“Cruci-” Malfoy began the incantation of the Cruciatus Curse and Harry, having previously all witnessed, endured and cast the said curse, made an impulsive move to prevent himself from feeling the horrendous sensation of pain ever again.
“SECTUMSEMPRA!” he bellowed from the floor, aiming at Malfoy and waving his wand wildly, while a weird sense of pride washed over him as he saw the curse hit it's target.
Blood spurted from Malfoy’s face and chest in a way one would've thought he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He gasped, eyes fearful and wide as he staggered backwards and collapsed onto the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand.
Seeing the unexpected scene taking place before him, Harry abruptly got to his feet and made a few careful steps towards his rival, whose face was now shining scarlet, his white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest. The occupied bathroom was eerily quiet, not a single sound heard apart from Harry's heavy and Malfoy's very short and sharp breaths he was desperately taking.
Harry took in the agonizing look of pure fear and despair on Malfoy's face, and searched for a feeling of something inside him. That something, the emotion he was expecting to find was regret or remorse, and even shame - anything similar to the sense of guilt for what he had done.
However, his expectation was cut short when, despite his anticipation, he found nothing of the sort. Instead, all his senses were working tirelessly and his entire body was permeated with nothing but adrenaline.
He went a few steps further in the direction where Malfoy was quite surely dying, slowly and painfully if the grimace on his posh face was anything to go by, and Harry found himself quietly observing the soon to be corpse.
Unashamedly scanning Malfoy from head to toes, Harry tightened his hand around his wand to the point it went almost as white as Malfoy's when he realized the high feeling in his chest intensified upon seeing the blonde shaking uncontrollably in a pool of his own blood.
He was cut open in various places, the crimson red pouring out of him at all sides and all Harry could grasp of his emotions was the unpleasant feeling of recognizing something new about himself.
Malfoy was dying by Harry's hand, and Harry thought it thrilling.
Not being able to contain himself anymore, Harry gleefully chuckled at the sight in front of him and came closer to Malfoy even further, the action immediately followed by squatting down so he could see the horrifyingly beautiful creation he himself made.
He reached with his right hand, the one with the wand, and poked one of Malfoy's open cuts on the chest with the tip of it. Malfoy, in turn to the sudden contact, hissed in pain and Harry grinned in twisted approval. He drew back the wand hand and a second later reached with his left, pressing down the same cut with his bare fingers. The excruciating chest pain Malfoy felt was freely voiced, his scream of anguish echoing through the bathroom.
The cry of pain was suddenly cut off when Harry, growing aggravated by the sound, cast a nonverbal Silencing Charm to prevent his early hearing loss. That soon proved to be in wain, because the Moaning Myrtle, as if her mission is to make Harry's life more difficult, let out a deafening shriek. "MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!"
Harry's eyebrow twitched at the intrusion, and just as he was uplifting his wand to curse her mouth shut, the door behind him banged open. He stood up and watched in aghast as Snape burst into the room, seemingly ignoring Harry's raised wand and roughly pushing him aside. His face livid and uncharacteristically with a hint of worry, he knelt down, drew his wand and started muttering the counter-curse.
As Snape healed Malfoy from the violent assault and quite literally mauling, Harry stood aside and with displeasure observed the process. When he finished curing the wounds, he helped Malfoy up and gave him one more check over. "You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that...Come..." he said as he supported Malfoy across the bathroom.
"And you, Potter, you wait here for me." he spat out, his voice ice cold and eyes full of fury. Harry watched him leave and as soon as Snape was out, sat down on the wet floor, in the puddle of blood mixed with water.
Oddly enough, he was calmer than he expected himself to be, despite his hands shaking from excitement he shouldn't be feeling in a moment such as this. Moaning Myrtle was still floating at the same place, wailing and sobbing, and Harry, getting the urge, told her to shut the fuck up. The only reason she even listened to him was because she was too taken aback to do anything else.
After around ten minutes of waiting, Snape decided to finally grace Harry with his presence, shutting the door behind him upon entering. He told the Moaning Myrtle to go, and she swooped back into her toilet at once, leaving a ringing silence behind her. Harry, still on the floor, quickly stood up when he saw the murderous expression on Snape's face.
Carefully examining Harry, Snape quickly learned that blood and dirty water from the floor were completely covering his body. His eyes travelled further down to Harry's fingers and his wand, that were too, covered in gore.
