Advice, or
Stone Pain In The Stony Heart
Chapter 24
What you need, Dita wrote to Lucia, is a Wizard doctor or wise person who isn't afraid of Muggle ways, or a Muggle therapist who is very familiar with wizarding ways. Do wizards really think all wizard problems are caused by magic? Don't they think there's anything that transcends the differences between the two races? There's plain old human nature at the base of all of it.
But this is not the practical answer your friend needs. My suggestion is that you find others like him, who are still struggling—there has to be some, after what that school went through—and start a support group with some wise adult to lead it. Maybe the Muggle Studies professor will know about psychology. They have to know you can't just point a wand at a young person's brain to fix it, surely, or else they would already have done so for Chador.
As for you, my dearest ridiculous child, whoever taught you that the 'ordinary' miseries of school life were less worthy of comfort than war traumas? Not me. The comparative smallness of one kind of unhappiness doesn't make it less unhappy; a cruel action is still a cruel action, whether it's hitting someone with a bludger (whatever that is) or hitting them with a car. I said be patient and understanding, not be a doormat. Still, I'm glad you erred on the side of patience rather than the opposite.
I miss you terribly, but I know that just now your brother needs me more than you do. You're just learning to fly, but he's had his wings terribly, terribly broken. I've been in Prague and now Krakow for quite some time, following his footsteps around these old, beautiful, fierce cities. He admired the Poles when he was here as a boy, so strong and proud they were. I wish he'd known more of the history of their courage and resistance during World War II and Communism—perhaps he would have found inspiration in them. I've taken a room he had in Krakow, not a month ago—pretending to be a near-Squib for the benefit of the wizard neighbors (who are very excited that I have a daughter at Hogwarts, let me tell you!)—because I need some time to finish translating the last year of his diary. He didn't dare to write often, not with Voldemort in his very house, but occasionally he did dare. There's shame between these lines of ironically dancing men, Lucia, deep, tearing shame, partly for what his family was reduced to, but also for what he was forced to do. Oh, Lucia, he was forced to do things no young person should even have to think about. And there was no Myrtle for him to talk to. He had no outlet except a few stolen entries in this journal. I don't know all the words he used (what's Occlumency? he was obsessed with it), but I can read between them. I can only hope—pray—that his abjectness will help turn his life around, be the making of him instead of the breaking of him.
Oh, dear, this isn't a terribly cheerful letter, is it? Well, I'm nearly to the end of the diary, and I have a feeling it's going to give me the final clue I need to track him down. All my love, Mummy.