Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice, only son of James Potter & Lily Potter nee Evans, the Fourth Triwizard Champion, and the Master of Death….is going to therapy. After long discussions with both Ron & Hermoine (mostly Hermoine), he agreed to go.
As he stands outside the office, his nerves are almost on fire, wringing his hands together, complementing on going in or ditching it for a cup of Butterbeer. He never had to go to therapy. Not when Uncle Vernon would hit him, or when Dudley used to chase him around the neighborhood, not even when everyone around him died due to Voldemort. Everyone expected him to be okay, to be a shining hero they needed. And in part, he had to suck it up to be that.
“Mr. Potter?” A voice calls out behind him. Caught unaware, he quickly turns around, wand in his dominant hand. “My apologies, Mr. Potter, I am Dr. Burke, are you okay to go in or would you like a minute?”
“A minute, if you will.” He said, wand going back into his holster. His therapist, Dr. Burke, nods and unlocks their office, stepping in, a crack open for him. Dwelling back, even the Hospital Wing back at Hogwarts made him nervous. He didn’t want Madam Pomfrey to see the damage the Dursley’s enacted on him throughout his childhood. While all the same, he did, if so Dumbledore listened and would stop sending him there every year… But since the old Headmaster raised him like a lamb for slaughter, he doubted he even would.
Breathing in, he opened the door. It wasn’t small, a fact he thanked Merlin for, who knows what would’ve happened. It was almost….roomy? Although, he guesses, that was the point. To make their patients comfortable. A small desk sat on the right side of the room, near a window, where the doctor sat. They offered a smile, and tipped their head to the left, where a couch and a beanbag sat. The bright yellow bean bag almost gave him whiplash, a Pureblooded Magical willingly having a Muggle Object?
“Take a seat, if you want. I’ve had patients more than happy to stand.” Dr. Burke said, notebook in hand, crossing their feet, as they waited for his answer. He sat on the couch, even as the little kid in him wanted the beanbag, never allowed on one. Dr. Burke grabbed a yellow candy from a bowl on their desk, offering one to him. “It’s a Calming Drought, made to help people with PTSD or anxiety issues. Quiet ingenious if you ask me, from-“
“Weasley’s Wizards Wheezes.” He finished, grabbing the offered candy into his mouth. Seeing Dr. Burke’s raised eyebrow. “Sorry, my friend, George, owns it, he developed it to help with it all.”
“It’s alright, it’s expected as they rise in popularity.” Leaning back in their chair, grabbing a quill. “Where do you want to start, Mr. Potter?”
“Harry, please.” He twisted the rings around his pointer finger, once belonging to his parents, he found them in his vaults at Gringotts. His mother’s was a beautiful silver with a red ruby in the shape of a teardrop; while his fathers was a gold with lilies carved in them. An inscription on both of them, You are my happiest moment. “Where do you prefer?”
“Most patients desire to start from the beginning, others start at the end, while the rest pick off something that reminds them of why they’re here. It’s your choice…Harry.”
“I never had a choice.” Anger fills his eyes, much like his mother’s used to. “My old professor, Snape, revealed to me after he died, I never had one. That Dumbledoor had given me trial after trial to prepare me for war, so that I could die at the proper moment.” While still bitter at the man, he could still be grateful for the fact he didn’t lie to him about that.
“You were groomed to be a child soldier, then?”
“What?” He snapped his head up, shock in his face from the open mouth to the widened pupils. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know! …What does grooming mean?”
Dr. Burke dropped their relaxed position, sitting tall and poised, as expected of a Pureblood. “Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them.” With a barely contained disgust at the words, his doctor continued. “I don’t know if Dumbledore did or not, would you like to talk about it more to be sure? Or would you prefer something else?”
Harry looked in their eyes, a dark brown filled with concern, in another lifetime; they would’ve been his fathers eyes. He swallowed, “I’d like to be sure. I want to have my life be mine .” Dr. Burke nodded, writing with their white quill. He could confess to himself that he took a while to even start.
Coughing, he began. “Before I went to Hogwarts, I lived with my aunt, uncle and my cousin… I never had a room, of sorts? I used to live in the cupboard under the stairs for the first 11 years of my life.” Dr. Burke looked at him, horror in their eyes. He was used to it from the Weasley’s & Hermoine, however. “We had a routine. I’d wake up and make breakfast, if i did it right, my aunt wouldn’t hit me with the pan or yell at me. Then, she’d give me a list of chores to complete before the day ended, I had to avoid my cousin chasing me with his friends to beat me up while doing it. If i managed to be good for the day, my uncle wouldn’t beat me with his belt when he got home. If he did, I would be thrown in the cupboard. If i was lucky, I'd get a piece of bread to eat for the day. Usual stuff.” He shrugged, before remembering Hermoine’s words, “Usual..for me.”
“I take it from your word choice, you are aware that is child abuse?”
“You’re just a freak! Always useless!”
“Oh, you’ve done it now, boy!”
“Time for Harry Hunting.”
“You don’t have to do all of the chores??”
“Nope. We all help out, Fred & George always get to remove the gnomes though.”
“Where’d you get those bruises?”
“No-Nowhere.”
“We get to eat three meals a day?”
“I don’t want to do this!! Please don’t make me do this.”
“If you’re so good at magic, you could’ve left. But you haven’t, deep down, you know you deserve to get it beaten out of you!”
“You didn’t deserve this Harry.”
“You have a home at the Burrow, always.”
“After a few years, I did.” Voice shaking as he did so, remicent of the young child who he used to be. “I never realized it for a while, but when I would stay the summers at my friend, Ron’s house, the differences were too much.”
“Ginny! What were you doing?”
“Are you okay, Harry? I was just asking him questions on the Daily Prophet.”
