A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Forever Siriusly Sirius, whose interest in this story is rekindling the attention for it. Thank her. She's lovely.

-C

"Are you feeling better?"

Gabriella nodded, knowing that was what he wanted from her. She wasn't hyperventilating. She wasn't thinking of killing herself (not really). Although the irony of the precautions they took with someone who literally couldn't move more than her head was not lost on her.

"That's good, Gabriella. Now, we're going to delve into some of your memories today. Are there any you would like to start with, or do you prefer that we just dive in and discover as we go?"

She looked up at him and frowned thoughtfully.

"Which one gets me out of here quicker?" she said.

He smiled knowingly.

He was going to do that a lot, Gabriella could tell. She hoped she wasn't locked up long because she hated being looked at like that, like she was stupid or predictable.

"It depends on the person and their intentions," he said slowly, still smiling. "Letting someone who doesn't want us to heal them choose tends to make things take longer because they pick memories that don't really get at the core of the problem. Later in treatment, though, when they want to heal, they often know exactly what will be most helpful, and then it's an expedient."

Gabriella nibbled on her lip, trying to think of what to do. Part of her wanted to stall the process because she wanted to show them they couldn't just make her cooperate.

But she wanted to get out of the place so badly that she just shook her head.

"Let's just dive in," she muttered.

He was still smiling that asinine smile when he nodded, pushing a Pensieve into the middle of the room and moved his wand to her temple.

Gabriella was a bit concerned for a split second, never having previously had someone take memories out of her head, but he fished around in her head for memories that were somewhere in the back of her brain and it didn't hurt at all, so she relaxed a little bit as he took a few memories, putting them in the basin and looking down at them as they swirled, nodding with satisfaction.

"Take my hand," he said gently. "I don't want you getting stuck in a different memory from myself."

With a frown she took his hand and she felt them fall into the basin, the strange sensation of falling into a pool with no water, and they landed on their feet on the grounds of Hogwarts as Gabriella saw a slightly younger, more vibrant version of herself about to be pummeled by the Whomping Willow. James Potter pulled her out of the way and began to yell at her.

Gabriella watched numbly, able to look at it in a different way. The worry on James's face, the horror in his eyes as he realized what could have happened to her...

James had been her only true friend. She knew he never would have told on her because he never would have let them take her away from where he could keep an eye on her.

The Healer at her side watched the exchange emptily, paying particularly close attention to the memory version of Gabriella, who was insisting that she wasn't trying to kill herself.

And she hadn't been. She could see now what it looked like, but she had just been so tired. She hadn't been taking very good care of herself. She was young and foolish and...

And that was exactly what she was doing when her friends turned her over to the teachers, only she was doing so much more of it. She was taking even worse care of herself.

She was trying to die.

"I think we're done," her Healer said gently as the memory began to fade, and he grabbed her arm, pulling her out of the basin and helping her to the chair.

She hadn't realized her legs had gone so weak until they hit the solid white linoleum floor of the room they locked her up in for the sessions. She didn't like seeing her memories, she decided.

"I need to ask you a question," a gentle voice said, pulling her out of her thoughts. "I need you to answer it honestly."

Gabriella nodded.

What was the point in lying? He could probably tell, anyway. There was probably some sensor. And then she remembered the serum they'd fed her before she came in.

She couldn't really lie anyway, so why had he asked? Did he want to know she was answering voluntarily? She wanted to scream, the mind games were just so confusing.

"Were you trying to kill yourself in this memory?"

"No," Gabriella said, looking down at her feet. "No, I really was just tired and not thinking about where I was sitting down. I don't think I would have been sorry if I had died, but there wasn't any intent behind it."

"All right, good," he said, nodding. "Tell me about James, this friend of yours."

She smiled a little.

"He wasn't my friend at the time," she said softly. "We'd known each other forever but we'd never been close. It was this, really, it was seeing me like that... He became my greatest friend and protector. I still don't know why he bothered."

He paused for a moment, watching her. Then he said gently, "He cares about you because he sees that you are a good person in need of help."

"Am I?" she asked. "Am I a good person? They say people get what they deserve..."

"They say that because it's the way they want the world to be, Gabriella," he whispered. "Not because it's the way it is. In fact, the world usually works the opposite way. Maybe many do get what they deserve in the end, but many don't. Nature has no hard-and-fast rules about good and evil and deserving as far as my experience tells."

Gabriella nibbled her lip, looking down at the carpet again.

