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The Sanatorium
By BigFatMaybe

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Category: Post-Hogwarts
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama
Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Disturbing Imagery, Extreme Language, Mental Abuse, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse
Story is Complete
Rating: R
Reviews: 5
Summary: Head Auror Harry Potter receives a mysterious letter that was sent from a mental asylum, claiming that horrible things are happening in this institution. He decides to investigate, but not even he could have been prepared for the terrible secret that waits for him inside.
Hitcount: Story Total: 2960



Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work.





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It was a warm morning in August when Harry Potter entered the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. Ginny Weasley, his wife, was already sitting at the table, slowly chewing on bits of scrambled eggs as she stared ahead blankly, her hair tousled.


“Thanks for making breakfast,” he said, placing a kiss on the top of her head as he passed.

“Y’welcome,” she muttered.

He grabbed himself a plate as well and sat down across from her.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” he asked, nodding at the thick book she was absentmindedly leafing through.

The Magic Mountain by a writer called Thomas Mann,” she said. “Hermione gave it to me a few years back as a birthday present, and my eyes fell on it just now when I passed the bookshelf.”

“Awfully thick, isn’t it?” he asked, ginning while he poured himself a cup of tea.

“I remember her telling me it was about a man staying in a mental hospital for seven years, and everything inside it was a metaphor or something for European society.” She glanced down at the pages and snorted.

“Sounds like a book to your taste, then,” he quipped.

“Why did she give me this?” Ginny asked in exasperation. She closed the book with a thud and pushed it aside.

“Because it’s her life-long mission to make us read more.”

“She’s far too persistent.”

They ate in silence for a moment.

“Training starts again next week, right?” Harry then asked.

“Yep,” she replied. “One more week of blissful holiday until the season kicks off again.”

“I wish I had the time to enjoy this weather as well,” he sighed, looking out the window to the sun-lit place in front of the house. The weather had been glorious for the past few days, but it was hard to enjoy it when he was inside the Auror Office all day.

Ginny smiled weakly and rubbed the back of his hand. “How about we visit the Burrow tonight and fly around the orchard?” she asked. “You hardly go outside anymore lately.”

“That sounds wonderful,” he sighed. He grabbed the hand that was stroking him and squeezed softly. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mr Copper,” she said. “Now go on and finish your breakfast, or you’ll be late.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Oh, is that how we’re doing it here?” she asked, arching her brow. “D’you want me to call you Daddy from now on, then?”

Harry, midway through sipping his tea, coughed and quickly placed the cup back on the table before he could spill it.

“Ginny!” he spluttered, wiping his mouth.

“What?”

“I… never mind. I’m late.”

He leaned forward and gave her a kiss, but paused before leaning back again.

“Never call me that,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “Seriously.”

“If you say so,” she laughed.




Ten minutes later, he entered the Auror Office, greeted the others before shutting himself inside the Head Office to sort through his inbox.

On top of the pile of oddly sized papers and parchment was a new article titled “Proposal for Improving Potion Tracing in Auror Field Work” by Robert Grosseteste from the DMLE.

What a way to start the day, he thought, grinning ruefully.

He was barely past the abstract of the article when a sudden bright flash of light in the middle of his desk ended the normality of Harry’s day then and there.

He grabbed his wand and aimed it at the light as it slowly faded away to reveal… a roll of parchment.

Harry frowned and poked the roll with the tip of his wand. Nothing happened, it merely rolled back and forth as he pushed it.

“Specialis Revelio!” he muttered. Again, nothing happened.

Thinking this was simply yet another document sent to him from somewhere in the Ministry (probably the Unspeakables trying out a new method of message delivery, he thought), he placed his wand on the desk and opened the roll of parchment.

It was a strange handwriting, hastily written down to the point where it was barely legible in places. Harry narrowed his eyes, bent forward to look more closely, and began reading.

To whoever receives this:

I am writing this with the hope that someone, somehow, finds this, and warns the world about this. Please, read this document thoroughly and bring it to the proper authorities; the Aurors, The Daily Prophet, The Quibbler… anyone.


