"What brings you here today?"
Harry shifted in his seat. This had to be the most uncomfortable he'd ever felt in his life.
"My friend kind of- said I should."
She was nodding. "Okay. Have you been to therapy before?" She was looking directly at him, which Harry felt, somehow, was rude.
"No," Harry replied. They didn't have therapists in the wizarding world. Just prophecies and pensieves.
She nodded again, just once this time. "Okay. Let's start by telling each other a little bit about ourselves."
"Alright," Harry said and waited for her to begin.
"I've been a therapist for 15 years now. I grew up in Essex to Sri Lankan immigrants. I've worked in many different settings- from prisons to schools, to where we are now," she waved a hand at the quite luxurious office- a high ceilinged loft with a view that overlooked a quiet street in Kensington. "Tell me about yourself- where did you grow up?"
"Surrey."
She blinked. "I've never been."
He tried to find his voice again, remembering the muggle version of his life that Hermione had helped him concoct.
"It's not much, kind of a worse thing than a suburb."
She made no reply.
"I lived with my aunt and uncle and their son. My parents died when I was very young." He supposed that was a good place to start, she was probably salivating now.
"I'm sorry to hear that. How did they die, if you don't mind my asking?"
"They were killed by someone who disagreed with them, politically."
Harry watched her eyebrows raise slightly. She was processing. "I see. So, they were politicians?"
"No. More like- activists. And then I grew up in a boarding school mostly, after I turned 11. In Scotland."
She smiled. "I don't detect a Scottish drawl."
He really wanted to give her a smile, because he was there by choice and she didn't need to service an arsehole, but he couldn't. "No, there were kids there from all over the UK."
"I see. And what do you do now?"
"I'm- I was- a police detective. I took a year off to teach, actually at the same boarding school. But I left that as well and now I'm taking time off."
"Mm," she said, making a note in the book in her lap. "You said your friend thought you should try therapy. Why do you think she said that?"
"She, erm- thinks I'm sort of lost."
She waited for him to continue but Harry felt a very immature need to make her work for it. She gave in. "And why does she think that?"
"She thinks I've been avoiding them. Her and my other close friend, who's her boyfriend. She says I've been running around with my boyfriend all over the continent and then when I'm in London I just stay home and don't really see much of anyone unless they come looking for me."
"Are you avoiding them?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he shrugged.
"If you were to guess."
Harry thought about it. "I guess it's easier for me right now to be around people who don't know anything about me."
"Right now? Did something happen?"
Harry hadn't expected them to get to the heart of things so quickly. He wanted to leave as much as he wanted to spill his guts. He scratched the back of his head and shifted in his seat again. But he was on a couch and it was obviously very comfortable and so he knew it looked very odd to be doing that.
"Er- I don't- this sounds really stupid because I'm here of my own accord and you're supposed to talk in therapy but I sort of don't want to talk about that."
"So something did happen?"
Meaningless death. Blood and gore. Shouting at a locked door. Hot, hot tears.
"Yeah," Harry said.
"It's not stupid, to come to therapy and not want to talk about certain things. But what exactly do you want to get out of coming here?"
Harry thought she'd earned his consideration of the question, since she'd left him alone about the last. He looked at the window and furrowed his brow, even though he didn't need to think hard as the answer came to him. "Relief."
"Mm."
"My friend Hermione, the one who said I should, did it years ago. She said it was like when you open a fizzy drink- the pressure release, the air escaping. And then the bubbles- everything coming up to the surface." It sounded terrifying, now that he'd retold it.
She smiled. "That's a great way to put it. Hermione sounds intelligent."
"She is." Harry liked her for liking Hermione- it was good for her, in his estimation.
"So your goal is to achieve some relief- perhaps from some emotional or psychological discomfort. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Besides avoiding close friends, have you noticed other behaviors?"
"What do you mean by 'behaviors'?" He didn't like that.
"Let me rephrase- is there anything else happening in your life that you'd also like relief from, that you'd like to stop."
"I have nightmares, sometimes. But that's not really new. Hard time sleeping, generally. Hard time feeling-," he searched for the word "normal."
She was writing this down. "When you have a hard time sleeping, what is that like?"
"Bad?"
