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Take 1.
Harry, feeling more than a little harassed, arrives. He’s ten minutes early, sensing that this might be like a meeting with McGonagall, or maybe like an appointment with Kingsley, when he was Minister. Formal. Something he should be prepared for, maybe with some notes. Hermione uses little cards when she has an important meeting, and can usually be found the night before with her neat little cards floating around her like Snow White’s tweeting birds.
Why Snow White, he wonders? He hasn’t thought about Muggle stories and fairytales since the moment he met Hagrid. Maybe it’s because sitting here, in a brown and beige waiting room that smells of plain bar soap and some kind of pine-scented cleaner, he feels very far away from magic.
The door to the left of reception opens. The Healer is younger than he expected, her hair up in a bun and her robes simple, soft golden-brown.
She smiles.
“Harry?” she asks, and he nods. “Come on in.”
He doesn’t talk much. She seems unsurprised, and not disappointed.
Take 4.
“Yeah, well, you know.”
“I don’t, I’m afraid,” she says gently. “That’s why you’re here, Harry. To tell me.”
“It was a snake,” he says. “A boa constrictor. It wanted to go home to Brazil, even though it had never been out of the zoo before.”
She hums, and writes something down in her book. She uses bright blue quills, and Harry’s only now sure that it’s not some variation on a Quick Quotes Quill. He still doesn’t like it, and he definitely doesn’t trust it, but at least he can point out that any lies or nonsense she produces are hers, in her handwriting.
“ Bred in captivity,” he says. “That’s what the sign said.”
“You remember it so clearly?”
“It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me before I came to Hogwarts. Of course I remember it.”
“Hmm.”
She writes something else. Harry squirms.
“Bred in captivity,” she says. “Do you remember anything else from the sign?”
Take 7.
“I think,” she says, calm, serene even, “that you should go home, Harry.”
He hasn’t said a single word beyond good afternoon. It’s been twenty-five minutes.
“Send a message when you feel ready to come back,” she suggests. “This won’t help if you don’t want it to.”
“I know you’re a bit sceptical about the whole thing,” Gin says, swinging their hands between them. It’s cold enough that her nose is bright red, and he can smell the pumpkin and ginger from the hot drink in her other hand even over the cut of his coffee. “But say you weren’t.”
“C’mon, Ginny-”
“Say you weren’t,” she says again, in the very firm voice she saves for talking at him until he actually hears what she’s saying. “What harm can it do to talk to a nice woman who’s legally not allowed tell anyone what you say for an hour a week?”
“How do I know she won’t tell anyone?”
“She won’t if she wants to keep her job,” Ginny points out reasonably. “And besides, you need to fill your days somehow. It’s not as if you have a job.”
“Uncalled for,” he says, even if it is completely called for. “I’m independently wealthy. I don’t need a job.”
“And I make more money than you did,” she agrees, “but that’s not the point. If you agreed to go to the Healer because you’re bored, at least pretend to be interested in it. It’s a waste of time, otherwise.”
“I have time to waste. Unemployed, remember?”
“You could finally weed my roses,” she says, but there’s no real bite to it. “I’m serious, love - I know you and Lily are enjoying all this time together, but maybe talking to the Healer will get you talking to other grown ups again.”
Harry says nothing.
“Hermione told me you’ve not written back to her yet,” Ginny says gently. “And Ron’s expressed an actual, fully-realised concern. It’s getting serious here, you know.”
Take 1.
“My wife thought I should come back,” Harry says, leaving out the bit about not having a job. He still can’t explain why he left the Aurors, but he did, and he doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t regret the choice to stay at home with the kids for a while, either - well, it’s just Lily now, who’s so good and sensible that Harry could almost be convinced she was adopted.
“And what did you think, Harry?”
He remembers Ginny sitting on a bed in a grubby room in Grimmauld Place, reminding him that she knew what possession felt like, if he only cared to ask. He trusts Ginny and her instincts more than anyone in the world, bar one, and he trusts that if she wants him to come back here, it isn’t for her sake.
