Archive of Our Own

A series of interconnected works written for the Gehayi as part of the Worldbuilding Exchange 2018.

These works explore mental health provision and long term mental health care in Wizarding Britain.

The series is mostly told from a third person limited view of Ginny and is canon compliant to the epilogue. I have made attempts to make All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection a triumphant tale but both it and The Nargle That Winds the Spring's first chapter are bleak.

There were four things that inspired this series:

Gehayi's request that "I'm especially interested in physically and/or psychologically disabled witches and wizards and how different countries and cultures educate their magical children" combined with the worldbuilding prompt "Wizarding UK Healthcare"

A discussion about Desi!Harry headcanons and how they conflict with the characterisation of the Dursley's we see which made me wonder which characters could be imagined as coming from the Indian diaspora without contradicting anything we know from canon which reminded me I've never had a dentist who wasn't from the Indian diaspora.

The current UK government's attempt to privatise the NHS by stealth, the anniversary of Nye Bevan's death and an essay detailing how much work went into getting doctors on board. This combined with a Royal College of Surgeons not existing in its current form until 1745 when the Statute of Secrecy was enacted in 1692 made me wonder how the NHS would exist in the Wizarding World.

Finally, the first chapter of The Nargle That Winds the Spring and All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection were written in the immediate aftermath of my mother being assaulted by a mentally ill neighbour and as such was heavily influenced by her difficulties accessing treatment and the failures of our local mental health service to appropriately support our neighbour following the cuts and changes made to the NHS under the Coallition and current Conservative government.