She smiled. "Sorry, let me clarify. When you have a hard time sleeping, what keeps you awake? How do you feel?"
"I feel like I'm really aware of my heart. Like I'm waiting for it to stop."
"Does it race? Does your breath quicken?"
"Sometimes."
"It sounds like anxiety. When that happens, do you notice anything that could trigger it? A change in environment perhaps or some precipitating experience?"
When too many strangers had touched him, their brushing fingers of familiarity, their lingering stares- when Talbott tried to have sex with the lights on, nights when he couldn't stop thinking about how it used to make him feel to sit next to Severus at meal times in the Great Hall.
"Not really."
"It's random, is it?"
"Yes."
She referred back to her notes. "You mentioned nightmares- what are they usually about?"
They were worse than nightmares. They were good, warm dreams and he never wanted them to end.
"I never remember them."
"Okay. Do you know what a dream journal is?"
Harry tried really hard not to let the horror show on his face. "I think I can guess."
"I think if you dream often, it might be helpful for both of us if you keep a notebook by your bed and record the dream right after you wake up. So you can recall them and we can assess them later. Dreams are not everything- sometimes they're complete nonsense. But they can be useful in facilitating conversations about identifying patterns or desires in your subconscious."
"Er- I guess I can do that." He wasn't sure he understood half of what she said. He'd sort of try and then say he hadn't had any dreams if he had to.
"Okay." She looked at her notes again. "You said your aunt and uncle raised you. Can you tell me something about that?"
"Like, what?"
"How would you describe it, being raised by them."
"It was um- unpleasant."
She wrote something down and then waited. The silence between them then felt like a battle- both of them trying to make the other so uncomfortable that they'd have to give in.
Harry buckled eventually. "They never liked me. And I never liked them. My uncle was conservative and very stupid. My aunt just had no imagination. All they cared about was their son. Who was an arse until recently."
"You still have a relationship with him?"
"Not really- he reaches out sometimes to keep in touch. I think he feels sorry."
"Because his parents favored him?"
Harry chortled. "Yeah. For some other things, too."
"Can you give me an example? Of how they favored him?"
Harry thought he'd give her a classic. "I lived in the cupboard under the stairs until I was 12."
"A cupboard?"
"Under the stairs, with a slanted roof. Dudley, my cousin, had 2 bedrooms. One he slept, one he played in."
Her pencil was moving but she kept looking at him. When it paused, she spoke. "I'm sorry."
He found a loose thread in the couch. "It was a long time ago."
"So was it your idea to go off to boarding school?"
"No, my parents had arranged for it before they died."
"Do you remember your parents at all?"
"No."
"What else can you tell me about your time with your aunt and uncle?"
Maybe she liked it, when she could feel sorry for him. Maybe it was so entertaining and tragic to her- maybe it made her feel like her job had meaning.
"I don't want to talk about that anymore."
"Okay. Then that's our time for today."
He rose, exhilarated by the prospect of being free, if a little surprised by the abruptness.
She held the door open for him. There was no one in the waiting room- they'd ended earlier then they were supposed to. After he crossed the threshold, she stopped him.
"Harry? You want relief, you said that was your goal, right?"
"Yes."
"It will come at a cost. Please don't make another appointment until you're ready to pay it. In other words- really talk. Anything else is a waste of both our time."
She shut the door in his face.
Him and Hermione thought it would be funny (and convenient) to get muggle cell phones so they could call each other. They both got the smallest models available and spelled them to cast a sort of muffliato anytime they were talking into them so anyone around them wouldn't overhear their conversation. Not fully using magic to communicate felt both antiquated and very modern to both of them. Harry appreciated the convenience, the assured lack of interference from tabloid rot, and the laugh it gave him to click into his contacts and only see the number 1, in parentheses, and Hermione's name on the tiny, black and white screen. They'd tried to get Ron in on the joke, but he'd reacted very Pureblood about the whole thing. Harry gave him the other half of Sirius's mirror to keep in touch with him.
He took off his eyeglasses and put on his sunglasses as he stepped back out into the day, a habit left over from the months of stalking he'd suffered right after Robin's Hood. His phone was out of his pocket and dialing Hermione's number before he'd reached the end of the street.
