Harry was struggling to cope with the enormity of it all. Whilst he was happy enough during his time at Hogwarts, he had never known pain or sadness like it. He had tried ignoring the pain, sadness and anger for fear it would render him a gibbering wreck but his efforts didn’t seem to be working. Or that was the opinion of Hermoine, and she was always right.
He had been visiting Molly Weasley in secret, during work hours, on the pretence of investigating a dark wizard in the general area. His work performance was pretty poor, but as he had killed the greatest dark wizard of all time, the other Aurors didn’t really notice. His position at the office was more ceremonial than anything else anyway. Harry didn’t really need the job anyway. He had signed an exclusive deal with the Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes shop, now run by Ron and George, which meant they could sell “official” Harry Potter items, in exchange for Harry receiving a small percentage of the profits. Harry particularly liked the mini flying Harry Potter on a small broomstick, like the one of Victor Krum destroyed all those years ago by a jealous Ron. He wasn’t so keen on the exploding wands named after his battle with Voldemort, but it was popular so he allowed it.
Unlike the other Weasleys Molly seemed to understand Harry. She was always happy to see Harry during the day, as she was lonely now her children were either at school, working or… gone. She had added Harry to the family clock, which Harry loved and hated at the same time. He knew there was only a space there because of him, because of what he had done.
They appreciated each others company, and often that didn’t involve the need for words. Harry was as happy helping Molly with the chickens or de gnoming the garden as sitting listening to the wireless or just having a chat over a nice drink he had often been sent as a gift.
That day though, Molly was sitting at the kitchen table. It was empty and scrubbed clean. She seemed different somehow thought Harry as he walked in. She looked more serious and sat differently.
“Sit down Harry” she almost ordered.
Harry sat down, not daring to speak. He felt that Molly had not finished talking, but had merely paused to allow Harry to sit. He did so, the chair felt more noisy than usual as it scrapped across the kitchen floor. He pulled into the table, resting his wand upon it. Molly continued.
“ Harry, Harry, Harry.” she paused to reach across the table and grabbed hold of Harry's arms.
“ Not many people know this about me, but before I was pregnant, I was training to be a healer at Saint Mungos. I was fresh faced, just out of school and full of all these ideas. I was really good at it too, according to my teacher. Perhaps though, a little too good, or perhaps I should say different. I was very much like Arthur back in those days, into muggle healing techniques as much as wizarding ones. It was very much frowned upon though, just as it is still. I did my final project on it. How we could use the muggle ideas around mental health and illness in the wizarding world. The treatment then at Saint Mungos, and it hasn't changed much even now, is to simply perform a spell to counter whatever it is that isn’t working. You know, if you were depressed they would admit you for an intensive course of laughter therapy, chuckling charms, tickling charms, that sort of thing.
Unfortunately though, for people like you, they may simply take away the memories that are causing you pain.”
She stopped. It was the first time this fact had been acknowledged out loud between them. Although this was an unspoken truth, Molly felt it could no longer remain so. As she looked over at Harry, whose cheeks were now being flooded with silent tears that had been waiting to come for many years. Molly stood up and guided Harry to the sofa, she did not speak further, but pulled Harry into her. She had said enough for now. She didn’t want to overwhelm Harry and waited for him to cry for as long as he needed to, and to speak when he was ready.
Harry sat, enveloped for what felt like forever, but was only 2 minutes before he spoke. He was worried he might not be able to stop when he started, but he didn’t feel able to hold it in much more.
“I had been tempted to go to Saint Mungos, to get rid of all the pain. It sounded so simple. But then I remembered, and I remembered and I don’t think I could stop remembering, even with the most advanced memory charm there is. And I’m not sure I want to stop remembering. But it hurts Molly, I really hurt. How can I hurt so much?
Molly had no answers for him directly, because she too was hurting alongside Harry. However, she felt able to offer Harry help, so she continued.
“I was kicked out for this idea Harry and disgraced. It’s why I get so worried about Arthur dabbling in all this muggle stuff. It's dangerous. It seems both wizards and muggles are scared of things they don’t understand even if it might do them good. Dumbeldore though, he was impressed with my idea. He thought it might work but he wasn’t as powerful back then as he.. Ended up being.”
