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Harry knows his therapist is right; Hermione is right too, for that matter. Keeping the whole story locked up from everyone was only making things harder. He hadn’t actually told either of them the whole thing, but they both heard enough to fill in the gaps reasonably well. Hermione said that people like him - wixen like him - were a not quite rare occurrence, but still a very uncommon one and especially ones of his particular brand. Based on her research into the subject, True Empaths were more often born with the ability to sense other people’s emotions - and were actually very rare - but partial empaths often came about after life altering events. Being nearly killed as an infant was generally considered a life altering event, Hermione affirmed, and given that he’d essentially been shielded by his mother’s love, it stood to reason that he might be capable of sensing such things. The question then became: why hadn’t he felt any of it before? The answer was actually fairly simple.
“Horcruxes,” Hermione reasoned. “We both remember what that locket did to us, and considering that Riddle was incapable of feeling love at all, having a piece of him living in you would certainly serve as a well-placed damper on that ability. The removal of it simply opened you up, and I imagine it was an overwhelming thing.”
Harry nodded, because that did make a great deal of sense. He’d been so overwhelmed with a lot of things immediately after the war that it was hard to parse out the truly new feelings and the relief at being alive. Waking up in the Burrow that first morning had been...something.
“I think you should talk to your therapist about this,” she’d advised in that tone that meant she was more ordering him gently. “And Molly, because I imagine she’d love to know these things too.”
That, Harry didn’t doubt. If ever there was a way to assert to Molly how absolutely fantastic of a mother she was, it was this. His therapist even agreed, after he told her the necessary bits. Which was why he was stood poised to knock on the front door just as Molly herself swung it open to welcome him with a hug. Harry took the moment to let it all flow through and around him, to absorb that which was meant for him and release it back.
~*~*~
Once the tea was made and they were seated on the comfy sofa, charmed knitting needles clacking away in the corner, Harry figured it couldn’t be held off any longer. “I...There’s something I think you need to hear, Mum,” he began with a fortifying sip of his tea. “It’s nothing bad!” he rushed to assure her at the deep furrow of a worried brow. “I think...I mean, I hope you think it’s a good thing, actually.”
“I can’t imagine I’ll think anything less of it,” Molly assured him, one warm hand on his back. “But I can’t truly judge that if you don’t tell me.”
Another fortifying sip. “Right. Yeah. I suppose I’ll start...from the beginning....
~*~*~
You all know the story of how my parents died, how I survived and how Voldemort was put dormant for ten years. There’s more to it, though, because my mother’s love didn’t just shield me - it changed me. At the same time I was given a new ability, it was immediately dampened. Few people know that the night I survived, Voldemort actually accidentally made me one of his horcruxes - sealing the prophecy, and his own fate.
I didn’t realize anything was supposed to be different because of what the Dursleys did, how they treated me. Growing up feeling so hated and unloved, I frequently dreamed of a life where I had a home surrounded by it. Then I got to Hogwarts, and I met Ron - my first real friend - he talked so much about his big family, simultaneously loving and frustrated with all of you. After that, I dreamt of waking up in a bedroom to hear laughter and noise of a family and the smells of a breakfast being cooked with love. It was either that or nightmares.
I suppose Ron wrote about me in his letters enough, because that was the first Christmas I received genuine gifts. One was the invisibility cloak Dumbledore had been holding for me, and the other...was your sweater. It felt so different to what I remember a sweater feeling, so much warmer than I thought was possible. Ron said you sometimes put warming charms on them, and at the time I didn’t know how to tell the difference so I figured that’s what it was. Now I know it was love, Mum. I could feel it through the dampening effect of Voldy’s horcrux. All the love you wove into each stitch for a boy you’d never met. I wore that sweater every chance I got with the Dursley’s, just to feel something good every so often. Then they brought me here, and even through the effects of the horcrux, I could feel the love around this place. Even then I knew there was something inherently loving about this home.
The years went by as they did, a few times I felt something break through the horcrux, whispers of a feeling I recognized but couldn’t name. It all came to a head after the war. I died, Mum. Dieing killed the piece of him that lived in me and I chose to come back. For love. ‘Mione once said I had to be made of just that, and it had never felt more true in that moment. Everything was so overwhelming it was hard to parse the new feelings from the relief of being alive and having won the battle. And then you hugged me. There was - /so much/ love in that hug, Mum. That was when I first began to suspect that something was different, but I was too tired to really think about it.
The first night after the war that we spent at the Burrow, I remember waking up in Ron’s room and I could feel it: all the love surrounding me. Not just for everyone else around me, but so much of it for me, too. There was noise and laughter just outside the door, and you were cooking breakfast; and I thought ‘this is it; this is what I dreamed of all those years ago. Just this’. I put my hand to the wall to turn over and everything became so much clearer. Mum, this house isn’t full of love just because the people in it love, though you do, the very bones of this house are full of love. This house breathes love the way Hogwarts breathes magic, Mum. The Burrow is held together with Love and Magic. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, being here with how much love this place exudes. I need you to know how much love you’ve poured not just into your children, but into everything you do. I can feel it in every stitch of your sweaters, even years later, in every meal you make and every hug you give. Even in this tea!
The war was not won because of me. The war was won because a mother loved her son. The war was won because you loved a boy you’d never met and made him a sweater for Christmas. Molly Weasley, you are the true savior of the wizarding world. You and every mother like you.
~*~*~
Molly had given up dabbing the tears from her eyes, instead allowing them to flow freely like Harry’s. “Oh Harry.... If ever there was one who deserved to feel all the love in the world, it’s certainly you.”