CHAPTER THREE: GOBLIN GOULASH: PART II

Harry's P.O.V

Nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in. So wrote Ivan Turgenev in his book, Fathers and Sons. That one line, that lone sentence had always fascinated Harry since she had first read it back when she was in muggle school. In the beginning, before Voldemort, before the war, back when she was a simple orphan girl whose parents died in a car crash, Harry had loathed the character Bazarov, the cynical nihilist, from that book.

In her child-like eyes, he was everything wrong with the world. He was repugnant. Something to feel pity for. His epistemological scepticism, which negated all knowledge, everyscrap of it, as being continually held as possibly untrue or simply never being able to prove anything, grated on her young nerves. In her naive mind, there was, and could only be, two sides. Wrong. Right.

Bazarov's Moral apathy left her feeling cold. If morality did not exist as an objective reality, a human construct, then really, no action was and is necessarily preferable to any other. All of it was artificial. Killing someone, anyone, for whatever reason, was not inherently right or wrong, it was all subjective to that singular person and reality, from one to another, was a singular experience. A madman's reality was very much different to a midwife, Bazarov would say. Young Harry had sneered at the very notion of such a possibility.

There was Morals. Killing was wrong. Good people did good things. Reality wasn't subjective, it was an unarguable fact. What happened, happened. Furthermore, the chance that there was no meaning to life, a fact Bazarov advocated, felt like spit in the face. It had been all so simple, back then.

In the end, Bazarov found himself miserable, retiring back to the countryside, friendless, to help his father in his doctor duties. After botching an autopsy, he contracted blood poisoning and died. To a young Harry, that felt like justice. The empty, hallow man who found nothing in everything kicked the bucket and well, he deserved it. Harry chuckled. This Harry, who was so far removed from the child she used to be, who had faced war, death, torture and pain unnameable, realised something completely disheartening.

She was Bazarov.

Truth is entirely personal. Her truth, her life, did not align with others. Muggles would disavow her very existence at the mere possibility. What she classed as universal truth could and would be denied by others, perhaps many, and in turn, she would contest other's truths. Now she understood. Right, wrong, they were just labels. One mans right is another's wrong. Tom Riddle never cast himself as a villain, but as a liberator, an advocate for his people. She too never saw herself shunned in shade, the bogey man. If there were such things as right and wrong, one of them, she and Tom, had to fall into the latter category and if asked, simultaneously, neither would vote for themselves. Then, perhaps you would say, others could and would label who was right and wrong if they, themselves, could not? Not really. Sure, Harry had her champions. Hermione and Ron would shout until they were blue in the face that Harry had been right all along, she had been just… But didn't Tom have his knights too? To Lucius Malfoy, to Rabastan and Rodolphus, to Antonin and Rosier, he was the pure one. Truth, then, became something in the eye of the beholder, not a universal concept.

In that alone, reality became something malleable. Harry's reality was something of a dreamscape, a surrealist interpretation to the average person. Her reality was very, very, very different to many others. Flying on brooms, potions, dragons, goblins, they were just figments of many people's imagination, but to her, they were real. The coin could be flipped. Student loans, marriage, mortgages, average nine to five jobs were something of a mythos to her. Why ride a car when she could apparate? Why ring from a phone when she could use the Floo? Others reality was not her reality. However, if reality was a blanket, undeniably general, how could two very different realities co-exist? Harry would tell you. If reality wasn't a universal concept either. If, yet again, reality was subjective. The madman and the midwife could become one, if they were looked upon from different angles.

Additionally, if there was no true truth, if reality was something constructed by individuals intrinsically, then moral principles were, in fact, just another set of intuitive delusions. To many of the wizarding world, she was a hero. The chosen one. The saviour. However, to a select few, she was and would likely always be a demon. Ask Hermione about her choices, and then ask Bellatrix, if she were still alive, and well, you would end up with two very polarizing views of one person. So far from each other, Harry would guess, the two couldn't possibly be the same individual. And yet, she was one person. There were two views of her, multiple, actually, and they all lived in some form or shape and she was the madman and the midwife, the saviour and the demon, the just and the corrupt.

