htaccess troubles

I've been messing with this for a while now, and I can't seem to find out what's wrong. I got apache2 installed on debian, and I'm wanting to deny directories to be viewed with a .htaccess (with having -includes in it obviously).

However - when I do this, and put a .htaccess in the root directory/or the folder itself, it's still viewable to public. I've messed with the 000-default config, and default config in sites enabled/available, went by tutorials on google saying "AllowOverRide All"

But usually, it'll give me a 500 error, or it won't work at all, even after restarting the webserver multiple times.

Anyone got any suggestions/comments to this?

NEVERMIND - I found the issue, it was because I didn't have Options -Includes in my default config, it was standard Options Includes, so everytime I'd put -Includes in a .htaccess it wouldn't work because of that reason. It now works.