Trace
Harry plucks grass from the earth and grinds it in his fist. Up ahead, the Whomping Willow shudders against the mild blue glow of night. His eyes are heavy and raw. He feels as though someone took a sheet of sandpaper to the inside of him. Or else took a rubber to his skin. He feels washed out. With much effort, he releases his fist, lets the grass fall in a scattered, wet mush, and starts the process again.
It’s late, time limping its way bitterly toward morning. He shouldn’t be out here. He has homework for Charms and a paper for Potions due in the morning, as well as a test in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but he doesn't have the energy left in him to work on any of it. He wrote the paper, but the last time he tried to proof read it for continuity and errors, his head swam so heavy with sleep that all the words ran together. He is trying to stay on top of things. He is doing a very poor job.
His exam will be all lies, so he refuses to bother with that.
Harry yanks another handful of grass. He wants to yell. He wants to yell until his throat bleeds with it. He wants to break something in half or set it on fire. He wants to hurt someone, so he grips his fist tighter around the dirt and grass and feels it pull at the skin on the back of his hand. That hurts, which is good. And he can control it, the hurt, which is better. It keeps him here. It stops him from thinking.
He keeps his eyes front. He watches the tree shake an owl from its branches. He watches it split into two trees, both shuddering; blinks against the exhaustion fucking up his sight- which is bad enough on its own, thank you very much.
Three AM has long since come and gone, but Harry can't go inside. Two nights ago, the bone of his wrist had caught Dean across the mouth as half of the Gryffindor boy’s dorm had crowded into his room to see what all the screaming was about. Ron had shaken him awake, but Dean had been closer to his side. Then there were all the stares, and Seamus spent the next day whispering that Harry was faking nightmares to scare everyone into believing him.
So, Harry can't go back inside. The nightmares have only gotten worse since returning to Hogwarts. What sleep he gets is restless and awful, and usually leaves him feeling worse than before, so he's begun to avoid it as much as he can. Then there's Umbridge, whose detentions keep him up most of the night anyway.
She’d made him stay later than usual tonight. She had sat behind him, clearing her throat any time he stopped moving the bloody pen, until well past when his hand refused to heal completely between lines. He’d had to stop by the lavatory to wrap it up before he could come out here.
She's getting bold about it, which makes Harry nervous. Three nights of this and he hadn’t scarred yet, but he felt certain he would have something to hide in the morning. On his hand no less- that would make things difficult. He's bleeding through his makeshift bandage as it is, though that's probably his own doing.
He's so tired. He's beyond what sleep can fix. Bone tired- he'd heard the phrase once and it seems apt now. The marrow of him is exhausted. But more than tired, he's angry, and that keeps him alive. His whole body boils with it. It's ruining him, he's more than sure. It keeps everyone far away. There's nothing he can do about that, though. Nothing he can do about anything, which only makes him angrier, the more he thinks about it. He's getting better about controlling his outbursts, though. Reining them in. He has to. He can't afford to give Umbridge any more fuel to use against him than she already has. He can handle the pain- that's easy enough. But he doesn't want her scheming up new ways to hurt him- or worse, going after someone else to make him squirm.
So instead he sits quietly and grits his teeth and writes the lines. He's good at that- at being quiet. He knows it makes her angry, and that might be dangerous, but he refuses to give her the satisfaction of making a sound. He had gasped, the first time the pen had broken the skin on his hand- more in surprise than anything else- and the look on her face had been delight. That, more than anything she could do to him, had turned his stomach. So, he stays quiet and he writes, and he tries to ignore her stare, her quiet cough, her sighs.
It's as much rebellion as he can manage, but he'll take it. That, and his conviction. Every night, before she sends him from her office to clean his hand off and “get to bed, now” she asks him if he’s ready to take it back.
“Are you willing to admit the truth?” She says, and Harry can only stare back at her and work to contain himself.
