A/N: Please don't kill me. This is short and doesn't really have a plot and I kept you guys waitng for about two weeks, and I feel massively guilty, but I was on vacation with my family, and my mother likes it if I spend time with her and not my computer because she gave birth to me and stuff, and then I came home and I have finals in three weeks and a paper due in two and my teachers are mad, absolutely mad, not to mention the fact that I had to write a scene with the therapist, which simply WOULD NOT WORK the first four and a half times I tried it and also I had to rethink all of my plans in terms of this because of what the boys (yes, I AM looking at you, Draco. That was not cool.) decided to do in the last chapter. So. I am very sorry. Please don't hate me. Also, this will be just about the second to last chapter (probably). Again, I am incredibly sorry. My next story will be written up before I post it, promise.

Wow. That was long.

DHDHDHDH

"You mean to say that he actually admitted he liked you, and you very clearly fancy him like mad, but nothing happened?"

Harry looked at her incredulous face and shook his head. "Yes, Ginny, for the umpteenth time today, absolutely nothing happened. Well, actually, not nothing. He shouted at me and revealed that he knows about my Doctor Who obsession, for reasons I cannot fathom, which I suppose is something. But no, nothing in the way you mean it." Harry sighed, Ginny winced, and Harry handed her another spoonful of Pepper-Up Potion.

"Why won't you jut give me the Hangover Potion? I know you have some somewhere. And this Pepper-Up Potion tastes awful," Ginny whined.

Harry groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Once again, Ginny, I'm, not giving you Hangover Potion because you were an absolute ass and you drank way too much and you forced me to be shouted at by Malfoy and you deserve a little bit of punishment for that. Seriously."

"Have mercy, Harry! Come on, please! For me? You know you love me!"

"Yes, I love you, but we've been having variations of this conversation all morning and I'm tired of it."

Ginny paused and considered her options. Finally, she said, "So, seriously, nothing happened with you and Malfoy?" Harry groaned and hid his face in his hands. Ginny persisted. "Seriously? Nothing?"

Harry thought very firmly to himself that he needed a new roommate. He stood up and left the flat, pausing only to fiddle with the stereo for a moment.

Halfway down the hall, he heard Ginny shriek and curse.

He had turned on Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

At top volume.

DHDHDHDH

"Harry, I don't know what to tell you. Draco is obviously very fragile emotionally and he doesn't feel deserving of love. You need to think good and hard before you do anything, and if you are serious about wanting to be with him you need to show him that irrefutably." Hermione smiled warmly at Harry. Since he had told her about Draco's rant last night, she had latched on very enthusiastically to the idea of them as a couple and had proceeded to lecture Harry on Draco's loveliness and fragility for the past quarter of an hour, despite the fact that she had not in fact seen Draco since what was collectively referred to as The Incident At Malfoy Manor.

Harry looked at her desperately, shifting in his armchair. "Yes, Hermione. I understand all of this. Ginny gave me the same lecture this morning, except she added in bits about giving her Hangover Potion and how to shag him." He shrugged at Hermione's expression. "Yes. I know, but she's Ginny and she's irritable. Anyway, what I want to know is how to do all of this." Without his quite having meant to, Harry's puppy face had firmly reinstated itself on his face.

She just shrugged and smiled in an irritatingly ineffable, incomprehensible way. "Well, I wouldn't know, would I? I met my one true love at age eleven." She smiled fondly at Ron, the love in her eyes turning rapidly into exasperation when she saw that his face was still frozen into the mask of shock it had become when Harry had informed him of his feelings for Malfoy. As she fussed over and bickered with Ron, Harry summoned his robes and left their flat. Harry loved them both, he really did, but.

They were very rarely any help whatsoever.

DHDHDHDH

Harry shifted his weight on his white chair and immediately felt incredibly self-conscious.

The therapist's eyes followed him as he moved, but she didn't say anything.

The latest Celestina Warbeck song floated into his brain.

His love swept me up like a tide

And his arms are the only ones I can abide

Because only he takes me for a contraband carpet riiiiiiide...

At this point in the song, her voice reached an agonizing high C, and Harry's brain forcibly shut it off, leaving him feeling blank and vaguely empty and feeling more awkward then ever. The therapist was was still watching him.

She had very pale eyes, he noticed. Pale eyes that bore into him with an intensity reminiscent of Professor McGonnagall. He looked down and wondered vaguely if this schoolboy guilt was meant to ever go away.

He hoped so because it was driving him mad. Madder, anyway, he corrected himself. He was quite obviously already a bit mad, at least, he reasoned, or he wouldn't be here. Would he?

And wasn't a therapist meant to help all of that?

Well, the ever-present Hermione in a corner of his mind informed him, you do have to actually talk to them for that to work.

But Harry didn't particularly want to talk, and besides, she had scary eyes.

And so he very pointedly looked away from her, eyes flicking over the walls with their several diplomas (first name whited out on every single one) and towards her desk, a simple, spartan affair with the exception of a small photo in a silver frame. Squinting a little bit, Harry realized with a sudden shock that it was of the therapist herself in a younger incarnation, with an arm looped around a tall, handsome man. And another shock passed through Harry as he sees that the man has a child, a little girl of no more than four or five, balanced slightly precariously on his shoulders.

The therapist had a child.

A beautiful child.

And a handsome husband.

And, fuck, she looked so happy, and glancing back to her now, he could see that happiness lingering on her face.

She had everything he wanted.

And she was totally useless at everything.

At helping him get the everything he wanted and needed and, fuck, he was done with this, done with watching happy people be useless, done with everything.

He was done.

And Harry stood up and left, pausing only to swipe a handful of jelly beans.

He had to do something about this. And he was beginning to have an idea of precisely what.

A/N: Please review. Even just to virtually kill me. Reviews guilt me into writing.

Also, in the original version of this chapter, I used a fragment of a Celestina Warbeck song created by Sara's Girl, believing it was canon. I'm really sorry for using it without permission, and have replaced it with my own fragment. Again, I am sorry about the misunderstanding. Please check out Sara's Girl, as she's marvelous.