01
No psychological illness appears out of thin air.
It is the mind’s response, its attempt at self-rescue, after it has been wounded.
When skin is injured, it bleeds and stings.
Left untreated, it festers and fills with pus.
Because all of this is visible, people tend to act.
Stop the bleeding.
Disinfect.
Bandage.
But psychological wounds are different.
They hide deep inside, never immediately exposing their rot, carrying no sharp pain to sound an alarm.
Over time, both the person who was hurt and the bystanders around them grow accustomed to ignoring it.
As if the pain doesn’t exist.
As if the decay isn’t a wound at all, just “being in a bad mood.”
Chloe had always believed that healing a wound of the heart was no different from treating a wound on the skin.
The first step was to ensure that the source of harm was kept far away from her client.
And that, naturally, fell within the scope of her therapeutic services.
She had to make sure her clients would not be subjected to malicious harm again during the vulnerable period of treatment.
To that end, she had once burned the genitals of a man who had violated a child.
She had once personally destroyed the hideout of a trafficking ring, guided by a client’s memories.
She had once punished the drunken, abusive husband of a woman he had beaten into depression.
So warning Rita Skeeter, that unscrupulous journalist, for Harry Potter’s sake fell squarely within her professional responsibilities.
The wind chime at the door rang softly.
Genevieve looked up and saw Chloe push inside again.
“One caramel pudding.” Chloe sounded tired.
She raised a hand and stifled a yawn.
“You’ve been unusually busy today, Camellia.” Genevieve narrowed her eyes and looked her up and down.
“Haven’t you gone a long time without doing a judgment? And now — two jobs in one day?”
“Don’t call me that name.” Chloe’s voice was ice-cold.
“This pudding is for me, and it has nothing to do with anything else. And besides — what happened this morning does not count as a judgment. That was a therapeutic service provided by my practice. It’s included in the consultation fee I charge.”
Genevieve let out a soft laugh, sarcasm woven through it.
She slid the packaged pudding across the counter.
“Fifty pounds.”
Her eyes carried a faint challenge.
“Are you trying to bill your entire day’s revenue to me?” Chloe raised an eyebrow, but she pulled out the notes and set them on the counter all the same.
“A service fee for tracking down that woman’s address.” Genevieve dropped her gaze.
“She really is a strange one.”
“The world is vast. All kinds of people exist in it. And besides — aren’t we strange too?” Chloe sidestepped the probe, turned, and walked out of the dessert shop.
02
“Sis, you have to hear this — someone burned down that rotten journalist Skeeter’s house and nobody knows who!” Michael was working his way through the pudding in front of him, face bright with excitement.
“It felt so good! Whoever did it is a real hero. The Aurors went to investigate this afternoon and found absolutely nothing. Now half the people out there think Skeeter staged the whole thing herself just to grab attention.”
“Is that so?” Chloe feigned surprise and paused in what she was doing.
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“No one.” Michael pursed his lips.
“Skeeter didn’t have a scratch either. That’s the most disappointing part.”
Chloe smiled quietly and went back to arranging the flowers she had bought into the vase. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“And I feel like the boss was in much better spirits this afternoon,” Michael continued, just as animated.
“You have no idea how insufferable that Skeeter is. The boss must have been putting up with her for ages.”
“As a matter of fact, I do know,” Chloe said.
“You’ve told me quite a lot about her baffling behavior.”
“Right, right.” Michael nodded emphatically and kept going without restraint.
“Three years ago, at Ginny Weasley’s Quidditch match, after the game ended, Ginny accidentally fell off her broom, and Oliver Wood went to check on her. Skeeter wrote it up as Ginny Weasley having an affair with Wood.”
“And then Skeeter secretly photographed the boss and Hailey on a mission and claimed he had cheated too. She wrote that the two of them were only staying together despite being completely indifferent to each other because the boss couldn’t bear to give up Mrs. Weasley’s motherly warmth, so he was enduring it, but was too furious to simply let it go, so he had gone and found himself a lover to get back at Ginny Weasley.”
“Then when they broke up a year ago, Skeeter spread even more lies. She took a stolen photo of Ginny Weasley going to St Mungo’s for a knee examination and turned it into a rumor that Ginny had gone to have an abortion. She even claimed it was because the boss was fickle and didn’t want to take responsibility as a father.”
Michael had said all of this in front of her many times before, driven by his indignation on Harry’s behalf.