"I was trying to stop the bleeding." Harry suddenly blurted, the lie slipping out almost effortlessly. Now, the only minor disadvantage would be Snape's, even if reluctantly admitted, Legilimency and Occlumency skills.
"You don't say." Snape said quietly in return. "You seem to be unusually calm for someone who claims they've just tried to save another person's life." he continued the tirade. For the lack of the better answer, Harry just shrugged, which enraged Snape even further.
Gritting his teeth, Snape leaned toward Harry and continued with the interrogation. "Then I'm sure you can tell me, why was Mr. Malfoy, the person you were presumably trying to save, under the effects of the Silencing Charm?" he demanded more than asked, and Harry settled on the half-truth. "I needed to concentrate and he was making it difficult." he answered, and it was partly true - Malfoy's whining was hindering Harry's exploration of the mutilated body in front of him.
Snape's eyes flashed with distaste. “Apparently I underestimated you, Potter.” he said in a low voice. “Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?”
A moment of silence prevailed before Harry responded. "I read about it somewhere." he answered with yet another half-truth, which was enough information for some people to take it and go with it. Snape, however, was another story, and Harry cursed his luck that his professor just had to dig in further and ask him where exactly.
"If I remembered, I would've told you in the first place!" Harry impatiently snapped at him, which was, looking back at it, a stupid and terrible mistake on his part. Snape caught him unprepared - not that it would've helped anything even if he was - and plunged into his mind, where he found everything there is to find about the Half-Blood Prince’s copy of Advanced Potion-Making.
Drawing back out of his head, Snape, leaving no argument, told him to bring his schoolbag as well as all the school books in his property.
Seeing that there was no point in arguing, Harry turned around and splashed out of the bathroom, breaking into a run toward Gryffindor Tower as soon as he was in the corridor. Most people were walking the other way - they gaped at him, drenched in water and blood, but he answered none of the questions fired at him as he ran past.
There will be plenty of time for answering all the queries, once he deals with Snape and whatever abysmal punishment he assigns him.
After arriving into the Gryffindor common room, pointedly ignoring all the blatant stares, getting Ron's copy of Advanced Potion-Making and hiding his into the Room of Requirement, he was ready to face Snape once more. The instant he stood before the man, Snape started carefully examining the books but unfortunately for him, could prove nothing. In the end, with the mandatory insults on Snape's part and hilarious nickname fiasco on Harry's, his punishment ended up being detention with Snape every Saturday until the end of term.
The most devastating part of it all wasn't the captivity he was gonna endure for the next few weeks, but the fact he won't be able to participate in the last match of Quidditch.
As soon as he set a foot into the common room, Hermione, Ron and Ginny rounded up on him and simultaneously exploded with a bunch of questions directed his way. There was no need in explaining anything to anyone, considering this was Hogwarts in question, where rumors and news travelled faster than Hogwarts Express. Which was the exact reason why he had to endure fifteen highly unpleasant minutes in the company of McGonagall, who had told him he was lucky not to have been expelled.
Still, the three of them were his best friends and he owed them a detailed clarification at last.
"I won’t say ‘I told you so.'" Hermione said once Harry finished telling the story, unsurprisingly not being able to stop herself. This earned her an angry "Leave it, Hermione." from Ron, an eye roll from Ginny and stubborn defiance from Harry.
"What do you want me to say, Hermione? I can't take back what I did." he said and the sentence was immediately followed by Hermione's rant. "No, of course you can't, but there wouldn't be any need for that if you had only listened to me in the first place!" she went on, not showing any indication of stopping anytime soon.
Losing the remaining patience he had, Harry hastily responded back. "He very much deserved it and you know it!" he angrily snapped at her and Hermione opened up her mouth in surprise. "I don’t believe this." she said. "You’re actually defending-" she didn't get to finish due to interruption from Harry. "Yes, I am! I wish I hadn't done it, and not because I regret it but because now I have to sit in dozens of detentions with Snape, missing out on the last match!"
In the exact moment the angry speech left his mouth, all three of his friends were looking at him with mixed expressions on the faces - Ron, just staring, Hermione, horrified and Ginny, ready to snap in Harry's defense at any given moment.
Hermione opened up her mouth to no doubt reprimand Harry, but she wasn't given the chance to utter another word because Ginny beat her to it. "Give it a rest, Hermione!" she said, and Hermione angrily turned towards her new target. "He almost killed someone and all you three seem to care about is Quidditch!"
Ginny completely ignored the said words and went on further. "By the sound of it, Malfoy was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse, so you should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!" she continued, Ron nodding behind her and Harry felt an incredible surge of gratitude toward his friends.