"Hello?"
"She's horrible."
"I take it it didn't go well?"
"She told me not to come back."
"What? That's ridiculous."
"I know."
"No," Hermione said, snark in her voice. "Harry- what did she really say?"
Harry squinted as turning a corner put him in the current of a cold wind. "She said something about not wasting her time- not to come back unless I was ready to talk."
Hermione hummed on the other end.
"It was very unprofessional. I would expect more of your recommendations, Hermione."
"Well, you were being difficult, weren't you?"
"She was asking very personal questions!"
"Harry- she's a therapist. That's kind of her job."
"I just- I didn't expect all that to come on so quickly."
"All therapists have a different approach. Maybe you could try someone more gentle."
Harry was affronted. "I don't need someone more gentle. "
"Don't you?"
"First of all, I know what you're doing- you're trying to reverse psychology me into another appointment with this Trelawny of muggle therapy."
Hermione laughed. "Stop being so paranoid. I really meant it, I tried 10 different therapists before I found someone I liked. Maybe you just need someone with a different style."
Harry didn't say anything for a moment, switching the phone to his other ear and warming his free hand in his pocket. He still felt like this was some sort of challenge or test he had to pass.
"Fine. I'll try with her again. Can you make another appointment for me with her, please?"
"Make it yourself. I'm not your secretary."
And then she hung up on him.
When Harry returned, he wouldn't meet her eyes. He was still seated in a lobby chair when she opened the door and said to him, "Ready to talk?"
He had the urge to leave again, but he shoved down his irritation and stood. "Yes."
He came in and sat in the same spot on the couch. He didn't think he could stand small talk so he started immediately. "I keep thinking about something and I want to stop thinking about it."
She waited for him to go on.
He was so embarrassed. "I broke up with someone, about a year ago."
"I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you. We can come back to this, but I'm afraid I have to insist we start from the beginning."
"This is the beginning. I'm telling the story I want to tell to you from the beginning."
She capped her pen and closed her notebook around it.
Harry went on. "Did you mean the beginning of my life? My whole life? Won't that take an awfully long time? I'd like to be healed quicker than that." He found himself trying to remember how much each appointment cost- not because he cared about the money, but her intentions.
"Wanting to be healed quickly and actually healing aren't quite compatible concepts." Harry didn't have a response to that. "Keep telling me about your family."
He felt angry again. "Why? I'm not here to talk about that."
"Simply for the reason that it's the beginning."
"I told you, I didn't love my aunt and uncle. As much as they hated me, I hated them back."
"Tell me about your parents, then."
"I don't remember them," Harry said slowly. "I was a year old when they died."
"What do you know about them?"
"They were both young, talented. They'd just left school and were very politically active. My dad was rich, he didn't need to work, so they kind of just worked for the cause. They had me when they were really young. They got married young." Maybe they knew they didn't have time.
"Was it your aunt that told you the story of how they died?"
"She lied to me. She told me they'd died in a car crash. It wasn't until I was in school and I met people that knew them that I learned the truth."
"That's awful."
Harry shrugged.
"What did you learn?"
"The house was broken into. I was there."
"Sometimes a powerful thing like that can leave a mark on one's memory. Do you ever dream about it, dream that you remember?"
"Sometimes," he said tonelessly. "My father was murdered first and then my mother, in front of me, because she was protecting me. Sometimes I think I can remember her voice, screaming. Sometimes I think I can remember the way he smelled, my dad. And a game we used to play. But they're not memories," he lied. "It's just my mind playing tricks on me."
"Is she saying words in the dream?"
"No," he lied again. "None of this matters. I'm over that, I didn't come here to talk about that."
"I didn't mean to imply that you aren't 'over that', as you put it. I just need as much information as I can get. To understand who you are."
"That doesn't define who I am," he said. Everything felt like a lie, now, and why the fuck was he here?
"I didn't say it did. It's just part of the picture. You sound angry."
"I am angry."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't come here to open up about my parents. I came here because I needed to talk about my present, what's been in my head, what I can't stop thinking about."
She said nothing.
"I don't even talk to my closest friends about them. Why would I open up to you about it?"
