"I know it's tough, but I need you to pay attention to me. Can you focus your energy for just a moment?" a lady asks. She wears white robes and sits comfortably in a large armchair. A clipboard lies in her lap and occasionally she uses it to jot down a note or two. Otherwise, she remains almost completely still.
Across the room sits a boy with bright red hair and tired green eyes that look far older than the rest of his face. He fidgets in his seat, constantly wringing his hands or running them over his arms and legs as if he's being attacked by a colony of ants. Sweat drips from his brow and his ghastly pallor gives him the haunted look of a soldier returning from battle.
"Hugo, I need you to concentrate," the lady repeats, trying to hide her growing impatience. "I don't want to have to give you a calming draught again."
The boy manages to tear his eyes away from his arms for a fraction of a second. "It's so hard," he murmurs, gasping for breath between each word. "They're all over me. I can't get them off."
The lady presses her lips into a thin line, but keeps the rest of her face neutral. "We've talked about this before, Hugo. There's nothing on you. It's all a figment of your imagination. Let's try again. Stop focusing on your hands and focus instead on your breathing. Allow the panic you're feeling to melt away."
Tentatively, Hugo closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying his best to follow the instructions that the lady is giving him. He inhales, then exhales, repeating several times and though he still twitches, his hands settle into his lap.
"Good. Now, Hugo, I'd like to try and talk to you about the root of your mysophobia. I want you to think back to whatever event made you aware of the germs around you and why you started to panic. Can you tell me a little bit about it?" the lady says, glancing briefly at her clipboard.
"Well, I think it started a few years ago really. It must've been about 2013. There was a large Dragon Pox outbreak…"he started before he is cut off.
"2013, but that means you were only six. How did you find out about the Dragon Pox plague?" The lady asks, counting the years on her fingers.
Hugo thinks for a minute, his eyes scrunched as if he's sifting through the years trying to find an exact memory. "I think it was The Daily Prophet. My mum liked to read it every morning before work and often times she'd discuss the things that were happening in the world with Rosie and me. My dad would try and tell her that some of the topics were too adult for us, but she always shushed him, telling him that she wanted us to be intelligent and well-informed."
"So you heard about the Dragon Pox outbreak from her? Do you remember anything specific that she might've told you?"
"Just that Dragon Pox was a dangerous disease and that to keep ourselves and others safe from it we had to be very careful to wash our hands and cover our mouths if we coughed and sneezed."
The lady scribbled a few notes onto her clipboard. "Did that scare you immediately? Was that when you started obsessively washing?"
Hugo shakes his head. "No. That didn't happen until quite awhile later."
Although the lady tries not to express her emotions, disappointment registers in her eyes. She'd hoped to find a simple, straight forward cause that could be treated quickly. "Go on," she encourages.
"My mum told us that healers and potioneers from St. Mungo's were being dispatched to Canterbury to investigate the source of the outbreak. She said it would be contained within in a matter of days and that we had nothing to worry about since we were so far away from it. Of course, we both know that isn't what happened."
"Just so we're both clear, why don't you tell me what happened?" the lady says, adjusting her body in her seat.
For the first time, Hugo looks the lady directly in the eyes and says, "Thirty percent of England got sick. Hundreds died. And that's not even including the numbers in Wales and Scotland. It was the worst health disaster in Europe since the bubonic plague and it took ages to get it under control. The UK was declared a crisis zone and quarantined from the rest of Europe to keep it from spreading."
"Right. I know what happened to the nation as a whole. What I want to know more about is what happened specifically to you and your family? Did you or anyone you knew get sick?"
Hugo starts to shift in his seat. He bounces his right leg up and down and goes to start wringing his hands again, but stops himself when he sees the lady staring at him. "Oh. That," he says in a monotone. "For most of the epidemic my family was safe. My mum had us wearing muggle style oxygen masks and made us wash our hands frequently. My dad complained loudly telling her that she was being paranoid, but she insisted."
"Smart woman," the lady interjects.
"She was," Hugo says, sadness causing the words to hang heavy in the air. "When it became clear that this wasn't a normal outbreak, all ministry officials got brought in to help. My mum was one of them. Since she was from a muggle family and since the normal spells and potions weren't working, she was given the task of studying the bacteria and how it was spreading."
The lady's eyebrows rise in surprise. "I didn't know that your mum was a part of that research project. It revolutionized the way wizards think about potioneering. It…" She stops herself, realizing that it isn't the appropriate time to discuss medical history. "Sorry, continue please."
"We didn't see my mum for a little over a month. She'd write occasionally to tell us about the different discoveries we'd made and not to worry. She promised us that everything would be okay…" he says, drifting off into thought as he finishes the last sentence.
"But it wasn't okay was it?"
Hugo stares at the floor, caught up in his train of thought. His eyebrows are knitted together and his eyes begin to moisten. When he speaks, his voice crackles and pops. "No. Not really. At first, it seemed like it would be. My mum came up with a vaccine, something that had previously never been seen in our world. Eventually, the entirety of Britain would receive it and it would save thousands of lives, but at that point in time it still had to be tested. She sent her research over to St. Mungo's and clinical trials began. After that she returned home."