"What do you think I deserve?" she whispered. "I mean...you've got my file. What do you think about me? Do I deserve to be locked up like a criminal?"

He considered her for a moment before saying, "If you think you're the first person to ask me that, you're wrong. I'm under no obligation to answer you, Gabriella, but I will because I think you need to hear what I have to say." He paused until she looked up at him and said, "You deserve to be loved. You deserve to have people care about you and treat you well. And that is why you're here, Gabriella. You are here because people cared enough about you to make sure you got better. You're sick."

"But do I deserve to be locked up?" Gabriella challenged, desperate to win something.

"No, but you need to get better, and if this is what it takes, then this is what it takes," he said gently. He sighed. "Look, I know how you feel. I've been in this hospital myself, once upon a time."

She blinked at him.

"I didn't want to be here," he told her softly. "I thought the world had turned against me. I was actually here for three years. Mostly it was so long because I butted heads with my Healer at every opportunity and fought the help he was trying to give me. But when he retired and handed my case over to someone younger, someone more sympathetic, it didn't take me long to realize that I was wasting my life in a place I was only in because of my choices, my actions, my inability to deal with my life." He sighed. "I know it's hard to cope with right now, but I want you to understand that everyone here is trying to help you, Gabriella. We want you to succeed just as much as you do. We don't want you to have to be here because it means you're still not healthy. And we want you to be healthy. Do you understand?"

Gabriella just stared at him for a moment, processing the speech and trying to decide what to do. Three years... But that was for fighting back.

But could his file have really been as thick as hers?

"How long do you think I'll be here?" Gabriella asked nervously. "And will it always feel so suffocating?"

The man leaned forward and smiled at her, and for the first time Gabriella didn't feel like she was being patronized.

"That," he said softly, kindly, "depends entirely on you, Gabriella."

They talked for a bit longer about James that day, but they decided that was plenty for one day and she was taken back to her room where she was once again restrained.

She didn't panic. She wasn't bitter. She just stared at the ceiling and reflected.

Entirely up to her.

/-/

"Gabriella?" Healer Strauss asked happily. "Are you ready for your O.W.L.s?"

Gabriella nodded, trying not to think about how many months she had been in the institution. The Healers all told her what great progress she had made, but no one was telling her that she had an exit date anywhere in the foreseeable future.

"You still have a lot to cover," she would be told each time she asked.

Now she was coming to what she assumed was summertime and she was being taken to a special room where an examiner would meet her twice a day each day so that she could take her O.W.L.s as promised if she kept up her studies, which she had.

"I believe I'm as ready as any person would be," she replied softly, gazing over at the cabinet that held the medications they gave her if something went wrong, which was usually only after particularly intense sessions. Within an hour after the potions wore off, she would be fine again.

They told her it was normal, but she had a hard time believing that anything about this institution could be considered normal. If anything, it was simply not unusual or unheard of.

She didn't know the name of anything she was taking, and that in and of itself was a bit disconcerting, but she knew that they were far less likely to hurt her than she was, so she took what was given to her almost without complaint anymore. Complaining set her back. Complaining made her life less hers.

And Gabriella was clinging to any bit of control she had amassed, because control meant life was becoming more normal again, that she could be back in the real world, back in England, back to Hogwarts, just a bit sooner.

It wasn't strange, anymore, that Gabriella had to be led along like a child or a puppy wherever she went. In a way, she'd managed to find the positives in it. There was no concern about being lost in the strange maze of predictably unchanging whiteness. She didn't have to think as she walked, just to follow the person in front of her, and often she found thinking to be a tiresome thing that was either depressing or cyclically cynical, and quite regularly both. She tried to think about the letters she'd gotten from James and Remus and Gillian while she had been there, not about the winding turns and twists of the passages.

They did not speak of the institution or ask anything of her experiences, only how she was feeling. They did not mention Sirius, perhaps with fears of upsetting her. They held tales of fun, whimsical, exciting things her friends were doing, maybe to cheer her up or maybe to make her hate where she was enough to really work at getting better.

Or maybe they just wrote letters, didn't think about how she would take them.

Gabriella sat down to her O.W.L.s and took them all straight through, a break for food and a potion between each session. The quicker she was done, the sooner things could be normal again at the hospital.

She didn't ask what the potion was. She didn't complain. She just took her tests.

/-/

"Very good, Gabriella," her doctor said gently as she sat in a mess on the floor, tears streaming down her face. "Very good. I know that memory was painful for you, but-"

"I deserved it," she muttered into her knees. "I deserved it."