She paused, out of respect for Albus Dumbeldore.
“ Anyway” She said, bringing herself out of her thoughts.
“ Albus had read my paper, and approved of my technique. I don’t think that any memory is so bad it warrants being erased. Bad things happen for good reasons and they are just important to a person as good things. The problem comes when it is all consuming. Muggles like to talk about those bad things, because by releasing them from our minds it stops them from being trapped there. They are talked about, and it helps muggles to think about those bad things differently. Not always as a good thing, but just not as a wholly bad thing either.
The problem, I think, was the danger, and the time. It was felt that my idea would take too long to work and that by the time a person was in a better place, they could have got even worse in themselves, and irreparable damage done. Not much is known about the mind, either from muggles or wizards. No-one's ever really bothered to do much about it. Everyone has just stuck to their ways and that's that. I think it came down to money too. It was a lot quicker to fix a person with magic than by messing around, like they called it. However, I had seen the ward at Saint Mungos that they kept hidden, the ones, like Gilderoy Lockhart, who have been left with no memory at all.``
Molly sighed, as though this was itself some sort of release. To be able to finally disclose to someone else what she had done, and why she was no longer able to work in the magical world. She hoped Harry would agree to her plan, even though she was terrified he would, because of what it would involve.
Harry sat on the sofa with a puzzled look on his face. He was certainly intrigued, and Molly had hit upon the one reason he was worried about getting his memory modified. After his experience with Lockhart, he was always skeptical about the idea of messing around too much with memories. He was interested enough to want to know more.
“What do you mean, Molly, you haven’t actually said what you mean?”
Molly stood up, and went over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room furthest from the door. She reached up and pulled a book, the title of which Harry couldn't see.
All at once the books on the shelves grew wings and started to fly up around Molly's head and the ceiling. Once the bookshelf had cleared, the shelves themselves flipped downwards and became panels into what was now a door, with a small golden handle that had appeared on the right hand side of the door.
Molly reached for the handle, pushed it down and pulled the door open. Harry had to shield his eyes from the light beyond the door for a minute as whatever it was beyond the Weasleys front room was much brighter.
When they had made their way inside, and Harry's eyes had adjusted, he could see they were in a small circular room, that had no visible windows, and only the door, which had now disappeared, once again becoming a wall. Harry naturally looked up towards the source of the light and at the top of this tall, almost church like room was a glass roof, which was letting sunlight stream into the room at an almost unnatural pace.
When Harry finally looked down and across at Molly she had sat down on a dark wooden circular bench, which stretched across half of the rooms wall. It had squashy cushions and even though it was very much a bench it still looked inviting. There was nothing else in the room that Harry could see. At Molly's request to sit down he crossed the small floor, which he noticed was an intricately marbled pattern of dots and squiggles. This room felt very out of place in the Burrow, if indeed thats where they still were.
Once seated, Molly smiled at him, and asked him
“Are you ready?”
Of course Harry was ready, or so he thought. As he nodded, a circle in the marble floor appeared and segments started to disappear to reveal something that was making its way up into the room. As soon as it was half way up Harry recognised it at once.
“Is that? No, it can’t be? Did Dumbeldore..?”
Molly finished Harry's half started sentences for him.
“Yes Harry, it's a pensieve, but it's not Dumbeldores. However, he did give me this one, he had two, not that anyone knew that of course. He believed in me and my idea, and told me that one day I may need to help someone. At his request I have spent my time working on my ideas in secret, with his help of course.”
Molly opened her cloak and pulled out from inside a pocket a small wooden chest. She tapped it with her wand and it popped open to reveal a collection of small vials containing silvery liquid that Harry recognised at once. She pulled one out of the collection. It was labelled James Potter.
“Harry?” Molly asked.
“Are you ready to understand your past? Are you ready to relieve all those painful memories?
Molly reached over, grabbed Harry's hand and with her other hand tipped the vials contents into the pensieve and they plunged themselves forwards into the past.
