(no subject)
Title: Secret Chord, part 1/7: "Measured Out in Coffee Spoons"
Type: Slash
Genre: Angst.
Characters: Terry/Anthony (vaguely), misc. Ravenclaws and adults
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, language.
Prompts: "in the room where women come and go"
Word Count: 2,690
Summary: "There’s something to be said for the tenacity of groups."
Disclaimer: All are JKR's. These incarnations of Terry and Anthony are being used by me and Chelsea/unrulygarden for the Occlumency RPG; Terry is her character.
A/N: written for 7spells
The Hospital Wing’s freezing - shouldn’t be, it is June after all; should be warm, if anything.
But it isn’t. It’s absolutely arctic, and Anthony can’t stop shaking. How Terry and Michael and Kevin can take it, he has no idea. They should just go. Anthony’s fine; anyone with two brains should be able to see that. Pomfrey and McGonagall have come and gone already, and even Professor Vector came down to try and “talk some sense into him.” They even went and called his mum up to school - and on her and dad’s anniversary too, the absolute last day when they need to be disturbed by something as foolish as this, as this… thing. There’s nothing wrong with him! Why can’t anyone else see that? They’re causing a fuss over nothing and it’s completely ridiculous!
So he snapped a little after his last NEWT - Arithmancy, his favorite subject, easily bound to be his highest-scoring NEWT. That’s understandable; it’s all over, it’s a big upheaval for any seventh year. So he’s been keeping himself up with coffee and charms and maybe hasn’t slept in at least a week. That, too, is understandable, really; it’s NEWTs week. So he saw Smith trying to feel Terry up right after the test, dropped his bag, ran outside, and fell to his knees screaming. So, in so doing, he sent Hagrid’s hippogriff into a tizzy. The only one who suffered was some nearby vegetable and Hagrid probably shouldn’t have that beast… thing in the first place.
Either way… this is just sadistic. None of that means he’s lost his mind, or snapped, or anything of what they’ve been saying. He’s not in danger of anything, or doing something to himself or anyone else, and he certainly doesn’t need any bloody sleeping potion. Giving it to him on an empty stomach’s just as bad an idea as giving a first-year a pet dragon. And it smells completely rancid.
That he hasn’t eaten in a day or two also means nothing. It’s completely normal that he gets busy and forgets to do things. Like eat. And sleep. And perform general self-maintenance tasks. He’s still alive, isn’t he? His heart’s still beating and his nerves are still flinging signals at each other; he must be fine. The last things he needs are potions and pity, and the last place he needs to be is in this hyperborean hospital, on this lonesome bed with these starched, sterile sheets, curled in this degrading fetal position. Kevin and Michael can leave any time they please, and Terry definitely doesn’t need to be sitting where he is, goblet-full of Dreamless Sleep in hand.
Just like how Flitwick hadn’t needed to come down and stick his nose into the situation. Head of House or not, there wasn’t anything wrong here, save that Anthony was and still is cooped up when he doesn’t need to be - and so His Professorial Insight wasn’t required.
Kevin and Michael, at least, have something vaguely resembling the right idea. They’ve backed off already, even if it took them a while to do so, even if they’re still clinging to this ludicrous notion of something or other being amiss - they really must not think that much of him, Anthony reasons. To think that he’s not the best judge of his condition when he’s the one experiencing it, even while (admittedly somewhat) sleep-deprived and (so they say) delirious (though, really, he’s more clear-headed than he’s been in a while). Even though Anthony only sees his jeans and sheets right now, he doesn’t need to look up to see that they still won’t just leave him alone. Their breathing is obnoxiously loud, almost labored. Unnecessarily so, but then… most of what they do anymore appears to be at least slightly unnecessary.
He even hears the footsteps that whisper into the hospital wing, purposefully delicate around him as though around broken glass and eggshells. God, he hates it when they do that. He’s not broken, he isn’t breaking, and sidestepping around him like he’s a heart or a glass figurine just makes him feel murderous.
The mattress shifts, but not because Terry’s finally getting up. Someone else sits down.
- I told you to take care of yourself, Golden Einstein, she (Luna. Bloody. Lovegood.) breathes like an elegy. Usually, Anthony wouldn’t mind her, but she’s being annoying for right now.
