Doing a Double Take

“Yeah, I’d say I regret calling him,” Harry told Dr. Emilia. He ran a hand through his ratty hair, trying to push off the nasty headache that hadn’t faded since he woke up. “I mean, I really like the guy. Even if I can’t have him romantically, I think he would be a really good friend.”

Dr. Emilia nodded, eyes not leaving Harry’s. “But, from your own accounts of the phone call, he seemed to be very polite and not bothered by your intoxication. So, why do you really regret calling him?”

Harry looked away from her, blushing and uncomfortable. Dr. Emilia snorted. “Okay, so we’re going the avoidance route today, I see.”

She pushed back in her chair and leaned forward, seeming more solemn than she had for the past half hour. “You’ll have to hear me out on this one, Harry. But please listen fully to what I am going to say before drawing any conclusions, okay?”

Harry frowned, not wanting to hear her parrot the words of his friends. However, just as he opened his mouth to express this, she said, “I booked a boggart for the second half of this appointment. I think you’re afraid, and I think you don’t even know what you’re afraid of. I think it would be helpful to get an unbiased source to explain what that fear is, and then we could work from that to try and get to the root cause of it. I want to help you, Harry, but I feel that we are at an impasse. I can’t help you if I don’t even know what it is you need.”

Harry was startled by this. Sure, she had mentioned the exposure therapy a few times, but he hadn’t considered that maybe it could benefit him. He hated the idea of the boggarts, but he saw the hopeful look on his therapist’s face, and he couldn’t help but agree.

She led him down the hallway, explaining the procedure as they went. “The way this works, is there are two rooms connected by a window. The boggart is in a wardrobe on one side, while you stand on the other side. The window is thin enough to allow the boggart to react to you, but it keeps you safe from any potential harm. I will be standing at an angle that will keep the boggart from reacting to me while allowing me to observe. One of the boggart experts will coax the boggart into and out of the wardrobe, so it stays controlled. If at any point in the interaction you feel unsafe or uncomfortable to a large degree, you can move out of its line of vision to end the interaction. Does that all sound good?”

Harry thought that no, this did not sound good, but it did sound like something that he needed, something he never would have done on his own. He had actively avoided boggarts decently well in his life, the last one he had encountered being cleared out while he was transforming Grimmauld Place. The image of a false Hermione telling him that she and Ron no longer needed him or wanted him wasn’t one he was eager to repeat, but he didn’t even know that that would be what he would see this time around. So, despite his obvious reservations, he choked out an “Okay.”

She opened a door, leading Harry into an unassuming room with plush armchairs and soft carpeting. The walls are a soothing blue, the lights covered by soft fabrics that keep the room feeling warm. He felt instantly comfortable in the room. It would be easy to assume that this was just a simple room for decompressing, if it weren’t for the chair facing a slim window, a sturdy wardrobe visible on the other side.

Dr. Emilia gently urged Harry towards the chair, stepping to an angle beside him. “Whenever you’re ready,” she soothed, “I’ll let the other side know to release the boggart. But only when you feel like you can.”

“I don’t think I ever will,” he admitted, “so you may as well just let it out now.”

She nodded, then lifted a hand. Harry assumed that someone could see, because when she did that, the door to the heavy wardrobe slowly creaked open. He had no idea what it would be until the slender hand gripped the edge of the door, until the sweater on pale wrists slipped back to reveal gentle tattoos. A lithe form slid out of the wardrobe, and Draco Malfoy was suddenly looking Harry directly in the eye. He looked different, and it took Harry a second to place it. The disheveled hair was pulled back in a flower crown, the edges of his sweater were frayed, and there was even a spot of flour on the corner of his forehead. By all means, this should have been an identical match to the Draco that Harry had grown fond of. But, with a cold jolt to the heart, it wasn’t; this Draco was scowling, an angry expression that Harry hadn’t seen since leaving Hogwarts that left him feeling empty.

“Potter,” he sneered, his eyes glancing up and down his form. “What a surprise. You seem to keep appearing everywhere I go. Why can’t you just learn to leave me alone?”

“I—I can’t,” Harry whispered.

“I figured that one out, genius,” Draco scoffed. “You never were able to leave me alone. Last time it was because you thought I was up to something. Granted, I was, but this time I’m just trying to live my life. So why can’t you ignore me this time?”