"That's partially the benefit of therapy- you should be able to tell me things you might hesitate to tell anyone else in your life."
"I am trying to do that, just not about my parents. I want to talk about the other thing."
"Just the other day you said you didn't."
"I changed my mind."
"If you went to the doctor because of the pain in your back and they asked you questions about other parts of your body, would you tell the doctor their questions were irrelevant?"
A flutter of bird's wings and he could see a robin had landed on the windowsill. He looked at it rather than admit she was right.
She was saying nothing again and he held back from rolling his eyes. "No."
"I would appreciate being treated with the same respect. Trust that I can decide for myself what's relevant and irrelevant to your mental state."
Harry gnawed at his tongue. He nodded. "Okay."
"Tell me more about your aunt and uncle."
"What do you want to know?"
"You can decide where to start."
"My aunt is my mum's sister." It was the first thing he thought of, then he fell silent.
She'd opened her notebook, but then shut it again. "Mr. Potter-"
"Wait," Harry said, trying to keep his voice calm. "I'll go on, just give me a second."
She did.
"My aunt- she was really jealous of my mother, all her life. Felt she was their parents favorite, that she got all this special attention. She didn't approve of my mother's…politics, let's say. So she didn't treat me well. And her husband, my uncle, was just- an idiot."
"How?"
"He used to say I should be so grateful to them for giving me a roof over my head and if it were up to him, he would send me off to the shelter or a school for boys where I could get the beatings I deserved for being a freak."
"Why do you think he called you a freak?"
"I don't know, it was almost like being an orphan was somehow my fault and he thought my parents were unemployed scum and somehow that also was my fault. And I didn't get along with anyone at school and I was small and runty and this big stain on their perfect little family of three."
"How old were you when you knew he felt this way?"
"He was always like that, as far back as I can remember."
"What was your aunt like?"
"Just really cold mostly- really obsessed with her son, my cousin, Dudley. They spoiled him rotten and she was always worried about making his favorite puddings and trying to anticipate his tantrums and going out to buy him the newest thing."
"That explains the great necessity of his acquiring the second bedroom."
Harry smirked. She had the right idea, to make a joke about it. "You're starting to get it."
"Tell me about the cupboard."
Again, "What do you want to know?"
Again, "You decide."
"It smelled awful, like something was rotting. Sometimes I was afraid it was me." Now, from his experience renovating Grimmauld Place, he knew it was mold. "It was full of spiders that touched me at night," he went on. "When I got older, I couldn't really stand up straight, because the roof was slanted. It was-"
"Under the stairs," she finished for him. "I remember."
"There was no light. It was dark, all the time."
"You'd spend the day in there?"
"Only if they locked me in."
"Why might they do that?"
"Punishment."
"For what?"
"Getting in trouble at school, getting letters from friends." Or getting hundreds. "I was always doing something they didn't approve of."
She was writing, then she stopped to look at him. "What was the worst part?"
Harry felt oddly calm, like he was caught in a breeze. "I didn't have a watch. So when they locked me in, I could guess the time by the slant of the light through the bottom of the door, but I was never sure. They let me out to use the toilet in the morning and in the evening and they fed me once a day but sometimes I was so hungry or I had to pee so badly that then I thought there must not be a single person on the planet that cares that I'm in here."
He ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe that's the worst part but then maybe the worst part is now- right now. Telling it to someone. Someone like you, who'll feel sorry for me." He laughed, closed his eyes against the sudden rush of feeling. "It's so humiliating."
It was quiet in the room again.
"And then I moved to the second bedroom when I was twelve, and then it was the bars on the window and the locks and the catflap on the door to push meals in. But it was really different, having a window. And a watch. And friends."
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. "Why should that be humiliating?"
He took a deep breath. "I couldn't explain it."
"If you had to try."
"I really don't know." He missed Severus so much.
She waited.
"No matter that I couldn't help it or that I was a kid or any of that. I'm just ashamed- that it happened to me."
"Do you know anyone else who has had a difficult childhood?"
The robin in the window has gone.
"Yes."
"Would you ever think less of them because of what they went through?"
Harry shook his head. "No. Of course not."
"Are you so special that you have to hold yourself to a different standard?"
"No," he said. "I'm not special at all."
