His healer wasn’t at St. Mungo’s, but in a building further toward the edge of London where newfangled wizards messed around with psychology. It hadn’t been there especially long. Thankfully Zacharias had waited until the twenty-first century to be mental. Tony had better be thankful too, that there was someone else to take the responsibility of fixing him.
A lot of it was just talking. The mind was a muddy area of magic, and today’s healers preferred to err on the side of caution. Unfortunately, Zacharias believed. He’d gone in half-hoping to just be Imperiused, and had been frustrated they expected him to put in work. But that was what he was here for, he supposed: to learn how to put in the work everyone else did instead of searching out chemical substitutes.
He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way in the waiting room chair. He was early. It felt counter-intuitive but sitting here was better than sitting in Anthony’s kitchen. Maybe he should
talk today about moving out, figure out why he was dragging his feet despite the annoyance of living in a sitting room. In theory Zacharias hated to be baby-sat. But he didn’t feel qualified to baby-sit himself either and he had a suspicion he needed it. Sharing a space was a reminder that he lived in a society and couldn’t just do whatever the fuck he wanted. When he lived alone somehow he’d been able to forget that, as if when he shut himself in his moldy flat he crossed into a world where nothing mattered and he made the rules.
Could he say that to his healer? Probably not. His verbal filter operated precisely backwards. Another issue he hadn't been able to raise—that, at least had always been around, so nobody could suggest it was to do with trauma. Zach was getting tired of hearing the word.
In the face of his skepticism they'd assured him he
was traumatized. No matter how much time he’d spent with his nose down dodging all the consequences of it he could, his last year at Hogwarts had been unequivocally fucked. It had taken practice not to laugh that off. Of course, accepting it made him feel even less worthy of special treatment now that a whole generation was in the same boat. He still had to clarify internally that his peers had gone through worse every time he thought of it, as if a war hero would come shout at him. But he was considering himself a traumatized person now, whatever good that did. Zacharias had the feeling he’d still have been here in peacetime.
Several people were streaming down the stairs now and out through the lobby. A group letting out, probably. Zach pursed his lips judgmentally—even if there’d been enough wizard heroin addicts to warrant it he would
never have put himself through that. But there was a whole boatload of people now whose mental problems were variations on the same theme. Maybe it was less work for the healers.
Sometimes he saw people he recognized from Hogwarts. Rarely any he’d spoken to, but many he knew by name for no reason and even more he just knew by face. The girl in the big cardigan was the last kind. All he had one her was that she was younger and Slytherin, but despite her Slytherinness making him inherently reluctant, he still felt sort of guilty watching as someone else brushed by and her scarf fell out the top of her bag onto the floor. Nobody else was going to pick it up? Christ.
Zach took out his wand and levitated the thin scarf back over to her, but as she hadn’t noticed in the first place, it just bobbed pathetically along after her. “Hey,†he called to get her to turn around.
@Ffion Foxwell-Jones 