“..He doesn’t hit you for it?”
“Would you like to stay on this, or would you like to continue?”
“Continue. I might come back another day to focus.” Twirling his mother's red ring, he focused on trying to remember. Memories from those times are blurry, the result of too many concussions. “I got my Hogwarts Letter in the mail, my aunt and uncle didn’t want me going. They hated magic, which is why they never told me about it. They even moved to a cabin in the lake just to avoid those letters. On my birthday, Hagrid, the Gamekeeper at Hogwarts and an old friend of my parents came by to deliver it. He later took me shopping for my supplies, where I met my first friend, my late white owl. I named her Hedwig.”
“After Hedwig, from your textbooks?” Dr. Burke asked, replaying her white quill with a nearby brown one.
“Yes, I liked the name..” He confirmed, smiling at the fond memories her name had brought him. “I met my friends Ron & Hermoine on the train, along with Neville. Ron didn’t quite like Hermoine at the time, ironic considering he married her.. Later on, I had rejected Malfoy’s friendship, after he was rude to my friend, Ron. Reminded me of my cousin. It was here I saw Dumbledore, for the first time, in the Great Hall. He kept staring at me, and smiled when I got into Gryffindor. Throughout the year, there was someone wrong. Looking back, Hermoine compared it to a mystery from a children’s book.”
Another raised eyebrow, “Soon we found out the Philosopher's Stone had been hidden at Hogwarts, and Voldemort, possessed through a professor, was trying to steal it.” As always, he ignored the flinch, a name gives people power, and he had stolen too much of it from Britain. “Dumbledore wasn’t at Hogwarts, leaving my Head of House, McGonagall, in charge. We were kids, idiotic kids, and charged in there to try to stop him. We faced Devil’s Snare, flying keys to unlock a door, a life size chess board that knocked out Ron, and a room filled with potions, poison and fire blocking both doorways.” The scratching of the quill against parchment stopped, the doctor stared at him in bewilderment before writing again, with a bit more force than necessary. “Hermoine went to save Ron, and I went to stop him. I found Professor Quirell, possessed by Voldemort, staring at the Mirror of Erised, where the stone was hidden.” Widened eyes stared back at him, waiting for him to finish before speaking their truths. “You had to not want the stone to be able to get the stone. Which He could not do. Dumbledore thought he was clever for that… I- I ended up killing him. I killed my professor when I was eleven. And he was proud of me for that, my Headmaster was proud that I killed a man.” He choked out, mind still unable to process that. He wondered if his parents would be happy and proud that he killed someone as a child.
“That was not your fault. You were a child, it couldn’t have been your fault. From what you told me, Dumbledore made it all too easy for children to walk into a heavily dangerous situation, where one of you was harmed. You were faced with a dangerous man, no one can blame you.”
“But-“
“Did you mean to kill him?”
“Well, no but-“
“Did you plan to kill him?”
“No.”
“Was it accidental?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that would’ve happened?”
“No.”
“Do you think your answers would’ve been the same as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named if we asked him how he felt about his murders?”
“No.”
“Then how could it have been your fault?”
“I don’t know…It feels like it is. I burned him alive, I heard him scream. It was all I could hear when I closed my eyes. My touch killed him, because of my mother’s protection. But it was only there, because of me.” So confused, just like he was on the day it occurred. If they looked closely, they could see the tears forming. But they never fell.
“That’s okay.. You know it wasn’t, but our feelings are a confusing mess, they make us lash out, they don’t coincide with reality sometimes… One of my patients, she has C-PTSD, she sometimes explains things she does by imagining the child from her younger years besides her. If she has the urge to read children’s books, she explains it by the child she used to be holding her hand, begging to read one, since the both of them never could.” Their hands moved as they talked, but always below his eye level, as if careful about it. “Is this your first therapy appointment?”
“Yes.”
A smile. “It could mean that your child self, doesn’t quite understand what happened. And while you understand, he still feels like he did something wrong. Later on, in the session, Would you like to discuss how to help him?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. And what would you like to do now?”
“Continue.” Dr. Burke nodded, grabbing their brown hair, and placing it in a ponytail with their wand sticking through. A jolt of pain through the chest. “When I came back to my aunt and uncle, they gave me my cousin's second room. With a price, bars on the windows and padlocks on the door.”
A snap echoed through the room, a broken quill in the doctor’s hand. “My apologies. Continue if you want, I can get a new one.”
Biting his cheek, he did. “They locked up my trunk with all of my homework and my wand. I couldn’t do the summer assignments, so I had to do them on the train. That summer though, Ron and his brothers, Fred & George went all the way there to take me away. It was the first summer I stayed away from there. Their mum, Molly, was nice to me, always fed me and cared for me. I felt like she was nicer to me than her own kids sometimes, I don't know for sure.” Scratching of the quill. A smile. Uncrossing of the legs. Other than that, not much changed. They were letting him speak, if he wanted them to, they would. “I didn’t like that year that much, Lockheart kept trying to bring me into the cameras to boost his own fame. He kept assuming I wanted my fame and I liked it. I didn’t. I just wanted my parents back. Didn’t like how the Universe didn’t listen to me, and tried to crown me as an Heir of a Hogwarts Founder.”
“Technically, the Potters are descendants of Gryffindor, and you would be Heir of Slytherin through conquest.”
“…What.”
“Never looked into your family tree?”
“Not yet?”
“It was foreshadowing.”
That one actually managed to get a laugh out of him, he didn’t know if it was the Calming Drought or the therapist themselves. “Funny.” Harry shifted in his seat, laying against it, fully settled. “The Chamber of Secrets was opened that year.” Stiffened body. Eyes raised. A question to go on and continue. After years with the Dursley’s, he got familiar with body language. Just like Dr. Burke. “Painted on the walls next to the Great Hall in blood, The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware. Cheesy. Not even actual blood, rooster blood, couldn’t even go all out. But it managed to get everyone panicked, and the fingers all went to me.”