He would have come back for Gin’s sake, but he’s dubiously sure that that isn’t how this works.
“I think that she usually has a point,” he says, “even if I don’t always see it right away.”
Take 5.
“Do you struggle with trust, Harry?”
He wants to say of course not, I’m a grown adult, but he knows he’s not supposed to lie. He settles on a shrug. No one can accuse him of paranoia if he’s non-committal.
“Hmm,” she says, making a note. “Alright, then. Let’s discuss that a little bit.”
“Oh?”
Her smile should annoy him. It’s the same kind of small, neat smile he remembers Umbridge saving for punishment, but it’s missing something. Malice, maybe.
“You don’t trust me,” she says plainly, and Harry can’t help but squirm a little bit. He sometimes wishes he was better at hiding how he’s feeling, but he stopped doing that once he finally left the Dursleys behind for good, and he’s lost the knack for it. “That’s fine. It makes sense, even. But I do wonder who you do trust.”
“Tons of people,” he says, and feels guilty because that’s a lie. “Enough people.”
She makes a note.
“I couldn’t trust anyone as a kid,” he admits, surprising himself. “I couldn’t.”
“You grew up with your aunt and uncle, right? And a cousin?”
“Yeah. Dudley. He-”
He bullied me, only Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, can’t admit that his stupid cousin bullied him and got away with it until Hagrid found them in a hut on a rock in the sea.
“It stopped, mostly,” he says instead. “Sort of. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen.”
Because he hadn’t spent long enough in Privet Drive for Dudley to keep on at it, after the Triwizard Tournament. There had been the disaster with the Dementors, fair enough, but Dudley had come out of that with his usual robust good health, the git, once the shock wore off.
It had seemed to shake something loose in Dudley’s head, though. That fright. Maybe it was a bit of sense. He’d seemed to understand Harry a bit better after that. The little note in his last Christmas card had been friendly. Almost fond.
“Mostly,” she agrees, making another note. “And your aunt and uncle?”
“Uncle Vernon hated me,” Harry says, because that absolutely is not a lie. “And Aunt Petunia was my mother’s sister.”
Every time Harry tries to put his mother and his aunt in the same picture, it skids off and turns to nothing but shadows, just out of reach. He’s only seen Petunia a handful of times since he left Privet Drive for the last time, almost always in Dudley’s presence, and being a grandmother seems to suit her - it’s softened something in her, in a way that seemed impossible twenty years ago.
“I saw her,” he says, without really meaning to. “I went to my mum and dad’s grave for my mum’s birthday and Petunia was there.”
“Did you talk?”
Sort of. More than they ever really had before. She always went out of her way to avoid mentioning Harry’s mum, and it had ruined the whole day to have her laying a bunch of yellow and orange carnations on the grave when he arrived.
I lost a sister, too. Maybe, but she’d walked away years before, and Harry’s childhood had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t regret doing so.
“Not really,” he says. “We haven’t got anything to say to each other.”
Take 11.
“Professor Hagrid is a good friend of yours, then?”
Hagrid still has Sirius’ bike, somehow, roaring around like an aging manticore. He dropped Harry off today, because they were out for lunch and Hagrid offered to take a delighted Lils for ice-cream while Harry had his appointment.
“Yeah,” he says, mostly telling the truth. Hagrid is the only family the kids have on Harry’s side. He’s the sole person Harry trusts more than he does Ginny, and that’s probably only because he’s known Hagrid longer.
“You know,” she says, as if she’s just puzzled something out that’s been bothering her for days. “You say you don’t trust many people, but I think the people you do trust understand how important that is.”
“I never said I don’t trust many people.”
“Enough people,” she concedes, smiling that little smile again. “Alright, yeah. But it’s something to think about. Why do you trust the people you trust, but not the rest?”
“She’s prying,” Harry says, adjusting his fishing rod just for something to do. He’s not quite gotten the hang of it yet, not even with the charmed lures Gin hid in his little tackle box, but there aren’t many better ways to pass an afternoon than sitting in an uncomfortable chair by the river with Ron and a couple of bottles of beer. Fishing is just the excuse.