"You know you didn't, don't you?" the he said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder.

Gabriella said nothing, merely choking out sobs as she tried to calm herself, tried not to panic right in front of her doctor.

She was supposed to be making progress, not having meltdowns.

They hadn't let her go back for sixth year, but she could make it for seventh if she just...stopped...crying.

But she couldn't stop. She could barely breathe.

"It certainly explains more of your behavior where Sirius was concerned," he whispered, petting her hair. "You don't have to talk right now, Gabriella. Just let it out and we'll talk about it tomorrow. How does that sound?"

She couldn't find words, and even if she'd found some she would have to have been able to say them, and she couldn't have repeated her name to someone in that moment, so distressed was she.

Gabriella only had a vague sensation that she wondered if she could suffocate herself in the state she was in and she heard the alarm go off, heard her doctor telling her to think more positively, to remember why she wanted to live, but once she went down that dark path she couldn't see the light anymore and she passed out just after the nurses restrained her.

/-/

"Your N.E.W.T.s were excellent, Gabriella," the nurse said, grinning. "You'll get the scores soon, but I think you're going to be very pleased with the results."

Gabriella just nodded, trying not to think about how long she'd been in the institution, how badly she wanted to leave, how little she cared about what she'd gotten on her N.E.W.T.s. She knew she'd done well. Now if she could just go home...

"Gabriella," her doctor said with a smile as she sat down. "A few more sessions, I think, and as long as nothing unexpected happens I think you'll be out of here by the end of the month."

She blinked.

"Really?" she breathed.

This was the first time anyone had mentioned a timeline in association with her getting to leave. She could scarcely believe it, and yet she could feel excitement in her chest, bubbling up and threatening to overflow.

He smiled softly and nodded.

"Let's talk about how you feel about yourself," he said, nudging the potion toward her.

Truth Serum.

Gabriella sighed, wondering what might come out this time. She'd been doing the exercises so much that even she was surprised at how she felt.

Gabriella had long since done anything other than take the potions they put in front of her, so it was almost automatic, picking up the potion and drinking it all down, looking expectantly at the man across from her, waiting for the questions she knew were coming.

"Do you like yourself, Gabriella?"

"No," she admitted. "I frustrate myself."

He frowned slightly.

"Do you hate yourself?"

"No," she admitted, realizing for the first time the truth of it. "I think hating myself was simply an easy way of avoiding the actual problems in my life. If it was my fault, it couldn't be someone else's. Things were simpler that way."

"But none of it was your fault," he said gently.

"I know," she said softly, tears coming to her eyes. "But I kept letting it happen. That was my fault."

He nodded.

James had been right all along .Maybe Kent would have gotten away with it, but Gabriella would have felt better about everything, about herself, about the fact that she'd tried.

Maybe others would have seen him for what he was. And maybe she would have seen Sirius for what he was. And maybe she would never have been institutionalized to begin with.

But there was no living on maybes and what ifs.

Three hours later Gabriella was informed that the session had gone well and she was led back to her room. She stared at the ceiling for about an hour before a new nurse came in carrying a stack of letters.

"Two letters," she said brightly, setting the letters on the bedside table. "And I've been instructed that these are your N.E.W.T. scores."

"Thank you," Gabriella replied mildly, waiting for the woman to leave before turning over and picking up the three envelopes.

Remus.

James.

N.E.W.T.s.

Which to open first?

She ripped open the N.E.W.T.s and glanced through the list of O's that lined the page. She smiled at the Divination O. She was probably the only person who'd gotten one of those in years.

Tossing the unsurprising scores aside, Gabriella weighed the two letters in her hands, deciding which was lighter, which turned out to be James's.

Apart from his telling her about a Quidditch match he went to Peter with, he scribbled that he'd waited to send the insert until she'd finished the N.E.W.T.s to keep from disturbing her studies.

The insert in question was a wedding invitation. He and Lily were getting married.

Now she absolutely had to get out, she realized, thinking about the date on the note, glancing at the postmark. She'd make it if she got out on schedule.

She had to be there.

Then Gabriella opened Remus's letter, which was four pages long, and she smiled to herself, reading his flowing words, wishing her well, telling her every detail of his life, even down to mundane things like when he was brushing his teeth and how he thought of her when he put on a certain sweater because they'd had breakfast once while he'd been wearing it.

She felt tears in her eyes and realized that for the first time in she couldn't remember how long she had happy tears.

She missed home.