“I did,” is all he can ever manage. If he says anything else, he’ll boil over, and then he’ll really be in for it. She frowns at him, then, her lips pulling into a tight, angry line. But she doesn’t look unhappy. She looks manic. She looks at him the way Dudley had looked at Harry’s pet spiders right before he squashed them, a lifetime ago.
“I will see you tomorrow, then,” she says, and Harry is excused.
It takes everything out of him, these detentions. It takes everything he has. And it isn’t the pain- which alone is enough to undo him, if he’s being very honest. His hand aches all the way through the next day, into the process starting again. It compounds, gets worse with time. But he’s felt worse even still.
It’s keeping himself at bay which exhausts him. And yet it's the only thing that gets him through the day. It feels like a victory, every time he can meet her stare as dry eyed and defiant as that first night.
She isn’t the first to try and break him, Harry thinks to himself. Probably not the last, either, but she’ll fail. They’ll all fail. It doesn’t matter how tired he is, or how much he hurts, or how many endless days this goes on- Harry will meet her eyes. Harry will not cower, he will not lie, and he will not apologize.
He almost loses it two days later, right in the middle of transfiguration. He had stayed up all night finishing the homework. He would, under no circumstances, be made to disappoint McGonagall the way he had disappointed Flitwick the day before. She frowns at him anyway, when he turns it in, and he can’t look her in the eye.
Something about the thin line of her mouth leaves him trembling. Or maybe that, too, is the exhaustion. But he is shaking by the time he reaches his seat. Ron receives the same frown when he admits he hasn’t done the assignment at all. That, too, makes Harry angry. What right did he have, skipping assignments, when Harry is spreading himself so thin?
He gives Ron the cold shoulder, which Ron doesn’t question. Ron didn’t question much about Harry these days, a courtesy Harry returns in kind. If Ron wants to be squirrely and distant, Harry would let him. What's one more blow in the torrent of a week like this? Harry is a pebble. Harry is a leaf in the wind. He can roll with anything.
The sound of his name snaps Harry back to attention. He hadn’t realized he’d been dazing out, staring at the far wall. The room spun a little as he turned to face front.
“Thank you for joining us again, Mr. Potter.” The look McGonagall gives him is not unkind. If anything, she looks concerned. The class around him, though, laughs at the chastisement, and Harry feels his face heat up. He hunches his shoulders a bit, makes a fist beneath the table. It hurts more than he’d expected as the scabs pull open. He has to smack his other wrist on the table- twice- to keep from gasping.
Ron looks at him, startled, like he’s gone completely mad. It takes Harry a minute to realize what he’s done, and what it must look like. McGonagall’s mouth is a flat, straight line. Harry can’t pull himself away from the line of the frown, and it takes him another moment to realize she’s speaking to him again.
“—step out Mr. Potter, and I will see you after class.”
Harry doesn’t respond. He collects his things quickly and carefully, terrified he’s bled through his bandage again, grateful the sleeves of his robes are long enough to cover his hand. He stumbles at least once in his rush out of the room, his face hot with the eyes following him.
He’s shaking so terribly, his head swims. He barely makes it to the toilet before he doubles over. It’s mostly bile he spits into the bowl; he hasn’t been eating. He dry heaves a few more times and tries to cough the burn out of his throat. He thinks it’s just the puke that has him crying, he hopes he's not this pathetic, but he’s lost of all sense of self-awareness by now.
He comes-to some time later, with his face pressed against the seat. Someone bangs their fist against the stall door again. So that’s what woke him. Probably Ron come to find him after his “Outburst.” Harry tries to tell him to sod off, but only manages a half-hearted Mmph.
“Harry?” A girl’s voice echoes lightly off the tile walls. So not Ron, then. He tries to tell Hermione he’s fine and that she should leave him alone- or at the very least tell her to leave the boy’s lavatory, but grunts instead. Barely that, even. There’s a huff from the other side of the door.
“Harry, I know you’re in there. It’s been hours. Are you- are you decent?” In a better frame of mind, he’d laugh. She’s blunt to a fault, Hermione is. There’s a shuffling on the other side of the door and then- “Alohomora” and the door bangs open.