- Terry, how’s he doing? - and Lisa had to come along too. Friend or not, she doesn’t need to see him like this and worry herself silly over this superfluous fuss everyone else is raising.
- ‘m fine! - he says (maybe a bit loudly, no more than is necessary, really). Don’t need sleep, or potions, or anything! Just need to get out of here!
- Does that answer your question? - Terry sighs.
- He’s completely flipped, Kevin grouses from somewhere far away, which is fine enough on its own. I mean, it sucks, but we can deal with it.
- So why aren’t we- (Lisa)
- Because he keeps saying that he’s fine!
- I am fine! - The words taste like battery acid when he spits them out… how battery acid must taste, anyway. They explode from his lips like fire and set the oxygen alight.
- See?!
- You have no bloody idea what you’re talking about!
- You’ve had a bloody nervous collapse! - Kevin matches his vehemence now; it’s so mindless, needless, needles. Yes, yes, the words themselves are needles that Kevin’s trying to jam into him. It won’t work. Not now that he knows the plan.
- Have not! - Is a mindless enough response.
- Have too! - But should he question it, perhaps?
- I’d know it if I had! - It comes so effortlessly, and leaves some secret part of him crying out doubts, suspicions, whispers of “maybe this” and “perhaps not.”
- Not necessarily! - Kevin’s rhetoric is similarly flawed.
- Will both of you please, Terry interjects evenly (though his voice is raised; he lowers it to say), shut. Up?
…Terry’s right. Of course he is. He’s always right, if you ask him. He has to be - it’s a compulsion, just like Anthony’s thing with threes, and thing with fours, and thing with all the books being alphabetized by author and title, with their stems perfectly aligned. That way, if he forgets either Moste Potente Potions or Professor Vindictus Viridian, it’s not so hard to find the book. It’d be easier if people wouldn’t mess around with his things, but they never stop - by this year, they should just know better, with exemptions made for fun and first-years - picking up cigarettes, apparently, means that one calms down.
How the hell can he calm down when these people keep trying to make him worry, when there’s nothing wrong and still they prattle on about nervous collapses, and minds long lost, and self-destructive tendencies.
The mattress shifts again as two feet nestle between his own. …His hand is warm. Why the hell is his hand so warm? And all of a sudden like that? What’s the universe playing at? Forced to by god-knew-what, he finally looks up; Terry has his one hand wrapped in two, cold fingers pressed to forehead.
- Anthony, he sighs like breathing for the first time, Anthony, please. (Please what? Please die? Please be quiet? Please take the potion? Please please me like I please you?) Look. I don’t know what’s wrong. I just… don’t know, okay? But something’s wrong. (And why’s that, eh? Because nothing’s going right? Pathetic excuse for logic.) Just… we’re all here because we care about you, and you’re not well. We’re friends. We know you’re doing it to yourself. Just… take the potion already. (Of course it comes back to that. All it’s been for the past hour and seventeen minutes has been that goddamn potion and how he’d bloody well take it if he knew what was good for him. He guesses he must not know that well. Otherwise he’d be a good boy and take the damn thing already. He’s not good, he’s not nice, and he’s not a fucking crazy person; he knows he doesn’t need it, and still his Judas lips respond,)
- Fine.
There’s something to be said for the tenacity of groups. Collectively, they sigh. Luna hands the goblet back to Terry, who, in turn, passes it to Anthony, who puts it to his lips and drinks until it’s gone. His harassers disembark before he collapses into sleep.
------------------
Terry sighs again once Anthony’s head hits the pillow, hair splaying out behind him like a curled brown halo. He removes the sleeping boy’s glasses and nestles them on the nightstand with the empty goblet - all while vaguely pondering that this is probably the closest any of them will ever see to Anthony being drunk, and that he’d almost be preferable that way. At least Terry knows how to handle drunks. His Muggle “friends” back home get trashed enough to have taught him a thing or ten, and he’s more than amenable to insobriety when he has to deal with them. First-hand hangovers are terribly good professors; and cleaning them up is even an improvement.