“Nah,” Ron says, hat pulled down over his eyes. He has more luck than Harry, usually, and has two fine fat trout in his ice-box already.
“What do you mean, nah?” Harry asks indignantly. “She is! Asking me about Hagrid? What business is that of hers?”
“She’s your therapist, and you’re being a prick,” Ron says, crossing his feet and settling deeper into his deck chair. “Doesn’t count as talk therapy if only the therapist talks, yeah?”
“I still don’t get why I need therapy in the first place,” Harry grumbles, feeling unaccountably cross about the whole thing. “I’m fine! I’m alright!”
“Absolutely,” Ron agrees, twitching his fishing rod and flicking another fucking trout into the ice-box. “Same as we all were. You’re just the only one who’s never talked about it. To anyone.”
“I’ve talked to you,” Harry points out, pointing an accusing finger at Ron. “And Hermione, a bit, and I’ve talked to Ginny!”
“Yeah, but not really,” Ron says. “You’ve told us what happened, but not how it felt to live through all of that. You keep all of that bottled up, mate. You’re going to pop someday. Think about it, for my sake. Ginny’s young enough that she’d remarry, and I don’t want some tosspot who plays for Caerphilly as a brother-in-law.”
Harry laughs. It feels good to laugh. He mostly only does it with the kids, these days.
Take 3.
“It’s not that I’m doing it on purpose,” he says, slowly. He doesn’t trust that bright blue quill of hers, even now it’s sitting on the table beside her. She’s curled up in her chair with a cardboard cup of hot chocolate, the twin to Harry’s. He bought them on the way, a peace offering to make up for storming out last week.
It’s the Muggle kind - warm and soothing, but not warming. He wouldn’t rate it as a cure for Post-Dementor Exposure Syndrome. Still, it’s not a terrible apology. It’s got little marshmallows in, and flakey chocolate on top.
“I don’t expect you are,” she agrees. It’s later than usual, and the squat little lamp on the low table catches golden on her glasses. “And if you want to keep doing it outside of here, that’s fine.”
“But there’s not much point in talk therapy if I don’t talk, right?”
“Unfortunate but true.”
They sip their hot chocolate. Harry chews on some flakey chocolate, and some words.
“I don’t… Everyone keeps telling me I should,” he says at last. “But I don’t think about it. I don’t have nightmares, not since Voldemort died, and I don’t worry about it.”
“So because you don’t worry about it, you don’t talk about it?”
He shrugs. More or less.
“Some of your friends were tortured during the war,” she says, startling him. She’s not usually that direct. “Most of them don’t talk about it either, I’d guess. Not to you, any road.”
“Uh- no. I suppose not.”
“Do you think that means they don’t talk about it at all, then?”
“Er. Mm?”
“Just something to consider,” she says, smiling a little.
Maybe - and he’s not saying anything one way or the other - it might not hurt to talk to her. Gin’s right when she says he doesn’t talk about it at all, much, and Ron’s right when he says that mostly Harry just talks about what happened, not that it happened to him.
Couldn’t hurt to be a little more open about it. For Gin’s sake, and the kids’.
Take 14.
“When Jimmy was born- James, my eldest,” Harry says, declining a Ginger Newt with a wave. “I don’t think I was ever so scared as when the midwife just, just handed him to me. As if I’d know what to do!”
“James is what, twelve now? Seems you figured it out.”
“Ginny did all the hard work,” he says, and means it. “But that’s not the point. The point is that everyone expects me to look back and be scared. I’m not, though. I was at the time, but looking back on all the mad shit we did during school doesn’t scare me.”
“Do you think it should?”
“Not really. Things that scare me are, like… Lily sneaking my Firebolt out of the broom shed, or Albus hating school, or Gin getting sick. Real things. Things that are happening now, or could happen now. All the rest of that, none of that’s a threat anymore.”
“Harry, dear! Come in, come in!”