“Jesus, Hermione,” Harry says, or at least he thinks he says it. He thinks he might still be half asleep. He tries to prepare himself for a lecture on respecting teachers, or for her to fuss over him and bully him to Pomfrey’s office.
Instead, she puts a hand on his shoulder and Harry almost gags again as every muscle in his body tenses in response. He is disgusting right now, and he knows it. His skin crawls with the weight of her hand, but she pulls him away from the bowl and props him against the stall wall. He keeps his eyes down- practically closed- against his own embarrassment. Then her hand is on his chin. He tries to jerk away from her, only to bang his head against the wall.
“Stop that,” Hermione tells him gently. She wipes his mouth with tissue and Harry wants to die. He wants Voldemort himself to appear in this bathroom right here and now and kill him where he sits. He tries to grab it away from her, but by that time she is already throwing it into the toilet and flushing it away.
“I’m not a child,” he tells her, his voice somehow both slurred and raspy, and sounding very much like a child even to his own ears.
“Yes, you are,” Hermione replies. Her voice isn’t mean. It isn’t even her usual bossy tone. It is soft. Sad.
He finally opens his eyes and she is crouched down in front of him. She doesn’t look disgusted, though that’s how he feels. She doesn’t even look angry with him. He’s reminded, suddenly, of early mornings in their second year, when Harry would climb down the stairs into the common room to read, only to find Hermione already hunched over a book of her own. They could talk, then, in early hours. Before the world rushed in and they both had to fight to keep their heads on straight.
Hermione had shown him a letter, once, when he caught her crying over an unfamiliar Ancient Runes text book- from her parents back home.
Our Dear Hermione,
We are glad to hear things are going well with you, as they are with us. Top of your year is wonderful- but difficult, of course, to maintain. You are an exceptionally bright young woman, and so the drop in your runes grades have us concerned. We spoke with a merchant in Diagon Alley who suggested this book might help. We do hope you will put it do good use.
You know how hard we have worked to give you the best education a Witch can have, and that it did not come without sacrifice. We know you will make us proud, and not waste the opportunities you have been provided.
We love you most,
Mum and Dad.
“I got an ‘Exceeds Expecations’,” she had told him, looking nervous to even admit it. He’d nodded. What could he say to that? And when she’d cried harder, he’d let her wrap her arms around his neck.
She watches him now, their roles reversed. The knot in his stomach doesn’t loosen, but the shame around it does- just a bit.
“I’m just so tired, Hermione,” He tells her. His voice is raw- from retching or from something else, even he can’t tell.
“Well, maybe if you slept…” she prods at him, but there’s no bite to it. It almost gets him to laugh, but his throat closes around it. He closes his eyes against a weight he can’t bring himself to feel. He wants to tell her everything in that moment. He wants to collapse. Instead, he pushes his glasses up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, leaning back against the wall.
“Harry,” Hermione’s voice is low this time. “What happened to your hand?”
Harry freezes. He doesn't know why. It's the same question Ron had asked, and he'd meant to tell her eventually. He really did. But he knows what she'll say. She'll be horrified, and then it'll be worse because he won't be able to lie to himself. He tries to exhale, but his breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t want to own up to this. He can’t.
“Harry-“ and he can feel, rather than see, her reaching out toward him.
“Don’t.” He barely manages the word, and then everything hits him at once. Every secret he’s kept, all the nights of sleep he’s skipped. The long, long summers he can only remember parts of. The look in Umbridge’s eye and McGonagall’s frown and how Dumbledore won’t so much as glance in his direction.
He chokes on air. He tries to breathe past the closing of his throat, but he feels like he’s buried underground somewhere. He feels like he’s already dead. Hermione’s voice gets further and further away, and suddenly Harry can’t tell if he’s real or not at all. He tries to flex his hand, to ground himself in the pain there, but he can’t feel it and that scares him even more.
