Chapter 7 : The Closet under the Stairs
"Can you tell us what happened?" asked doctor Dumbledore.
"Yes," answered Harry.
"You can take all your time, Harry," added doctor Umbrige, no longer clad in pink. She was wearing a simple white overcoat. The only pink detail about her was the kerchief that she kept around her neck, as an eternal reminder of the colour that Harry used to associate to her in his other world...
"There will be no need for it," answered Harry.
Doctor Dumbledore softened his expression to encourage Harry to continue. The old man's eyes were pale blue, and his glasses reminded of the shape of a crescent moon... He was not a wizard, but his gaze was comforting... And it looked magical. It still looked magical, despite everything... Harry took in a few breaths and started his story:
"It all began as a child's game," he said. "I... I was an unhappy boy and... And I started to make up stories."
"Was it easier to cope with your reality by creating another life?" asked Umbridge.
"Oh, yes! I created some troubles for myself in my new life, but..." Harry bit his lip, feeling his heartbeat accelerate.
"Take your time, Harry, take your time..."
"I didn't think it would go this far," said Harry, trying to regain control of his breath. "I had no friends in my school, but I had Ron and Hermione. As for adults surrounding me, I assigned a role to each one of them."
"And Voldemort?"
"Voldemort..." Unexpectedly, Harry started to chuckle. "Voldemort... Voldemort was the worst person of all. A pitiful creature, hated by all... Voldemort was the one that I myself hated the most..." Harry's chuckle devolved into nervous laughs, through which he barely managed to utter: "Voldemort was me."
For a moment, only Harry's laughter resonated through the room. The doctors remained silent.
"I didn't want to kill Cedric..." continued Harry, still laughing. And weeping... Until his cries overtook his laughter. He was in pain, the doctors knew it. Remembering these events was tearing through his being, but he needed to get this out.
"Do you feel like you can go on?" asked Dumbledore carefully.
Harry nodded. "I didn't know it was me... At the beginning... At the beginning, I was still aware of that other world. Everything I hated about myself, I projected it on Voldemort. But I knew, deep inside, I knew that it was all my imagination..."
"And then it took over?"
Harry choked another laugh. "I don't know... I honestly don't know... I'm not sure whether I lost myself in this new world that I created, or if I willingly chose not to get out... Whenever reality threatened to resurface, I tried to keep it down. I didn't like reality. I wanted to keep living in my magical world..."
"But your magical world... Wasn't perfect either?" dared Umbridge.
"It was... It was, at first... I was a hero. I was a saviour of that world... But then..." Harry exhaled in pain. "I guess I'm just not used to being happy."
"When have you started?" asked doctor Dumbledore.
"Oh, very early!" said Harry. "Tell me, doctor, do you know how it is to be locked inside a closet?"
"No, not really..."
"It feels awful, let me tell you. Awful. You start thinking that the walls will close on you and that you will suffocate. You feel as if you're entrapped there forever and that you will never go out. After the first few times that you've been screaming for them to release you, you notice that it's the wrong thing to do. If you scream, they let you inside even longer... But... But you still want to escape... You need to escape. You want to go outside, anywhere... You just need to get out of that place... And so I found a way to do it. If I was physically entrapped, my mind was still functional... My body was in a claustrophobic room, but my mind... My mind was in Hogwarts."
"They're in prison now, Harry, you know that?" said doctor Dumbledore.
Harry just shrugged. "So am I," he said.
Harry felt better at each following session. He didn't have a single relapse since his confession. But he still didn't get to the crucial part, to the day of Cedric Diggory's death. Harry would sometimes be alone with a single doctor, but sometimes, like today, there would be four of them — Dumbledore, Umbridge, McGonagall, and Snape — for reasons that Harry couldn't completely understand.
Harry smiled in a sign of welcome and raised his eyes to look at doctor Dumbledore and doctor Umbridge. She was scribbling something on a notepad. Doctor McGonagall and doctor Snape standing behind her.
"You were the one putting restraints on me, right professor Snape?" asked Harry.
"Doctor," said doctor Snape with his low, measured voice. It seemed unnatural to see him in a blindingly white uniform. It still hung on his body, though, as if it was too big. He still looked like a bat of sorts.
"Restraints were necessary, Harry," said doctor McGonagall.
"I know," nodded Harry. "I'm still getting used to seeing you... As people."
"Do you really see us as we truly are?" asked doctor Umbridge. "How can you be sure of it?"
"I'm not," said Harry. "I'm not sure of anything. But this is the best guess that I have... You are doctors; I'm in an institution, but not of a magical kind... My mind was my ally, but then it turned against me. I ended up believing that my imagination was real. And I ended up killing a friend... Right?"
Doctor McGonagall walked towards Harry's bed. She sat on its edge and took Harry's hand into her own.
"Are you ready to talk about Cedric?" she asked.
Harry nodded. "My friend Cedric... He was playing along with me... He loved the stories I was telling... We played... He played... We pretended that we were fighting in a tournament... A Triwizard Tournament, as we called it... He was playing while I was convinced that it was real. And so we played... We ran through the labyrinth..."
"That was no labyrinth," said doctor Umbridge. McGonagall shot her a dark look.
"I know it now," said Harry, unmoved. "But at that moment, I could swear that we were running through a labyrinth... And then... There was the goblet... As soon as we touched it, we were somewhere else. Or so I thought. Or so I felt. And then..."
Harry clenched his fists and closed his eyes. His breathing became heavy. This hurt... The thought of it hurt... For a moment, he thought about running away in the realm of his imagination once again and forgetting about this story, but he rejected the thought. It hurt, but it was going to hurt even more next time, if he allows himself to fall back again.
"I didn't feel it," he finally said. "I didn't... I swear I didn't know I did it... I felt detached from... From whatever it was... Voldemort... It felt as if I was watching him from a distance... I felt trapped, held down by a statue from the graveyard where the goblet took us... I saw... Somebody else kill Cedric... Somebody just as hateful as Voldemort..."
"It wasn't Voldemort?" asked doctor Snape.
"No, it was... It was his helper... Wormtail, he was called..."
The doctors exchanged worried glances. McGonagall was holding Harry's hand so tightly that she was hurting him. Dumbledore stood up. There was commotion in the room and Harry couldn't know why. In less than a minute, everybody but McGonagall had left the place.
