*WARNING* This scene has caused the story to be moved up to a T rating because I have an unfortunately sick mind and some rather gruesome things come up. If you would like to skip over the disgusting images as you are squeamish, I will be accommodating to all my readers and you can just scroll to the bottom where there is a summary of the chapter so you won't have missed a thing.

All I wanted was to live in the infirmary, was that too much to ask? When Madam Pomfrey wasn't looking I would take out the schedule Sirius had given me from under my pillow and stare at it, considering how much longer I could pretend I was ill. Life was good in the infirmary, I got little homework and lots of chocolates from various friends. Kaise visited me every day and went through the schemes we had been setting up, keeping me updated on their progress or outcome. She generally avoided the topic of Malignatious.

I seriously considered it, the entire easter holiday I spent recuperating in there. I could get all my meals from the house elves, and learn from the bed. Maybe once I had learnt everything, I could become a teacher. I would bring my whole class into the infirmary and draw the curtains and expand the room like my dad did once with one of the forts we used to make with sheets. I would use the muffliato charm so that Madam Pomfrey wouldn't get angry at me for disturbing her students, except I wouldn't be calling her 'Madam Pomfrey', she'd be Poppy. My students would think I was terribly eccentric and cool, looking at me with the same idolatry they did Spriteworth. Except for the Slytherins, but there was no pleasing them.

And maybe Kaise and I would get married and in this bed and we could have kids who'd grow up in Hogwarts because I'd be a teacher there, and they would learn all the secrets of the castle I never did because I was living in the infirmary and give just as many teachers hell as I had.

Or maybe, even better, Lily would feel bad for the bedridden boy who had exhibited affection for her and Kaise would fall in love with another invalid instead and Lily and I would get married and we could live in the infirmary together and most importantly, I would never have to face Felix and these blasted Quidditch practices.

But I couldn't live in the infirmary. I knew when I awoke to the flustering of Madam Pomfrey and a dreadful wailing that came not from the feminine mouth it should have been, but instead a poor, frightened boy. I sat up in bed, slightly faint still from the fever, to see laid out on the bed beside mine the mess of what I thought was a boy.

He was naked apart from a pair of briefs and shuddering perhaps from the drafty castle or maybe from the awful thing that had been done to him. I had to reach for my glasses- which I rarely needed- to make sure what I was seeing was correct. I recoiled as I realised what I was seeing. The skin on the entire left side of the boy's body was either so thin the muscles could be seen through it or just plain gone, ripped off his body so he looked somehow more naked than he did just simply undressed. His muscles still pumped and blood still flowed, though some spurted from the ripped skin on his left side and formed a layer of crusted brown, caking the wound and giving him back some dignity.

I turned away, removing the glasses, wanting to gag. I could still hear the wailing though, the gurgling of pain from behind me that made me want to run to greenhouse two and tear every mandrake from their roots so that maybe then their screams could drown out the pain. It was enough to make a person go mad, listening to the horrendous agony that tore through the muted afternoon. It seemed to suck all the energy from the room just to wrestle out, leaving everything in its wake darker and deflated.

I heard a dreadful shushing and cooing of a girl as the sound persisted, growing louder despite the desperate efforts, the shaking sobs and surely cringing touches and yet such a softness. I turned again to see a small girl by the boy's side as Madam Pomfrey ran from his side to one of her cabinets to find whatever could help him. She looked terrified and yet she stayed and stroked the hair that still remained thankfully atop his scalp, I don't know how I would have reacted to an exposed brain.

The girl had short, pixie like hair and a gentle face, and though something about her looked too awfully small to possibly be strong enough to bear such a sight, she remained adamantly beside the ragged boy as he yelped and whimpered at whatever Madam Pomfrey was dabbing on him.

"What happened, my girl?" she was asking the girl beside him, who was still looking at him with pity, stroking his hair despite the blood that stained the sleeves of her shirt. She wasn't wearing a robe, just the grey skirt some girls wore underneath and her shirt, a Gryffindor tie having been pulled down hurriedly so that it hung wonkily at her collarbone. She was speaking rapidly but calmly.

"I found him lying on the floor outside the greenhouses, so I levitated him here as fast as I could, he was wearing a yellow tie when I found him, I think it's Frank Longbottom, miss, he's a second year hufflepuff,"

"And what's your name girl?"