“Did they assume that because you were the Heir by conquest?” Dr. Burke asked, brown eyes glittering with an access to knowledge, but with a concern for how the blame affected their patient.
“Nope. Because I was going to the Great Hall because I was hungry.” Harry laughed at it, as he got older, the ridiculous experiences only made for joke material. “The fact they found out I could speak Parseltongue was a coincidence.”
A pinch between their brows. “Was it just the younger years?”
“Even the seventh years.”
“Merlin..”
“I have the feeling you’re going to be like that for a while.”
A raised eyebrow, amusement painting their features. “Would you look at that, he’s a jokester.” A note jogged down on the parchment, he could barely make out the words “Humor as a coping mechanism.”
“It got worse as the first attack happened, when Colin Creevy was attacked and petrified. I didn’t hate the kid, he was a good kid, with a positive outlook of the world. But since I didn't like the pictures he would take, anyone who thought I was innocent….”
“Colin Creevy…he fought in the Battle, didn’t he?”. A tone so devoid of its humor from a minute ago, soft.
“He did. A fighter then, and a fighter when.. when the Battle happened.”
“You don’t want to talk about it now, that’s okay… Now, the Chamber of Secrets. What did Dumbledore do?”
“Nothing.” He laughed, but it was dry, brittle. Not one of humor, not one he could imagine Fred would use. “He let the school stay up, even when everyone was getting petrified left and right. I found, through a diary, that Hagrid was the suspect last time it opened, and when I realized. Hagrid was sent to Azkaban.”
“Hmm. Do you believe there to be any correlation?”
“It was a coincidence. The Ministry sent him there, not Dumbledore.” He breathed in, mind catching up to him. “But he definitely knew about me going into the Chamber… When Ginny, Ron’s sister, went missing into the chamber, we went after her. I opened it, and I found her on the ground, unconscious. Tom Riddle, the one who owned the diary, who was the Horocrux, stepped in and grabbed my wand. As the better looking version of Voldemort, he wanted answers before he killed me.”
A flinch. A pause. “You’re saying there was a time He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was…hot?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a therapist?”
“You work better with humor rather than confrontational… Andddd you’re deflecting.”
“..Yeah.”
“What did he want answers on? Clearly he knew how to make a Horcrux, an abomination that that was.”
“How i survived him.”
“Oh, what a narcissist.”
A nod. “Spent the whole time monologuing, wasting my time.” He said, rolling his eyes. “Through Parseltonuge, he told the Basilisk to kill me, yeah, a Basilisk was in Hogwarts since it got built. Yada yada, Fawkes, Dumbledore’s Phoenix came in, carrying the Sorting Hat.”
“Not technically Dumbledore’s. Fawkes was the familiar of Godric Gryffindor, and has bonded to each Headmaster and Headmistress of Hogwarts. I expect he had bonded with McGonagall.. And a Hat?” Dr. Burke pointed out, scribbling on their parchment, muttering of incompetent Headmasters.
“Did not know that.. But the Hat contained the Sword of Gryffindor, which I used to stab the Basilisk…after it bit me.”
A blank stare. Blinking of the eyes. A sigh. “I might need to go to therapy after this too. The long lost Sword of Gryffindor, which has been sought after and had thousands of Wizards & Witches alike look for it, was in the Hat that sits upon all of our heads as children? How are you still alive, Harry?”
“Spite.”
“Not even surprised.”
“Phoenix tears can heal Basilisk wounds apparently, a fact even Mr. Perfect forgot as i stabbed a fang into his Horcrux.”
“You were 12, correct?” Nod. “Yeah, you’re going to be here once or twice a week. I can see why you’re here.”
“Ouch.”
Dr. Burke waved their hands, “Go on now, can’t help you if you don’t finish.”
“We managed to get out, with Riddle gone, Ginny was getting better. We went to Dumbledore’s office, his eyes kept twilinking. Malfoy, the older one, arrived since he planted the Diary with the Weasley Family. He left, and I freed his House Elf, Dobby, on the way out.” Fondness leached into his voice, as a snake crushed his heart at the memory.
“Ooh. I bet he didn’t like that. Malfoys are always such drama queens.”
He burst out laughing, the pain in his chest dimming a bit. “He really didn’t.”
Blowing a strand of hair out of their face, Dr. Burke looked him in the eyes. Faint smile on their face and in their eyes. “Dumbledore didn’t offer you help throughout the year, correct?” A shake of the head.”Only helping when you were possibly going to die. Tell me, Harry. Did you learn to sacrifice your life before or after Hogwarts?”
“Now you’re a therapist again..”
“It’s why you’re here.” A tilt of the head.
“I think both? I never mattered before I knew of magic to people, and when I did, when I had people that cared about me, I was willing to go into the fire for them.”
“Do you know who put you with your aunt and uncle?”
“Profes- Headmistress McGonagall says he did, even as she warned him against it.” Harry said, eyes widened as he took a breath in. “He was counting on me to risk it because he knew the environment I would be raised in. That old bastard!”
“Calm down, Harry. He’s dead, and can’t do anything else to you. Take another Calming-Candy.. We don’t know if he meant to or not, you can always scream at his portrait after this if you want. But, how do you feel, right now?”
Taking two candies from the offered bowl, he turned the rings from his parents around. “Confused. All signs are pointing to that he did it, but some part of me…the kid me doesn’t want to believe it.”
Tapping their fingers on the desk beside them, “When I was a kid, whenever I didn't want to believe something. My mom would either let me have time to adjust and rethink on it, or give me evidence and a board to think on it currently. Which one do you want?”
