Tolfrey had been housebound at Jon's Kensington palace for three weeks or so now, and despite his generalised anxiety and specific agoraphobia, cabin fever was starting to set in. Jon was being wonderful and supportive, and his boundless frivolity and levity was helping to a certain extent - the depressed Scottish man couldn't bring himself to constantly offload his dark thoughts and fears only the man who had taken him in since to do so would be akin to taking a puppy and shooting it's mother in the head whilst making it watch. It was good to suppress and deny his feelings of worthlessness and dread some of the time, but it was starting to get to the point where they were being bottled up and would start seeping out in some other ways if he couldn't get them off his chest. Talking to his therapist was all well and good, but therapy didn't really help - Dr Peeters didn't know him, didn't know his friends or his situation and ultimately was paid to try to make Frey feel better. These facts, when coupled with his general mood, added up to Frey being very cynical about the efficacy of psychotherapy. He was resisting the help that was being offered to him, and although one couldn't blame his as that was a manifestation of his disease, he was certainly not helping himself.
Since returning to Britain, both Jon and Dr Peeters had encouraged him to try to reconnect with his friends and work at returning to something that resembled a normal life. Frey had vague, hazy recollections of treating his friends and family like shit during his last couple of months of what he thought of as his past life - or rather at the start of his new life. His previous, joyful and lighthearted existence had ended on the night of the Battle of Hogwarts. He could pinpoint the death of the man he used to be to moment when he failed to fully deflect the spell that would have, if it had connected properly, torn his body to shreds with shrapnel made from his own skeleton. In his dark times, in the middle of the night when he was laying awake in bed, thoughts racing and unable to sleep but too exhausted to do anything to occupy his hypercritical mind, he all to often relived those moments, willing his past self to neglect to parry at all and just allow it all to end there and then. But no, however much he wished that he had exploded in a pink mist of valour standing up for the rights of muggleborns everywhere, that wasn't what had happened. And instead he had come through battle, but woken up a shadow of his former self.
That was when the drinking started, and the potions abuse. Despite their best efforts the healers and mediwizards at St Mungos had not been able to repair the damage that the dark magic had done to his legs and he had been crippled. There was also a piercing pain to remind him of his predicament every time he shifted his position. And so Frey had started to take painkilling potions, and once the idea had struck him, started to use polyjuice potions and variants thereof in order to be able to walk, albeit on someone else's legs. He also would drink to numb the physical and mental pain that he felt, and over the course of a few weeks this had quickly begun to impact negatively on his relationships with his friends. He was pushing people away, snapping them, shutting them out, resenting them when they implied he had a problem, lashing out and criticising anything he could about them - harmful personal things that he latched onto in the people that he knew and cared for, striking at the insecurities they had confided in him where it would hurt them the most - as retaliation for what he perceived as a torrent of attacks on his own character. Then, when he finally had driven the last person who stuck by him - Pike - to abandon him too, he couldn't take being in the flat that they had shared and he just run away, cutting all contact with his friends and loved ones.
That had been a year ago, and he couldn't really remember much about that time at all. He knew that he'd been vicious in his lashing out at people that were trying to help him, and he didn't honestly believe that anyone would still want to call theirself his friend. But he was trying to make amends as instructed, and he had written letters to a few of those people who had been his nearest and dearest apologising for his behaviour and seeking forgiveness. Some of the letters had been easier than others, and some would-be recipients still had not received anything from Tolfrey because he just couldn't find the words. He had ripped up and burned three times as many notes as he'd actually owled because they just sounded lame, half-hearted and vague. Nevertheless, some people had actually replied and were willing to hear him out. Jocasta in particular had exchanged mail with him a couple of times and had persuaded him to meet up.