Hermione must have seen it coming, because by the time Harry starts gagging, he is already leaned back over the bowl. There’s still nothing in his stomach, but the dry heaves force him into some pattern of breathing.
Hermione doesn’t leave, though he wishes she would. She just rubs circles on his back. She says something low that he can’t quite make out and helps him lean back again when he’s done. He wipes his mouth on his own sleeve before she has a chance to baby him further. He wills her to leave him, pleads in his mind for her to go so he won’t have to answer her questions. So he won’t have to meet her eyes.
“We’ll figure this out,” is all she says, as he sucks in deep breaths of air.
Much to his own surprise, he’s relieved to hear her speak. She reaches out again to smooth the fringe off his forehead, and he almost loses hold of himself entirely. He wants to tell her what that means, but he can’t. She adjusts and sits beside him, and pulls his head to her shoulder, and he lets her. He lets her brush his hair back.
No one has ever done this for him. Not like this. Not in this kind of moment. He’s heard Petunia cooing over Dudley often enough, so he knows it happens. When Dudley was sick he got to sleep in front of the Telly on the sofa, and Petunia brought him soup and tea, and read him books. Sometimes Dudley would fake it just to stay home from school for a day or two.
Harry, on the other hand, had always done his best to hide being sick; because if Petunia found out he had a bug, he’d be in quarantine- which was worse than being in trouble. When he was locked in his cupboard, at least he could listen in on the daily life moving around him, and occasionally Petunia would let him out to relieve himself. No one had to stop by when she locked him in the bathroom. She didn’t believe in feeding him if he was just going to throw it up again, or in bringing him water if he could get it from the sink. He would be alone in there for hours or days, until he cut the nonsense and could be trusted to be elsewhere without making a fuss, or a mess of things.
No one had ever rubbed his back or told him it would be alright or any of that. Strangely, he feels like crying, but he doesn’t think he could manage it now if he tried. He feels wrung out.
“We’ll figure it out,” Hermione says again, and for a moment, Harry chooses to believe her.
She comes with him to visit McGonagall, and Harry's stomach is in knots the whole time. He's sure she’s going to rat him out. But for the second time that day, she surprises him. He listens as she explains how Harry’s been sick, and that’s what happened this morning. Harry must have been a real sight to behold, because McGonagall takes one look at him and says, “See Pomfrey and get some sleep, Mr. Potter. I will inform the other teachers. I do not want to see you out of bed tomorrow.”
She gives him a wry smile, and so must think she’s doing him a favor. Maybe she is.
“I’ll get him to bed, Professor,” Hermione says, and she wheels Harry out of the room.
"You covered for me,” is all Harry can say, when they had moved far enough down the hall. Hermione shoots him a concerned look.
"I told her the truth,” she says. “And you really do need the rest.”
Harry wants to roll his eyes at her, but he thinks maybe she’s right.
“I’m not going to Pomfrey,” he says instead, and it’s Hermione who looks toward the ceiling.
“I’m so shocked,” she says flatly. He smirks, but it dies on his face as she looks back at him. He can feel the mood shift. “Harry what happened to your hand?”
The question still catches him off guard, and he tries to hide his hands by shoving them into his pockets, as though that could make her un-see the gauze. He shrugs.
“Detention with Umbridge-“
“You hurt your hand in detention?”
“You could say that.”
She givdes him a sour look.
“What does that mean?”
“I told you she makes me write lines,” he says this flippantly, like it should be explanation enough, though he knows it isn’t. Somehow, recognition still clicks in her eyes. Her face turns hard, and she wheels him into a corner by his wrist.
“Ow- Hermione, wha-.“ He tries to move away, but she’s already tugging the bandages off his hand. She inhales sharply, and Harry stares hard at the wall behind her head. He doesn’t need to look. He doesn't want her to catch his eye.
I must not tell lies.
The angry red lines, he knows, are still raw from the night before. It’s been healing slower and slower between sessions. He thinks he should be worried about that, but he can’t bring himself to care. He can’t even look at it, really. His hand starts to shake, and he rips it out of Hermione’s grasp.
