"Are you all right, Harry?"
Healer Letham's voice was gentle. She asked the question once and left it there. Harry knew that he could have sat with her for an hour in silence and she wouldn't repeat it. She didn't want to press him.
At the same time, she has to press me, or I won't actually heal.
Harry breathed out slowly, then looked up and said, "I'm so tired of getting lectures from Hermione."
"Ah, your friend. Yes, you did tell me that you'd had one visit with her and it hadn't gone well. You had another one?"
"Yeah, yesterday." Harry shook his head and kicked the stool in front of him. Since it was the one that had a tray from Dobby on it, full of small sandwiches, that just made the tray overbalance and fall on the floor, spilling food everywhere.
Harry closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Everything in him hurt, spiraling grief and rage and upset. And now he'd caused a mess that he couldn't even use his wand to clean up.
"Here, permit me," Healer Letham murmured, and waved her wand. Harry heard the tray reassembling. He didn't open his eyes to see it. It had hit him all over again that his wand had the bloody Trace on it, and that he couldn't even draw it to defend himself if Voldemort or his pet Death Eater who'd impersonated Moody showed up knocking at the Manor gates tomorrow.
"Do you wish to discuss the visit?" Healer Letham asked. Harry opened his eyes to see that she had tucked her wand away and was calmly focused on him, the way she always was when they were in the same room.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Yeah, I think I have to."
"I would not wish to force you."
"It's not you forcing me. It's me forcing me."
Healer Letham looked as if she might protest for a moment. Then she nodded. "All right. What did you want to say? Or ask?"
"I told Hermione I want her to stop lecturing me," Harry said. "I told her I want her to stop nagging me to talk to Professor Dumbledore. And Professor Lupin. Somehow, he's back in there. I don't know, maybe he's coming back to be our Defense professor again." Harry didn't see how that could be, when most people seemed to know Lupin was a werewolf now—that had slipped out—but maybe Dumbledore could pull strings around that. "She got upset and said the war was important." Harry stopped.
"What you said sounds reasonable to me," Healer Letham murmured, "though of course it would depend on tone and wording. What did you say then?"
"I told her that my family and I were fighting the war in our own way, and Dumbledore and Lupin already tried to offer me training and I turned them down. She said I had to talk to them. That it was important. So I asked her what was so goddamn important, and she got upset and started to cry. And then Ron jumped on me for upsetting Hermione, and I fought with them both and told them not to come back."
Harry stopped again. He was breathing hard, he realized, as if he was back in that room with his best friends who—he didn't understand. They might have thought the Malfoys were holding him prisoner, but now they knew that wasn't true, so why did they and Harry keep arguing?
He didn't understand.
"There are only a few weeks until Hogwarts begins again," Healer Letham said. "That is not so long. Are you upset because of what you said to Hermione? Because of what she said to you? Because she wouldn't stop lecturing you when asked? Because Ron became involved?"
"Any. All." Harry shuddered and sank back in his seat. "I don't want to yell at them. But Mother and Father don't want me to tell them all about what we're doing to fight the war, either, and I understand that. Ron might blurt it out because he got upset. And Hermione might take it to Dumbledore, and I don't want him learning it."
"So you do not trust them."
"I trust them with my life!" Harry said hotly. "Just not with this."
"It is all right, Harry," Healer Letham said. Harry would have given a lot to know how she was so bloody calm all the time. "You can have different levels of trust for different people. You can argue with them and make up. You can have different friends and family outside the ones you used to have, without giving the old ones up."
"I sort of have given the Weasleys up," Harry muttered. He hadn't seen Molly Weasley as more than a nervous, distant face on the platform since second year. He hadn't been invited over to the Burrow during any holiday or summer. Of course, Mother and Father might not have let him go, but he hadn't been asked, either. "Even Ron's sister Ginny avoids me now. She had a crush on me at one point."
"Do you mourn that?"
"I really liked Mrs. Weasley," Harry muttered. "I don't—I mean, I don't really miss having a little girl with a crush on me in the same House, but it's sort of sad that she decided I was a bad person just because I'm a Malfoy."
Healer Letham nodded as if that made sense to her, even though it didn't really to Harry, and he was the one who'd said it. "Have you exchanged any owls with Ron or Hermione since you fought with them?"
"Just one. Hermione said it wasn't safe to send letters, according to Dumbledore, and she wouldn't be writing back to me after this. And then she said again that there was important stuff happening in the war and I should go to Hogwarts and talk to Dumbledore."
"Has he sent you any letters?"
"No. But he could say it was for the same reason that Hermione's saying. That it's not safe."
Healer Letham was silent for a while, probably thinking. Harry sat there and wondered if he was supposed to feel better just because he'd confessed to fighting with his friends.
Well. He did. A little. Healer Letham's words about how he didn't have to trust Ron and Hermione with everything and he could make up with them if they argued circled in his head. He could wait until they went back to school and see how things stood then.
And he didn't have to apologize for getting kidnapped or not meeting up with them right away. He'd been kidnapped. That was something they could understand. They probably would. He'd had fights with Ron and Hermione before, and they'd always made up in the end.
"Do you think it would help to write to them?" Healer Letham asked quietly.
Harry started. He had wandered far away in his own mind and hadn't even noticed her turning to look at him again. "I don't see how. Hermione said she wouldn't answer, and Ron didn't say that, but he's probably still upset with me for swearing at Hermione."
"Not letters that you send. Simply letters that you write, to lay out your feelings, for yourself, and keep. Perhaps someday you'll show them to your friends. Perhaps not. But it might be a way for you to let go of some of your own anger and decide what you'll say when you see them again."
Harry smiled hesitantly. "Like keeping a diary?"
"Yes, if you'd like. Perhaps you can write letters to other people and see what you would say in them." Healer Letham half-smiled at him. "I don't pretend this is an instant cure, but it is something I have seen work for other people in similar situations to yours, where they have fought with friends and are confused."
Harry thought about it for a little while, his legs swinging. He ended up taking a sandwich from the tray and eating it, then offering the tray to Healer Letham. She took one, too, and ate it while watching him.
"Yeah," Harry said. "I think I'd like to try that."
And he could think of lots of people he'd like to write to. Ron and Hermione, sure, but Mrs. Weasley, too. Remus Lupin. Dumbledore. Even his parents. Even Sirius Black. He definitely wouldn't send those last few, but he would like to try.
And something inside him that had felt stirred up like a whirlwind since the fight with Ron and Hermione calmed at last.
....
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