Molly’s been baking again. He’d half floated down the path, carried along by the smell of apples and cinnamon and orange, warm and bright in the cold of a wet November evening. Percy’s the next best hand in the kitchen in the whole family, but no one bakes even half as well as Molly does.
“Sorry for barging in,” he says sheepishly. “Gin and Lils are gone out for dinner with Luna, and Ron and Hermione are at some party thing, so I was at a bit of a loose end.”
Usually, he’d have little Hugo to babysit with Ron and Hermione at a formal function, but he’s with the Grangers for the weekend - Harry wouldn’t dare intrude there. It’s still a bit fraught, based on what Ron’s told him, and Hermione’s very prickly about her parents.
“Barge away, dear,” Molly says, pulling him down to kiss his cheek. “Go on, go in - Arthur’s inside. Go in and get warm. Where’d you put your broom? Here, give me your cloak, you’ll catch your death.”
“Thanks, Molly,” he says, and means for everything, every time he says it. “Want me to bring anything in?”
“A crowbar, to get Arthur out of that armchair,” she says, but she’s grinning. “Go on, throw something on the fire, I’ll be right behind you.”
Arthur’s snoring under the Quibbler when Harry sits down at the fire and kicks off his boots - Gin hates them because they’re right on the verge of falling apart, but Harry can’t ever bring himself to throw things away until they’re worn right through. Not for the kids, mind, or for Ginny, but he has no more intention of throwing away his boots before the soles fall off than he intends on getting rid of his Firebolt before it loses its enchantments.
“If Molly asks,” Arthur says, face still hidden, “I haven’t woken up, but hello, son - rubbish night for flying, eh?”
“If Molly had to ask, she’s a fool,” Molly says, tugging the Quibbler aside and frowning down at Arthur. “Sit up and say hello properly! We haven’t had any visitors in ages!”
“We had George here just yesterday for breakfast,” Arthur whispers to Harry, “but you know how she is. Still not sure what to do with her empty nest, eh?”
Harry settles in. Tomorrow, him and Lily are due to have tea with Hagrid and Fang, but maybe the day after they’ll have Arthur and Molly up to Grimmauld Place for dinner. He’ll write a letter to Hermione, and he’ll go fishing with Ron, and him and Hugo will go to the cinema. When the other kids are home for Christmas, they’ll all pile into the Burrow and bully Molly into sitting down and letting them cook dinner for her on pain of hiding her knitting needles.
This will do him more good than therapy, sitting here with Arthur and Molly and apple tart fresh from the oven.
He’ll still go to therapy, for Ginny’s sake, and for Ron’s. But this, spending time with his family, this is better.
He’ll give Molly the new radio him and Lily picked out last week, because Molly loves the wireless but her battered old thing crackles when the wind’s up, and she deserves a new one, one that works properly-
Oh. Ah. Okay.
Take 15.
“I think,” he says, and she looks up in surprise because he never volunteers a conversation like this. Her smile is small and neat, but it isn’t really like Umbridge’s at all, no more than her bright blue quills have anything to do with Rita Skeeter and her poisonous lies.
I must not tell lies still catches the light on the back of his hand sometimes, silvery-bright against his skin. He doesn’t really think of it other than that, except that sometimes George or Luna’s jokes go over his head because he thinks in straight, honest lines as much as possible.
“I think that I should keep coming to see you,” he says, “because Ginny and Ron think I should, and I trust them. They know me better than anyone, probably.”
Hagrid thinks he should keep coming too, admitted as much with an embarrassed clap on the shoulder that even still sent Harry straight to his knees. Hermione, now that Harry’s finally written back to her, thinks it’s doing him good, even if she still can’t understand why he left the Aurors.
“But,” he says, and the bright blue quill pauses over the parchment. “But, I really do think I’m better than everyone thinks. I just needed a break, that’s all.”
“You’ve been fighting Dark wizards for almost twenty years now, Harry,” she says, nudging a tin of biscuits across the table to him. “If anyone deserves a break, it’s probably you.”
“Yeah?”
“Have a Ginger Newt, Harry,” she says. “Let’s talk.”