“Harry- that’s a black quill,” she says. Her voice is its usual haughty accusation, as though he had found one on the side of the road and started using it for fun. “I’ve read about them, it's not-. She can’t be making you do this.”
“Yeah, well, whether or not she can, she is,” Harry snaps back, defensive now. He feels guilty and furious. He's not a liar. He has to shove his hands deep into his pockets to hide his trembling. An eternity passes between them.
“I’m telling McGonagall.” Hermione moves to head back down the hall, and Harry fumbles his hands out of the cloth and grabs her shoulder, pulling her back into the shadow.
“No, you’re not,” he tells her. She looks at him, her eyes watery. So, she does believe him. The relief doesn't diffuse his anger. “I don’t need anyone else in on this. It's none of their business- or yours. Besides, do you really think telling McGonagall will make her stop? If it's illegal, she knows and she obviously doesn't mind. What can McGonagall do? It'll just make things worse, and you know it. I didn’t ask for your help, Hermione. I can handle this. I’m fine.”
“Harry,” she says, so softly he hates her. “You’re not fine.”
But she doesn’t say he’s wrong about the rest of it, so he knows he’s not.
“I’m fine enough.”
"I don’t think that has ever been true,” she says. Harry has no response for that, so he says nothing. He leaves her there, in the corner, and heads off for the dorms.
Harry survives detention. He manages to keep his temper under control after as well- for a time. And then, one day, he doesn't. So, it's no surprise really when another week is assigned. He thinks maybe Umbridge missed him by the way she watches him in class. He thinks she was waiting for this. Part of him still believes- maybe stupidly- that he’s keeping her from harming anyone else by sitting through their sessions. He's keeping her preoccupied. Other kids would complain, and this isn’t about punishment anyway. This is about breaking him.
He tries to be angry and only angry. McGonagall takes five points from Gryffindor when she finds out and Harry thinks about telling her. Not so she could save him- he still doesn’t believe telling her would help one lick. But just to see the look on her face.
He doesn’t do it, but it’s nice to fantasize. It helps him stay angry, and if he's angry enough, he can't be afraid. He’d rather be anything other than afraid.
Still, his hands are shaking as he winds his way to her office. The weeks in between have made him soft again. He isn't ready for another week like the one before. He had barely survived it, he thinks. He had only just begun pulling his grades back out of the gutter. The nightmares were finally starting to mellow out enough that he could sleep through the night.
The last of the scabs had only just peeled away. Maybe she knew that.
He knocks on her door and sets his jaw as her voice calls out, cheerily, delighted, “Come in!”
He steps into the room, and a sick feeling washes over him. He feels exhausted. He feels raw, already.
The quill and a stack of clean white paper sit atop an otherwise empty desk. A sight now too familiar to Harry. A low-backed stool is pulled just slightly away, as though anticipating him. Umbridge smiles from behind her own desk as he enters. He meets her eyes.
It’s harder this time, to keep himself together. He tries to hold on to the anger and for the first few hours, that’s enough. But he’s out of practice now, and this is no longer a shock nor a pattern. He refuses sound, but by the time the clock strikes midnight he is fighting tears over the paper. He grits his teeth and tries to hold himself back, and mostly succeeds. It’s out of frustration as much as anything. Every so often he must pause to shake his hand out, and her quiet cough counts it as a loss for him.
He’s better than this, he knows he is, but the skin is too new. It can’t heal quite right anymore. Harry is too tired, and he can’t seem to focus on the pain or tune it out.
Harry doesn’t know what time it is, when he finally makes his way back into the Gryffindor commons, but it’s empty so he assumes it’s late. His hand feels mutilated- flayed. It never really bleeds until he’s finished, the pen eating up the blood to write the lines out on paper, but he had to steal one of the hand towels from the bathroom on his way back, because tissue wasn’t enough to clean him up. It seems even his skin, even magic, is giving up on him.
