I'd been suppressing my emotions even without Occlumency for years due to my family's treatment of me, and using my version of Occlumency only made it worse. I'd been bottling everything up, letting it fester instead of dealing with it properly. That had then bled into all my other actions, and I could see where I'd been far too confrontational or cold-hearted at times, when I could have diffused the situations differently.
If I'd been thinking straight, I would never have acted so quickly against the old vice-principal of Woolingsby. I should have let him hoist himself with his own petard, letting him do stupid stuff while building a proper case against him. Same with my upfront, in-your-face confrontation of the Dursleys. They could have called the cops on me, and been in the right!
And I could have handled Delilah's kidnapping so much smoother. I should have just had Inky pop her away to safety, and that would have been that! But being shot by a man right as he was stealing away an innocent and unwilling woman had filled me with anger and a desire for revenge, and had led to me destroying a parking structure in a shootout with criminals!
I shuddered, terrified at the realizations I was only now coming to, and glad that I'd narrowly avoided becoming a monster by having the issue pointed out before I went too far off the deep end. Losing my emotions and ability to connect with people and turning into a sociopath or psychopath was a chilling nightmare.
Without any further hesitation, I dropped my Occlumency barriers, and immediately felt the differences I'd ignored or never truly noticed. Everything felt clearer. Sharper. The things I'd kept bottled up surged through me and I let out a gasp of pain as it all flooded through me.
Hate, anger, shame, self-loathing, misery, and depression from my early days with the Hunches assaulted me all in one single, overwhelming wave, and though I tried hard not to, I began to cry.
Besides me, Harry curled up, sobs escaping him as he also let go of his Occlumency defenses. His experience had to be just as bad as my own, and I wrapped him up in a hug, even as I desperately wanted one of my own.
Sam and Delilah had less extreme reactions, having had much less time practicing the mind arts compared to myself and Harry, but they still winced and hissed a bit as they released their own Occlumency barriers.
"The tea will help," Perenelle said softly, serving us some more of the hot drink.
It must have had some Calming Potion laced with it because it did indeed help calm our unsettled emotions, and soon our sniffles and sobs came to an end.
"That was… I had no idea I was suppressing so many things," Sam muttered to himself in a bit of a daze.
'All four of us are real messed up, huh?' I thought to myself with a bitter snort. Each one of us had things we were trying desperately to forget. How ironic it was that trying to ignore them was what had brought us to the brink like this.
"I know this is for the best, but I'm going to miss being able to just ignore the discomfort from the monthly monster," Delilah grunted in a bit of displeasure once we had all calmed down.
"Why don't you have your boyfriend brew you a Moon Potion? Or learn to do it yourself if you wish?" Perenelle suggested.
"A what-potion?" Delilah inquired.
"A Moon Potion. Or maybe they call it something different in England these days? It's a potion that eliminates the pain a woman goes through during her time of the month and reduces the amount expelled, so to speak. It's completely safe and can be combined with other potions and medications," the long-lived woman replied, and Delilah shot me a glare.
"Why didn't you tell me there was a potion to stop cramps?!" Delilah demanded, grabbing and shaking me by the collar in frustration.
"Wh-what a-are you t-talking about?" I asked, my voice coming out weird as I was rattled around.
"There's a potion witches can take to completely remove the pains of our monthlies!" Delilah explained, letting go of my shirt.
"Oh," I said awkwardly. "I, uh, actually didn't know that."
"Men!" Delilah growled, throwing her hands into the air in a huff. She then pointed a finger into my face. "When we get back, you are going to find a way to make this potion, and we're going to sell it."
"Okay, yeah, I can do that," I said slowly. "Sorry, the idea that there might be a potion for that biological issue never even crossed my mind."
"Did you really think witches would go around living their lives with that sort of pain if they couldn't help it?" Perenelle asked with a raised eyebrow, Delilah nodding in agreement.
"There's no safe answer to that, so I'm just going to shut up, now," I said, and Nicholas snorted.
"Smart. It seems you've learned the first rule when it comes to living with a woman," he chortled, earning a smack on the shoulder from his wife.
"Don't worry, dear, I'll pass along my own personal recipe for you to use," she told me. "It uses fairly common plants, so even a Squib like ourselves can acquire the ingredients and brew it."
"That's good to know," I said with a nod.
"Was there anything else you folks wanted to ask about?" Perenelle inquired.
"I do have a few more questions," Sam admitted, and Harry nodded eagerly in agreement.
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