Harry couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t find a way to slot this Draco (cold, calculated, biting) with the one he had been knowing now. He also couldn’t admit to this fake one why he had been thinking of the real one so much, couldn’t let the words past his lips. But that did seem to matter.

Draco’s eyes widened momentarily, and a cold smirk spread across his face. “Oh, Potter,” he simpered patronizingly, “don’t tell me you have feelings for me. Did Golden Boy Potter fall in love with the big bad Death Eater?”

“I did,” he managed to respond. “I do.”

He cackled with glee. “Oh! This is priceless! You didn’t think I could ever feel the same, did you?”

He analyzed what felt like every inch of Harry’s body. “Oh, poor Potter. You’ve seen yourself, haven’t you? Scrawny little git, always have been. You’re too small to be a proper man, aren’t you? Look at you!”

The last sentence was a scathing scream, digging deep into Harry’s skull. He felt himself whimper.

A cold chuckle. “You have looked at yourself. All those ugly scars covering yourself. You didn’t think for a second that you could be desired? You’re more mark than man. Why would I go for someone like you when I could find someone attractive, someone whole? I’ll never want you. I’ll never even like you. And no one will want you. You look vile. You make me ill.”

“I think that’s enough,” Dr. Emilia said, hand resting on Harry’s shoulder. She lifted her other hand, and an invisible force seemed to push the boggart back into the wardrobe, locking the door as if nothing ever happened.

“Before I let you leave for the day,” Dr. Emilia said, never turning to face Harry, “I just want to do a quick debrief. We don’t need to talk in depth about what just happened now, but I would be doing you a disservice if I just let you leave now without saying my piece. Harry, no matter what, you always are and always will be worthy of love. That love does not need to depend on what you look like or what you provide to others. You were raised in an environment that made you believe you didn’t deserve love, then transferred to a life where the love you received was transactional. This was wrong, and it was not your fault. You do not have to be a hero or look like a model to be worth loving. You are surrounded by love, even though it is hard to believe. I don’t want you leaving here today thinking anything that boggart said could be true, understand?”

Harry nodded minutely, trying to keep himself contained. Dr. Emilia sighed, then stepped in front of his field of vision. She knelt down so their heads were level.

“That boggart was only what you fear. Fears are usually based in fact somehow, or perceived fact, and it is up to me to figure out where that is. You were done a great disservice in your youth, and you were treated in ways no living being should ever be treated. You were raised to think you have to be worth something, and it’s my job to teach you that you don’t. There’s no such thing as being whole or being shattered. You are alive, and life isn’t about what aspects of yourself have been stolen. You are loved entirely, and you are entire. If you chase being whole your entire life, then you will never get to enjoy who you are now, and you will never be satisfied. Understand that you are a whole person no matter your experiences, and your struggles with mental health don’t indicate what you will receive from others. You have scars, physical and mental, but the fact is that you are healing. Recovery doesn’t have a timeline, and love doesn’t need recovery.”

She stood up and reached out a hand, gently lifting Harry from his seat. “You aren’t your past, and you aren’t your scars. You are Harry, and you are whoever you want to be, and whoever that is, you have love. You will always have love.”

~•~

If there was one thing Harry could depend on, it was Ron rummaging through his kitchen as though he lived at Harry’s house. It ignited a sort of warmth in his chest to hear his friend when he got home, and even more when Ron called out, “Mate, you really need some more snacks in here. Me and ‘Mione have been waiting for ages—”

“It’s been seven minutes,” Hermione whispered conspiratorially, helping Harry remove his cloak.

“—And we are absolutely starved, completely ravenous. I have got to start keeping some of Hermione’s favorite foods here. I’m going to stock your fridge pantry, just you wait.”

Harry chuckled weakly. “I’m sure you will. I need to find some tasty things to keep around, anyways.”

Ron popped out of the kitchen and into Harry’s line of vision. “That’s your devastating revelation voice,” he accused, pointing a finger. “That’s the voice you use when you learned something about yourself.”

“Have you considered you might know me too well by now?”

“Never. I won’t know you too well until I know your prick size.”

“Ron,” Hermione chastised, “we can at least pretend that we don’t know what’s going on with him. You know how much he hates it when we know things about him before he works up the nerve to tell us.”

“Hey!”

“You’re right,” Ron admonished, “but sometimes he doesn’t tell us anything if we don’t ask him about it.”

