Date: April 20th, 2009 8:32 p.m.
Location: Potter-Peverell-Grey Apartment, London (Still Unplottable, Still Traumatized)
Tagline: When Mental Illness Has a Schedule and the Sandwiches Have Knives
Seraphina had just finished alphabetizing the emotional trauma shelf when Raphael finally broke.
It had been two days since the Consumerism Event. Two days since 463 hPrime boxes had been tamed, recycled, magically flattened, emotionally processed, and sorted by shipping vendor, wand signature, ethical sustainability rating, and whether or not the parcel vibrated with suppressed demonic intent.
Two days since she transformed the apartment into a postmodern catalog for Chaotic Aesthetic Witchcraft Monthly™.
Now, every single item was:
Labeled.
Indexed.
Entered into her planner's enchanted inventory tracking system.
Photographed for her new Hexagram board "Cursed but Make It Fashion."
Paired with an outfit and an escape plan.
There were mood-coordinated scroll drawers. There were revenge-ready stilettos under sarcasm-specific cloaks. The enchanted planner had been upgraded to call her "Supreme Logistics Tyrant."
And then just as Raphael dared to hope for normalcy Seraphina filled out early applications.
Not for school.
Not for politics.
But for blood companion access authorization to Hogwarts.
Five. Months. Early.
It was at this moment, while watching her cross-reference Hogwarts Ministry bylaws with four inter-realm extradition treaties and mutter legalese in High Unseelie while sipping lavender chai, that Raphael diagnosed her.
Formally. With flourish.
"Seraphina Liliana Lily Potter-Peverell," he intoned, "you have OCWTSD."
She didn't even look up. "What's that? Another planner brand?"
Raphael blinked slowly. "No. That's your diagnosis."
He held up the parchment.
Thick. Cursed. Gilded at the edges. Color-coded by symptom severity. The ink shimmered ominously. The footnotes glared.
> Official Diagnosis:
OCWTSD Obsessive Cleaning, Workaholism, Trauma & Shopping Disorder
"Raphael," she said very calmly, very quietly, while sorting her war tiaras by emotional intent, "you are not licensed to diagnose anyone."
"Please. I trained under a plague priest in the Shadow Healer Corps and survived being screamed at by three queens and an incubus in the same hour. I'm qualified."
She rolled her eyes but took the parchment anyway. Read the list. Blinked.
Then read it again.
> Symptoms (Observed):
– Cleans after house-elves. Who already cleaned. Twice.
– Dinner must be at exactly 9:00 p.m. Not 8:58. Not 9:01.
– Sleeps with three separate to-do lists, each cross-referenced.
– Scheduled crying time between "Tea" and "Tooth-brushing."
– Bought 48 pairs of shoes in an hour. Hid them behind curtain rods.
– Recites magical law in four dialects of High Unseelie when mildly stressed.
– Cramming ten years of magical education into four months. Casually.
– Breaks down over anything under 95% on a mock exam.
– Installed two enchanted planners that scold her in fae-accented passive aggression if she procrastinates.
At the bottom, in Raphael's immaculate shadow-ink script:
> Suggested Treatment:
– Less trauma. Less capitalism. More supervised leisure.
– Also… enforced naps.
"I'm fine," she muttered, glaring at the parchment like it had insulted her tea.
Raphael arched a brow. "You skipped your scheduled crying time because your tea wasn't steeped at the right temperature."
She did not dignify that with a response. Instead, she aggressively sliced cucumber.
New Rituals, as of Monday Morning (Certified by Raphael, Enforced by Threat):
Tea Time: 8:35 p.m. sharp.
Dinner: 9:00 p.m. (Late arrival will result in war crime accusations.)
Mock Study: 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., daily. Caius now legally bound by guilt-trip contract to join.
Cleaning Frenzy: Must be supervised. Previously unsupervised episode resulted in one disassembled wall, two crying house-elves, and an aggressively vacuumed snake.
And speaking of mock study
Seraphina had taken Aunt Catherine's mock Hogwarts entrance exam. Not once. Not twice. Three times.
First score: 48/100.
Immediate emotional spiral. She didn't even cry. She just sat down and scheduled her breakdown like it was a business meeting. Labeled it "Emotional Correction."
Second score: 92/100.
Still not satisfied.
Third score: 99/100.
Now she was only mildly disgusted with herself.
She made Caius take it.
He got a 60.
"Sixty?" she said, with the horrified cadence of someone watching bloodlines crumble in real time. "You're an academically unstable embarrassment to the legacy."
"I don't study, Seraphina. I succeed."
"By accident!"
"Don't weaponize facts."
Dinner that night was a spiritual event.
Seraphina cooked.
Roasted Dire Hare, seasoned with lemon-wyrm zest and basil-infused murder.
Cucumber sandwiches so sharp they could be legally classified as daggers.
Lemonade brewed with alchemical clarity and approved by Raphael himself as "non-toxic, probably."
They ate in silence. The kind of silence that exists between former cult survivors and people who alphabetize their curses.
Caius eyed the tea stack, now alphabetized by emotional consequence.
Raphael readjusted the knives in the wall and muttered, "We really need to ban cucumber from weapon classes."
Blood Fang was sharpening a cheese knife.
Seraphina, sipping her guilt-cleansed tea, finally sighed. "I'm fine."
"You built a tea tower. Color-coded by mood," Raphael said.
"It's an emotional filing system."
"You tried to alphabetize vengeance."
"Vengeance deserves proper indexing."
Raphael didn't argue. He knew better. The last time he tried to stop her from cleaning during a thunderstorm, she summoned three decorative hurricanes and a cursed mop.
Instead, he handed her a folder. Labeled: Hogwarts Admission Finalization.
She blinked. "I already filled out all the Ministry forms."
"These are the ones you forgot," he said dryly. "The ones that require a soul signature, blood affidavit, and approval from a religious authority."
"…I'll forge it."
"Already done."
She smiled, just a little. Not happy. Just comforted. In a compulsively efficient, legally accurate way.
Somewhere under the bed, her planners beeped.
Somewhere in the tea shelf, Trauma Chai shimmered with pride.
And somewhere in the ether, Hogwarts shivered because a girl with a planner, OCWTSD, and an emotional damage tea empire was coming.
Armed.
And organized.