This all collapsed together in the startling conclusion that, in the light of such possibilities and understanding as she knew it, really, there was no real meaning to life. What had she changed? Nothing. She had not ended blood prejudice just by killing Tom or a handful of his followers. That ideology was too deeply rooted within wizarding society, culture, government and philosophy for just her to stamp out. Yes, she put a stop to the wizarding war… But so had Albus in his time, by slaying Grindlewald and look, Tom had come along right after and Harry was sure, resolute, that another would come again. He would wear a different face, but their soul would be the same. It always was. There would be another her, another Albus and the cycle would start all over again. It had begun with Salazar and Gryffindor, perhaps even further back, and she was not the one to put a stone underneath that turning wheel. On and on it would go.

If so… Then what was the fucking point in the war? What was the point in all the death? What was the point in all the pain and loss and degradation? None. Nothing. Jack fucking shit. She had given up her life, laid down and died and nothing, not one bloody person would ever fucking change. That… That was what made it so tragic.

It had all been so utterly, disturbingly hopeless.

"Fathers and sons by Turgenev? An interesting reading choice."

Harry snapped the book closed with an echoing thud that was muted by the rushing crowd around her. This whole place made her feel uneasy. The crowds of couples, families, a little brood of toddling children being led by a teacher, made the museum feel claustrophobic. The noise was grating, the smell was agitating, the whiteness and brightness made her eyes feel sore, people kept brushing up against her invasively close and the emergency exits made no sense. Even the bench Harry had secluded herself away on, in the far corner of the front greeting lobby felt warped and overly cheerful with the little misshapen brightly coloured roses painted onto the wooden surface. What in the name of sweet hell was she doing here? Ah, yes, her reason was standing right in front of her.

Dr Hannibal Lecter… Her therapist. He was an impressive man to look upon, she would give him that. He was tall, imposingly so, with keen, slicing features. In fact, everything about him seemed… Sharp somehow. His three-piece suit was impeccably tailored and fixed, no creases in sight. His Italian leather shoes shined almost obnoxiously. Even his tie was, surely, made from expensive silk and pressed to fluid perfection. No doubt, he would have fit in perfectly well in a crowd of purebloods and that made Harry feel queasy for reasons she didn't even want to begin to analyse. This, however, she could glide over. She had met people like Lucius Malfoy before, handled people like him before, with their affluent decisions in clothing, their high-class tastes and bitter superiority. What she saw in his shadow, however, she couldn't look over. It was there, skulking in his eye, lurking in the twist of his lips, loitering in the way he held himself.

She saw Tom Riddle.

Nonetheless, that may well very much be speaking more of herself than Dr Lecter. She was beginning to see Tom everywhere. In her dreams. In her reflection. In the cast of a certain curl or in the dim lighting of a flickering bulb. She couldn't escape it, escape Tom and so, saw him everywhere she looked.

"I read it every year."

Harry said as she lowered the book into her lap, running a mindless thumb over its fractured spine. If Hannibal projected sharp perfection, Harry exuded broken chaos. Her hair was left down today, an unholy mess to tangle at her shoulders. The jumper she wore, a simple knitted dusky pink thing, was unravelling at the cuffs from where she had taken to plucking at the wool. Her timberlands had seen better days and the tapping of her foot was no doubt adding another scuff mark. She wondered if he, Hannibal, too saw the contradictory natures of themselves, or whether he just saw an irritable teen. It would be disappointing if it was the latter, but perhaps, best for all. She didn't need a psychiatrist digging too far into her head. Merlin forbid he should start to see her own cutting and inky demons, or maybe, find Tom all over again.

Hannibal gave a slow nod as he pressed in closer, taking a seat next to Harry. This close, she caught a whiff of him. He smelled like earl grey tea and something woodsy, deep, dark and on the back of her eyelids as she blinked, she caught a glimpse of the forbidden forest.

"A favourite?"

He pointedly looked down to the book in her hands. Harry scoffed and shoved the damned book into her messenger bag. Far away from her.

"No. I bloody hate it."

From the corner of her eye, she thought she may have seen a phantom of a smile, a ghostly apparition of enjoyment, but she couldn't really tell, nor did she care to. She wanted today over and done with. Nothing more, nothing less. Resolutely looking into the crowd around her, eyeing the displays and exhibitions, her tone took on a wisp of wistfulness.