Anthony doesn’t drink; they all know this - Michael and Kevin, Lisa and Luna, the rest of Ravenclaw house, though none of them are present. More than enough people have tried and failed to give him Butterbeer before (even though that’s hardly alcoholic; it won’t even knock out a House Elf until s/he’s had about thirteen). Given this charade, he should probably start. Not that Terry necessarily encourages liver damage without purpose, or that he’d force booze on Anthony when he clearly doesn’t want any - but a few drinks won’t fry as many brain cells as Anthony’s overworked this week.
Whoever invented Awakening Charms and caffeine-enhancing potions should be taken behind a barn and shot dead. No painless Avada Kedavra - the scum doesn’t deserve it.
“Madam Pomfrey did try giving him a Calming Draught before the sleeping potion, right?” Lisa asks nervously.
“And a Draught of Peace,” Kevin huffs bitterly. “He cooperated with both of those, and neither worked, so he threw a fit over the sleeping potion. And then his mum showed up, which was a right mess and a half.”
“Well,” Michael sighs pensively. “We managed to knock him out without Stunning him. That’s worth something.”
“Would’ve been faster to do that.”
“But ultimately worse for everyone.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I didn’t say that. I merely-”
“You lot wait here,” Terry interjects. (Playing the leader with a bunch of debate-prone intellectuals is so bloody tedious.) “I’ll go talk to his mum and McGonagall.”
“She tried to keep us from getting in here,” Luna comments off-handedly. “Said we’d probably just disturb him.”
“Well, in all fairness,” Kevin retorts, “it was a possibility.”
“I think she’s gotten a few twigstaxs caught in her hat since she took up Professor Dumbledore’s old job. Have you noticed how she never takes it off?”
While Luna and Kevin get into a discussion of twigstaxs and how to spot them, Terry makes good on his promise. The rest of their lot seems engrossed, and it’s easy enough to open the door and eavesdrop.
“I should’ve seen this coming,” Anthony’s mum huffs. Her very voice is injured. She’d never make it as an actress; good thing she’s a writer instead. “I thought his letters home were getting more erratic, but his father said not to worry. Thought he could handle whatever it was, since he’s eighteen and all.”
“In all fairness, Catherine,” McGonagall chimes in, probably as soothingly as she can get - her hand’s on Anthony’s mum’s shoulder and everything - “your husband is a Muggle. He has no idea what the boy could get himself into.”
“He still thinks that we handle dragons in Care of Magical Creatures…”
“I daresay Hagrid would love that,” Pomfrey huffs.
“Nevertheless!” Flitwick pipes up. “We have quite a quandary on our hands! He was looking at work in the Ministry - Committee on Experimental Charms! There’s no way he can start working in this state!”
“And I’ll note that not a one of you has suggested any way to handle this,” McGonagall sighs.
Anthony’s mum mimes that she has no ideas - that’s always the way with parents, isn’t it? Pomfrey and Flitwick are similarly clueless. This is ridiculous! On the one hand, Anthony’s an adult and should be deciding this for himself… once he’s rested and sentient, that is. For another thing, these people aren’t even trying. They don’t know how to help him, that much is apparent, but they could at least make an effort to do something for the boy. (It occurs to Terry, vaguely and only for a moment, that calling Anthony “the boy” is possibly the most condescending thing he’s ever done. And to the least deserving person.)
“Well,” Professor Vector says softly (her voice always has been too airy for angles, but it’s strangely grounded now. Anthony really has no clue that he inspires this in people, does he?), “there is a residential program. At Saint Mungo’s. He’d only have to stay a month, maybe six weeks.”
Because that’s really what he needs. Going from being caged up in a castle to being quite literally caged up (alright, not literally) in a bloody hospital, spending every day with healers and mediwizards who don’t know him (and who he more than likely won’t trust) but still give him advice on his mental state. True enough, there’s no way he can work right now - he can barely form a coherent sentence that isn’t attacking someone, how could he even think to work? - but he doesn’t need what Professor Vector seems to think he needs. She’s a lovely woman, really, she is… but she has no idea what she’s talking about.
“Residential?” Anthony’s mum practically whimpers. She obviously doesn’t want to believe that this is happening - and Terry can’t say that he blames her.
