Family Therapy

Epilogue

Personal Journal entry [excerpt]: Autumn, 1995

Outside the window of my thatched, half-timber cottage, I can feel the pressure building. It is a perfect fall day: the air is pure and clear and crisp. Along the main drag of Hogsmeade, merchants and shopkeepers have been setting up their displays since first light. Expectation hovers over the village, much like the blanket of sweetly scented woodsmoke from all our hearths often does on a low-pressure day. But today is not a low-pressure day, by any means. Above my head, as I throw open the shutters, a remote autumnal sun beats down, pouring out its strength one last time before winter closes us in with wind and snow, and makes my newest home town look like a Christmas-card confection, drawn by some artist with a yen for Victoriana.

And still the pressure builds. I wave a greeting to Madame Rosmerta as she strolls briskly by, a large flagon of hard cider balanced on one well-turned hip. She grins, gestures to me with a jerk of her chin, and calls, "It's the pear cider, whenever you've a mind to slip over, Doctor!" But her haste tells me exactly what the source of the pressure is, so I am not at all surprised when the first wave of shrieking adolescents breaks screamingly over our cozy hamlet. The first Hogsmeade Day of the school year for the students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has begun.

I'll be lucky to find a seat in Rosmerta's pub before sunset, by which time the kids usually have cleared out of town. But the pear cider is my favorite, so I might have a go earlier, especially since Minerva and Poppy have both said they'd be down this afternoon. And no patients today. So Hogsmeade Days at Hogwarts are just as much a reward for me as for the students. My day off.

Better yet, the student days in town also give me an excuse to pop down to London of a Friday evening and work late with the docs at St. Mungo's Hospital. Psychiatric work is rather different from a magical perspective, so we have a great deal to teach each other, not to mention the fact that I am working on their credential as a healer--emphasis: mental health. Apparently, my natural magical tendencies lead me towards that skill, so Albus encourages it, even as he keeps me on as adjunct faculty at the school. This gives him somewhere to send troubled faculty and students, so everyone wins. I now have quite the caseload, I am beginning to answer to "Professor", and Poppy Pomfrey has unexpectedly become a friend as well. Anyway, I can sleep in the next morning after St. Mungo's--that is, until the students come rampaging through the streets.

Now I let myself lean out the window and enjoy the spectacle of Magical British Youth roaming the byways of their own magical village. Even though I sometimes teach up at the school, they are all afraid to greet me. What if their friends think they are a patient? I grin helplessly at the memory of my own teen years and all that pointless self-consciousness. Thus, with my head in the sunlight, elbows on the sill, and mind in the past, I almost do not notice him.

But he wants to be noticed. "Doctor Walker!" cries the almost-familiar voice again. I jerk myself out of my reverie, and there he is, standing, open-mouthed, gaping towards my window. I blink, but he stays the same--Harry Potter. A longer body, perhaps, and a deeper voice, but the same clear green eyes, now wide open, and the same shock of dark hair that just never plays dead. Harry has become a teenager.

I am out the door before I know that my feet are moving, charging down the garden path and across to him. Then I see that 2 friends hover near him, uncertain, so I stop, not wanting to embarrass him. Slowly, with great dignity, Harry raises his hands to his spectacles and makes his fingers into windshield wipers across the lenses. We both are grinning until our faces nearly break. With all my heart, I return the gesture.