"You know, when I said I would go to therapy, I pictured a sparse room, tacky sunflowers in a garish vase and a chaise longue I would be forced to recline on. I didn't picture an art museum."

Today was Friday and therefor, therapy day. Sometimes she really did wish Tom had of won. She wouldn't have to put up with this bullshit if he did. Originally, Harry was meant to go to his practice, conduct a session and call it quits, but the Dr had put a lovely little stop to her plans. He had rung Alana that morning, at an ungodly hour before Harry could even begin to fake some sort of illness to get out of her commitment and asked for her to meet him at this address for their session. Neither Alana nor Harry recognized the address, and even though Alana had offered to drive her over, likely to make sure she did, in fact, go to her session, Harry had declined all offers of transportation.

If she was going to do this, play at being muggle with a psychiatrist trying to root around in her mind and excavate her secrets, she needed an hour or two to get her own head in the game, to put on her human, healthy mask. If she didn't think it would alert Alana and others of deeper troubled seas within Harry, she wouldn't have bothered to play along. However, Harry didn't need to cast anymore suspicion onto her, her life, her story, if she was going to survive the next few months without outing herself and so, she had to go to therapy.

In the end, she had taken the bus, stopped a few streets, or blocks as the Americans would say, away and took her time in walking. In some shadow of naivety, she had hoped he wouldn't be there when she turned up or he wouldn't show, and she could use the excuse of not knowing the landscape to reason her lateness. Evidently, he had anticipated her slow arrival and conducted his own entrance to mirror hers. Bastard. Intelligent, but still, a bastard.

"If I believed that sort of therapy would work for you, I would have arranged it so."

Harry grimaced. She held some scepticism that any form of therapy would work on her. I'm inside you, Harry. How do you get over that? How do you move on from a person like Tom? Especially her? He was inside of her… Had been inside of her, a part of her soul, melded to her very being. That wasn't a stain easily removed. She wasn't sure she even wanted it gone. Apart from his wand she had hastily scavenged from a dilapidated Hogwarts straight after the battle, that stain was all she had left of Tom. All the reminder she held that told her it had been real, Tom had been real, she had been real. Without that… What was she? Who was she?

"And what sort of therapy is this then? Am I going to see ink blots? Am I meant to tell you that a painting of a ship makes me feel isolated? Or how that shade of red simply pops in that Fresco over there?"

Harry scoffed. Without Tom… She was incomplete. The body only had room for one soul. Just one. When Tom had come storming into her parent's home, slain them and then transferred a part of his soul into hers, he had chipped apart of her own away and replaced it with his foulness. When she had died at the battle, when his Horcrux had been kicked out of her, he had left a hole within her soul. Sometimes, she thought she could feel it, that pit, that void. It ached. It hurt so bad. Worse than any Crucio. And what could she do about it? Nothing but grin and bear it. Like always. The fact remained, coming back, surviving the Avada Kedavra again, well, when Harry came back the second time… She was just a little more soulless.

"It is a sort of therapy that, really, is no therapy at all."

Harry glanced at Hannibal. Therapy that is no therapy. A soul that isn't really a soul. A Horcrux that was empty. So was her life, vacant things masquerading as full. She looked at Hannibal then, really looked at him, right in the eye. A part of her wanted him to see, to truly see, to stare into her and find her empty. Pointless. Hallow. Another part of her wanted to unsheathe her hidden wand and to slice him from groin to Adams apple, just to see if he was as empty as her. The majority of her just wanted this fucking day over with. Yet, Hannibal wasn't finished.

"Unlike Dr. Bloom and others, I do not believe you are as brittle as they do. Are you hurt? Yes. Scarred both mentally and physically? Undoubtedly. Are you fundamentally changed from your experiences? I think there is no possible way you could not be. However, are you as fragile as they believe? As you believe? I do not think so."