"Good," she said. "It's good that you know that. Keep reminding yourself."
"Okay," Harry assented.
He told her about some other things, with the Dursleys. The stuff that broke something inside him to say aloud to someone, what he called the Cinderella stuff- cooking and cleaning and then other things that never made it into the fairy tales like the days in his bed where nothing changed but the light.
Then suddenly, time was up.
"Do you remember what I told you about the dream journal?"
"Do I have to?"
"You don't have to do anything."
Harry knew what that meant. He rose from his seat.
"See you next week."
The bass beat drilling his ear without an apparent end was one of the reasons he hated clubs in London so much.
"Are you Harry Potter?"
Also- more people knew who he was here.
Talbott chose the moment to grip the top of his arm and lead him away in a walk toward the bar. They'd kind of fallen into that quite easily, him being Harry's human shield.
More of their friends were standing around the bar- or a sort of loose definition of friends. They were a mix of witches and wizards with their partners, some of them muggles. Harry felt very sure they mostly stuck around because he paid for everything- him and Talbott were too bad at partying for them to be interested in their club personalities.
"This place gets wizards sometimes, sorry," one of them said in his ear, a woman whose name was- Janey or Jenny or Genie, he couldn't remember.
"It's alright," he yelled back so he didn't have to lean in to meet his mouth with her ear. "You like the press, don't you?"
She smiled at first and then looked confused. "What?"
"Everytime you've suggested a place, wizards show up, somehow. Must be that you like when the Prophet are outside when we leave."
She started to shake her head, but Harry turned to the bar and Talbott, surely enough, was ready with a drink to hand him and he was off.
Harry had started his club career as a bar dweller, but he found that the moment Talbott wasn't right next to him and he was alone, it attracted conversations with strangers like moths to a flame. After a few awkward run-ins, he learned to retrieve his drink from the bar and quickly make his way to some inconvenient place for two people to sit or stand near the DJ booth where the speakers were too loud to allow for conversation or comfort and he would watch.
Watch the club's proceedings like a courtroom. The music is the case and the jury's deliberation is in the dancing crowd- his money at work at the bar, the people accepting and rejecting each other, the beginnings and endings of arguments, the inexplicable elbow precluding broken glass, the hand-in-hand lead offs to my-place, your-place, and him observing it all mostly with indifferent amusement and sometimes with an intense wish to be like them.
There were nights when Talbott hovered by him all the time (neither of them liked to dance) and other times, Talbott would hang by the bar. He didn't mind being approached by strangers and Harry suspected there were times when Talbott got it in his head to try and make Harry jealous when his self-consciousness was heightened and Harry's blaze attitude about their relationship began to wear on him.
He thought so because it was often on those nights that Talbott would try to initiate sex, which was still difficult for Harry.
He found a corner seat for himself, a bench near a fake telephone booth on the outskirts of the dancefloor. He decided he was never coming here again- he hated kitschy decor. Talbott squeezed in next to him and they began to talk. They had to take turns speaking at a normal volume directly into the ear.
"How was therapy?"
Harry thought it was funny for him to ask. "I don't think you're supposed to ask me about it."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, it's therapy, it's kind of private, right?"
"I didn't ask what you talked about. I just asked how it was. Maybe I should have asked if she took you back, since you were so rude the first time."
Talbott could be very defensive- it was one of his more annoying attributes.
"I wasn't rude. I just hadn't really gotten my head around bearing my heart to a stranger yet."
"Bearing your heart," Talbott echoed but Harry was guessing because he hadn't bothered to say it in his ear and he was trying to lip read. Then Talbott made eye contact with him- significant.
"What?" he mouthed, although he didn't want to know. He got the feeling Talbott wanted to be a fly on the wall in his therapist's office.
Talbott gave him another look instead of saying anything.
"What?" Harry insisted.
Talbott looked away and took a sip of his drink. Then he leaned in to say "It's hard to talk when the thing you like about me is that I keep quiet."
Harry used to feel guilty about it, the way they were, used to feel bad for Talbott but Harry'd told him over and over again to leave him and he didn't feel bad anymore. Now he just leveled with him.
"I'll let you touch me tonight, will that make you feel better?" He flicked the sweat off his drink.