“Well, he would live at the hospital for the month or six weeks-”
“Er, excuse me, Professors? Madam Pomfrey, Mrs. Goldstein?”
They turn to look at him in unison, and… Wait. What’s he doing? He doesn’t remember what he thought was important enough to interrupt Professor Vector for… but he’s been on stage before. He can wing it.
“Yes, Mister Boot?” McGonagall enunciates. “Am I to take from the lack of commotion that Mister Goldstein has finally consented to take his potion?”
“Er… yes, Professor,” he mutters. It’s now or never - but before he can continue, Madam Pomfrey jumps in.
“I swear; that boy will be the death of himself! He might be eighteen, but he’s clearly not above petty foolishness-”
“I think there’s a little more to it than that, Madam Pomfrey-”
“Which is exactly what the Saint Mungo’s program attempts to address!” Professor Vector just can’t get off that subject, can she? “There are clearly causes underlying this that have to be dealt with-”
“Professor!” Terry interrupts (he knows his voice is too loud; it doesn’t help that Flitwick winces). All the eyes stare at him again. “I… I don’t think he needs to go to Saint Mungo’s.”
“Terry,” she sighs, “he’s unwell. I know you, Kevin, Michael and everyone want to help him, but you can only do so much.”
“They can only do so much.” It’s a valid point. Valid enough, anyway. “And they don’t even know him. I mean… who’s to say he doesn’t just… need a holiday? To somewhere other than his parents’ house, I mean.”
“And where are you suggesting he take this holiday?” McGonagall enquires (fair enough).
“I… my parents have this friend in Ludgvan - she’s just a few miles out of St. Ives, off the beach; she’s got a lovely place. It’s calm, it’s quiet - I… I’d take him there. She’d let us stay, and it really wouldn’t be any trouble-”
Being reasonable (for once), McGonagall raises a hand to shut him (and Professor Vector) up; they both oblige, though he does so more willingly. Sharply, she turns to Mrs. Goldstein.
“Catherine?”
She’s nearly crying, but stays strong enough to just avoid it. Finally, she sighs, “Better there than Saint Mungo’s,” and Terry can’t keep down a breath of relief.
Type: Slash
Genre: Angst.
Characters: Terry/Anthony (vaguely), misc. Ravenclaws and adults
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, language.
Prompts: "in the room where women come and go"
Word Count: 2,690
Summary: "There’s something to be said for the tenacity of groups."
Disclaimer: All are JKR's. These incarnations of Terry and Anthony are being used by me and Chelsea/unrulygarden for the Occlumency RPG; Terry is her character.
A/N: written for 7spells
The Hospital Wing’s freezing - shouldn’t be, it is June after all; should be warm, if anything.
But it isn’t. It’s absolutely arctic, and Anthony can’t stop shaking. How Terry and Michael and Kevin can take it, he has no idea. They should just go. Anthony’s fine; anyone with two brains should be able to see that. Pomfrey and McGonagall have come and gone already, and even Professor Vector came down to try and “talk some sense into him.” They even went and called his mum up to school - and on her and dad’s anniversary too, the absolute last day when they need to be disturbed by something as foolish as this, as this… thing. There’s nothing wrong with him! Why can’t anyone else see that? They’re causing a fuss over nothing and it’s completely ridiculous!
So he snapped a little after his last NEWT - Arithmancy, his favorite subject, easily bound to be his highest-scoring NEWT. That’s understandable; it’s all over, it’s a big upheaval for any seventh year. So he’s been keeping himself up with coffee and charms and maybe hasn’t slept in at least a week. That, too, is understandable, really; it’s NEWTs week. So he saw Smith trying to feel Terry up right after the test, dropped his bag, ran outside, and fell to his knees screaming. So, in so doing, he sent Hagrid’s hippogriff into a tizzy. The only one who suffered was some nearby vegetable and Hagrid probably shouldn’t have that beast… thing in the first place.
Either way… this is just sadistic. None of that means he’s lost his mind, or snapped, or anything of what they’ve been saying. He’s not in danger of anything, or doing something to himself or anyone else, and he certainly doesn’t need any bloody sleeping potion. Giving it to him on an empty stomach’s just as bad an idea as giving a first-year a pet dragon. And it smells completely rancid.