“Hey!”

Hermione shoved her shoulder against his, smiling calmly. “You know we care about you. We just don’t hear too much from you during the week and have to be nosey when we have the chance. So, we want to know what’s happening.”

Harry sighed. “Just a rough day at therapy, nothing really new.” A pause. “Hermione, why didn’t you tell me that you’ve worked with Draco?”

“I needed you to draw your own conclusion,” she acquiesced. “When I tell you my own experiences, sometimes you get a bit defiant. Or you think that it’s the absolute truth. There’s never an in between. So, I figured if I told you I liked the guy, you would’ve either just accepted it as truth without seeing for yourself or you would have avoided him entirely.”

Harry accepted this begrudgingly. “Are you at least willing to tell me what projects you worked on together?”

“Nope!” Hermione said cheerfully. “You can find out for yourself. Or not, whichever is fine. But also, last I heard you were just considering finding out more about him. What have you learned?”

Harry quickly shared the course of his past week, perhaps giving a few too many details about how pretty he looked with his hair pushed back by flowers. By the time he was done, Ron and Hermione were exchanging a knowing look. “Look, mate,” Ron started, “I think you’re already in over your head. Clearly you have feelings for him. I’m never going to be too fond of him, but I have to admit that he’s been good to the people I care about lately. So, what are you planning on doing about it?”

“Nothing,” Harry admitted. “I like having him at least as a friend. I don’t want some unrequited feelings ruining that or making it awkward for our mutual friends.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Unrequited my ass. That boy has been ecstatic about you forever. And he’s definitely gotten worse since you came back into his life. So, maybe don’t assume the worst yet, okay?”

Ron interrupted them by throwing down a takeout menu. “Not that I don’t love telling Harry when he’s being an idiot, but can we please get Thai today? I’m begging you.”

The argument was put on hold for the sake of food, which all parties could agree was a more than reasonable reason to put an argument on hold. Ron did get his wish of Thai food, and three plates of ped krob later left them all sated and relaxed on the sofas. Harry was just gathering up the plates when Ron grabbed his wrist and, with as much earnest as he had ever expressed, asked, “You are going to come to dinner tomorrow, right? I just haven’t told mum yet, and I’d rather not tell her if it’s going to be a false alarm. You have missed the past month’s, and if I tell her you’re coming and you don’t, I think I might get murdered. She’s ruthless.”

Harry sighed, putting the plates down on the coffee table before addressing his friend. “I think I’ve put it off for long enough. I do care about your family—”

“Our.”

“Our family,” he amended. “Sometimes it just feels difficult to go to dinners. Emilia thinks I can be more honest with my friends and my emotions, so I’ll try that. I get a bit jealous of you guys getting to have your own families. Not that I don’t view your family as being mine, but I think I anticipated having my own spouse and kids by now, so not having that kind of hits me.”

“Well, you also thought you were into women, so maybe your anticipations can take a step back,” Hermione said. “There’s no timeline on this sort of thing, Harry. You’re still young! And I know you want romance, but if you think you aren’t going to spend an inordinate amount of time with the child currently growing in me, you’ll need your head checked.”

Harry chuckled. “Oh, I know. I’ve missed it anyways; fifteen-year-old Teddy isn’t as excited to spend time with his godfather as he used to be.”

Ron patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. None of us are cool anymore to him. I think it’s the whole war unit. He’s got to show his friends that he’s too good for his famous family.”

“Yeah,” Harry said slowly, then shook his head. “Anyways, what’s been going on in your lives? I feel like we keep talking about me, I want to know more about you.”

The couple glanced at each other, a silent conversation clearly going on. Harry was getting used to these throughout the years, only a little bit peeved that he wasn’t included in the language. He pretended he wasn’t interested, fiddling with his fingers as if they were the most interesting things he had ever seen. The pair came to some conclusion, and Hermione poised to speak. If she were a Slytherin, Harry amended mentally, she would have definitely been poised to strike. Then again, he wondered if there wasn’t at least a little bit of snake blood running through her veins.

“My team had a bit of a breakthrough,” she told him. “We’ve been working on medicine treating depression, since both the muggle and magical pharmaceuticals have been quite lacking. We’ve managed to make a melded drug that we think majorly reduces observed side effects and also can help entirely normalize brain chemistry. So, I had been wondering if you could connect me with Dr. Emilia. We need to gather a large number of volunteers for a validation study, and I think she will be able to recommend people to it who would be a good fit.”