Talbott was undeterred. "Did you talk about Snape the whole time?"
"No," Harry said. "We didn't even get to that. She wanted to know about my childhood."
A bit of roaming red light, then white caught Talbott's eye and Harry could see the true color of them for a moment.
Then he said something Harry didn't hear. "What?"
"I said you've never told me about that. I bet Snape knew all about it."
Many things ran through his mind. He wanted to say a mean thing, wanted to say he did like it better when Talbott was quiet. Then he wanted to patiently explain, then he wanted to say something comforting.
"I don't know what to say. It's a very boring thing to know about, I was a muggle."
He could see Talbott thinking.
"What will we be doing the night of the session where you tell her about Snape?"
"What do you mean?"
Talbott pulled him by the collar to keep him close. Harry's hand was wet from his drink and he closed it over Talbott's fist.
"Today you talked about your childhood and we're in this shithole. You hate going out in London. So I'm wondering where we'll be when you tell her about Snape." Talbott let him go.
Harry grabbed him back. "It's pain. Less romantic than you think it is."
Talbott gave him another look and then leaned back in his seat, his head against the wall behind him.
Harry had been committed to the truth with Talbott since the moment they began dating, so the conversations were uncomfortable. He was always caught between being brutally honest and breaking the truth to him gently, and so he was always putting it in some weird way. He said many things, but Talbott always seemed to want to hear the thing he couldn't say.
Talbott was back in his ear. "You wouldn't be in pain if you didn't still love him," he said.
"I think that's true." Harry said it into the crowd, hoping not to be heard. "He told me he was a black hole with nothing to give and I didn't think twice. Now I'm paying for that. Do you want to break up?" This was the question he always asked to signal to Talbott he was done, he couldn't talk anymore.
"Do you?"
He could give Talbott this, at least. "No."
"Dance with me?"
"Must we?" But he was letting himself be pulled to stand, leaning on his captor like his legs wouldn't work.
"Slow," Talbott said and did the work of putting their drinks down and wrapping Harry's arms around his neck.
It wasn't exactly what the music selection was calling for, but it was the only kind of dancing either of them knew how to do. They stopped fighting the music with their voices and shuffled slowly to electropop.
Hermione sent him a text in the morning that said "Ron says stop going to clubs in Camden before you get stabbed."
Harry would never understand how she could be bothered to punctuate her messages so well on a numbered keyboard. "K," was his response.
He needn't bother asking her how they knew where he'd been the night before- the evening had somehow ended with him taking pictures for a line of people in a photo booth that printed little square photos (more kitsch). When he was drunk he was much more amenable to an admiring crowd and as he'd predicted, they were photographed leaving the place in the middle of the night.
She sent another message straight off. "And why weren't we invited?"
He typed, "sry married couples not allowed \_(ツ)/ ". It took him a very long time but it was worth it.
Hermione and Ron weren't quite married yet- they'd just gotten engaged a couple of weeks before. Harry wasn't happy for them- it felt like he was the only one in the world who wasn't. He didn't hide the fact from them either, making digs at them about it whenever he could.
Hermione's message back: "You're being awfully moody and rude about that."
He changed the subject. "any leads on pensieve"
He had the idea to use the pensieve, to help with his mental troubles. He was much keener on that than therapy. Dumbledore and Snape had used it for many practical reasons, but one day he had a thought- maybe they'd used it because it had positive side effects too-
His phone pinged. "No. Only known one is in Hogwarts. Shall we have lunch later?"
He shut the device and tossed it onto Talbott's side of the bed. Talbott had gone to work already but the bed still smelled like him.
It'd been difficult at first, not working. So difficult. He'd been bored out of his mind and he hated feeling useless. But the Auror's office was quiet since the events of Robin Hood, and that helped him when so many times he'd felt the urge to go into the ministry and request his job back.
Now it was 6 months since his goodbye from Hogwarts and he'd found things to do, things to keep him busy. First it was the restoration of Grimmauld Place- he hired a team of 1 architect, 2 interior designers, 3 painters, 2 curse breakers, and a sink guy to make it look absolutely nothing like he remembered it.