Harry’s heart jumped. This was not some experiment from the Unspeakables after all. He grabbed his wand again and waved it at the window looking out to the Auror Office, closing the blinds. Then he continued reading.




It all started off with so much hope. I began my new job in a sanatorium on the continent for Magicals with mental ailments. It’s high up, because the air here is cleaner, purer. It helps to heal people with mental and/or chronic health issues. Or, if healing is not an option, it gives them a place that will support them in their struggle with illness, but in most cases this sanatorium acts as a way to keep them away from society, for everyone’s good.

Suffice to say, the cream of the crop of the psychiatric world works here. Or so we all think. Oh, how wrong was I.

I was brought here as a treatment specialist a while back, because the previous one had supposedly left due to disagreements with the chief medical professionals. That should have set off alarm bells in my head. Also suspicious was the fact the recommendation of my boss back in London was so warm and full of praise. We never got along, and we both knew that I felt awfully out of place in that psychiatry. Why, then, did he describe me as a level-headed, talented therapist who could feel at home in even the most extreme circumstances?

But I get flustered when big decisions are put on my desk, and so, in an act of rash foolishness, I signed the contract. And off I went to the continent.

Upon arrival, I was welcomed by the two head therapists who coordinated treatment. The director of the sanatorium, I was told, was rarely there. Again, alarm bells should have gone off.

I felt at home here the first few days. The surrounding landscape was simply beautiful, the sanatorium had everything that was needed for my work and for my stay, and the patients here were intriguing and challenging cases. And so I started work, full of confidence.

The first patient that was placed under my care, was a man with a speech disorder. The issue was that he could not express himself in a clear, normal manner, but instead everything he said was endlessly verbose. I started our first session asking him how his day was until now. Considering it was eleven in the morning, I figured that there wouldn’t be much to talk about. Oh, how wrong I was. The man began describing every small detail of his morning ritual in the most colourful, thesauric language that I have ever heard in my life. How he showered, made his bed, opened the curtains, walked to the central hall for breakfast, sat down, greeted the others, how the breakfast tasted (“a delightful giocoso melody of tastes, a tonic of joy that graced my palate”). As a matter of experiment, I asked him more specific questions, and I ran into the same issue with every question that I asked. When I asked him directly about his speech disorder, quoting the diagnosis of the previous therapist, he explained his disorder in the very same verbose manner. Nightmare.

And that was the first patient.

My second patient was a lot less laughable: he was a convicted paedophile who suffered from severe delusions. He was utterly convinced that intercourse between adults (read, the patient himself) and young children was perfectly fine. His reasoning (and this is, sadly, not a joke) was that he had time-travelled to the past and was therefore placed back in his eleven-year-old body.

My third patient also suffered from delusions. She was a young woman who was admitted to the sanatorium after trying to blackmail a poor boy into a marriage with the reasoning that they had a “soul bond” of sorts, that formed when they first met when they were children. The boy’s parents put a stop to it while he was halfway through signing the magically binding contract.

The next day, I was invited by the other two therapists to observe a group therapy session, to see how that went in this institution. I happily accepted, and placed myself in a quiet corner of the room while the others congregated in the middle, together with one of the other therapists.

And this was where the first doubts started to sink in. This was not at all the kind of group session that I was used to back in London. Group therapy sessions, as a brief explanation, are supposed to be about mutual support, a tool for us therapists to use social pressure to push patients to develop more healthy ways of coping with their illnesses.

But that was not at all what happened in this session. There was support, all right, but support for the disorders themselves. That very same young woman I mentioned above was the first to speak, and she proudly told the others every detail of how she went about entrapping her supposed “husband to be”. When she told the group that she had been able to “mindspeak” with him (as in, have mental conversations with him), the others clapped! They told her that she did a good job! I could not believe my eyes. I watched the leading therapist for any sign of intervening, but he just let it be! And then the second patient stood up to tell his story, and it was the same bloody story that the young woman had told us! The details were slightly different (this man was convinced that his soul-bond with his love interest had started when he pulled her away from a broom crash), but in essence he suffered from the same delusions. And, my fears were proven right when the others applauded him as well! They slapped him on the back! They asked him to tell them more next time!