That he hasn’t eaten in a day or two also means nothing. It’s completely normal that he gets busy and forgets to do things. Like eat. And sleep. And perform general self-maintenance tasks. He’s still alive, isn’t he? His heart’s still beating and his nerves are still flinging signals at each other; he must be fine. The last things he needs are potions and pity, and the last place he needs to be is in this hyperborean hospital, on this lonesome bed with these starched, sterile sheets, curled in this degrading fetal position. Kevin and Michael can leave any time they please, and Terry definitely doesn’t need to be sitting where he is, goblet-full of Dreamless Sleep in hand.
Just like how Flitwick hadn’t needed to come down and stick his nose into the situation. Head of House or not, there wasn’t anything wrong here, save that Anthony was and still is cooped up when he doesn’t need to be - and so His Professorial Insight wasn’t required.
Kevin and Michael, at least, have something vaguely resembling the right idea. They’ve backed off already, even if it took them a while to do so, even if they’re still clinging to this ludicrous notion of something or other being amiss - they really must not think that much of him, Anthony reasons. To think that he’s not the best judge of his condition when he’s the one experiencing it, even while (admittedly somewhat) sleep-deprived and (so they say) delirious (though, really, he’s more clear-headed than he’s been in a while). Even though Anthony only sees his jeans and sheets right now, he doesn’t need to look up to see that they still won’t just leave him alone. Their breathing is obnoxiously loud, almost labored. Unnecessarily so, but then… most of what they do anymore appears to be at least slightly unnecessary.
He even hears the footsteps that whisper into the hospital wing, purposefully delicate around him as though around broken glass and eggshells. God, he hates it when they do that. He’s not broken, he isn’t breaking, and sidestepping around him like he’s a heart or a glass figurine just makes him feel murderous.
The mattress shifts, but not because Terry’s finally getting up. Someone else sits down.
- I told you to take care of yourself, Golden Einstein, she (Luna. Bloody. Lovegood.) breathes like an elegy. Usually, Anthony wouldn’t mind her, but she’s being annoying for right now.
- Terry, how’s he doing? - and Lisa had to come along too. Friend or not, she doesn’t need to see him like this and worry herself silly over this superfluous fuss everyone else is raising.
- ‘m fine! - he says (maybe a bit loudly, no more than is necessary, really). Don’t need sleep, or potions, or anything! Just need to get out of here!
- Does that answer your question? - Terry sighs.
- He’s completely flipped, Kevin grouses from somewhere far away, which is fine enough on its own. I mean, it sucks, but we can deal with it.
- So why aren’t we- (Lisa)
- Because he keeps saying that he’s fine!
- I am fine! - The words taste like battery acid when he spits them out… how battery acid must taste, anyway. They explode from his lips like fire and set the oxygen alight.
- See?!
- You have no bloody idea what you’re talking about!
- You’ve had a bloody nervous collapse! - Kevin matches his vehemence now; it’s so mindless, needless, needles. Yes, yes, the words themselves are needles that Kevin’s trying to jam into him. It won’t work. Not now that he knows the plan.
- Have not! - Is a mindless enough response.
- Have too! - But should he question it, perhaps?
- I’d know it if I had! - It comes so effortlessly, and leaves some secret part of him crying out doubts, suspicions, whispers of “maybe this” and “perhaps not.”
- Not necessarily! - Kevin’s rhetoric is similarly flawed.
- Will both of you please, Terry interjects evenly (though his voice is raised; he lowers it to say), shut. Up?
…Terry’s right. Of course he is. He’s always right, if you ask him. He has to be - it’s a compulsion, just like Anthony’s thing with threes, and thing with fours, and thing with all the books being alphabetized by author and title, with their stems perfectly aligned. That way, if he forgets either Moste Potente Potions or Professor Vindictus Viridian, it’s not so hard to find the book. It’d be easier if people wouldn’t mess around with his things, but they never stop - by this year, they should just know better, with exemptions made for fun and first-years - picking up cigarettes, apparently, means that one calms down.
How the hell can he calm down when these people keep trying to make him worry, when there’s nothing wrong and still they prattle on about nervous collapses, and minds long lost, and self-destructive tendencies.