Harry couldn't stop the laughter from bubbling free. Fragile? No, she didn't believe she was fragile. She thought she was damaged. Broken. Wrong. Many people did. Oh, they didn't say it. They would never say it. But she saw it. In their eyes, between their carefully chosen words. Harry saw it in the continual flow of Hermione's letters, the ones she ignored, always asking how she was feeling, how she was doing. She saw it in Ron's awkward silence, unsure of what to do or say to her. She saw it in the little gift baskets Molly and Arthur Weasley were sending her, looking like funeral offerings. She saw it in Alana's insistence of therapy. Like Tom, she saw it everywhere.

"Well, I hope you like your own company Dr. Lecter. Because I believe you're the only one who has settled yourself into that camp on the debate of my wellbeing."

Yet, it was… Nice? Nice, that someone, anyone, even a stranger as Dr. Lecter was, could see anything other than wrecked goods.

"So, Dr, if this isn't therapy, what is this trip about?"

In answer, Hannibal brushed imaginary lint off his trousers and stood.

"You handled the case with Will Graham very well."

Ah, the mushroom killer. What a… Memorable guy. Creative. Still, he lacked the proper survival skills to keep himself hidden. Especially from someone like her, like Will. Together, they had whittled the pharmacies down and, Harry being side-lined from the actual action, Will and Crawford and a set of swat members had stormed the building during daytime, apprehending the man before he could do any more damage. He had never seen them coming. It felt good, entirely too good, to be a part of the cat and mouse game again, even if she hadn't seen, personally, the mouse get pounced on.

Perhaps it was careless of her, a fair bit arrogant too, thinking she could join in on the fun but keep everyone blind to exactly who and what she was. But she… Couldn't help it. She had her own needs to fill. She wanted it. The chase, the adrenalin, the game of trying to outthink the other man, always unsure of where he or you will have to step to catch them. There was nothing else like it. Nothing. It was the only thing that didn't make her feel numb anymore. Unbeknownst to her, Hannibal was watching.

"However, that is a routine you know very well. I believe your issues lay outside of those kinds of matters. You have trouble socializing, do you not? Alana informs me that you have taken to reading, cooking and hiking, but I do not believe you do this as a form of recreation or enjoyment, but because it is what you think is expected of you. What you think constitutes as normal behaviour. I suspect you have forgotten how to enjoy yourself, how to relax, how to find something pleasurable outside of, let's call it, work."

He was hitting too close to home. Far to close. Harry joined him in standing and, rather angrily, waved her hand around them in a wild gesture.

"And what? I'll become an artist and all my problems will be solved? Well, hot-damn. Someone should have mentioned that to me years ago. If only I knew I could have papier-mache'd Voldemort to death."

This time, he does chuckle. It's a heavy sound, soothing, like a cello. For a split moment, Harry wants to wrap the noise around her, bathe in it, dissect it. It's a new sound. Unique. Then she inhales and the feeling's gone. However, it was something. A feeling. Unbound by force of will or logical reasoning and for a blissful second, one tick of a clock, Harry hadn't felt numb. She wanted the feeling back.

"Art is a spectrum. Subjective and objective. No matter who you are, where you come from, how you have lived, there is a type of art that speaks to you. Art is expression and expression connects. It is a good place to start in the effort to find exploits that you can enjoy."

He began walking, around the edge of the lobby, sticking close to the exhibits, and Harry followed like someone had tied a string of yarn around her intestines, right behind her belly button, and was dragging her forth. This conversation had drifted from slightly amusing antagonism to something dangerous. She could feel the buzzing ringing in her ears. Connection. Wasn't that a menacing prospect.

"What if I don't want to connect?"

How deeply she and Tom had connected and now, after his death, she was left in tatters. That's what connecting did to you. Nothing lasted, nothing was a constant, and in the end, someone would be left holding the torn rope with blood on their hands. Hannibal stalled next to an African mask, the wood painted in rich blues and reds. Again, his voice dropped to something base-like, even but sloping, as he inspected the tribal mask with an appreciative eye.

"Everybody wants connection, Hemlock. Everybody wants to feel and understand that there is someone, something, that understands them back. Even their less desirable traits. It's a fundamentality of humanity. Humans do not exist or survive alone, in a void, secluded. We are, after all, pack animals."

Harry shook her head almost violently.

"But, like with most pack mentality, there can be exceptions. The lone wolf. A feral dog. A trapped bumblebee who never gets back to it's nest."

