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Chapter 9: Mutual Meddling

Friday, March 28, 2008

Friday ended up being quite an interesting day.

After dropping Rosen off at school, Hermione had her second counselling session with Cornelia Acosta, a Mind Healer specialising in grief and loss. The first had been primarily information gathering for both clinician and client, but it hadn't yet been particularly therapeutically useful. This day's session had been about getting to know each other for the purpose of building a therapeutic relationship, but of course the other woman already knew who Hermione was.

Frustratingly, Cornelia seemed to focus more on praising Hermione's strength than on understanding her struggles. It didn't seem to matter to Cornelia that Hermione didn't feel strong right now. She felt untethered, and being reminded of her strength didn't do anything to ground her.

Hermione wasn't sure how helpful the woman was going to be, and she rather narcissistically found herself wishing there were more people like her, who straddled wizarding and muggle practices. The wizarding world's approach to mental health was woefully inadequate for a world so steeped in conflict and trauma.

Maybe she should get a muggle therapist instead, or in addition to. She wouldn't be able to talk to them about magic, but she might be able to talk about kink. Even with confidentiality laws, Hermione felt too well known to speak freely to someone she didn't trust in the wizarding world.

Obviously the hope was that Hermione would come to trust Cornelia enough to speak freely, or what was the point? But trust took time to build.

Then again, she'd spoken more or less freely about kink to Malfoy. That didn't mean she trusted him, but she also didn't distrust him. She had known him for more than half of her life, and even if they'd been adversaries for much of their youth, she had spent a fair amount of time with him during their eighth year at school.

They had studied together often, in fact. Theo was usually with them, and he was forthcoming enough that Hermione had soon come to consider him a friend. Malfoy hadn't been as open with her, but there had been times she and Malfoy had studied alone, too. Times they had spoken without arguing. There had even been a couple of times when Malfoy had woken her when he'd found her asleep on her books, and then walked her back to her dorm.

But they hadn't remained in contact after leaving Hogwarts. They had crossed paths occasionally, of course, through mutual friends or professional quidditch, but she wasn't close with Malfoy the way she was with Theo. They didn't spend any time together.

She and Theo had written to each other regularly, and he'd even visited her a few times over the years. In fact, Theo had visited her in Varna, Paris, and Berlin over the years. Not even Harry and Ron could say the same. They'd never come to Paris.

Still, she couldn't deny that she felt a sort of familiarity with Malfoy. Perhaps they didn't exactly like each other, but they knew each other. Really knew each other.

So for whatever reason, she felt as though she could be honest with him, and she realised that meant she expected him to keep her confidence. She was fairly certain he wouldn't develop loose lips even if she offended him. He valued privacy too much for that now, she thought. That spoke to a level of mutual understanding between them that did, in some ways, approach trust.

It did not, however, explain why she fussed over what to wear to meet him for tea. That was more to do with returning to Cambridge after months away than it was to do with the fact that she was going back with Malfoy, of all people.

She opted for a dress, casual enough to make it clear she wasn't going to Cambridge to work, but professional enough for the inevitability of running into staff and students who would recognise her. It was a long-sleeved shirt dress, buttoned all the way up to the top button of her collar, and all the way down to mid thigh, though cream coloured linen fabric hung past the last button to her knee. It was fitted to her curves until it reached her natural waist, and beneath the thin leather belt that rested there, the skirt flared out so that it swayed around her thighs. She put on pumps in the same cinnamon brown tone as the belt, and accessorised with a dragon-hide purse. Ethically sourced, of course.