Chapter Text
I must not tell lies, Harry wrote.
The cut in the back of his right hand opened and began to bleed afresh.
I must not tell lies.
The cut dug deeper, stinging and smarting.
I must not tell lies.
Blood trickled down his wrist.
--
“Harry, I think you ought to tell Dumbledore your scar hurt...”
It was the second time in two days he had been advised to go to Dumbledore, and his answer to Hermione was just the same as his answer to Ron.
“I’m not bothering him with this. Like you just said, it’s not a big deal. It’s been hurting on and off all summer — it was just a bit worse tonight, that’s all —”
“Harry, I’m sure Dumbledore would want to be bothered by this —”
“Yeah,” said Harry, before he could stop himself, “that’s the only bit of me Dumbledore cares about, isn’t it, my scar?”
--
The back of Harry’s hand aches. He’s been having trouble sleeping. As he trudges to the third floor corridor, he girds himself for the fifth night in a row of Ministry-sanctioned torture.
He again questions why he doesn’t call a stop to it. Just one word to McGonagall, or even Madame Pomfrey.
Harry keeps telling his friends that he doesn’t want to bother Dumbledore. But, what he knows deep-down inside, is there’s no authority figure he can rely on. Every adult in Harry’s life, to date, has failed him in some profound way.
His scar too has been aching.
It’s not just when Umbridge touches him. When he’s carving his lines in the back of his hand. As he’s trying to fall asleep when he slips back from his detentions after midnight. After he’s asleep, in his dreams, when he feels Voldemort’s ominous, ever-present malevolence in the back of his mind.
Harry trudges up to the glaringly pink-and-frilly Defense office, stomach churning. Umbridge is waiting for him, as always. Staring unblinkingly with her bulging toad-like eyes.
The Blood Quill lies in wait on the table in front of her desk, along with a blank sheet of parchment.
Harry sits down and sets to his task. He refuses to look at Umbridge.
He grits his teeth as he starts writing his lines. The familiar stinging pain in his hand starts, followed by the bone-deep throb of freshly-healed flesh being sliced back open again.
Harry doesn’t have to look up to know that Umbridge maintains her unblinking stare on him.
God, doesn’t she have OTHER THINGS TO DO than creepily ogle me for five hours a night, Harry thinks, disturbed.
Blood wells out of the back of his hand, and drips onto the parchment, mingling with the rows and rows of ‘I must not tell lies’ written in the same bright crimson blood.
The back of Harry’s hand is searing with pain, and he feels his hand muscles start to cramp up, after the 20th hour this week of carving the exact same lines into his flesh. He briefly puts the Quill down to shake out his cramping hand.
“Mr. Potter—” the voice is still sickly sweet, but silkier than he remembers, “—I did not permit you to take a break.”
“What am I, a house elf?” Harry mutters under his breath, but he picks up the Blood Quill all the same.
“You can stay an extra, hmm, 30 minutes tonight.”
“Cool,” he mutters, not bothering to formulate a respectful response.
In his peripheral vision, Harry thinks he sees a flash of crimson cross Umbridge’s eyes. He looks up and rubs at his eyes, wearily. He must have imagined it.
“And have we learned our lesson yet?”
She smiles, cloying and ingratiating and fake, at him.
There’s a knowing gleam in her eyes he’s never seen before. He maintains a silent rant in his head about how vile, evil, twisted, and sadistic she is. How much she seems to enjoy watching him inflict pain on himself and slicing himself open. How she can’t look away from his blood soaking through the parchment.
“Yeppp,” Harry says flatly. “I’m all cured. No more lies.”
His scar starts hurting more. He runs his left hand across his forehead in frustration. He looks down at his fingers, and they’re wet with trickles of bright red blood. How did the blood get on his left hand—?
It takes him a beat to realize his scar must be bleeding.
His whole head feels like it’s about to split open.
“Do continue, Mr. Potter,” the simpering voice says. “No need to stop.”
There’s a different quality about the voice, but Harry can’t place it. The pressure in his forehead increases.
“Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it?”
He grits his teeth and continues without looking up. He thinks he sees a swirl of black robes out of the corner of his eye, but that’s ludicrous—Umbridge is the only other person here and she only wears fucking pink.
Harry doesn’t want to look up again. He knows she hasn’t taken her eyes off him the whole time. It’s incredibly unsettling and creepy.
“Please continue writing your lines, Mr. Potter,” Umbridge’s voice, still high, but somehow more razor-sharp and cutting than Harry’s grown familiar with, says. “We were just getting to the enjoyable part,” she adds in an almost sing-song tone.
Harry squints up at Umbridge. The horrible fake smile has returned to her face.
“I’m not sure if the lesson has fully sunk-in yet. We could require a few more nights.”
His vision starts to flicker, and for the briefest of moments, he sees a stark ghostly-white skull where her stupid simpering toad-face should be—like one of those slapdash Muggle cartoons where one of the characters gets electrocuted and their entire skeleton appears in a flash.
Harry ignores it and returns to his lines. He might be mildly hallucinating from the pain.
When the sharp, stabbing pain in his scar gets too much to bear, he groans under his breath in frustration. He weighs his options. He can storm out and risk getting another few days added to his detention. Or he can sit around and suffer for another four hours.
He decides to take his chances on storming out. He throws the Blood Quill down on the table and starts to rise from his seat, but he can’t.
He’s stuck.
He looks up in indignation.
To his horror, he discovers he is actually hallucinating. Instead of Umbridge, Voldemort is standing right there.
His scar feels like it’s about to explode.
Then the Voldemort-hallucination grins, horrifying in its unyielding, mad, terrible triumph.