The lady nods and flips over the paper on her clipboard, allowing her more room to write. "That doesn't sound too bad."
"It wasn't," Hugo says. "My dad had hid it the best he could, but I knew he'd been terrified that she'd contract the disease. When she finally made it home, I think all of us were able to sleep a bit better."
"So what happened next?"
Silence fills the room. The lady can tell that Hugo is holding something back.
"Hugo," she says softly, "What happened once your mom came home?"
"It-It…I suppose it started about a week after she came home. The coughing. The sniffling. Then there was a fever and these horrible green pustules that exploded with rotten smelling pus." Hugo's voice broke and tears began to well in his eyes. "She was laid up in bed for days and no matter where you went in the house, you could hear her groaning and calling out for help. Normally, she'd have been taken to St. Mungo's for treatment, but the hospital was already full, so dad and my Uncle Harry sealed off the upstairs to keep her quarantined. Healers came when they could to provide treatment and showed the rest of us how to perform a variation of the bubblehead charm that covered the whole body. Even still, I was never allowed to visit her. My dad said it wasn't safe. Sometimes I could hear her calling my name, pleading for me, but still my dad wouldn't budge…at least not until the end."
The lady shuffles through her notes, looking for a shred of information that she'd written down in a previous session.
"I woke up one morning and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table with my Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny. They all had the same expression on their faces. It was one that said she was dying. My dad sat me down and told me that things weren't good. That she wasn't going to make it much longer. I insisted that he let me see her. I couldn't live with the idea of not getting a chance to say goodbye. My dad fought, but my Aunt Ginny managed to convince him.
Once the proper spells had been applied, I was allowed upstairs. I sat beside her bed and told her stories. Every single one I could think of. I told her about my days at school and the current events. I even brought up a copy of The Daily Prophet to read to her. She was pretty out of it by then. I don't know if she even heard half of what I'd said. After awhile, my dad escorted me from the room so that the Healer could work on her. She died a few hours later." Tears begin to stream down Hugo's cheeks and his voice breaks. He wraps his arms tightly around his body and cries.
"I'm so sorry. I know that must've been incredibly traumatic for you. When you're ready, could you tell me a little bit about what happened after her death?"
Hugo inhales deeply, trying to stem the flow of tears. "She," he hiccoughs, "She had to be cremated. My dad wanted to bury her properly in the family graveyard, but the Ministry wouldn't allow it. So they burned her up and we got a small box back full of her particles. My dad put her little box in the wall in the cemetery just behind where my Uncle Fred was buried.
After that, my dad fell apart. He started hitting the firewhiskey hard and sometimes at night, I'd hear him in his room sobbing and calling her name. Different family members took turns cooking, cleaning, and caring for me. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I began to feel like the house was contaminated. I worried that everyone would get sick and die. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it out of my head. I started studying every cleaning and decontamination spell known to wizards. Then I started bathing three or four times a day. Before I knew it, I couldn't even leave the house for fear of the germs that waited outside of it."
The lady looks back at her notes, circles a word, and then writes a question mark next to it. "Hugo, I have a difficult question. In the story you've just told me, it sounds like your mother died, but I know that isn't true. Your mum was the one who dropped you off here."
Shaking his head, Hugo says, "No. No. Not my mum. It was my sister who died." The tears begin to pour from his eyes. "My… Rosie. I…should've been able to….to…to save her, but she was so…small…and she'd never been…a…particularly healthy…child. There just wasn't any way to fight it."
Hugo rises from his chair and begins tearing at his clothes. "They're all over me. The germs. I can feel them," he gasps. "Get them off of me. Please, make them go away."
Rushing to the corner of the room, Hugo turns on the sink and sticks his hand under the scalding water. He begins to scrub, trying to rid himself of the germs.
"Accio Calming Draught!" the lady calls.
The lady walks to where Hugo is standing and immobilizes him. She pulls up the sleeves of his sweater to examine his hands. She wrinkles her nose when she sees that they are rubbed raw, cracking, and oozing.
"Oh, Hugo. You've started this again? You've got to stop hurting yourself like this. Now, I'm going to lift the spell and you're going to sit up and drink this calming draught. We'll talk about this some more tomorrow, but I think we've made good progress today."
Without protest, Hugo drinks his potion and returns to his room in the mental ward at St. Mungo's.
Hey there!
This story was originally posted on HPFF for The Phobia Challenge where it won 1st place! This was my first time writing Hugo Weasley and the phobia I chose was Mysophobia, which is a fear of germs. Mysophobia can be triggered by a traumatic event such as a death or prolonged illness. For whatever reason, the idea of some sort of disease epidemic kept sticking with me, so I started writing. Truthfully, this ended in a completely different way than I had originally intended. In fact, it wasn't until about half way through that I even really knew where I was going.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so if you have a moment, please leave a review in the box below.
And as always, thank you for reading!
~Kaitlin/TreacleTart