He was terrifed at the idea of leaving the house. All those people looking at him, judging him, laughing at him. He put off getting ready until the very last minute, since any time he thought about it his chest felt tight and breathing became difficult. So instead of washing, shaving, doing his hair or anything related to personal grooming, he just stayed glued to to sofa watching some silly tv show about a wonderful woman who he wished was his aunt or something but on the other hand was kind of glad she wasn't since every niece or nephew she had seemed to become embroiled in a murder at some point - whether as the victim, the perpetrator or simply a suspect.
The incongruously jolly theme tune struck up and Frey looked at the carriage clock on the mantlepiece. Shit, he was supposed to be meeting Jocasta in 5 minutes. It would take him longer than that to get out of the house, let alone to their arranged rendezvous in Kensington Gardens. His chest tightening again, he heaved himself off the sofa and into his wheelthrone, scooted into the bedroom and threw on a natural coloured woolen sweater and some grey trousers, that had apparently fit Jon almost a decade ago. Frey had next to no belongings of his own and Jon had kindly sent off to his parents for a bundle of garments that would be an appropriate size the diminutive wizard. The jumper smelled of his housemate as he pulled it over his head, and this helped to calm him slightly - Frey found Jonathan's presence or anything that reminded him of it reassuring and it gave him a different, more pleasant sensation in his chest but he was in too much of a rush to notice it. He slipped on some ill fitting shoes and wheeled himself the twenty miles (or so it seemed) to the rear of the building, let himself out and locked up diligently.
He freewheeled down the ramp that his caring landlord had had installed and his momentum carried him along the garden path. He hesitated at the back gate though. He hadn't left the grounds to the Emerson townhouse since he arrived. What if he couldn't get back in? What if Jon hadn't altered the spells correctly so that the latch would recognise Frey as a resident and grant him access? What if he was cast back into living on the streets? Perhaps he should cancel meeting Jo and go back to watching Jessica. He was safe in there. He had a roof over his head, regular food. No one he wasn't ready to see could sneak up on him. No. He'd got this far and Jo would likely already be waiting for him; he couldn't just stand her up. He took a couple of deep breaths and turned the ring on the gate to let himself out. He hoped he could find his way back.
And so, about five minutes late, Tolfrey appeared on a path through the Italian Gardens, his wheeled wingback chair disillusioned so that muggles would pay it no attention. He looked terribly scruffy. The clothes he wore were obviously high quality, but completely at odds with his patchy unshaven face, greasy knotted hair and panicky look. There were far too many people around, he didn't like it. He kept turning his head this way and that, leaning around the sides of his seat as he wheeled himself down the path. On the face of it he was looking for Jocasta, (and indeed was quietly calling her name in a worried and questioning tone, convinced that he had left it too late and she'd already left him) but really he was jumpy at being in public and was scanning the crowds of faces in case anyone else that knew him was there, anyone he hadn't psyched himself up to see so he could run, well, roll away and hide before they found him.
He got more and more anxious and his breathing became quicker and quicker as he rolled his way around the pools of the landscaped gardens looking for his friend. Had she been here and gone already, tired of waiting? Or had it all just been a cruel joke on him - her revenge for the horrible things he'd said and done to her in his madness, to put him in this position make him come out into the open? Were all his former friends hiding somewhere laughing at his distress? "Jo?" he cried weakly. "Jocasta?" Unless she was right next to him, she'd have had no chance of hearing the pathetically meek voice calling her name, getting more and more frantic and panicked with every passing second. The muggles around looked at him with sideways glances, not wanting to make eye contact with the crazed cripple in what looked to them like a normal if rickety wheelchair, although one or two braver and more caring old woman did give him sorrowful glances even if he was avoiding eye contact. Eventually the panic was too much for him, and he collapsed backwards into his padded wheelthrone hyperventilating and wanting to get out of there. He gathered up the wolly jumper in front of his mouth and nose to breath through it, lacking a paper bag. Indeed it covered his whole face - eyes included - allowing him to blot out the sight of all the people around him. It helped a little bit, probably just as much Jon's scent as the structured breathing, but he was still utterly terrified of being out in public and just wanted to be back under his duvet in his secluded hidey-hole.
