Julian watched the snitch dart past Adrian Pucey, startling him badly enough that he fumbled and lost the quaffle. At the same time, both Harry and the Slytherin seeker tore after the flying golden golf ball from their separate positions in the sky.
Harry was faster. He gained a solid lead in the chase, only for Marcus Flint to slam into him in an attempt to cut him off. It earned Slytherin a foul and gave Gryffindor a free shot.
When the game restarted, Julian narrowed his eyes at Quirelmort as he saw Harry's broom begin to act strangely.
...
Hagrid, who had joined them in the stands by then, noticed it too and muttered that something was wrong.
Hermione, being relentlessly reliable, pointed out that Snape was staring at Harry from the adult stands and muttering under his breath. She started to move like she was going to rush off and do something about it, only for Julian to stop her.
He raised his wand and aimed across the pitch at Quirrell. An invisible pulse shot from the tip, straight into the possessed man.
Quirelmort immediately recoiled as an unseen legilimency strike slammed into his mind, snapping his concentration and breaking the spell.
Harry's broom steadied at once.
...
Julian hid his wand quickly, before anyone could notice what he'd done. Ron and Hermione both gave him odd looks, but he only shook his head and forced his attention back onto the match.
Quirelmort looked absolutely furious. His face had gone red, veins standing out on his neck as he ground his teeth hard enough to make the anger obvious to anyone watching him closely.
His eyes swept the crowds, hunting for whoever had dared to assault his mind, but all he saw was a sea of people focused on the game. That only left him frustrated, with nowhere to direct the rage properly.
He stormed off from the stands, but nobody cared. Everyone was too busy watching the match.
...
Harry looked like he was about to throw up.
Instead, he spat out the snitch, somehow having caught it in his mouth.
"I've got the snitch!" he shouted, holding it up high.
The crowd erupted. The match was over.
All in all, it had been a fast game, barely thirty minutes from start to finish, when it could have gone on far longer. There was even a world record for a match that lasted eight full days, because the seekers kept getting stopped and nobody managed to score.
...
Afterward, Hagrid made tea for the group, and Ron and Hermione started arguing with him about Snape's involvement in the earlier attempt on Harry's life.
Julian wisely stayed out of it.
That didn't stop things from spiraling anyway, especially when Hagrid accidentally mentioned the Cerberus in the castle, something Harry had apparently overheard Snape muttering about earlier in the week after getting bitten.
That was enough for the idea to take root among the golden trio. Snape was trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone, and they needed to stop him, despite being a bunch of first-years.
...
Julian didn't interfere.
Even in the books, nothing important happened for another month and a half after this match. Instead, he returned to the workshop and his preparations, because today's work was especially important.
He sat against the workshop wall, closed his eyes, and slipped back into his mindscape.
I'll set a center point first, something to serve as the hub for my mind, he decided.
He began moving the floating stones closer together, drawing them inward until massive vines formed between them, anchoring them into a connected structure.
...
The result resembled a floating mountain range. With the strange lighting, and the fire-water threading through and beneath the jagged line of rock, it was almost beautiful in a way he hadn't expected.
Next, Julian lifted himself into the air by sheer will alongside the item facets, then descended onto the largest floating rock at the center of the range.
With a thought, he flattened and smoothed the top of it into a stable platform. Then he began the real work, forcefully shifting the center of his mindscape to that exact point.
The entire mindscape shuddered as the change locked into place.
In the end, it held. Stable and strong.
...
Now for my defenses, Julian thought, his focus sharpening.
A dense fog billowed outward from his mental self, rolling across the landscape until it reached the very edges of the mindscape. There, it changed, taking shape as countless interwoven hexagonal lattices, layered together like a net wrapped around everything.
The trick with occlumency shields was that they depended heavily on the owner's perception. Julian chose what he remembered as the strongest natural shape for the outer layer of his defenses.
And occlumency shields didn't have to be a single layer. They could be as simple or as complex as the user wanted.