“I’ll take a minute or two.”
“That’s doable.”
“…Can I have the board as well?” He asked, a nod. Dr. Burke took their wand out of their hair, causing it to fall to their shoulders. Seconds later, a leaf got transfigured into a chalkboard, with writing already on it, of a timeline. Grabbing their hair, they twisted it around their wand before adjusting it. Putting their parchment on their desk, they looked at the window, letting him have a few minutes to himself.
It allowed him time to fully look at the room, on the desk, pictures jumped out at him. One was of two adults that looked older than his doctor and four similar in age to then, which must’ve been their family. Their mother and father glared at everything they saw, an almost deadly grip on their children’s shoulders. The children had been holding hands with one another, looking anywhere but each other.
The other picture contained two dogs, which had to be Magical based on the way one had wings, and the other had a third eye. They stared adoreling at Dr. Burke.
Along the walls were posters, and some were dried flowers in a picture frame. An attempt to keep them alive; or the memory of them at least.
“I think i’m ready now.” Dr. Burke looked up at him, adjusting their chair back to him now. Quill in hand, they nodded at him. Whenever you’re ready. It said, “My third year was probably my favorite one. Voldemort didn’t even bother with me that year, thank Merlin. Hermoine got a Kneezle, Crookshanks, kept trying to kill Ron’s pet rat, Scabbers. I wish he did.”
A raised eyebrow. Odd blinking.
“It’s not what it sounds like! The rat was an Animagus!” A chuckle sounded out, returning to their usual posture. “Remus Lupin was our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, he was fun, actually managed to teach the subject…and he knew my parents.”
“I knew of him when I was in school, nasty little trickster, he was. And yet, he was the person the young ones would go to for help.”
A smile so bright it almost hurt his cheeks, “Sounds like him” He choked out, the tear finally falling. “Later in the year, Sirius Black met with us in the Shrieking Shack. Ron’s pet rat was Peter Pettigrew, the man who actually killed my parents, he was their Secret Keeper. I didn’t want my parents’ friends to become killers, i stopped them from killing him. And he ended up escaping to return Voldemort to power, making Sirius live as an escaped convict.”
“Did you personally bring him back?”
A glare. ”No.”
“You published Sirius Black’s journals and his letters to you, in it, he detailed how you had knocked Pettigrew out and tied him up. It was a simple mistake, he was a rat, a slippery rat.”
“…How are you so good at this?”
“I pick apart your brain and dissect it.” A raised eyebrow, from Harry this time, before a short laugh escaped him. “Do you want to continue to your fourth year?”
“Is it normal to want to stay in my third year, to what it used to be?”
“Of course. I want to go back years in the past before it began. Sometimes, I consider stealing a Time Turner from the Ministry to do it.” Looking back at their patient, they clarified. “I studied psychology in the first place to understand myself, now I use it so others don’t have to go through the process of spending a decade on the subject.”
“Huh. Okay… Why did Sirius not have a trial?”
Silence. Tapping on the table. Wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Dr. Burke?”
“The only way Sirius Black would not get a trial is if it was requested by the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, which was..”
“Dumbledore.” He watched as the words were added onto the timeline against the man in question. He wanted to be angry, but at this point, he expected it. “Fourth year, Barry Crouch Jr. kidnapped Mad-Eye-Moody and impersonated him through Polyjuice Potion. He entered me in the tournament through a fourth school, and he made sure to get me through the end. Dumbledore didn’t notice it, but I don’t know how true that is anymore. I got to the end… and I had to watch as my friend, Cedric was killed by Pettigrew.”
“We can stop here if you want, witnessing a death can be traumatic and can cause panic attacks.” He heard them speak, but he did not see candles around him being lit. Small waves of comfort filled the room.
“I’m fine. The candies help with them, don’t they?”
“Yes, but i still care about your comfort.”
“I’m okay. Voldemort was reborn, we dueled. It caused the last few spells of his wand to be reversed…I heard them. Cedric, my parents. I heard their voices. I wanted to give up just to hear my parents again.”
Tapping the quill. “And what kept you alive?”
“Cedric asked me to carry his body back, I owed him that. He was there because he wanted to split the fortune and the position with me.”
“Do you still miss him?” A nod. “Do you do anything to honor him, even now?”
“I’ve begun to visit the Hufflepuff Games, I visit his grave every now and then.” He swallowed, on what, he didn’t know. Was it his guilt? “I petitioned for a statue to be made of him, it was unveiled a couple months ago. I see his father there.”
“That is a nice way to honor him. Patients find that carrying something from their lost loved ones, or honoring them by consuming their favorite dish, tend to help. I carry my sister’s pearl earrings with me.” Two pearl earrings did indeed sit on their left ear, bright as if they were new, but the scratch marks were not.
“Do you still feel his loss?”
“Most of the time. Someone once said, that the ones that love us, never truly leave us.”
“And they’d be right.”
“He was. Cedric never left. I remember crying my eyes out in the summer, screaming his name in my sleep. I got punished for that. And now? I can’t sleep sometimes, it feels like he’s next to me, like they’re all next to me.”
A pause. “Do you want me to help with that?”
“No. I miss them, I don’t want to lose the only thing I have left of them, other than the memories.”
“And the sleeping?”
“Please.” Laughter tumbled out of the both of them, a note scribbled into parchment as a reminder. “Fifth year, was a mess. Umbridge, from the Ministry was our new professor. Her form of detention involved a blood quill.” He shoved his sleeves down, showing the silver writing of I must not tell lies.
Dr. Burke’s demeanor changed, their face dropped the cheerful emotion it had a second ago. Their posture stiffened. “That is both child abuse and illegal.” They had to swallow lest they choke. “That disgusting woman, to do that to a child.”