Then it was what he liked to think of as "family obligations"- meeting regularly with Ron and Hermione so they knew he wasn't dead, making up with the Weasley clan (minus Ginny- she was still sore and he was too now, since the articles), and answering Dudley's calls when he got in touch. Then there were the weekend trips all the time, to still feel like he could breath, then there was alone time with Talbott, which he needed from Harry to keep him from leaving Harry and now there was therapy and that all quite filled the time, really.
And that was all without the not-remembering.
He did lots of things to not-remember or to figure out ways to not-remember even better, more of which you'll hear about later.
He ended up having lunch with Ron and Hermione.
They decided to meet in Archway- the sort of busy bit on the main road, in a cafe owned by a nice Greek man who wasn't overly friendly.
"I shouldn't have listened to you," Ron said to Hermione, after he finished his sandwich in three bites. "I'm getting another one."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"All your training, for nothing," Harry said.
She ignored him. "Don't be angry, but we want to talk about something serious with you."
Harry groaned. "Just a moment of peace, please. I'm in therapy, aren't I?"
"Barely! You almost left after the first session and it hasn't gotten remotely difficult yet."
Easy for her to say, she hadn't been to the second session. Ron came back with a bag of crisps and his second sandwich, cold from the fridge, probably because he was too impatient to wait for a hot one.
"What is it that you want from me? I mean I'm- I'm seeing someone else for Merlin's sake, isn't that enough in itself?"
"Did you get started without me?" Ron asked.
"No one told you to leave the table," Hermione shot back. She focused her attention back on Harry. "It's not that you're not making progress- you are. You don't completely ignore our messages for a start." She was clearly still bitter about that. He'd dodged their communications after the breakup but gave that up quite quickly- Ron and Hermione subsequently seemed scarred by it and they never seemed to agree on the amount of time that had passed that way- to Harry it seemed weeks but they insisted it had been months. "But you also…you know, you're being very classically Harry about some of it. And not in a good way."
"Like what?" Harry was appalled.
"Like our engagement!" Ron said. "You can't even be happy for us like a normal person."
"You're getting married, big whoop, like it's some major achievement?" Hermione's mouth fell open in disbelief. He continued, "Congratulations, you're doing exactly what everyone thinks you should do, it's wicked."
Ron laughed as Hermione said, "See! You're being so cruel about it!"
Harry shut his mouth, crossing his arms and his legs under the table.
"You have to admit it, it raises some questions when your best mate's not happy for you at a time like this," Ron told him.
"How do you know you're right for each other?" Harry asked.
Hermione licked her lips and her chest raised visibly.
"How do you know you're right for one another?" he insisted.
"Harry-"
"You know, it's almost like his shitty personality rubbed off on you somehow before you left each other-" Ron started.
"Ron, NO," Hermione interrupted.
"Well I thought you two were mismatched the moment you got together, and that was before I contracted the shitty personality."
Ron opened his mouth to reply but Hermione slapped her hand over it. "You always thought we were mismatched?" she said, her brow creased.
"Yes. You're mature, responsible, resourceful. And Hermione, you have to admit ," he was mimicking Ron now out of vitriol, "you are exasperated sometimes at Ron's inability to keep up, aren't you?"
Ron managed to get his mouth free. "Are you saying I'm not good enough for her?" The crisps were forgotten.
"Oh no, of course it goes both ways. Ron, when was the last time you could say or do something moronic in peace?"
"That's rich coming from you - with the way you've been at it since you've been dumped! That was over a year ago, I don't know if you know- I've never seen anyone so determined to be miserable their whole life!"
"Not all of us are so fortunate, Ron."
"Fortunate? According to you, I have fuck all, not even a brain!"
Then it was quiet and it almost seemed like Ron was waiting- for an apology, for them to mend things quickly. But Harry was silent.
"Fuck this," Ron said, screeching his chair back loudly from the table and rising. No one noticed the commotion because they'd charmed themselves quiet. It was strange to be able to fight in peace.
As he left, Harry forced himself to look at Hermione, mostly because he wanted to show her he didn't feel bad. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
She steadied herself with another deep breath and briskly wiped away the wetness from her eye. Her voice was strong. "I wanted to tell you that- as difficult as you're making it right now- we'll always love you, the same as we do now. It won't be any different."
