"Constant Occlumency is..." I begin hesitantly. Then I clear my throat and go for a more detailed answer. "Yeah, I'm good at it. And it has saved my arse many times. But if you do it all the time, you don't really have a life worth living. Feeling nothing, never worrying, locking everything away - that makes a lot of things easier, but it's also addictive. Like anything you can numb yourself with. Drugs, Alcohol. Suddenly you find it difficult to complete the simplest of tasks when you are not occluded. It's all too much. So you do it again and again to survive. Literally. It's a spiral. The day I defected seemed like a good time to try and start over."