“I take it it’s horrible in the Wizarding World?” While it was a joking tone, he was worried about how drastically it changed his therapist.
Hand against their mouth, “It’s downright horrible. There’s a reason it’s been outlawed.”
“Another day to cover this, I take it?”
“Oh definitely.”
“On the bright side, I befriended Luna Lovegood that year, she was odd. But I liked it, she didn’t care for my reputation, and I didn't care how the other students saw her. She showed me the Thestreals, and she’s one of my best friends.”
Dr. Burke had a fond smile, eyes analyzing the boy-the man in front of them. “Your mother, Lily, was friends with Pandora.”
Hand still upon his mother’s wedding ring, they stopped. “Really?”
“They were several years older than me, but they were. She was friends with Alice, Marlene, and a Mary, but her, Pandora and Regulus were a trio, almost as popular as your father’s group.”
“Regulus Black?”
“The very one.”
“The only times people told me about my parents, they always leave my mother out.” He twirled her ring around his fingers once more, “Somerimes, i feel like I barley know her.”
“If you’d like, at the end of our session, i can give you a list of people who knew her well?” An offered hand.
A smile. “I’d like that.”
A moment to compose.
“It was also the year Sirius died. I tried everything to save him, he was the only family I felt like I had left. And it’s not like I could go to Dumbledore, he was ignoring me all year; something he never did. In the end, i couldn’t save him, and i had to watch him die. I almost cast the Crutatious Curse on Bellatrix, his killer. I couldn’t do it. When I saw Dumbledore after that, i blew up his office in a fit of rage. Kinda regret that, but not really.” He blinked, admitting that felt like a breath of fresh air. A weight he never knew was there. And all throughout his confession, Dr. Burke simply gave no inner chance into their opinion. Simply nodding, writing down, and then talking with him.
“We can try all we want, sometimes, we can never achieve it. When my sister died, I had tried Necromancy. I was desperate. It didn’t work…” He didn’t know how long ago it was that the late Burke had passed, but he could still hear the heartbreak from under a soft voice. “You have to want to see and feel thr pain to cast it, you may have lost your godfather. But it wasn’t enough to pull you into the darkest parts of magic, not like there is a dark part but…you get what i’m saying?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw words forming on the chalkboard.
Dumbledore ignores and _____ Harry, possibly an attempt to make him dependent on him.
“I do.” He could see the words before they came out of their mouth. “I had a jewelry designer custom make some of Sirius’ tattoos into pendants. I wear them every day.”
“That is a sweet one.. I once heard a poem, I remember a line going, We are the tombs and churches of people we loved. Meaning we carry things with us from them, whether it be jewelry or how we now drink coffee with our lunch instead of pumpkin juice, because a loved one did.”
“That’s going to keep me up all night.” A bark of laughter.
“It is a doozy!” They replied, shaking their head a bit. “Would you like something to drink or eat? I have a few things in case sessions get long.”
“Pumpkin juice?”
“Coming right up!” They got out of their chair, heading to a room nearby, not the door Harry entered however. A moment passed before they entered the room with a glass of pumpkin juice, grabbing it with a whispered thank you. He never even noticed how dry his throat had become.
“My sixth year, Dumbledore was already dying.”
“An odd way to start a conversation.”
“I’m already in therapy, what else do you want?”
“I’m older than you, I'm the funny one here, mister.” A smirk, it was a joke. They didn’t mean it, Harry.
“I have more trauma.”
“Is this the Olympics?”
“…Was that a Muggle reference?”
“Absolutely.”
A snort. He drank another sip of his juice before continuing. “Riddle had made more than one Horcrux, he made seven or eight.”
“Well no wonder he looked like the gum on someone’s shoe.”
“You have no idea how grateful I am that I was not drinking when you said that.”
“Oddly enough, I get that a lot.” Brown quill in the right hand, and parchment in the left, and they were already taking a note. They looked up at him from it, “Continue when you aren’t coughing up a lung, dear.”
“Okayyy, I think I got it. Now, Riddle made a Horcrux of the Gaunt Family Ring, his mother’s side of the family… it held a curse as a defense mechanism.”
“Oh, no wonder he’s crazy.”
“Yeahh. His hand was black and crusty, turned to mostly ash. It would’ve killed him by the end of the year, if he didn’t ask Snape to.”
“If I was on the verge of drying an ugly death, I would ask him too. Rather die hot, you know?”
“Not even going to answer. Dumbledore blew up at my aunt and uncle when he got at the house, made a big show out of it.”
“Hmm. You said he was already dying?” A nod. “He might’ve been doing that to get you on his side, he did have less than a year left.”
“Maybe, we got a new professor that year.”
“Not really a surprise.”
“You might’ve known him, Professor Slughorn?”
“Oh that bit- …that one?”
“You didn’t even try.”
“Yeah, I didn’t. Never liked Slughorn, always favored and collected a few students. And always left the rest out.”
Harry shook his head in agreement, “The Slug Club was a bad enough name as well.”
“Here he here he.”
“Malfoy was acting suspicious the whole year, I found out why in the end. But believe me, I had the biggest I told you so in the century!”
“Now I'm curious.”
“I suck at potions, normally cooking is easy to me, but potions never are. So I got thankful due to an old textbook that has corrections in them. Made classes easier… Uh, oh! Dumbledore gave me these ‘lessons’ where he would show me memories of Riddle before he was Voldemort, in hopes we’d find some keys to destroying him or what the next Horcruxes are.”
“I was never in the wars, so I never understood this. But, isn’t he just a normal man? Sure he’s got a nose deformity, but he can be killed, and then you can find his Horcruxes to destroy?”
