have to trust your partner totally when doing this, enough to truly open your mind. Otherwise the spell won't work.' He broke off, staring at the empty picture frame on his desk, frowning, and then looked back at me and smiled, but he seemed tired and kind of preoccupied. He told me that was enough for one night, and I should practice the guided imagery on my own for awhile, and we'd try again some other time. So that's what we decided to do.

Neville

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