"Well, of course I’m glad Harry wasn’t cursed!" said Hermione, clearly stung. Harry took that as a cue and before anyone could even think about saying another word, interjected. "It's settled then! I'm alive, Malfoy's alive, everyone's alive, end of story." he said and before either of the three had a chance to stop him, made a move towards the door of the common room.
"Where the bloody hell are you going?" Ron called after him and Harry told them the exact location where. Three disbelieving shouts of "WHAT?!" was the last he heard from the trio as he exited the common room and made his way in the direction of the Hospital Wing.
To say Malfoy wasn't exactly ecstatic to see him would be an understatement. Still, he kept quiet as Harry took a risk and started approaching the bed he was laying in, his body covered in bandages despite Snape's prudent healing session. Madam Pomfrey was currently nowhere to be seen, otherwise he surely wouldn't be able to just stroll inside where his almost victim was residing.
Without waiting for Harry to sit down, Malfoy put on his best arrogant expression considering the situation he was in, and bitterly addressed him. "Came to beg for my forgiveness, Potter?" he asked, pride almost leaking out of him, and Harry merely smiled.
Malfoy took his silence as a confirmation and his lips quirked upwards in condescending manner. "Well, if you insist. Get down on your knees then, and start begging." he continued. However, Harry did nothing of the sort and Malfoy started getting irritated when he himself saw so.
"I'm not here to apologize, Malfoy." Harry told him matter-of-factly. The blonde raised an impatient eyebrow, nonverbally telling him to not waste his precious time and get on with the reason he's here at once.
Harry smiled once again and his eyes sought the place where he poked Malfoy with both his wand and fingers. It didn't take a genius to notice that area of Malfoy's chest was more hurt than the other parts, and Malfoy, realizing Harry is staring at the wound, angrily snapped at him.
"What, once wasn't enough for you? Slicing me up like that didn't satisfy you so you had to further torture me?!" he went on, every next word laced with more bite and even though Malfoy would never admit it, even some apprehension too.
Being unable to stop himself, Harry snickered at the memory of the disaster that went down in that damned bathroom. "The way you were lying there, helpless, on the brink of death and all by my hand...it made me learn something new about myself." Harry informed him, snickering once more upon seeing Malfoy's horror stricken face.
Grinning callously at Malfoy's appalled grimace, Harry hit him with the undeniable truth. "I don't feel even the slightest bit of remorse for what I did to you." he said, then continued when he saw the shock on Malfoy's face grow in the matter of seconds. "In fact, I really enjoyed using that curse to mutilate you like that. I would've continued stretching out the cuts further, but unfortunately I was interrupted..." Harry trailed off, leaving it to Malfoy to interpret what would the final product be if he did continue.
Malfoy opened up his mouth to say something, anything, but no sound came out except from his heavy breathing. Acting completely oblivious to Malfoy's behavior, Harry continued cruelly taunting him. "Seeing you in the pool of your own blood...I've never felt such sensation." he almost whispered and Malfoy started frantically shaking his head in disbelief.
"The fact that I hurt you like that...it was me that landed you here...the knowledge that I almost killed you...It filled me with pure, maddening ecstasy." Harry said the last word and that was all Malfoy could take.
"You're no different from HIM, then!" he almost screamed the words without thinking, then regretted them instantly, because what was he doing comparing Harry Potter to his arch nemesis? He slowly glanced at Harry, expecting to find absolutely bloodthirsty expression on his face, but was instead met with amusement.
Harry Potter was amused by Malfoy comparing him to the sodding Dark Lord, and if that wasn't even the slightest indication he's changed, then what else was. "Who, Voldemort?" Harry feigned ignorance, revelling in the way Malfoy paled and flinched at the mention of Voldemort's name.
Not waiting for Malfoy's response, Harry leaned toward him and unflinchingly looked him straight into his grey eyes. "Compare me to him all you want, but you and I both know there is one thing Voldemort and I agree on, and that's the fact you're a pathetic, snivelling coward that is one day going to die either by my or his hand." he whispered at last and Malfoy went white.
As he was leaving the Hospital Wing, Harry swore to himself that one day he will find out what Malfoy is planning, and that day will be the day the git perishes by Harry's well aimed curse.
As he watched Dumbledore's limp form graciously fall from the Astronomy Tower, he made sure to fulfill that promise with the sudden decision to find Draco Malfoy - and finish the job he begun a little while ago, this time permanently.