Harry paused, a finger in the air. “I don’t know. Pettigrew might’ve been the only one alive to know how to bring him back. We were all just…following Dumbledore’s plan..”
“Then Dumbledore’s the idiot. Cheers.” They said clinking their glass of tea to Harry’s pumpkin juice.
“At the end of the year, Dumbledore took me to a cave where Riddle used to visit to torment children. Inside hidden under a potion was his Horcrux, one of us had to drink it. Dumbledore was already dying, so he drank it until it was gone. He grabbed the locket, Salazar Slytherin’s Locket, and left before the Inferni from the lake could drag us under.”
Setting the glass of tea down, Dr. Burke stared at him. “You do realize there is a lot to unpack there, right?”
“Definitely. It was hard to explain to Ron & Hermoine.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Putting their glasses to their forehead, he could see the brown of their eyes more clearly. He wondered if that’s what it was like for other people as well. “Riddle used to torment children, what a surprise. Like that isn’t every origin story of a serial killer. Second, he had to go and ruin perfectly good jewelry? Man, what if I wanted that locket? Third, Inferni? Merlin’s tits, this thing is paranoid.”
“Thing?” He snorted out, amusement in his eyes.
“Can hardly call it a man when he looks like the love child of a pile of dirt and a forgotten piece of paper.”
“Would you call him that to his, admittedly not a face, face?”
“Fun fact: that’s how my parents took the title of Heir from me and cut off contact with me.” They shrugged, ignoring Harry’s eyes of shock. “At least I still get money from them, so…”
“There’s no way you said that to his face.”
“Not to his face, but to my parents when they were having it over for dinner….Yeah, my parents were Death Eater Supporters, I was not. Whole thing.”
“I feel like this therapy is a two way street.”
“I already got therapy for my issues, this is your first of many sessions. Now, we got way off topic.” They said adjusting in their seat, putting their left leg under their right one.
“Right.. We got back to the Astronomy Tower, Dumbledore was dying. Malfoy came into the tower, took his wand and pointed it at Dumbledore. Voldemort gave Malfoy the task to kill him, from what I've learned later on, as a punishment for his parents. Snape instead kills him, but I guess he lies to cover Malfoy? I don’t know. I’m there, under my father’s Invisibility Cloak, Stunned.”
Dr. Burke took their glasses off their forehead and onto the desk. “Why is it that you say, the most traumatic shi- stuff?”
“Life didn’t like me that much.”
“Me too, kid.” They nodded, bringing their glasses on their forehead to bop their down, successfully bringing them down. Unlike Harry’s circle ones, they were a roundish square with chains accompling the frames. Which highlighted the already silver scar from their forehead diagonally until their neck. “Now, does this Malfoy kid need therapy too? Because it really sounds like it. I know you’re up in the air about Dumbledore, but again, unless your mind is not trained for it and you haven’t seen it, but seeing someone die can be pretty traumatic and damaging.”
“I think anyone involved in that War will need therapy. When if happened, I was torn up about it. He was my mentor, he felt like a grandpa I never could’ve had. He risked his life for me in that cave, but now? With a possibility that he could’ve orchestrated my whole life, to make me want to die for him? I don’t know how I should feel about it.”
Dr. Burke nodded, looking up at him, gazing almost through him. Seeing what, he didn’t know. “I’m not here to tell you how to feel about it, that’s not why i’m here. I’m here to help you understand what happened to you, help you through it until it gets better and it no longer suffocates you. You’re allowed to mourn him still, you’re allowed to hate him. But you’re also allowed to not know, just yet. Before we go on, do you want my advice or someone to listen?”
A choice. He gets a choice. “Both. I like both.”
“And would you like to continue?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, and what happened to you after this traumatic event? Did you find a way to cope, unhealthy or otherwise?”
“Not necessarily?” A raised eyebrow, eyes prompting him for more. “I went to a wedding, if that counts. Got to unwind and have self care?”
“Clearly you hang around someone with knowledge of therapy terms and self help. But did you really do that, or are you deflecting by making it out to be something it’s not so I can give you false progress?” Dr. Burke said, sitting down like a normal human being, staring at him through the fires of hell… all with a soft voice. They waited for an answer, but his silence had already doomed him before he could think. “Truthfully. You won’t get anywhere if you lie to yourself, I'd like to help you, Harry. You are holding yourself back. This was a stressful and traumatic time in your life, and you don’t want to face it, or-
“I don’t want to realize that I do need help.” Harry said, the words have broken a dam in his throat, finally allowing him to speak. “Barely anyone asked if I was okay in my life, they thought I would be. I just had to toughen up, and I’d be fine. I’d accept my fate as the prophesized Chosen One. And I would live my days out, not being weak.” He was breathless, all his thoughts laid bare, and unlike Dumbledore, it didn’t take a mind reader to see them. He chose to unveil them. It was his choice to tell.
“And why do you think you are weak?”
“I couldn’t save Cedric,” a broken and choked sob echoed throughout the room, laid bare with Privacy Runes & Silencing Spells. Only for a boy and his therapist. “I was right there , and I couldn’t do anything! Sirius was a few feet away, only by chance, standing by the veil. And just like my father, I failed him by letting one of us die because I chose the wrong option! Dobby died because of his hero worship of me, because once again, I chose to save him. Colin? He wanted to be like me. Remus & Tonks? I got them involved by starting the damn war in the first place! Fred was there because of his brother, and I was the one who got Ron roped into it on that train ride. Snape. Fucking Snape! He hated my guts, and yet, he was there to spy because of a promise made to my mother, and therefore me. I even got my parents killed, if I hadn't been born this wouldn’t have happened.” He collapsed on the couch, unaware of when he’d been standing. The pumpkin juice was spared, having been set on the stool next to him. “I was prophesied to be strong. To take down Voldemort. If I was strong, they wouldn’t have died.”