Was it her, or did she sound like she was trying to convince herself more than she was Dr. Lecter? It didn't matter. Connections hurt. As bad as it sounded, as despicable as it made her, losing Tom hurt, burned, shattered her just as much as Sirius's death. Why put herself through anymore than what she already had? In the end, she would lose them, whoever she connected to, she always did and she would be back here… Alone. How pathetic. Best to save herself the trouble and never leave square one.

"And do you see yourself as any of those?"

The question made her frown as she stared up at Hannibal. No. She wasn't the lone wolf, there were no woods for her to prowl. She wasn't a feral dog, she still had some wits about her, as dismal as they might turn out to be and well, she had no nest to try and fly back to. If so, what did she see herself as?

She was a stag, her hooves bent and crooked, her coat matted, and her antlers had been shorn off, just little stubs now, bleeding hills upon her head. Yet, the thing about deer, about stags, was they had herds. They too, like humans, desired company. Where was her herd? Where was her connections and understanding and emotion? Did she deserve that after all she had done? What she was becoming? What was she becoming?

Harry, gazed up into Hannibal's eyes, let that woodsy smell seep into her pores, and just this once, one time, she let herself have just a moment of clarity and openness. For the first time in months, perhaps her whole life, she spoke the truth. Her truth.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm a character in a story. You know those long-winded ones, of heroes and villains, the ones you read as a child? Only, the author stopped writing about me, the real me. They airbrushed it. They went and smoothed my rough edges. They took away my shadow. They painted a smile on my face and made me into some sort of Peter Pan knockoff. They made my story palatable for the innocent little children and erased me. Sometimes I like to think about the ending they gave me."

Hannibal's head cocked to the side.

"And what would that happy ending be?"

Harry smiled, but she knew, there really wasn't anything real there. That too had been written over.

"Knowing authors and kids, most likely me, older, wiser, stronger for fighting the good fight. There'd be a dramatic epilogue that has a huge time skip. I'd be standing at a train station, sending my own kids off to the very same school I went to. They would be best friends with my friend's children. The cycle would begin again. All would be well and good in the world. It's horrible, isn't it? The lies we tell ourselves, tell our children."

She could picture it all so clearly…

"What are those lies?"

And she saw all the horrid lies like maggots on a corpse. Eating and eating and eating.

"That there are such things as happy endings."

Harry slammed her guard back up, swiftly turned away from Hannibal to look at the crowd once more and tried to swallow down the bile rising steadily in her throat. Just because you wanted something, it didn't mean you always got it. Sometimes the stag died alone. There was nothing to be done about it. Harry should know that by now. A hand, welcomingly heavy, large, gentle but almost exceedingly warm, landed on her shoulder.

"Like art, a happy ending is subjective. What I see as a happy conclusion, no doubt, would be different to yours. Others projecting their wishes for us, their ending to our stories, can make us uncomfortable. It is only natural. However, disconnecting from people, instigating a seclusion, relying on being a lone wolf, will not stop that projection from taking place. Sometimes, Hemlock, against others well meaning interference and intersection into our lives, we must find our own ending. In the chaos that is the universe, if we are to truly thrive in life and come to our ending, we must form our own connections to objects, subjects, people, that can offer us understanding. True understanding."

Harry guffawed.

"Are you trying to subtly tell me to, what? Not try and please Alana? To fight what she's trying to project onto me? To go rogue and to just do what I want when I want? That doesn't seem very Therapeutic."

From over her shoulder, Harry looked at the tall doctor. The corner of his lips had pulled down slightly, just a fraction, as if he was contemplating what she had said. Harry knew better. He was a smart man, dangerously smart, he knew exactly what he wanted to say as soon as she finished speaking. This little display was only for her supposed comfort.

"This, as we have established, is not really therapy. However, that is not entirely what I am saying, either. I am advising you to look deep within yourself and find exactly what it is that you enjoy and to connect to it, even if that is against the wishes of Alana, me, your friends. Your life is your own now, Hemlock… Perhaps it is time for you to start living it for yourself. Take the pen back from the author and write your own story."