My heart was pounding, my hands were shaking, and my mind was working at full speed. What was going on here? Why on earth wasn’t my colleague intervening? Who of those two had cooked up these outlandish ideas first? Did one of them contaminate the other here, in this sanatorium?

I could not stand this anymore, and I snuck out before the next patient could speak their part. I headed straight for the staff room for a relaxing cup of tea before I could face any more patients. On the way there I passed a group of women who were chatting in one of the many long hallways of the institution. I couldn’t help but overhear part of the conversation:

“Oh, Jen, you’re too much!” That statement was followed by a chorus of high-pitched giggles. I stopped in my tracks. These four women looked to be in their forties, but the combination of their apparent age and that kind of laughter was intriguing enough for me to slow down to hear more.

“Oh, I know!” Another woman said, leaning against the wall and occasionally bowing as she was overtaken by another fit of giggles. “Oh, it was a lovely honeymoon! And sometimes…” she dropped her voice to a whisper as I got closer. The others followed her movement and they regarded each other with conspicuous glee. “Sometimes, Gary and I actually left the room!”

They all burst out laughing, bending double, leaning in their knees as they wheezed with roaring laughter.

One of them spotted me, and she stopped.

“Oh, hello,” she said, smiling at me. “You’re the new therapist, aren’t you? Is everything alright so far, dear?”

“Oh, yes, everything is fine with me, thank you,” I replied. “What’s with the commotion?”

“Oh,” she replied. She paused and looked up and down the corridor. No one was there. “We were just talking about…” She stopped and looked at her friends, who had also turned to me to join in on the conversation.

“We were just…” another attempted, but her cheeks coloured red, and she quickly looked away.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Jen was just telling us…” another said, leaning forward. “About her honeymoon, and… well, Jen?”

My head started spinning. The staff room was within my sight, at the end of the corridor…

“Well…” Jen said. “Thing is, during our honeymoon, me and my husband, Gary… Well, we had… you know…” She ushered me closer. I stepped forward, still occasionally glancing at the door at the end of the corridor where a seat and a cup of tea were waiting for me. “We had…” Jen said, pursing her lips to suppress another fit of giggles, “… sex.”

And they all collapsed with high-pitched, breathless laughter. I’d had enough, and rushed away, towards the safety of the staff room before my nerves snapped.




The next few weeks proved to be equally trying. Another patient was put under my care, and from the onset I knew that this would be a challenging one.
We sat down in the therapy room, across each other, sitting at a table near the window overlooking the mountain scenery.

“Good morning, Miss Fletcher,” I said to her. “Would you care to explain to me why you are here, in the sanatorium?”

“I love men,” she said in a low voice. She licked her lips and looked left and right as she said that, then back at me. “Nice, ripe, young men.”

“I see,” I said evenly. “That’s quite common for us women. What exactly is the issue with it?”

“I can’t stop thinking about them,” she said, her eyes roving around the room. “I write about them, you know. And read about them. But the things I’ve read…” she shuddered.

“What kind of things?”

“Stories,” she blurted out. “With… details. Sordid details.”

“Pornography?”

“Don’t you say that word!” she roared, veering up from her seat. I clenched my jaw and managed not to flinch at her outburst. “Don’t you dare talk about that filth! Disgusting! For a young lady like you to say such things! For shame!”

“Miss Fletcher?” I said. “Would you sit down, please? It would be much better for both of us if this session goes by in an orderly fashion.”

She deflated. “Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said.

“What kind of things do you write, then?” I asked, hoping to enter safer ground.

That appeared to be the right question. Her eyes sparkled and a wide smile spread across her face. “Oh, the most delightful little stories!” she explained. “Of nice, ripe, young men finding their love at such a young age! Their soul mate! A beautiful young woman, so innocent! Before she is degraded by other men, they get together and form a lovely-dovey couple that hold hands in school and occasionally, when they get older… they snog!”

I narrowed my eyes when she mentioned “soul mate”. That was the third time now that a patient had talked about this kind of thing. This was beginning to look like a sort of highly-contaminable virus among the patients.

“And how does the story continue, then?” I asked.

