#Harry's sabbatical from Hogwarts 6th year

[realitybitesyouknowit]

Chapters: 16/16 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort Characters: Harry Potter, Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Lily Evans Potter, Regulus Black, Kreacher (Harry Potter), Death Eaters - Character Additional Tags: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, the friends part comes rather quickly, angst (quickly resolved), Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Bliss, Grief/Mourning, Obsession, Possessive Behavior, Murder, Self-Harm, (in the context of a blood ritual), Horcruxes, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, BAMF Harry Potter, Magical Theory (Harry Potter), Simp Tom Riddle, Mentor Voldemort (Harry Potter), Underage Drinking, Explicit Sexual Content, harry is 17, Age Difference, Slow Burn, Humor, I wrote this for myself but you can read it too :), Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Not beta read we die like sirius, Happy Ending, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Re-edited as of september 2023, Translation Available in the AN Summary:

When Sirius died Harry's whole world crumbled.

Amidst grief and anger, one may find that hope and love can be found in the most unexpected places.

For Harry, that came in the form of Voldemort offering him a home.

-

A story of grief, healing, learning, and magic. But most importantly, this is a love story.

[thistlecatfics]

ALSO SNAPE. older teens/young adult period is such a ✨fun time✨in his life! so many possibilities! pre DE baby snape era… SWM era… immediately following voldemort’s defeat… right after harry begins hogwarts… he totally wouldn’t, but aaaagh i would LOVE to hear him unpack that first potions lesson with harry in therapy lmfao.

… also thanks to the snames post i now can’t help but imagine james and snape in therapy following SWM. i feel like james would be a much more… workable? client than sirius, especially if his parents were encouraging! would be a fun fic i’m just saying 👀

Ok he is the last one for the night because I was just like "oh I'll jot down an idea or two" and then I look up and it's suddenly 20 minutes later.

Adult Snape -

His character is like… DEFINED by not being in therapy. He (or at least part of him) is constantly living in the past and in each traumatic moment, and he does. not. move on. He survives. He does not heal. He is not interested in healing. 

Could you imagine Dumbledore trying to force him to go to therapy as a Hogwarts employee? LMAO. Snape would be like “You first, bitch.” 

Though I would love for Dumbledore to force him on a sabbatical where he did an intensive residential trauma treatment program for six months then six months to do potions research somewhere with no children and no one to ask him questions, and it would be the reward for completing the program. (That and a year off from teaching first through fifth years.) (I hc he actually likes teaching 6th and 7th years since he can be selective about them.) 

(I’ve never worked in non-substance use inpatient so I can’t say much about it and it would absolutely be a referral. Dumbledore’s like “so I have this guy I want in therapy…” and I’m like “... have you considered residential for him?”)

Adult Snape and I would not work well together. It would not be worth trying. (Though it’s easy to think of him as an old man but he was in his early 30s in the books lol.) 

Also if he’s being forced into therapy as an adult, he would absolutely remain silent the entire time as a test of wills with the therapist. 

Ok but younger Snape??

He only goes to therapy for Lily. Let’s imagine pre-SWM, Lily is like “I love you but I no longer like you. Go to therapy. Work on yourself. Then maybe we can be friends again.” 

Self-esteem!!! Identity! Identity in a social justice lens!! 

Definitely a lot of praise for his intelligence, but also slowly naming other values too. It would totally be a situation where I’m like “It’s ok if you disagree, but I think you have inherent worth, just as you are, separate from your intelligence. You don’t have to believe me, but I believe it. I’ll hold onto that belief until you’re ready to hold it too.” and he’d roll his eyes. Lol. 

Unconditional positive regard again as the key therapeutic factor!!

Being really careful to avoid any impulse to “fix” him and just bear witness and build trust and slowly co-create space where he can be honest about his feelings and hurt. 

As a teenager, I can’t imagine he ever mentions his family at all. I think it’s purely about his life at Hogwarts - he keeps those worlds so separate. (One of those situations where the therapist is immediately like “oh your family is FUCKED” but waits for the client to give an opening.) 

Ok post SWM???

James -

Also, yes, you’re absolutely right James would be an easier client to work with in many ways. Basically, he has a secure attachment style from parents who were able to meet a decent chunk of his emotional needs as a child, and so he is able to trust people more easily, which means therapeutic work can go deeper faster since the trust building stage is much shorter. 

I think the hard part for him in therapy would be motivation – why is he seeking therapy? He’s forced to by the school? He’d be absolutely in denial that he did anything wrong. 

I have a colleague at my old job who worked with students who were found responsible by the Title IX Officer for violating sexual harassment/violence rules (but not expelled), and I think I’d want James to go through that pretty structured program. I think I’d be too easy on him when the necessary step would really be around taking responsibility for his own actions (within a very complicated situation in which he’s not entirely in the wrong!) 

I also think he’d work better with a male therapist but maybe that’s just my bias. I’d want him to work with someone who feels more comfortable pushing him, and that’s just not my vibe. 

Snape post SWM?? 

He ABSOLUTELY shuts down. Talk to this bloody shrink about what happened?? Absolutely not. 

His main (only authentic?) relationship was just cut away (his fault, but still, it would be intensely difficult.) 

I headcanon that he really dives into dark magic during this time – not so much the Death Eaters but only Death Eaters as they are vehicles for the opportunity to explore the Dark Arts, an area where he can feel in control and powerful and so self-soothe. 

I would try to engage with him through magical theory and the Dark Arts and whatever his main interest in the present was (no judgment, confidentiality made clear), and see if we could use the magic he was creating and experimenting with as a vehicle for considering himself and his own internal experiences and feelings and needs. 

He’d be the type of client where I end up binging research after I see them to be able to keep up with them and try to be able to use it as an in for therapeutic work. 

I do think he really wants an audience for his experimentation, and so he might eventually start to enjoy talking about what he works on and we would SLOWLY build that therapeutic rapport. 

It might work, it might not, but I’d hold fast to my optimism even when it was hard. (And he would make it very hard.)

(And canonically, I think there just wouldn't be enough time to build that rapport. He'd join the Death Eaters and stop going to therapy before we get the opportunity to do some real work.)