“You’re not upset that you’re not weak, if you did, you wouldn’t be here; you’d be practicing your magic and getting your wand to respond to you quicker. You’re here because you feel guilty that you survived.You didn’t choose it. They made their decision..” Dr. Burke noticed, and the accusation cut deep into him. As if the wind out of a boat's sails had been taken, and it had nowhere to go. “You lost them, we’ve been focusing on how it felt to lose them. Tell me about them, talking, admittedly, does help. It keeps them alive, and makes the pain faint, a little. It doesn’t have to be much, it can be their favorite color or your favorite memory with them. Do you think about them often?”
“Sometimes, they’re all I think about…” Harry said, defeated. No one said therapy would be emotionally exhausting, that he’d have to actually face it. “Does it really help?”
“It does. You don’t have to talk to me about them, you can start a journal of everything you remember about them, or you can talk to someone else about them.”
He was silent for a while, the ghosts of his past seem to always follow him. He can hear them even now. Tell them about us. Let us live. “Cedric….Cedric was a Hufflepuff, a couple years above me. Sometimes, I'd be up against him during Quidditch, we were both Seekers, except he was the Captain. He was, supposed to be, the only Hogwarts Champion. He got a lot of support from Hogwarts, which he deserved. When I had fallen off during a match, he offered to replay it. Even when everyone thought I was lying… he was nice, he didn’t care…” Memories, old as they were, still hurt fresh. “He paid me back when I told him about one of the tasks, and didn't have to. But he wanted to. He was a good friend, a good person, I think I liked him. My favorite would have to be the Yule Ball, he looked….happy.”
“Did you think he wasn’t happy during the Tournament?”
He licked his dry lips, and when did they dry? “No. He was. He just wasn't..worried anymore.”
“I see.” Turning to write a note in the parchment, he had to wonder how small their handwriting must be to still not have to grab another piece. “How about your parents, then?”
The rings felt cold upon his fingers, guilt poured into his heart. “I wish they were still alive. Barely anyone had anything bad to say about them, my dad was a prankster, who according to Remus & Sirius, would mother hen them. And my mother was an intelligent witch, who used to help and build Sirius’ bike..” He started to twist and turn his fathers ring around now. “Sirius & Remus showed me most of their memories with them, I can see them in Hogwarts, or with me. In one of them, Sirius brough paint over to the house, Dad accidentally got paint on my cheek.” He unconsciously brought his hand to the same cheek, ”Mum threw a towel at him. She got a paintbrush and started adding more, until I had a flower in a pot painted on my cheek. I think Sirius took a picture of it when they weren’t looking, it’s on my nightstand…” They were filled with life that day, smiling. A family, ready to take the future in their hands. A shame the future didn’t agree, dead upon their carpet.
They shuffled in their seat, attention solely on him. “I met Remus first, for the first time I could remember. He was on the train to Hogwarts, when the Dementors attacked.” A flash of seeing him at Hogwarts hit him, dead upon the ground. A body of the many dead accounted for. His hand went into his hair, pulling it. Wanting in some way, to get it out of his mind.
“Hey. Hey, come on now. It’s okay,” A voice reached him, oddly angelic, but it was okay. It was okay, wasn't it? The voice said it was okay. He stopped pulling his hair, but he could still feel the pain in seeing his last of his first family dead. He could feel it. But he still took breaths of air, in and out, as instructed.
Blinking through his haze. And that was weird, wasn’t it? He had glasses on, and his vision was still blurry. Dr. Burke had inched their chair closer to him, hands reached out. Hagrid had been the Professor for Care of Magical Creatures, one of the only classes he had paid attention in. He knew what his doctor was. “Bloody hell. You’re a siren.”
Dr. Burke tipped their head to the right, “Yes. My family has had Siren Blood in them since our birth at the start of the Tenth Century.” Clearly a recitied line, back stood straight and emotionless words. Not even the soft tone he had gotten used to. “Someone paid attention in class.” They laughed, eyes still trained on him.
“Don’t Sirens kill people?” He blurred out before he could stop it. He was still so calm, since they wanted him to not hurt himself, he doubted he could even scratch his neck
“Ouch. What a very harsh accusation, I’ll have you know-” They started out, before laughing and waving around in the air. Or a lost thought they deemed unworthy. “My Full-Blooded Cousins definitely do, my grandma did in her age. But alas, I chose therapy… Probably would’ve done the same as them, have you seen the people in the world? So determined to hate people.”
“Okayyy. And what did you do to me?”
“Oh! My apologies, do you want my effect removed?”
“No. Just curious?”
“Ah. I see. I’d try not to be in it too much, it’s addictive as any drug. But I, effectively made you relax. From your mind into your muscles. It doesn’t take away your pain, you can still feel that.” The soft tone had made its reappearance, with a tone Harry could not decipher. Perhaps they wished they could take it.
“Sirens can hypnotize people, mostly men, with their voice. Can calm them down, can make them do something if they wish to. Some have telepathy, I can only do it with physical contact with someone.” Dr. Burke said, and with it, he noticed the way their hands were the only thing that shimmered. Invisible gloves, or genes?
He nodded, the effect had made him calm, but his pain was still his. It made him want to get rid of it, but as he noted, he wasn’t being forced into talking to get it out. With a deep breath, he began. “I miss him. He’s the only I knew the longest, he taught me the Patronus Charm. He brought my mother back, if in memory..” Panic seized his chest, before being rushed away by a sea of calm. “…I- uh. I miss being able to go to him for advice or just because. I miss him bringing out tea, I miss his comments he thought i couldn’t hear. I miss him. Oh bloody hell, I miss all of them.” Dr. Burke looked at him with such…sadness. He couldn’t place why it was there, but before he knew it, he couldn’t even stop to ponder. “Damn it, I miss them! I miss Sirius letting me ride his new bike. I miss him calling me Bambi, as embarrassing as it used to be, all I want is it back. I miss his puns he would sneak in through letters, I miss how he used to put a flower pot on my head. I miss how we used to go to the Library at Grimmauld Place, and teach me a few things from the books.”