There it was, the essence of the thing. They were a "we" now.
Then she seemed to hear it, catch herself. "Me and Ron getting married won't change anything. It's still the three of us, forever."
Clever Hermione. But who was cleverer than the cruel voice in his head when his mood turned? No one.
They didn't speak for the rest of the week.
Talbott said he was wrong for it, the whole thing. Harry insisted that was because he didn't really understand anything Harry had told him and he immediately regretted trying to explain it.
He missed his phone pinging with messages and Ron's calling into the mirror to update him about the Auror's office from work- how big was the stain on Jamsen's shirt this morning, what was Dawlish pissed off about.
The night before his next session with the therapist, he laid awake wondering what he would say to her. How long could he give her a hard time, really, and what was the point? Could he tell her about the fight or would she insist first on knowing what color Aunt Petunia painted her toenails- do therapists take sides? She probably would get the wrong idea about what happened with Ron and Hermione, you had to be there to get it.
Then he took notice of the chandelier- or at least the shape of it, in the dark. His interior designers had talked him into it, or rather, he said "Sure," to whatever they suggested. It looked nice enough in the daytime but at night, it was like an amebic creature hovering over him, waiting for the right time to land. He felt betrayed by the designers, as he did by Talbott who laid next to him, snoring. Why could no one understand him?
"Hello, Harry."
He was ushered into the room and he chose the same spot on the sofa to sit.
"Did you start keeping a dream journal?"
"No."
"Alright. How are you feeling today?"
"Sad."
"I'm sorry to hear that. What's making you sad?"
"I got into a fight with two of my best friends and it's bothering me."
"What happened?"
He relayed the whole story.
"What's the worst thing about them getting married?" She asked.
"They're mismatched, like I said. I love Ron but he's not right for her."
"What else?"
Harry crossed his legs. "I don't know."
"What else, Harry?"
There was a chandelier in here too, he noticed, a small one.
"They're growing up without me."
"That's good, Harry. Keep going."
He put his right index finger in his left fist and squeezed.
"They'll have a family, little kids soon. They'll forget about the one we had. Together." He felt so stupid. "I'll be alone. I won't belong, again."
"Again?"
"The cupboard. I haven't felt this alone since the cupboard."
The therapist won that day. But at least he hadn't cried.
During the renovation, they'd opened up the back of the flat to the courtyard that he hadn't known existed between the buildings.
The spells concealing the entrance didn't extend all the way back to the courtyard- Sirius's mum had just shuttered it with black curtains stuck to the windows with those awful sticking charms she loved so much. Harry didn't bother trying to have the charm extended for privacy in the back- on the contrary, he had the curse breakers remove all enchantments that hid number 12. The reporters knew where it was anyway and outside, among the balconies and the trees, there was something nice about feeling like a neighbor. Something normal.
The interior designers had big plans for the courtyard but Harry chose then to reign them in- there were just two wrought iron chairs and a matching table on slabbed flooring before grass gave way to fence. He liked to go out there and smoke a tortoise and gold pipe he'd discovered in his parent's vault. He assumed it was his father's or a family heirloom. He bought wizarding tobacco from the apothecary in Diagon Alley. There was a cat that visited sometimes, all black with a white belly.
He went out there the moment he'd come home from therapy and changed his clothes. He charmed himself warm and dried the chair before sitting and lighting the pipe.
He flipped open his little cellphone, went to the address book, and clicked the single name. It took a while for her to answer.
"Hello?"
"You're my only family," he said. "And now, you're going off on your own and starting a new family- a real one, by blood and everything. You won't love anything like you love your children. It's unfair and it makes me feel really alone."
He could hear her crying. "Okay," she said shakily.
"Stop crying."
She sniffled.
"Anyway, don't lie to me and tell me things won't change because they will. And I can be unhappy about that for a bit, I'm allowed. But I'll get over it. I'll be at the wedding. And I'll smile. And be happy for you. And I'll stop saying you and Ron are a bad match. So just give me some time."
"Okay," she said. She was composing herself, he could tell.
"Maybe some part of me wishes I could just marry you myself."
She laughed.
"Tell Ron." Then he hung up.