"If you do not want to discuss it, Harry, I do not mind."
Harry sighed and leaned back in the chair that the Room of Requirement had formed for him. The Room was dimmer and smaller than it usually was when he met with Healer Letham, more like his bedroom at home. "No," he whispered. "I think I need to discuss it, and—what my parents told me they did."
"To Flint?"
"No. He's in a Ministry holding cell right now, and I don't think they would try to get him out." Harry paused, uncertain. "I don't think," he decided to stress. "They're much more likely to try and get vengeance on him when he comes out, if he's not sent to Azkaban."
Healer Letham smiled briefly. "I agree."
"It's what they did to Crouch."
Healer Letham was silent, attentive.
"Father captured him and—and did it in a really nasty way." Harry was going to tell her about the other things, but not about the necromancy. He didn't know why that part had hit him the hardest, but it had. "He put him under the Imperius to get information out of him. And then Mother went after him when they heard about Flint's attack, and."
He stopped. Healer Letham listened. The fire talked quietly to itself.
"She hit him with a spell that tore part of his soul away. And she put him under the Imperius so that she could hear him scream, because Father's Imperius was keeping him calm." Harry swallowed a couple times. "I don't—why did she do that?"
"Did she try to explain it to you?"
"She said there was a white light in her head, and she had to do it to put the light out."
"Ah. Perhaps the same way that she had to torture Sirius Black when in the grip of the family madness?"
"Yes," Harry whispered.
Healer Letham leaned forwards a little. "I want to repeat that I am in your employ, Harry. I will not say anything about what you have told me to your parents. And I will say nothing to the Ministry about what your parents did, either."
"Why, though? I—I've read a few things about Mind-Healers. They don't always keep their patients' secrets if they think those secrets are dangerous."
"Because you have suffered enough."
Healer Letham's voice was full of steel. Harry had never heard it like that. She had always been wise, always gentle. She sat back now, maybe at the look on his face, and shook her head.
"Our first credo, as Mind-Healers, is to reduce our patient's suffering. Most of the time, that would mean reporting things like this, because they would be trying to harm themselves or casting the kind of magic that could delay their recovery. Even having people in their lives like this could lead to a report, because those people are usually abusive parents or lovers, and leaving them in that situation would increase their suffering over time, as opposed to the brief pain of a report.
"But someone like you, whose family members act like this to protect him? You would suffer more if I were to report this, Harry. Your parents would likely be arrested, or at least have to buy their way out of Ministry custody."
"You—just accept this."
"You're different from other people in the magical world," Healer Letham said. "Don't make that face at me, you are. People have made you that way, and not deigned to rescue you. You told me yourself that some people were saying you had been too violent with Flint in the Three Broomsticks, and the Aurors wanted to question you as well as him. You more than him. We cannot trust the justice system to be fair and equitable when it comes to you. Even if your father would normally be treated better because of his money, in this case he might not be, because you are Harry Potter in many people's eyes. Still."
Harry blinked several times and sat back in the chair himself. He hadn't heard her speak like that. He had had no idea she felt that way. He stared down at his clasped hands and wondered what in the world he could say.
"You need say nothing."
"You're a Legilimens, too?"
Healer Letham smiled gently and shook her head. "No, although I have some training in Occlumency. It's just obvious what you're thinking sometimes." She leaned back in her chair. "You can tell me what you're thinking, Harry."
Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I can.
Harry closed his eyes. "I already knew that Mother was a bit mad," he whispered. "I need to—I wanted to have my house-elf, Dobby, take the madness away from her, the way he did from Sirius. But she said she didn't want to. I don't know why.
"And I knew Father was cold, and not that connected to his emotions or people other than us. But I didn't know he would be this cruel. He used Crouch's mother's corpse to capture him, and to lure him. I would expect something like this from Mother. Not from him."
There was a long silence. Harry let himself drift in that silence. Good. He had spoken, and whether or not the words made sense to anyone besides himself, he had said them.
And he thought Healer Letham would at least understand them on an emotional level, even if she thought Mother was the most dangerous parent of the two.
"I understand," Healer Letham said quietly. "You thought of your mother as a possible refuge from the world, and then she proved, early on, that she was not exactly as patient and steady as you had thought she was. So you turned to your father. He explained himself to you. You thought you understood him. And now you think that you have not."
Harry took a shaky breath and nodded. "That's it, Healer Letham."
For a long moment, Healer Letham thought about that, and swung her foot back and forth. Harry watched her, expecting some outburst, but there was none. Gradually, calmness settled on him, too.
"I think that you should tell your parents how you feel."
"Do I have to?"
"Is there a reason that you do not want to?"
"I—they would be upset. Especially Father. And they would think that I hated them or had a lot of objections on moral grounds."
"Are they not on moral grounds, your objections?"
"Some. Of course. But—" Harry searched through his mind for a little while, and Healer Letham waited. He finally sighed and said, "But a lot of it is just thinking that I don't know them as well as I thought I did."
Healer Letham nodded. "That is perfectly understandable. I recommend you speak to them anyway, and do your best to make them grasp that. And that perhaps your mother should have prioritized asking after you rather than torturing a prisoner."
"What about Father? He did come to talk to me and Draco. He's the reason that the Aurors didn't spend as long questioning me as they wanted." Which had made the Aurors upset and hostile.
"You can still talk to him. Explain that you thought of him as the parent less likely to be mad or cruel."
"Which doesn't even make sense. He was a Death Eater."