Harry knows he is not a good person.

Of course, he has a sense of morals and standards. But he isn't a good person. He daydreams about slicing people open and enjoys watching blood drip down pale skin. He drowns himself in liquor and cigarettes, hating himself. A constant stench of sweat, bourbon and cigarette smoke constantly lingers around him, but he finds it comforting. Harry hasn't left his room since he came back nearly four weeks ago. Petunia gives him food through the cat-flap, and Dudley brings him alcohol so that Harry won't tell Petunia he was the one who spray painted the alleyway next to their house. Harry spends his days staring up at the ceiling, doing the same things over and over to pass the time. He has filled nearly a whole sketch-pad with pictures – crazed eyes staring out from a blood-soaked face, the vandalised alleyway, mangled bodies half dead. A notebook is full of drafts and published copies of poems, each telling a story. He tends to his injuries from when Vernon comes home on a drunken binge and carves patterns into his skin with a razor blade so that he can observe the vivid, red colour of blood. He longs to find different ways to torture people, musing over questions that hold disturbing answers, yet he wants to discover the truth. Does the skin rot if removed from the body? Are there curses that hurt more than the Cruciatus? Does inflicting pain on someone else feel as amazing as Harry would imagine it to?

No, Harry knows he is not a good person. He dreams of blood and screams, although he long ago stopped trying to figure out which screams came from his own mouth as product of his nightmares, and which belong in his fantasies. Although only 15, Harry has seen more than anyone ever should, felt more pain than anyone should have to feel. He thinks that it wouldn't be bad to torture people – after all, who hasn't hurt him over the years?

But Harry stifles his screams with his sheet, and covers the scars with long-sleeved t-shirts. He hides his sketch-pad and poems, and instead puts up the image of Harry Potter, boy wonder, Gryffindor Golden Boy who wouldn't harm a fly.

Of course, he never told anyone that as a child, he tore the wings of flies and burnt them to death with a magnifying glass.

After all, that wouldn't be Gryffindor Hero behaviour now, would it?