Her life had never really been her own. It had always belonged to someone else. Albus. Tom. Aunt Petunia. Her parents ghosts. The idea that suddenly it was hers, it… Terrified her. What was she meant to do with it? What did real free will taste like? If let off her chain and collar, would she become as rabid as Tom? Was that really a bad thing? What did anything mean anymore? Hunting serial killers was easier than this.

"Do I sound like a moron if I say I don't know quite how to do that?"

Hannibal patted her back before his hand fell away like the autumn leaf on an oak tree.

"Not at all. We all begin somewhere. If there was one thing you could try tomorrow, what would it be?"

Resurrection…

Harry shuddered and shoved that thought, that maggot, far back into her mind, into the dank depths it had wiggled free from. That wasn't her talking. That was just Tom's stain. Differentiate and disassociate. Lock it back and lock it down. It couldn't reach her. Tom couldn't reach her. She was a boat lost at sea, slowly rocking, surrounded by fog, hidden. Safe. Tom couldn't find her there. No one could. She just couldn't look at the water, couldn't see the shadows, the silhouettes of her fallen people, Remus, Sirius, Tonks, Dobby, Fred, Snape, Moody, Mum, Dad, everyone, floating by… No. Don't look. Hidden. Safe. The river Styx wasn't ready for her yet.

"I read phantom of the opera the other day. I think I'd like to go to that. An opera, that is. It seemed… Peaceful."

That's right. That's good. Something a muggle would say. Pretending was just second nature to Harry now. A default switch. Even lost in her own thoughts, the images her mind threw at her, her mask never slipped. She didn't know whether to be thankful of the fact or petrified of it. It didn't matter. After all, the numbness would take those emotions too before she could even begin to feel them.

"Then, in our next session, we will visit an opera."

Hannibal was walking again, gliding, ghosting along from one painting to a sculpture to a carving. None of them held Harry's eye for long. The painting didn't have enough crimson in it, too cold, too lifeless. Life was red. Life was blood. The sculpture of a reclining woman seemed to be too atomically perfect, so much so, all Harry wanted to do was lift it high above her head and swing it down upon the granite flooring, to smash it, just to see a broken limb or a cracked face. The carving was too cheerful, a man and a child holding hands, the older leading the younger. Merlin, she would burn that one if she got her hands on it.

Tempering off the snarl that wanted to blossom on her face at witnessing such sickly-sweet visages, Harry turned her attention to the Dr himself. His tie and pocket swatch were red silk, patterned with darker swirls of ruby. While still having those slicing features, the man wasn't perfectly symmetrical. The left side of his top lip was slighter, ever so, thicker than the right, giving him an almost, inching, lopsided smile. Thankfully, not once, had he forced a cheerful smile on his face, not even, in a poorly thought out effort, to gain Harry's compliance. Yes, he was far more aesthetically interesting to look at than these mimicries of a glazed over, happy world the artists obviously wished existed.

"You seem quite sure that there will be another session. I only agreed to one."

Harry taunted. She had walked into this building with one goal in mind. To get it over with and turn her back on the whole ordeal. Not only because she hated speaking about herself, loathed it really, but because it was the safest course of action. It would be easier to get through the next few months undetected without someone trying to get into her head or watching her every move. However…

"Yes, to get Alana off your back, if I'm not mistaken by your reaction at the time. Nonetheless, I believe you did promise to further sessions if you felt comfortable enough."

Wouldn't it course more suspicion if Harry didn't comply with Alana's almost stubborn need to see Harry talking to someone about, well, her poor little orphan life? If Alana saw her in therapy, if Crawford saw it too, her supposedly working over her so called trauma, Alana's little lighthouse gaze would trail away from her and finally, Harry would be left well enough alone. Plus, in therapy, Jack Crawford would be more likely to call upon her services again, without the resistance from Alana hindering him. Momentary discomfort for a peaceful ending and another chance at getting into the great game seemed to be worth the risk, to Harry, at least. Still, whether that person to act as her scape goat was Dr. Lecter of all people was yet to be seen.

"Whose to say I'm feeling comfortable?"