The mattress shifts again as two feet nestle between his own. …His hand is warm. Why the hell is his hand so warm? And all of a sudden like that? What’s the universe playing at? Forced to by god-knew-what, he finally looks up; Terry has his one hand wrapped in two, cold fingers pressed to forehead.
- Anthony, he sighs like breathing for the first time, Anthony, please. (Please what? Please die? Please be quiet? Please take the potion? Please please me like I please you?) Look. I don’t know what’s wrong. I just… don’t know, okay? But something’s wrong. (And why’s that, eh? Because nothing’s going right? Pathetic excuse for logic.) Just… we’re all here because we care about you, and you’re not well. We’re friends. We know you’re doing it to yourself. Just… take the potion already. (Of course it comes back to that. All it’s been for the past hour and seventeen minutes has been that goddamn potion and how he’d bloody well take it if he knew what was good for him. He guesses he must not know that well. Otherwise he’d be a good boy and take the damn thing already. He’s not good, he’s not nice, and he’s not a fucking crazy person; he knows he doesn’t need it, and still his Judas lips respond,)
- Fine.
There’s something to be said for the tenacity of groups. Collectively, they sigh. Luna hands the goblet back to Terry, who, in turn, passes it to Anthony, who puts it to his lips and drinks until it’s gone. His harassers disembark before he collapses into sleep.
------------------
Terry sighs again once Anthony’s head hits the pillow, hair splaying out behind him like a curled brown halo. He removes the sleeping boy’s glasses and nestles them on the nightstand with the empty goblet - all while vaguely pondering that this is probably the closest any of them will ever see to Anthony being drunk, and that he’d almost be preferable that way. At least Terry knows how to handle drunks. His Muggle “friends” back home get trashed enough to have taught him a thing or ten, and he’s more than amenable to insobriety when he has to deal with them. First-hand hangovers are terribly good professors; and cleaning them up is even an improvement.
Anthony doesn’t drink; they all know this - Michael and Kevin, Lisa and Luna, the rest of Ravenclaw house, though none of them are present. More than enough people have tried and failed to give him Butterbeer before (even though that’s hardly alcoholic; it won’t even knock out a House Elf until s/he’s had about thirteen). Given this charade, he should probably start. Not that Terry necessarily encourages liver damage without purpose, or that he’d force booze on Anthony when he clearly doesn’t want any - but a few drinks won’t fry as many brain cells as Anthony’s overworked this week.
Whoever invented Awakening Charms and caffeine-enhancing potions should be taken behind a barn and shot dead. No painless Avada Kedavra - the scum doesn’t deserve it.
“Madam Pomfrey did try giving him a Calming Draught before the sleeping potion, right?” Lisa asks nervously.
“And a Draught of Peace,” Kevin huffs bitterly. “He cooperated with both of those, and neither worked, so he threw a fit over the sleeping potion. And then his mum showed up, which was a right mess and a half.”
“Well,” Michael sighs pensively. “We managed to knock him out without Stunning him. That’s worth something.”
“Would’ve been faster to do that.”
“But ultimately worse for everyone.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I didn’t say that. I merely-”
“You lot wait here,” Terry interjects. (Playing the leader with a bunch of debate-prone intellectuals is so bloody tedious.) “I’ll go talk to his mum and McGonagall.”
“She tried to keep us from getting in here,” Luna comments off-handedly. “Said we’d probably just disturb him.”
“Well, in all fairness,” Kevin retorts, “it was a possibility.”
“I think she’s gotten a few twigstaxs caught in her hat since she took up Professor Dumbledore’s old job. Have you noticed how she never takes it off?”
While Luna and Kevin get into a discussion of twigstaxs and how to spot them, Terry makes good on his promise. The rest of their lot seems engrossed, and it’s easy enough to open the door and eavesdrop.
“I should’ve seen this coming,” Anthony’s mum huffs. Her very voice is injured. She’d never make it as an actress; good thing she’s a writer instead. “I thought his letters home were getting more erratic, but his father said not to worry. Thought he could handle whatever it was, since he’s eighteen and all.”
