After the war, Hermione forced me to see a therapist. She said I had to deal with my shit childhood.
I hated going in the beginning, but over the past five years, it's been a lifesaver. At points literally. It wasn't just fighting in a war at 17. Hell, it wasn't even the war. The war was hell, but it was everything that led up to the battle that's what fucked me up.
It took me years of therapy to say the Dursleys abused me. No matter how much we've worked on the first ten years of my life. I still can't stand being in a small space. Even hearing an adult yell is enough to cause a panic attack. But I knew the way they treated me was fucked up.
According to my therapist, what really broke me was people telling me they loved and making me think I would finally be safe, only to have those people for me into situations to be harmed repeatedly before sending me back to the Dursleys that broke me.
For a moment in the first year, I thought I was saved and then I wasn't. Then, in the third year, for just a moment, I thought I was going to get to live with someone who actually wanted me. Hell, how did they both not know how bad things were when I went from thinking Sirius was a mass murder to wanting to live with him in like a minute?
Seriously, what were they thinking when I immediately wanted to live with an escaped convict who I thought killed my family and twelve people an hour before?
No matter how much Minone pushed, I never would have gone if it weren't for Teddy. I knew I had to be better to give Teddy the life he deserved.
I didn't know how to be a parent. No one does when they start, but I didn't even know what a good parent looked like. The Dursleys abused me, but they also abused Dudley in other ways. Sure, he never missed a meal knew the hit of a belt, but they abused him.
As much as I love Molly and Aurthur, they weren't the best parents. Sure, they were run ragged by all their kids, but they chose not to use the contraceptive charm.
Fuck, Molly never could tell the twins apart. As much as they joked around about their names. They told me how much it meant that I bothered to tell them apart.
I couldn't base my parenting on someone who couldn't even tell their kids apart. Not that I would ever tell them or Ron, but when I got custody of Teddy, I knew I needed to fix myself if I wanted to be a good parent to Teddy.
I knew I couldn't let Teddy have anything close to the childhood I had, but not how I was raised wasn't a good enough roadmap to raising a kid.
Admitting the Dursleys abused me wasn't hard. I always knew they were the worst kind of muggles but admitting that what Albus did was abuse. Now that took years, but I can admit that now. I can even look at the short time I had with Sirius and say it was a shit show of epic proportion.
Of every adult who knew me as a child, it was the easiest to forgive Siri. He was so broken by Azkaban and his own fucked up childhood. My therapist and I have done so much work around the adults and how they failed me in 3rd, 4th, and 5th year. But we've left Siri mostly alone because I don't want to hate him.
I don't want to look at the one adult who seemed to care about me as just Harry and not the Boy Who Lived and see all the ways he didn't put me first. But a war effort.
I can admit the war was fucked up and needed to be fought, but both sides used children as soldiers, and I don't have to think that was okay.
What was hard was looking at the other adults who should have done more for me when I was a kid and admitting they failed me.
Molly and Arthur needed me to save them from Voldy. Even people like Mini should have seen that what Albus was doing was wrong. She was my head of house and she should have been able to tell something was wrong in my home life and didn't.
I haven't ever been brave enough to ask her if she knew. She either cared more about using me as a tool than my health and safety or she told Dumblefuck and let herself off the hook when he said it's for the greater good or she just didn't notice.
No matter how much Jane and I have talked about it in therapy, I can't decide what's worse. But since I work at the school, asking would only make that worse. The only thing I can do is take care of Teddy and my students the way I wish they had taken care of me.
Fucking Fred and George knew something was wrong with how the Dursleys treated me. That's why they came to rescue me. But my teachers didn't notice or were too wrapped up in what Albus needed me to be to see I was drowning.
It's made dealing with all the older teachers hard. That's probably why the only teachers I talk to are Draco, the new potions teacher, and the new transfiguration teacher.
Thanks to my therapist, I've been able to make peace enough with my past to spend time with Molly and Aurthur without being pissed at them, at least for the most part. There were a lot of Sunday dinners I spent hiding with George because I couldn't deal with Molly. I went because Ron, and Ginny and George asked me to go.
It's been harder and harder to deal with Teddy's questions lately. He's five. His questions about his parents are more and more pointed.
Andi always talks about Tonks. I didn't know her well. So, I don't dislike talking about her. Sure, she was an auror who was happy to leave a kid to be abused so we could win a war, but she wasn't an adult who ever said they cared about me.
Now that Teddy is asking more and more questions about Remus. I don't know what to say.
Raising Teddy has been hard. I was so fucked up after the Battle of Hogwarts I could barely get out of bed, but I did.
At 18, I picked myself up and made sure Teddy was taken care of and loved. Even before I was raising him, I took the time to make sure he was okay.
How do I come up with something nice to say about a 21-year-old man who left me to a family that locked me in a cupboard for a decade and never even checked to see if I was okay?
Sure, Albus told him I was happy and loved, but I never took Andi's word that Teddy was okay. I went and saw him at least once a week. No matter what. No matter how hard it was to get out of bed or take a shower. Once a week, I would get up and go see him. Because when you love someone, you make the effort.
When Teddy was little, I could say some nonsense about how his daddy loved him and fought in a war and saved people. Or that he was the best teacher I ever had.
Now that he's older, those bland statements aren't cutting it anymore. And I can't dredge up a positive light to paint on a man who left me to be tortured for a decade. For a man who claimed to love me and care about my family, but even when he knew I was being abused, he wouldn't go against Dumbledick to make sure I had enough to eat.
No, he thought the war was more important than I was. I can't help but think about what I would do if there was another war.
Hell, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could emigrate to another country.
I know I have more resources than Remus ever had, but I know the Dursleys were getting money to take care of me. He could have lived on what they were getting from my parents' estate.
There was a goddamn war going on. My parents put things in place, so I'd be taken care of no matter who ended up raising me.
I found the will after the war. The list of people who were supposed to raise me if they died had ten names on it.
Ten!
They cared enough to make backup for the backup caregivers. Of course, they made sure there was enough money that I'd be taken care of.
Remus and Severus were on that list, both of whom didn't have the money to raise a kid. So, his being a werewolf and not being able to get a job shouldn't have mattered.
Actually, his life probably would have been better if he'd taken me to raise him.
"It's been a hard week. I'd like to talk about Remus."
The end.