Harry questioned as she tried to mutely scan Hannibal while his back was to her and facing another sculpture. For while he had, no doubt, been dismantling her both physically and mentally, Harry had been conducting her own conclusions. All she got was contradictions. His voice was almost continually low and calming, and yet, he chose his words as carefully as one would choose a chess piece to sacrifice. He knew exactly what to say and not say to get the reaction or subservience he wanted, and yet, he never ordered a single thing.

While being exemplarily dressed, in an outfit perfect for his profession, Harry had picked up on his gait. He kept his back straight, shoulders squared, right foot a smidgeon surer than his left, always leading and his knees and elbows remained loose. He wasn't unaccustomed to physical fighting, then. Antonin Dolohov had walked with the same surety and posture, and that wizard was as lethal with a wand as without it. Now… Why would a plain ol' psychiatrist walk like a kick boxer?

Furthermore, why was he so interested in her? He seemed amicable enough with Alana, from the brief interaction Harry had witnessed between the two in Crawford's office a few days prior, for this to, perhaps, be in a favour for the older woman, but for some reason, a little stone in Harry's gut that was still rolling, that explanation didn't quite fit. Professional curiosity? Even in muggle terms, she had led an interesting life, this could all be him trying to add another scientific achievement to his career. Then why take her to a museum and not question a single bloody thing about any of the things she had lived through? He had not even hinted to a single experience Harry had survived. No. Something was going on here… But what?

Contradictions and layers. Dr. Lecter was like Goblin goulash. A sort of stew, an odd blend of things that didn't work together, marsh mellowed turnips and frog stuffed pineapple and vinegar gravy with minted oranges, dusted with gingerbread and cheese crumbs, all thrown into one giant, blackened pot that somehow, some-fucking-way, worked. It was one of her favourite dishes, and also one of the most bewildering to eat. Hannibal began to turn to face her, finished inspecting the art, as Harry forced her gaze to dart to the exhibit closest to herself.

"I doubt you have told anyone else anything you have said to me. That denotes a sense of comfort, does it not?"

She'd been had, but also, he had outed himself, and in turn, been got simultaneously. What had been the theme of their discussion? Connection. He hadn't been trying to get her to form connections to artwork, not really, not even to Alana.

"And comfort equates to some form of connection. Connections you're trying to get me to make. You're good doctor, real good, I'll give you that. However, if you wanted to be my friend, you could have simply asked."

And been equally fast denied. However, he had known that, hadn't he? That was the point. All this, the museum, the friendly banter, it was to pique her interest. She almost wanted to give the man a round of applause. Of course, if it hadn't been her he was playing with. She didn't do well being on the chessboard, not since Albus Dumbledore. Hannibal made his way over to her.

"Not quite as good as I originally believed if you've saw through it already. On the subject of connecting, you worked well with Will Graham."

That was the second time Hannibal Lecter had brought Will Graham up, and Harry didn't have a clue what he expected, or wanted, her to say on the matter. In fact, she didn't think she could describe Will or what happened back in Crawford's office at all. She didn't think she wanted to even acknowledge it. It had all been so very… Messy. Involuntarily. Just like this therapy session, Harry had had the get in, do your thing, get out mindset about her that day. Then she met Will.

He was like her, she knew that, but so utterly different at the same time. He empathized with them, the people he pictured, became their soul. Harry could simply think how they thought, know what they would do. She became their mind channelling the soul, directing it. Put the two together in the same room and it felt like someone had spelled a lumos maxima right in her brain and set it off.

Will was speaking and then she was and then he was until all the words got muddled and Harry was no longer sure who was doing or saying what. For just a breath, she was the sky, Will had been the earth and there had been a great tree wrapped in a tornado, creativity, light, emotion and thought and the branches, like spindly arms, had connected them both. And still, that didn't even begin to describe accurately how it felt to be bouncing off Will, feeding one another, swirling. It had been different than Tom. Tom had invaded and took. Conquered. Seized. Possessed. She had lost herself to Tom. With Will Graham, something else had happened. She had shed her skin, her bones and muscle and for a single heartbeat, she had become something more. Not less. There were no words that could explain it. Never fully. Instead of pointlessly trying, Harry cocked a brow and fell back on sarcasm.

"Is he coming to the opera with us, or is that simply my privilege?"

Hannibal glanced down to his wrist watch.

