Dolor Retractatur (Pain repeated...)

The curses we bear

Notes:

This story has been posted on other sites, but I've decided to add it on wattpad too.

I don't own these characters, but I really wish I did. This has not been Beta'd so please excuse the errors I make. Better yet, lemme know if you find errors (look at me, being a slave driver ;P).

I hope you enjoy!

(edited in 2018)

Chapter Text

For the fourth new moon in a row, Harriet Potter lay curled on the floor, shaking from the pain that would develop and recede just as rapidly. Her teeth were clenched from the effort of not crying out, despite it being completely unnecessary. She had warded and placed silencing charms around the room in which she now lay so that no one would hear or disturb her. Perhaps she clenched her teeth out of habit - the last two times this had happened, she had been at the Dursley's and crying out would have earned her another black eye – or worse.

The first time this had happened, she had been with Voldemort, and she simply refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

This would only last another half hour, she thought desperately, stealing a quick glance at her watch. She regretted her decision, as glancing down at her wand arm alerted her to another part of herself that was screaming – although rather silently - in agony.

She mentally reassured herself that the pain would be gone in a second; and indeed, the blistered, charred flesh of her arm – originally a burn of some sort – was healing rapidly, skin cells stacking in uneven layers to form an ugly, discoloured scar, but thankfully, a brief reprieve from the pain.

She was probably quite the sight, she thought bitterly to herself. A canvas of bruises and cuts and scrapes. A canvas that had areas of itself scraped mostly clean only to be painted over again in new and different shades of pain.

She hated the Dursleys with a cold fury for the years of abuse and neglect that they had subjected her to, but she hated Voldemort far, far more. She hated him for killing her parents, and for killing Cedric, and for killing all the other faceless individuals that had been sacrificed on the altar of a war she had not been alive to witness. She hated him for taking away her chances at a normal, happy life.

Right now, she hated him for the curse he had placed on her four months ago – the curse that was the reason she now lay in a pool of her own blood and vomit and had done, every new moon, for the past four months.

She shouldn't dwell on the curse – it only increased her hatred for the snake-like man. Hatred wasn't healthy, she told herself. Hatred turns inward and festers inside the soul – it drives you toward solitude and bitterness. It turns you into the type of person of whom Albus Dumbledore would not feel proud, the type of person that your parents would not be proud to call their daughter.

She had committed to making her parents proud after seeing their faces in that graveyard.

It was in the graveyard that they had told her they were proud of her, but for what, she didn't know. Where was her Gryffindor bravery now? It seemed to be a flighty trait, vacating her when she most needed it.

That infernal hat had been wrong. Bravery was only truly bravery if it remained while you were at your most terrified. She wasn't afraid of Voldemort so facing him wasn't truly brave. Stupid, perhaps, but certainly not brave. Now she was terrified. Not of the pain, as she had long ago forgotten her terror of pain. It frightened her, but not as much as being /found out/.