Finishing up with a long day of studying for his upcoming exams - an exhausting process without the help of Luna and Hermione to help keep him focused, Harry headed up to the Gryffindor common room. He spotted Ron playing a game of chess against Dean in the far corner and contemplated going over to talk to them, but he hesitated. Ron had not been nearly as mad as the girls and had advised him to give them all some time to cool down. While the loneliness was really starting to get to him, he remembered Sirius' advice and decided he'd better not insert himself where he was not wanted so he headed upstairs to read before bed.
The dorm room was empty, but the sounds of pained murmurs echoed from the bathroom.
"Alright in there?" he called out. Neville peaked out the door, his face was blotted with tear tracks.
"H-harry? Do you have any healing potions?" he said in a quiet, pained voice.
"I know mama keeps plenty on hand, what's wrong? Do you need help getting to the Hospital Wing?"
Neville shook his head frantically.
"I'd rather the professors didn't know." He held out his hand which was wrapped in a towel, blood creeping through the fabric at an alarming rate. Gently unwrapping his hand revealed a phrase carved deep into the back of his palm: I must behave like a proper pureblood. It covered his whole hand, weeping fresh blood in droves, and it reeked of Dark magic.
"Bloody hell Nev! What happened to you?" He asked as though he did not have the object which had caused this resting in his pocket. Its effects were much worse than he'd expected. If the woman was not already in the process of dying, he would have killed her for this. A familiar rush of Dark magic crept into his veins, begging him to instigate more revenge on the woman as he muttered a few healing spells. He couldn't close the wound, but the bleeding stopped temporarily.
While he wasn't very close to Neville, the boy had always been kind to Harry, didn't think he was creepy, and had miraculously obtained his mama's respect in Potions class. He was also a bit of a baby, easily upset and emotional which led to him being bullied often, something, as everyone was aware, was not something Harry tolerated. While Harry largely ignored everyone outside of his friend group, he still felt protective over the other boy. Having learned of his tragic backstory via his mother of all people (seriously, when had he missed out on the Neville/mama bonding?) Harry knew that their early years were similar, and had Lily and James Potter lived, they would have been childhood friends.
This was all to say that in his quest to learn more about normal human behavior and ethics, he felt bad that Neville was a loser and felt a desire to be nicer to the boy. Plus, Blood Quills hurt like shit, and surely he hadn't done anything to deserve being cursed.
"Um, I had a detention. With that inspector lady. My shirt wasn't tucked in." Neville explained.
Harry's murderous thoughts swam around in his shitty occlumency shields. He excused himself for a moment and dug around in his bag for a calming drought, which he shared with Neville.
"Neville, this looks pretty serious. She used something Dark on you, I really think you should go to the Hospital Wing." Harry said. Cursed wounds were notoriously difficult to heal. "We should at least show my mum, she'll know how to prevent it from scarring." Neville looked faint at the thought of permanent damage, so he agreed.
Ron and Dean looked up at their hasty clamor down the stairs. They took one look at the soaked towel dripping blood onto the floor and joined them.
Ron tutted over the boy's injury and wrapped it tightly to stem the blood flow that had already begun to pick back up.
"We're going to see mama," Harry informed him quietly. "Umbridge did this to him."
"That's disgusting. You should tell Dumbledore, Nev."
"Has she been doing this to others?" Dean wondered. "I've heard that her detentions are shite, but no one talks about what happens."
"You remember how she threatened us in Potions? I'll ask around," Ron decided. "Colin Creevy can take some photos too, as evidence." The young photographer was dragged over by Ron's mother-henning and once a few photo's of Neville's hand had been secured, sent them down to get it healed with a furious wave of his hand. Ron looked about as livid as Harry usually was.
Mama was not thrilled to have her lesson interrupted, but with one look at Neville's hand, her face went stony. His hand was left to soak in a bowl of dittany, the relief on his face palpable. She gave Harry a very poignant look and he nodded with a feral grin. He was already on it.
By the time they had returned, Ron was standing cross-armed and angry in the common room, proceeding over a group of students having their hands photographed by Colin while Dean copied down everyone's statements. Ron motioned Harry to join him and cast a silencing charm over the pair.
"What are you going to do about this?" He asked Harry curtly. Harry looked at him with hesitance, but Ron was not in the mood for bullshit, so he decided to be frank.
"Well now that we have concrete evidence that she engages in Dark magic, mama and I were going to pin the blame on the Cruciatus incident on her too. No one will look closely into it with so much evidence against her already. Um, also this plan requires her murder."
"Good. Do you understand the difference between this murder and what you did to those Ravenclaws?" He interrogated.
"I think so? Killing Umbridge is good because she deserves it but those girls didn't deserve it because they were kids? Sirius said that I'm 'emotionally stunted' and need help figuring out the difference between an okay murder and a not okay murder."
"The main difference here, I would say, is that it's one thing to murder an adult who is abusing her position of power to torture students and another thing entirely to murder a kid - or torture them," he added quickly as Harry opened his mouth to defend himself. " - When they are being bullies, but not torturing people. Also, those girls were people Luna specifically asked you to leave alone. You deliberately went against what she asked you to do."
"That's what Sirius said."
"Then I think you should listen to your parents and us for once, mate. Look, the girls are a bit sticky about violence, so you really need to apologize for that. I'm not going to blame you for feeling those thoughts - I wanted to hurt them too, and I did hex them a few times - but you need to listen to us when we tell you what the limit is. You need to learn how to communicate. You need to trust us, please." Harry frowned and contemplated his friend's words. It mirrored what Luna had angrily yelled at him in the library. What Sirius had tried to impart.
Shame flooded him. He was a bad friend. He knew Luna was nonviolent, she was a vegetarian, for Merlin's sake, and he had ignored that because he was angry that she had elected to do nothing about it. But no - Sirius had promised that he was not, as long as he apologized and did better. He wanted to do better, and he hoped he could convey that to his friends. It was really hard to ignore the part of his head foaming at the thought of murder, however.
And the question of whether or not he should tell them about it, that his continued use of necromancy was giving him violent thoughts - thoughts he couldn't control because his mind was a mess and he was a hormonal teenager with no impulse control. What if they didn't like him anymore? What if he finally reached the stage where it all became too much?
He thought back to when he'd grown nervous to commit the sacrifice in front of them at Yule. Even after they found out and became interested in learning more about necromancy, there was always that thought lingering there that his friends would change their minds.
"I'm scared to trust you," he admitted, twisting his shirt in his hands to calm himself. The words clung to the inside of his throat like tar, but he forced them through anyhow. "I know it was wrong, but that's who I am. I lied because I didn't want Luna or any of you to find out - but that's my first instinct - to remove the problem and get revenge. And now that you've found out, you all hate me!" He choked back a sob, and his throat was too full of dread and mucus that he couldn't breathe.
Ron reached over and punched him lightly on his shoulder.
"We don't hate you, Harry. I promise. Like I said, I don't blame you for feeling like that. We've all seen you go full necromancer. I know you've hurt people. I was with you in the Chamber of Secrets, you can be terrifying."
"But you haven't seen it all!" Harry insisted. "You don't know the worst of it. I've been hiding it from you!"
"Did you enjoy hurting those girls?" Ron asked him gently. "Are you going to start hurting people for fun?"
"I thought they deserved it and it turns out the Cruciatus makes you high off your own power, so yes I did enjoy it," he admitted. "It was also terrifying though, and you saw how it made me sick. Mama made me swear to never use it again, and I don't want to. I regret doing it. I have no interest in hurting people for fun. I don't usually like killing. It's just a thing that happens - I don't feel bad about it, either."
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