"Yours alone, I'm afraid. However, I am meeting up with him in an hours' time for lunch at the hospital, I thought you would like to come along. There will be a young woman there, one I would like you to meet. She has had a rough time lately, and I believe you could help. I would, of course, inform Alana beforehand, if you agree?"

Finally, something to get her out of her own head and focused onto something else. This is what she needed.

"What's her name?"

Hannibal didn't miss a beat.

"Abigail Hobbs."

Well, look-y here. Harry had overheard Alana on the phone to Crawford just that morning, whispering about an Abigail Hobbs and something called the Minnesota Shrike. A quick search on the muggle computer her aunt had, while the woman was disposed in the shower, answered most questions Harry had. The serial killer's daughter, who had been in a coma up until that morning, had been saved by Will Graham of all people. Of course, Harry didn't know how much she could believe from a site called tattle-tale crime, she had her own experiences from misrepresentation from a media source, but still, the information presented currently was temptingly inquisitive.

While the happenings of the serial Killer was curious enough, it was the stories propagating from it that had Harry's doggish ears perking up. A young girl, trapped in her demented house with an insane father, totally unaware of her dearest daddy's hobbies, one day finds herself at the edge of his knife only to be rescued by the FBI just in the nick of time. It felt like a page torn right out of one of those tacky crime novels mostly found in discount stores. Too perfect. Too fairy tale. There were no happy endings. Just like the sculpture of the reclining woman and the carving of the man and child and the painting with no red, Harry wanted to rip that narrative apart.

"I have nothing better to do."

Harry found herself saying jovially. Really, though, wasn't that the sad truth? She had nothing better to do. The girl who had saved the wizarding world from destruction was left with only small pass-times to stop herself from doing something that would have Tom smiling down at her for. Merlin, she made herself sick. There was no hint, no ghost or phantom to confuse her or make her question what she saw. Hannibal did smile at her.

"I will inform Alana and then we shall leave. However, before we go, have you seen anything that has piqued your interest?"

Harry didn't think much as she wandered backwards, nodding towards an exhibit. In truth, it was an ugly thing. Grotesque some would say. Constructed from jarring pieces of spray-painted metal and sawn-off pipes, the thing was sharp and layered, a lot like the Dr with her, actually. Up close and personal to it, you couldn't see what it made, you missed the bigger picture, you could only see the serrated edges and black paint. The smile on Hannibal's face only grew.

"Ah, Assemblage. An artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. An interesting choice. It shows an inclination towards engineering and architecture. I have some books on those subjects you might enjoy?"

Harry nodded, thankful for any new reading material seen as that, reading, was all she was doing lately. She could hardly complain. If she was reading, she wasn't sleeping and if she wasn't sleeping, Tom's stain couldn't reach her. Additionally, there could be no possible way for Hannibal to know truly, why she liked the thing. Up close, it was just a junk-pile, take a few steps away and there it was. A black dog howling. The grim. Her Sirius renditioned in scrap metal. Somehow, it fitted his memory.

"It looks like a dog. I like dogs."

That big, warm hand was back on her shoulder as Hannibal led her towards the exit of the museum. However, Harry's eyes trailed towards the polished flooring. With the windows to their back, she could see their shadows. It looked like that minimalistic carving she disliked, of the man leading the child, but this one was… Darker. The uncertain lines of the shadows made it seem grave. The translucent shading gave it an air of uncertainty rather than optimism. The elongated forms made it seem just a bit more alien, dangerous. She preferred this version. It felt more real.

"I advise you to talk to Will about that kindred taste."

WOO OR BOO?

All I have to say on this chapter is that Hannibal is a right foul bastard to get right! The amount of times I've re-wrote and tweaked his lines and honestly, I'm still hesitant about them. For some reason, Harry gave me a bit of a runabout too. But, I'm over-all glad with this chapter and don't really want to say much as there are hints a plenty in this chapter about what's coming and I really don't want to start spoiling my own fic lol.

ONCE AGAIN, A MASSIVE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! Silent readers, followers, favourite-ers, reviewers, if I could, I would all give you a hug, but I'm afraid my thanks will have to survise.

As always, please drop a review if you have a moment, they keep the muses chattering.