Blurb: He lived with abusive people, and from there he was brought to a fantastic, murderous and backstabbing society. Was it any wonder that Harry Potter grew up a more than a little bit bonkers? (In which a reincarnated woman did NOT expect to end up as Harry Potter's shrink. AT ALL.) SI/OC insert
ONE
Henry
The world is quiet here. It isn't peaceful, he thinks, for he's always been told that there is a certain measure of comfort in peace. No, it's just quiet. Quiet like patience, quiet like expectation, quiet like dread.
Quiet like fear.
Quiet like the day he died.
He often wonders what peace must feel like. He'd not had even so much as a taste of it before, at that metaphysical train station, and since then he's always found himself morbidly curious.
Is death peaceful?
"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
He's had just about enough of adventures.
"Henry," she calls out to him, soft and calming. "Tell me what happened."
He leans back on his chair and tries to relax, as she'd told him he must during every session. He tries to do the relaxation exercises she taught him, tensing his muscles then loosening them, imagining reclining on a soft seat as it sinks slowly into Oblivion. It doesn't work, it never does, but he figures his muscles feel a mite less cramped, which is never a bad thing.
Lean back and relax, she always tells him. Just relax and talk to me. This is a safe place. You are safe here. You are at peace.
He hasn't the heart to tell her that he has absolutely no idea what "safe" truly means. That he probably never knew it at all.
He also can't stop thinking about how the wards on this building are humming with a strange foreign energy that raises the hairs on the back of his neck.
Wards he hadn't cast himself always make him anxious.
He just can't quite bring himself to tell his mind healer that.
There are many things he hadn't the heart to speak of. Hadn't the strength to even think about. What-ifs, should-haves, could-haves, all of them swirl in his mind like a thick, cloying vat of molasses that threaten to choke him everytime, so he just makes himself not think about things. It's not as hard as one would think. He'd been doing it his entire life.
What is peace?
"Avada kedavra!"
Sometimes he refuses to think about all the faces and the green lights, and at those times he figures he even feels a wee bit more human. Is that peace?
Meaty fists clenched tight. Shoulders taut.
It's going to hurt, he knows, especially his sides because he always hits him there, but then he's always hurting, so he's used to it.
"Come back here, Freak!"
He's safe here, he tries to convince himself.
Safe. Safe. Safe.
But he's been "safe" before. He's been "safe" many, many times before.
"Nowhere's safe, Harry!"
"Now, Henry," she murmurs, surprising him out of his soliloquy. "Are you feeling relaxed enough to begin?"
Not at all, he doesn't say.
He steels himself and tries to smile. "Sure."
A/N: Got the idea from a writing prompt I saw on Pinterest. My brain just ran away with the idea, sorry.