She bounced in her seat with excitement. “Oh, their relationship deepens!” she said. “They spend more and more time together, they decline the attention of other young men and women, as they are perfect for each other! And once they both are of eligible age to get married, they do! With the blessings of their parents! And that night, the young, ripe male makes her a woman, and nine months later, a beautiful baby boy is born! And all is well!”

“That sounds lovely, Miss Fletcher!” I said. “Like a proper fairy tale.”

“Thank you!” she exclaimed. But then her expression darkened. “You see, I write them because I want people to have a proper alternative to the muck you can read these days. Because it is utterly filthy and immoral. Women who are unpure on their wedding night! Soiled! Ruined! Men who are swayed by seductresses all around them! And oh, the details, the disgusting details! God save those poor souls!”

If you were to read the interaction I described above, you’d think this was a conversation between an older woman and me, someone born two generations later, with different worldviews. But I regret to inform you that this woman was barely older than me. Clearly the old world views are a lot more durable than we more progressive-minded people like to think.




That evening, I shared my worries about the recurrence of the word soul-bond among patients with the other therapists. When I finished my explanation, I looked at them expectantly to hear what they had to say about this. But to my surprise I saw nothing but two blank stares.

I turned to the therapist that had guided the group session I described earlier.

“You were there, right? You must have heard that woman talking about her strategy to blackmail her love interest into marriage, right?”

“Oh,” the therapist replied, scratching his head. “Right.”

My mouth fell open in shock.

“I wish I had a soul bond,” the other therapist said. “Like out of those fairy tales. Sounds like a dream.”

I struggled to find an adequate response for that as my eyes fitted between the two. But before I could find the words to express my indignation, all the lights in the staff room went out.

“What happened?” I asked, my eyes wide open but seeing only darkness.

“Oh, this is a power outage. Lumos.”

A light flicked on at the end of one of the therapist’s wand.

“Power outage?” I repeated, squinting against the sudden bright light. “Do you mean the power has gone out in the entire complex?”

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible! How can we fix this?”

“Dunno.”

“What do you mean, dunno?” I said, my voice rising. “You make it sound like this is a common occurrence!”

“Oh, it is.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” the other therapist chimed in. “Happens every few months or so.”

“Every few…” I shook my head. “Then why don’t you know how to solve this problem?”

“Dunno.”

My hands started to itch at the sight of the uncaring, vague expressions of the other two. “For God’s sake! But… How was it solved in the past, then?”

“Oh, the director knows how to fix it.”

“But you said he rarely comes by!”

“Yeah?”

“And we can’t call him, either, because all the power has gone out! Now what do we do?!”

“Dunno.” Said the one.

“We just wait,” said the other. “Sometimes the problem goes away by itself.”

I jumped out of my seat and stormed out of the office. I slammed the door shut behind me and marched towards the stairway, thinking that if I’d just went to bed, this would maybe all be over tomorrow. But in the dark, I bumped into someone.

“Oh, excuse me!” I said. I lit up my wand as well, and came face-to-face with a woman I recognised as one of the gigglers I spoke to last week.

“No worries, dear,” she replied, her eyes shining in the wandlight. “You know, when the power went out, poor Harold in the next room, you know, the man with the caramel smile, he was so flustered, that he fell on his back! And…” she bit her lower lip and grinned. “I saw his abs! They were a bit hairy, hee-hee!”

“Lovely!” I managed to say before scampering away from her.

I hurried down the hallway, my heart pounding in my throat and my hands clammy with sweat. I needed a break, a moment to myself, away from all this.

A door opened to my right and I couldn’t help but jump and gasp.

“Wha’s going on?” a gruff voice asked from the other side. I couldn’t see him through the thin gap between the door and doorpost. My stomach lurched when I recognised his voice. This was the paedophile. “I was just writing a story when the lights went off. What’s going on?”

“Power outage,” I replied after taking a deep breath. “Nothing to worry about. We’re working on fixing it as soon as we can. Please go back to sleep, or writing… whatever it is that you’re writing.”

The door closed again. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and then quickly continued my way to my bedroom.