But Chloe had to admit, listening to him recount it all once more, she found herself regretting that she had gone so easy.
She should have burned Skeeter’s hands.
“Dad comes home tomorrow, but then leaves again on a business trip the day after.” Michael held out the last spoonful of pudding toward Chloe’s mouth.
She shook her head.
He put it contentedly into his own.
“I won’t be coming here tomorrow, I’ll go home and stay for one night. I’ll be back the day after.”
“You don’t ever have to come stay here, you know. That’s perfectly fine.” Chloe looked at him, amused.
“No.” Michael shook his head like a rattle drum.
“I’d miss you.”
“And…?” Chloe drew out the word.
“And your place is closer to the Ministry of Magic. I can walk to work and don’t have to be on edge every time I Apparate, worrying some Muggle will see me,” Michael added with a cheerful grin.
“But most importantly, I really do want to be with my dearest sister.”
He was obviously flattering her.
Chloe knew it perfectly well.
She was moved anyway.
She laughed and reached up to ruffle his hair.
03
For the next several days, Harry threw himself entirely into work.
Perhaps it was because Hermione, Michael, and the others kept mentioning Skeeter’s miserable situation in front of him, but his mood this time was not as dark.
The wound even began to heal and scab over before it could land him in hospital with serious injuries.
When Thursday arrived, the day of his session, Harry instinctively reached for an extra jacket to layer over his shirt.
It was already late May.
The warm, gentle close of spring.
At this time of year, he would normally have worn nothing more than a thin shirt.
That morning, he had stood in the bathroom and stared at the scabbed wound on his arm for a long time.
Then he used a healing charm and smoothed it over effortlessly, leaving no visible trace.
And yet he still felt a quiet shame.
Even though the wound couldn’t possibly be seen, he still wanted to hide his arm.
He arrived early.
After lunch, with nothing to occupy himself, he sat around in his office and watched the time pass.
He was looking forward to the consulting room.
He liked the environment, liked the atmosphere.
He felt relaxed there.
And yet a low, nagging anxiety lingered.
Would it be as pleasant as last time?
Would he still feel at ease there the way he always had?
What would Chloe ask, and how was he supposed to answer?
The moment he stepped through the door, the rich, sweet scent of pumpkin cut through every one of those thoughts.
No surprise.
No trace of anything negative.
She raised the delicate cup in her hand.
“Perfect timing, try the pumpkin juice I made. You said you like it, so you must be something of an expert.”
Only then did Harry remember.
At the end of their last session, Chloe had asked what he would like to drink.
He gave a slightly flustered nod and walked over, not quite sure what to do with himself.
She had actually remembered.
He looked at the rich, fragrant pumpkin juice in the cup.
She had taken it to heart.
It wasn’t a question asked out of idle curiosity, and she hadn’t simply noted his preference and let it go.
A preference he had never even thought of as a need had been seen and acted on.
He hadn’t expected her to do anything like that.
It had been a long time since his needs had been taken seriously.
During his school years, he had wanted not to be kept in the dark.
He had wanted to be an ordinary student, not stared at, not the target of malicious speculation.
After joining the Ministry, he had wanted to simply be an Auror, free from expectations that had nothing to do with reality.
But no matter when, they respected him and dismissed him in the same breath.
People had found all sorts of pretexts to convince him that having his needs ignored was both necessary and right.
Over time, he stopped expecting anything of the sort.
As if his needs were truly too much, too unreasonable to deserve being taken seriously.
Harry took the cup and sipped.
“This is delicious!” He stared at the pumpkin juice, genuinely taken aback, and took another sip.
“It tastes a lot like what I used to drink back at Hog, at school.”
“Looks like I have a natural talent for it.” Chloe smiled.
“My mother’s secret recipe. The trick is apple juice and apricot jam.”
“That’s remarkable. When you decide to sell the recipe, you have to come to me first.” Harry shrugged.
“I’ll pay whatever it takes.”
“You can hand over your stake right now, Mr. Potter.”
Chloe blinked at him and gestured to the rest of the pumpkin juice beside her.
“All it’ll cost you is enjoying every last drop of this while you’re here, and then I’ll let you take the secret recipe home.”
Harry laughed softly.
The anxious knot in his chest dissolved.
If that was all it cost him here, then perhaps there really was nothing to be afraid of.
➤ Next: The Third Session
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