Everything Wrong with: The Many Faces of Har... er, Adira Potter

Chapter Six: Snakes and other slithering things

In all the chaos, Mrs. Weasley had forgotten to be uncomfortable with a girl sleeping in one of her boy's rooms, but when Iliana came downstairs that morning for breakfast, her appearance seemed to remind the Weasley matriarch of it.

"Iliana, dear, are you sure you're comfortable sleeping in the same room as a boy?"

Why must Molly bring up gender in this way? There may be reason to enforce these rules in a boarding school dorm, but surely not in a private family home. Her daughter will have presumably shared a room with one of the boys at some point. *Ding!*

"It's fine, Mrs. Weasley. Ron is a gentleman, despite all evidence to the contrary at times. Dumbledore was uncomfortable with me being in a boy's dormitory too, at first, but like I told him, I can take care of myself. Any boy tries anything they shouldn't, I'll hex their heads on backwards. Or I would, if I knew that particular hex."

"Well if you insist, dear."

And yes, it's clear enough from these two lines that Molly was indeed talking about sexual abuse. *Ding!*

Iliana felt Alastair looking into the man's eyes. She knew what he was doing; none of them had ever mentioned it before, but Al could see things in people's eyes that they tried to hide. It wasn't like mind-reading, more like heart-reading; he could tell if they meant Harry and company harm or not. He didn't always trust it, especially as it had never really worked with Dumbledore for some reason (nor with Quirrell or Snape), but it was a good starting point. Al seemed to like what he saw in the man, for he retreated to the background of their shared brain with satisfaction.

And now one of the Harrys just randomly has a superpower for no reason. Is it because he's part of a multiple system? Who knows! But that seems to be being used as the handwavium plot device for everything else in this fic. *Ding!*

"So what is a mind healer, anyway? Is that like a psychiatrist or psychologist?"

"If I understand the Muggle terms properly – which I assure you I do," Healer Young said jovially, "more like a psychiatrist than a psychologist, insofar as I have a Healer's certification and work at St. Mungo's in the Mind Healing ward. It includes everything from spell damage that causes mental injury, to non-magical complaints of the mind. I personally specialize in helping with post traumatic stress, as well as having an interest in... well, unusual psychology. What is normally referred to as abnormal psychology, but I don't like that term."

Healer Young is interesting. I wish we saw more of him than just this one chapter. *Ding!*

"There, now we won't be overheard or spied upon, even unintentionally. So, to answer your question, having multiple sentient minds in the same body is not common. It isn't nearly as rare as many people think, since most Multiples have learned very quickly to hide their condition, even before they know what's going on. If it hadn't been for your transformations, in fact, I doubt you'd even be aware of being any different from others."

What this means is: the author is trying to depict multiplicity as something that can plausibly exist in the real world. And that may indeed be the case, but this story makes a pretty shoddy case for it. I mean, forgive me if I'm not exactly buying into the fact that their multiplicity makes them uniquely talented, even in comparison to other wizards. And that's on top of the abilities that canon!Harry already had. *Ding!*