the_debt_of_time

Mia stuck her chin out and narrowed her eyes up at Sirius, annoyed that he was so
much taller than her. When he grinned down at her, likely knowing how irritating it was to
crane her neck up at him from that angle, she pinched the tender skin just above his armpit.
Sirius let out a yelp of pain, and Mia shoved him out of her personal bubble, turning her
attention back to her friends.
"You're fine, Alice. Now, basically, in order to learn Occlumency," Mia continued,
ignoring the way that Sirius was growling behind her, "at least at the speed that Alastor
wants you to learn it, I'll have to use Legilimency against you, and you will then have to
build up barriers. Any questions?"
Frank raised his hand causing Mia to smile at him. "Is this how you learnt?"
"No. I built up a resistance over the years." When Sirius scoffed loudly, she threw
two fingers at him from over her shoulder. "It took a lot of effort, but it's well worth it. I
promise."
She thought back to the few times on the run while hunting Horcruxes when she
had listened in on an older Sirius attempting to help Harry learn the skill. He told Harry—
even then—that he was not very good at it. Mia should have remembered. Still, most of
her basic skills in this form of magic had been learnt from Draco, who insisted that
Occlumency could be used to help her with the nightmares she had been having since
being tortured during the war. In the end, it had not helped with the nightmares—only
confronting Bellatrix here in this timeline had done that. Mia had kept on with the study
of Occlumency anyway, and over the years had begun to use it to fight off the strongest of
attacks, mainly Dumbledore's Truth-Silencing Spell.
"Why?" Alice asked, bringing Mia out of her own head.
"Honestly? I was bored," she admitted with a smirk.
Sirius raised his hand mockingly as he moved around her to retake his seat next to
Frank. "I have a question: what else are you hiding?"
"What exactly will happen when you use Legilimency?" Frank inquired nervously
when Mia pointedly refused to acknowledge her boyfriend.
She frowned at the look of anxiety written on Frank's face. He so resembled Neville
that it broke her heart a bit to tell him that she would, in fact, be invading his mind.
Knowing his and Alice's futures only made her feel that much more guilty. In the future
where she had come from, their minds had already been broken.