My hopes were dashed when I woke up the next morning and found out that the outage had not magically fixed itself overnight. My patience was up. I put on a dressing gown and marched downstairs to the staff room, hoping to find the other therapists there. To her luck, one of them was there. He had her back turned to her as he leaned out of the opened window, staring at the surrounding landscape.

“The power is still out,” I said.

“Good morning,” was the reply I got.

“Do you not hear me?” I asked. I was trembling with barely repressed fury and desperation. My stay at this sanatorium was barely a week old, and it was quickly turning into an absolute fiasco. “The power is still out!”

“I love watching the mountains in the morning,” the therapist said with a soft voice. “It always fills me with peace.”

“Yes, that’s highly interesting and all, but I wanted to tell you that I’ll be heading towards the nearby town today to search for an electrician or something. I want to fix this before any accidents happen.”

“You want to do what, now?” I heard behind me. I turned around to see the other therapist enter the room and close the door shut behind him.

“I said, I want to head into town to find an electrician.”

“How ambitious of you,” the therapist near the window said. I turned around to see him staring right back at me. Their presence on either side of me sent a thrill of fear down my spine, and my heart rate increased. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to stay here.”

“Why?” I asked. “And just let this outage continue without doing anything? What is wrong with you?”

“You make it sound like we’re patients of yours,” the therapist between her and the door said. She was beginning to get dizzy from having to turn around constantly to face them both.

“Allow me to explain,” said the therapist near the window. He slowly approached her. “You head into town. You look for an electrician who can fix this problem. You see, the problem with that is, that the entire town will then know that we have regular power outages here.”

“What of it?” I asked.

“Well, that would be awful bad press, wouldn’t it?” he continued while still approaching her slowly. She felt like a prey trapped between two hunters. “Who in their right mind would send all their lucrative patients here if they knew how things were ran on a day-to-day basis here? More importantly, it would probably result in the authorities shutting this institution down. While we’re having so much fun in here! No, I’m sorry, we can’t let you do that.”

I stepped back when he started invading my personal space, but then I bumped into the other therapist. His hands closed around my arms in a vice-like grip.

“What is going on here?!” I squeaked, struggling against the man’s strong hands. “Help!”

“Grab the syringe,” the therapist holding her said.

“On it,” said the other. He opened a cupboard to his right and withdrew a large syringe filled with strange fluorescent liquid inside it. My heart fluttered, I couldn’t breathe anymore. I wanted to scream, but my throat was squeezed shut by paralyzing fear.

“You-you’re crazy!” I whispered.

“Crazy?” the therapist in front of her said. He shook the syringe to stir the liquid inside it. “But we’re supposed to be the therapists, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” said the other. “And she is suggesting that we’re mentally ill? That would be madness!”

“Madness indeed.”

They chuckled. The hair on her neck raised up, her breathing sped up, the therapist, or whoever, whatever he was, got closer and closer with the enormous syringe. He rolled up the sleeve of her dressing gown slowly, revealing her forearm and elbow.

“Your veins are very visible,” he muttered, stroking the skin on the inside of her elbow. “Good.”

I wanted to close my eyes, I wanted to do anything at all to get away from this, to stop me from experiencing this. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the thick needle that approached. The metal felt cold on my skin. And then it slowly sank through, into the blue vein.

Pain. Panic. Pain. They vied for attention as my thoughts spiralled out of control. The metal sank impossibly far into my arm, and then the therapist began to push the liquid inside. My veins expanded, my whole arm felt like it was on fire, I felt the searing liquid spread through my blood vessels, up my arm. It numbed my shoulder. It travelled closer to my chest. My vision began to blur, began to fade. I slumped against the therapist holding me.

“Your therapy begins tomorrow,” I heard. It echoed through my brain. And then there was only darkness.




That is the last memory that I have. I know that a lot of time has passed since then. But the strange thing is that I can’t remember any of it. I know that the days go by in a numb, dull haze. But that is as far as I can will my consciousness to go. Where does the time go? Who am I? Where am I? It’s all so empty, and I’m getting so cold. Today was unusual, because the fog in my brain cleared up somewhat. It was enough so that I could write this all down, but I can feel myself slipping away again. I don’t know how much longer I can take this. Help me. Please.


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