Something moves in one of the armchairs. Okay, so not empty, then. Harry hides his hand and tries to skirt his way around toward the dorms.
“Harry?” He freezes. He turns around. Hermione sits near the fire, her eyes heavy with sleep. Beside her, a ball of yarn and a small pile of knitted caps.
“Hey,” Harry replies, stupidly, keeping his hands behind his back.
“How bad is it?” she asks. Harry just shrugs, his anger returning to him in a sudden flash. He tries to stamp it out and fails.
“Suddenly you care?” He snaps. Hermione looks away. She sniffs, and all at once Harry is furious. She does not get to cry tonight, not when she was so flippant toward him earlier. She knows exactly what kind of hell this week is going to be for him, because she knows how bad it was last time. More than Ron knows, even, and yet Ron at least had the decency to act sympathetic. Harry might complain too much, sure, but he thinks maybe he’s earned the right to a bit of whining at this point, what with how he is literally slicing himself open all night, how he will be every night this week.
"I thought I'd brought this on myself." Maybe she hadn't said it in so many words. But, then again, she hadn't said anything at all.
“That’s not fair,” Hermione says, and Harry almost screams. He’s shaking with rage. Across the room from them, a glass vase shatters. Hermione turns a shocked look to him, but Harry doesn’t even flinch. She holds his gaze, her eyes wet and red. She’s been crying since before he returned, Harry realizes. Good. Let her feel bad. He's not about to pity her because she wants him to be better than he is. No, not better, kinder- more respectful. She'd ask him to respect Voldemort himself, if she though he was handing out grades. Harry regrets the thought as soon as it crosses his mind, but his insides still burn.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and his anger evaporates. He is a bad friend, and he knows it. “I shouldn’t have been cold to you I just… I worry, Harry. It's torture, what she's doing. I wish you would let me tell someone-“
“Look, it’s alright,” he interrupts her before she can beg him, or say anything else he doesn’t have the energy for just now. “I’m alright.”
She doesn’t look as though she believes him, but holds out her hand for his. Harry approaches, but he keeps his own hand behind his back, almost petulant. Hermione watches his face, and her own softens. He thinks she can tell he’s been crying, too, and it makes him want to leave more than anything else. She squares her shoulders.
“I made you something,” she says. “Will you let me see?”
For some reason, the thought of showing her his hand makes him sick all over again. But she’s already seen it, he tells himself. She already knows. There's no point in hiding it now. Still, his hand shakes as he drops it to his side, still wrapped in the hand towel he’d stolen. She gestures for him to sit beside her and he does, moving the fist-sized yarn caps out of the way. He trains his eyes on the fire still burning low in the hearth.
“Let’s see it, then,” she says, professional as anything. Harry doesn’t move, doesn’t look at her, but he lets her take his hand and pull the towel away. It hurts, as the fibers of the towel stick to his skin, and he glances back. He regrets it immediately. The deeper parts of the wound have mostly closed, but the edges are still raw, like meat; and a thin, messy layer of blood coats his skin up to his wrist. He looks away.
“It's not healing so well anymore, is it? I’ve been searching for something that would help, and I think I found it. It’s made with Murtlap essence. It should help with the pain, at least.”
He feels her press something cold and sticky onto the back of his hand, and it tingles. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it lessens enough that he can actually feels some relief. It knocks the last of his resolve right out of him.
“I’m so tired, ‘Mione,” he tells her for the second time.
“I know,” she tells him. It’s the only thing she can say, but it’s not enough. Her hand reaches up- to touch his face, he thinks, but he can't bare that tonight. He ducks to the side, thanks her for the potion and leaves before he can do himself any more damage.
With his hand slightly numbed, he manages to wrap it up proper without much trouble, though he’s going to need to buy more gauze now that this whole mess has begun again. He collapses without changing, and exhaustion consumes him the moment his body hits the bed- even over the covers. He sleeps and dreams of static.
He dreams of nothing.