A Tale of Two Brothers

Chapter 24

Dark magic was addictive. The more one used it, the more they started to crave it.

The summer before his fifth year was hell.

Harry craved the bitter taste of that magic. Sometimes, he almost used his wand to just cast a spell, to let the magic wash over him. He almost lost control over himself one day when Regulus had stepped inside their house. His left arm reeked of that bitterness. If the man found it weird when Harry suddenly started following him around whenever he visited the house, he chose not to speak about it.

The crave was maddening.

Harry understood why people warned against using dark magic. He started losing his temper more frequently, he couldn't concentrate on tasks for long time spans and his body would get feverish spontaneously.  Worse, his health deteriorated, and he had to hide it from everyone by locking himself inside his room, which gathered everyone's attention. Luckily, after a lot of emotional speeches from outside his door, his parents passed off his strange behaviour as him going through puberty.

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"Harry, are you alright? You look quite pale." Jason asked and stepped inside his room, ignoring his rather loud 'no' and moved closer to him. Harry tried to lean away, but his brother's hand touched his forehead. "Merlin, you have a fever."

"Go away, Jason! Leave me alone." He snapped, moving away. His day was as bad as it could be. Why did Jason decide to ruin his evening too? Yes, he knew he had a very high fever right now. If that wasn't bad, he had already puked over half-a-dozen times by now, he couldn't even stand up without wobbling, and Harry was sure he was hallucinating the dark shadow standing by his window. 

"Harry?"

His heart started beating faster and his breaths became shallower.

Just one spell.

"Leave." 

The younger boy looked surprised and hurt by the coldness in his voice. "But–"

"No. Just leave me alone, alright? Why do you always have to be so clingy?" He stood up and walked towards Jason. Before the boy could speak a word, Harry took hold of his arm and pushed him out of the door. "Don't come up here again. And don't you dare tell anyone about this." He shut the door on the face of the teary-eyed boy.

Harry sighed and slid down to the floor with his back on the door. His hands started shaking again. The last five seconds drained his energy completely. He tried to occlude to stop the tremors in his hands, but it was useless. Nothing worked against that crave.

Just one spell.

Harry cried silently for a long time, until he finally fell asleep. 

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His condition was getting worse day by day. Harry knew that his brother hadn't talked to anyone about yesterday when his parents hadn't come shouting at his door, but he couldn't risk it. If Jason decided to rattle him out, his parents would force him to go to the healers and his secret would be out. No, that couldn't happen. Hewould not let that happen. Harry forced himself out of the bed and decided to search his school trunk for something.

"Hey, Jason." Harry sat down beside the nine-year-old boy and brought out a bag of sugar quills from his coat. "For you."

"I don't want it." His brother did not look up from the puzzle in front of him.

"I am really sorry about yesterday evening, Jason. I should not have snapped at you. I'm sorry." He said, looking at him. His fingers tingled again but this time he ignored it.