“In all fairness, Catherine,” McGonagall chimes in, probably as soothingly as she can get - her hand’s on Anthony’s mum’s shoulder and everything - “your husband is a Muggle. He has no idea what the boy could get himself into.”
“He still thinks that we handle dragons in Care of Magical Creatures…”
“I daresay Hagrid would love that,” Pomfrey huffs.
“Nevertheless!” Flitwick pipes up. “We have quite a quandary on our hands! He was looking at work in the Ministry - Committee on Experimental Charms! There’s no way he can start working in this state!”
“And I’ll note that not a one of you has suggested any way to handle this,” McGonagall sighs.
Anthony’s mum mimes that she has no ideas - that’s always the way with parents, isn’t it? Pomfrey and Flitwick are similarly clueless. This is ridiculous! On the one hand, Anthony’s an adult and should be deciding this for himself… once he’s rested and sentient, that is. For another thing, these people aren’t even trying. They don’t know how to help him, that much is apparent, but they could at least make an effort to do something for the boy. (It occurs to Terry, vaguely and only for a moment, that calling Anthony “the boy” is possibly the most condescending thing he’s ever done. And to the least deserving person.)
“Well,” Professor Vector says softly (her voice always has been too airy for angles, but it’s strangely grounded now. Anthony really has no clue that he inspires this in people, does he?), “there is a residential program. At Saint Mungo’s. He’d only have to stay a month, maybe six weeks.”
Because that’s really what he needs. Going from being caged up in a castle to being quite literally caged up (alright, not literally) in a bloody hospital, spending every day with healers and mediwizards who don’t know him (and who he more than likely won’t trust) but still give him advice on his mental state. True enough, there’s no way he can work right now - he can barely form a coherent sentence that isn’t attacking someone, how could he even think to work? - but he doesn’t need what Professor Vector seems to think he needs. She’s a lovely woman, really, she is… but she has no idea what she’s talking about.
“Residential?” Anthony’s mum practically whimpers. She obviously doesn’t want to believe that this is happening - and Terry can’t say that he blames her.
“Well, he would live at the hospital for the month or six weeks-”
“Er, excuse me, Professors? Madam Pomfrey, Mrs. Goldstein?”
They turn to look at him in unison, and… Wait. What’s he doing? He doesn’t remember what he thought was important enough to interrupt Professor Vector for… but he’s been on stage before. He can wing it.
“Yes, Mister Boot?” McGonagall enunciates. “Am I to take from the lack of commotion that Mister Goldstein has finally consented to take his potion?”
“Er… yes, Professor,” he mutters. It’s now or never - but before he can continue, Madam Pomfrey jumps in.
“I swear; that boy will be the death of himself! He might be eighteen, but he’s clearly not above petty foolishness-”
“I think there’s a little more to it than that, Madam Pomfrey-”
“Which is exactly what the Saint Mungo’s program attempts to address!” Professor Vector just can’t get off that subject, can she? “There are clearly causes underlying this that have to be dealt with-”
“Professor!” Terry interrupts (he knows his voice is too loud; it doesn’t help that Flitwick winces). All the eyes stare at him again. “I… I don’t think he needs to go to Saint Mungo’s.”
“Terry,” she sighs, “he’s unwell. I know you, Kevin, Michael and everyone want to help him, but you can only do so much.”
“They can only do so much.” It’s a valid point. Valid enough, anyway. “And they don’t even know him. I mean… who’s to say he doesn’t just… need a holiday? To somewhere other than his parents’ house, I mean.”
“And where are you suggesting he take this holiday?” McGonagall enquires (fair enough).
“I… my parents have this friend in Ludgvan - she’s just a few miles out of St. Ives, off the beach; she’s got a lovely place. It’s calm, it’s quiet - I… I’d take him there. She’d let us stay, and it really wouldn’t be any trouble-”
Being reasonable (for once), McGonagall raises a hand to shut him (and Professor Vector) up; they both oblige, though he does so more willingly. Sharply, she turns to Mrs. Goldstein.
“Catherine?”
She’s nearly crying, but stays strong enough to just avoid it. Finally, she sighs, “Better there than Saint Mungo’s,” and Terry can’t keep down a breath of relief.