Warm But Tainted Blood (Drarry)

chapter twenty

Harry's heard more rumors than he knows what to do with. They often flood his ears, drown out his thoughts, and fight to pull him down deeper. Harry knows gossip like he knows pain and he knows (like he knows the click of Aunt Petunia's heels) when gossip is seeped in truth.

The evening after Harry Potter announced to the school that he has valid reason to believe that Neville Longbottom is the reason Harry's a murderer, rumors rush to his head like blood. Aurors are coming to interview he and Neville tomorrow, which is unsurprising, and Neville has already pleaded guilty to all charges... which is surprising.

Guilt floods Harry's chest and with every heartbeat pain stabs his ribs. He killed someone-- oh, Godric, he doesn't even know who-- because he had to. It was in self defense, Draco would be dead if he didn't, he didn't know the dragon was a person... He's heard the reasoning. It's been playing through his head like a broken record.

It doesn't make it any better.

Harry was but a pawn to what Neville's own hands had crafted and he can barely sleep at night, so Harry can't help but wonder if Neville feels guilty about what he's done.

Harry finds Neville Longbottom sitting alone in the Quidditch stands, and thinks that there's no better time to ask.

Neville eyes him as he trudges up the stairs but says nothing. Harry plops down next to him and they sit in silence with tense so thick you could cut it with a knife. "So," Harry says at last.

"So," says Neville, the boy who loves Herbology and hates him, the boy who smells of citrus and dirt.

"Why'd you do it?" Harry asks. He's not sure he'll get an answer.

"Because I-I hate Hogwarts," said Neville... as if that explained wrecking terror upon the school for months.

"You're unhinged," deadpanned Harry. "You're unhinged and quite frankly insane."

"Am I?" replied Neville. "Or, ah, am I more sane than anyone?"

"Shut the fuck up," said Harry. "How can I undo it?"

"Undo what?"

"Shut the fuck up," Harry hissed. "How can I make the dragon people, people?"

"It's d-dangerous, Potter," hummed Neville. "Ah-Are you certain--"

Harry resisted the urgue to scream and bit out, "Yes."

Neville huffed and handed him a list of instructions. Harry grabbed it, happy to have no more business with him, and stood to leave.

"I hope you rot," said Harry before he left.

Neville smiled-- twisted and un-fucking-hinged, seeped in quiet but relentless hate, and replied, "Right back atcha."

∆¶∆

Harry's not a hero. He's a boy of eleven soon to be one of twelve who's been in the wrong place at the wrong time more often than he'd like to admit. He's not a fighter and detests the title.

Harry receives the instructions about how to go down in history as the one and only Ender Of The Dragon Epidemic and Harry's first instinct is to hand it off to an adult.

He doesn't, though. Not because he's something he's not-- a hero-- but because he's the only person he knows who can speak Parseltongue. The blessing (blessing, burden, curse) of an ability is essential to turning his classmates back to, well, his classmates.

Curfew passes and Harry begs himself not to do this all the while suiting up for the task at hand. He grabs his Invisibility Cloak, his wand, and the last of his dignity before heads off.

Passing the wards is easy. Removing his Invisibility Cloak while he's face to face with dragons is... not so much.

This is crazy, he thinks as he casts a fire repellent charm on himself, and he's right. I can't do this, he thinks as he takes off the Invisibility Cloak and immediately gets blasted with fire, and he's wrong.

The dragons are out for blood but he's more mobile than them. He jumps over dragons limbs, using a levitation charm on himself when need be, and circles the bunch with his wand against the ground. Once the circle was complete, Harry spoke, his words inbedded in magic and in the language of the snake:

"Forms are temporary
You are not
I'll give you my soul
That's yet to rot
Mother Snake may bless the weary
All your forms are temporary."

It works. (Harry doesn't know what he would do if it didn't.) Harry holds a sobbing George Weasley to his chest and thinks that he hates physical contact but does not hate him.

∆¶∆

Neville Longbottom has been officially expelled. His wand snapped, burned, and his character condemned in the media.

Harry thinks that he deserves worse but doesn't say so.

Harry goes about his school days in a daze of guilt-- he killed a man. It's not his fault but it did happen, didn't it? He feels like he could've done more (even though it was he and Draco that did everything.) His friends try their best to comfort him-- they try their damnedest, they always do-- but Harry's the first to admit that it's not working.

"You need a Mind Healer," stated Hermione the evening before the final exams.

Harry shrugs. He wants to consider it, he really does, but you cannot heal in the same environment you got sick in. He's not feeling so awful just because of the Dragon Epidemic. There's a lifetime of trauma under his skin and as long as he returns there for the summer, a Mind Healer won't do shit.

(Or so he thinks but does not say.)

As the end of the school year draws nearer, this thought is repetitive and stinging. He will go back to the Dursley's soon, back to bruises and broken noses and abandonment and cupboards--

No, he thinks eventually, and the idea is utterly refreshing, No the fuck I won't.

It's the last day of school and Harry walks down to the Headmaster's office, intent on asking Albus Dumbledore if he can stay at the castle over the summer.