Dr. Burke looked at him with understanding. They understood. Something that as much as Ron & Hermione tried, they never could. They had a family to go back to, “I miss how I used to wake up, and Fred & George would be staring at me. I miss being able to tell them apart when they’d try and trick me, I miss being the only person they felt like I deserved the Map. I miss how Fred would give me his Weasley Sweater, and try to get Arthur to believe he had another son he forgot about. I miss how Fred would defend me during my second year, how he even got a mock throne for me to sit in.”
“I miss how Colin used to follow me around, I can still hear the camera sometimes. He’s the only person I gave an autograph to, he was the only one that deserved one. I wasn’t the smartest person in Gryffindor, and he still came to me with help on homework or assignments or how to cast a spell.” The weight on his chest increased, while decreasing. All the things he could never say, lifted off his shoulders. Colin was a boy, taken by war. Barley finished with school, with the dream to be like the heroes he read about in his books his mom would read to him as a kid.
“I feel like I barely knew Tonks, but they rescued me from my uncle during my Fifth Year, when the Order of the Phoenix had been put together.” Bright purple hair had been at the end of the table during the meeting. Catching his eye and winking at him, before she would trip over the air. Ruffling his hair, before pushing him to the Hogwarts Express. “They were energetic during the war, she taught me self-defense they learned. They even made me the godfather to her son.” A choked sob, the image of a young boy in a crib, mint green hair crying after he visited when the war was finally over.
“I don't miss Snape that much. He was a git when he was alive, only thing changed is I know why he was bitter… I feel.. I feel guilty about him. He was abused, and then bullied when he came to Hogwarts. Almost dying there, but it was his choice to bully students as a teacher. To become a 13-year-old’s worst fear.” Dr. Burke nodded at him, slight anger and concern, perhaps for Neville, or did they think Snape was his fear? “I feel guilty because he became a spy to protect my mother, and then, me. He died for it, with his last words begging me to look at him while giving me his memories.”
“And what were the memories he shared with you?”
“He had some of my mother before she went to Hogwarts, some were of my father bullying him. One was where he begged Dumbledore to hide me and my parents, to spare us…” Hide them. Hide all of them, I beg you. The echo still surrounds him most nights. “The last one…it was.. him and Dumbledore, in his office.”
“And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die."
"So the boy...the boy must die?"
"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,"
"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the proper moment?"
"Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"
"Lately, only those whom I could not save… Everything was supposed to be to keep him safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter--"
"Have you grown to care for the boy, after all, Severus?"
“Dumbledore told him how he had prepared me for war, to ‘try my strengths’ so that I could die at the right moment. If I was to live, as Voldemort’s Horcrux, he would find another way to live. I had to die-“
“Stop it.” He did so without another word, his mouth closing. Dr. Burke stared at him, and for the first time, he could see pity and sorrow in those eyes. “You were groomed as a child soldier, and to die. You were seventeen years old, you did not deserve the burden placed on you. You shouldn’t have been responsible for a war that started when your parents were born…” They took a deep breath in, never breaking eye contact with him. ”Gringotts specializes in Cleansing Rituals, able to remove blocks of magic, potion effects, and even the darkest bits of magic. They could’ve been capable of removing the soul inside of you, Dumbledore groomed you to die for him… You deserve to live.”
Words were added to the board behind Dr. Burke, a now angry scrawl, as if the magic writing them, was as well. “I didn’t have to die?”
“You didn’t. Dumbledore was a chess master, and unfortunately, you were one of his pieces.”
He slumped against the couch, like Snape, he went from one shithole to the next. Oh how he would love to go back in time, reverse all the damage the war caused. To not be a peice to be won and used.
He doesn’t know how long he stayed like that, might’ve been a minute, might’ve been an hour. At last, he opened his eyes, and when did he close them? Dr. Burke had been writing on a new piece of parchment, legs crossed, glasses on the desk. They looked up at him, “I am going to give you a list of things, some will be recommendations, others will be a list of places to visit, and a prescription. You have been through a lot of traumatic events, and only time with a licensed therapist will help. It doesn’t have to be me, you can choose a different one. Although, I do hope to see you whenever you’re up for it.” They finished writing, setting the quill down amongst their desk, next to a pot of black ink. “Are you okay with the list?”
“I came here for help, didn’t I?”
A nod. “Got it.” They stood up, walking over to a cabinet full of potions. Dr. Burke grabbed seven vials of a green potion, carefully putting each into a basket. “Here are a few potions, only take them when you are panicked or can’t sleep. They are an alternative to my song, and they aren’t fast acting, but they aren’t addictive.”
“Ok.”
“One last thing,” They said, handing him the letter, among which he could see several things, with alternatives, just in case. “I do this with all my patients, it’s a fun activity for both… Can you guess my Hogwarts House?”
“Uhh.. Ravenclaw? You’re smart to be able to get a degree quickly, studied a lot, and have a nice outlook on the world. Wit?”
Dr. Burke let out a small laugh, “I’ve never gotten Ravenclaw before. But, ahh, I’m a Slytherin.”
A beat of silence. “Oh that makes more sense.”
“Thank you for coming, Harry. The first step is always the most difficult. I hope to see you next week, if you’re available.” With one final glance at the room, he spotted the name tag, and left the room, list in hand.
Dr. Raven B. Burke