Harry grinned. “That’s wonderful, Hermione! Of course. I’ll talk to her about it next week.”

He was truly happy for her. He had known she was working on medication effectiveness, but as far as he had known, she had been struggling with budget cuts and pesky bosses who had made it rather difficult for her to order the supplies she needed. Moving on to trials would be a big deal for her, especially in her goal to move up in the department. He knew she was capable and by far the smartest human he had ever met. After all, Harry mused internally, his war moniker really should have been changed to “The Boy who Listened to Hermione Granger”. Maybe he would drop a hint to a magazine about that. If they were going to still stalk him as though he were interesting, they may as well focus a bit on his friend who was actually doing things.

After the appropriate amount of worshiping Hermione (fit with plenty of bows and “we are not worthy”s), the conversation turned to Ron. “My team’s got their first scrimmage on Monday at six. Just a practice game, so nothing too serious. We’re selling tickets for cheap, but I’ve got a booth booked out for friends. If you were interested, you could come. I know it’s last minute, but I’d really like it if you came.”

“That’s brilliant, Ron!” Harry said sincerely. “I could definitely come. Just text me the details later and I’ll be there.”

Ron’s face lit up at that. The league was still decently new, and this year was supposed to mark a large improvement in funding and interest. After Ron’s stint as a successful assistant coach for the Quidditch team Harry flew with, he was a shoo-in for head coach of a Ploddle team. He had turned down some more high-profile positions for the newly established St. Catchpole Otters, allowing him to stay close to home. According to what Harry had heard, they really stood a chance against some of the larger teams, and he wanted to support his best friend’s venture.

The rest of the night with his friends was much more comfortable than the past few times had been. Harry wasn’t sure what to attribute it to; part of him hoped that it had always been like this, but the larger part of him knew that he hadn’t been the best friend lately. He had felt touchy lately, almost as if he were going to explode. When he was a younger adult, especially when he was professionally playing Quidditch, he had felt invisible and truly happy. However, the longer he’s gone without a serious relationship, the worst he’s felt about himself and the more he’s taken it out on his friends. He’s aware of this, and while part of him felt helpless about the whole thing, he also knew that he had to put in the effort to be a good friend instead of just having good friends.

He led the couple to the floo after the clock hit nine, about time for them to start getting ready for bed. With a gentle goodbye and a promise to see them at the Burrow the next day, they slipped through much more contentedly than usual.

Harry considered going to bed himself, maybe getting more sleep than he usually does. But there was this nagging feeling in his mind, one where he really wanted to do something. He thought about the Ploddle game, about how he would be sitting in the booth with all these couples (if he had to guess). And he really, really wanted one of those couples in the booth to be him and Draco. He knew he couldn’t have that for now, but maybe, just maybe, he could at least have him there as a friend.

Before he could lose his nerve, he pulled out his phone and went to Draco’s contact. “Hey,” he typed out, keeping it so cool and casual. “Ron’s Ploddle team is having a scrimmage on Monday. You interested in coming with?”

He hit send, then threw his phone across the room. He heard it land with a gentle thud on the couch, which was honestly a miracle. His first instinct was to go grab his phone and obsess over it until he got an answer, but he was smooth. Suave. He didn’t need to stare directly at his phone and continuously think about how much he wanted an affirmative response, or how desperate he was to have an excuse to see the blonde again and how great it would be if the two of them could go to the game, maybe sit next to each other, maybe have their knees knock together while rooting on Ron and maybe letting them stay pressed together—

“Nope,” Harry said, hitting himself gently on the head. “Brush your teeth, Harry. Don’t obsess, Harry.”

And he did so. He got himself ready for bed, only thinking a bit about whether or not he had gotten a response back, instead trying to distract himself with a nighttime routine. And then, only when he was in his pajamas, he allowed himself to retrieve his phone. He opened up to his messages, and saw that Draco had, in fact, responded.

“Sounds good, Harry! If you want me there, of course. I mean I’d like to go but I also don’t want to intrude so only if it’s okay with everyone. I mean, I’m not working on Monday so I’m definitely free so I could absolutely be there. If you text me the details, I can be there. Yes, I mean I’m saying yes.”

Mission success.