"Alice Fletcher," she said with confidence, gladly taking some of the ointment Madam Pomfrey had offered her and helping her rub it tenderly into the thin layers of the boy's skin, causing it to thicken and turn a healthy pink colour.

"There's nothing this stuff can do about the other parts, it can only make the skin thicken, not grow outwards. I'm going to have to stitch it." Alice nodded, waiting patiently as she grabbed a needle and flesh-coloured thread. I wanted to turn away as Madam Pomfrey brought the needle to flesh, but I couldn't stop staring. She began to stitch long lines, not pulling them taut but leaving them just tight enough to form a film over his organs, making the sight somewhat less gruesome. Frank screamed with renewed fervor, unable to keep the animalistic screeches from tearing from his lips and piercing the ears of us all. I noticed others in the infirmary watching on with pity.

Before long, Alice had taken up a second needle and threaded it, passing it perhaps even more softly through Frank's skin so he managed to hold back the yells and only let out groans now and then. She worked quickly with the healer, the two of them soon turning him over and working on his back, and then over again to stitch up the mangled parts of his face.

Soon, Frank Longbottom's entire body looked stitched, like a fraying doll. The two women stood back and admired their handiwork as Frank groaned quietly, his newly-sewn eyes closed as much as his threaded lids would allow. He looked much more like himself, but still a monstrosity.

Madam Pomfrey raised her wand then and began to mutter the longest incantation I had ever heard. Immediately the screaming restarted as Frank began to writhe, the threads melting and steaming as they reacted with his skin, becoming part of it, joining with the other threads and strengthening, moulding skin where it had been missing.

Suddenly, Madam Pomfrey's eyebrows furrowed and widened as the remaining threads began to tear themselves from Frank's skin with a twang. They carried on, twang, twang, twang, until nearly his entire abdomen was exposed and Madam Pomfrey remembered what she was doing. She began to shout the spell, weaving certain words and spells I knew, I had used them to counter Malignatious' dark magic. Her wand shot out with bright white which seemed to spread and encompass her entire body until she was a ball of light and energy, spreading over Frank as well and causing all the threads left to form skin and spread right up until the final edges met and they both collapsed, exhausted.

Madam Pomfrey dragged herself to a chair and sat as Alice hurried to grab a glass of water from a jug by another patient's bed and brought it back over to her. She drank it thankfully and reached for another, but Alice looked back to find she'd already finished it. I grabbed my wand off the side of my bed.

"Aguamenti," I said, sending a small stream of water into the glass, which Madam Pomfrey gulped down thankfully.

"Mr Potter, I'm sure the teachers at Hogwarts would appreciate it if you learnt sixth-year spells in you sixth year."

"But then you wouldn't have had any water, Miss," I said innocently, winking at Alice. She smiled politely in acknowledgement of my joke, but she didn't seem impressed like other girls would be. She wasn't challenging either, she just had no desire to be anything to me other than a friend. It was refreshing.

"What happened just now?" she asked, turning back to Madam Pomfrey, whose panting had stilled.

"What I just used was Fleshfibre, a healing thread which turns into stitches. Only particularly good healers can use it right, but not because of the stitching, because of the complicated spells that follow. It's hard but very effective, but this time it wasn't working. It was like the body didn't want to be healed, so it cut the chords. It felt like dark magic, if I'm telling the truth."

"Then what did you do to make him better?" I asked, still trying to blink away the spots from behind my eyelids burned there from Madam Pomfrey's light just a few minutes ago.

"Even good magic can be dangerous. To increase Mr Longbottom's health, I needed to give him some of my own. I have to lie down now, I must rest," she said, excusing herself from the room and leaving me and Alice to look at Frank, peacefully asleep as if nothing had happened, his skin perhaps a little pinker then usual. Alice kindly took the blanket from the foot of the bed where he had kicked it and pulled it over him, then proceeded to sit in the chair beside the bed where Madam Pomfrey had just been.

"You're staying?" I asked, confused.

"Frank helps me with Herbology sometimes in the library. I want to make sure he's Ok."

"You were amazing," I said, and for once I meant it with absolute sincerity, I wasn't just saying it because she was an attractive girl. I was saying it because I was truly inspired by her unshaken hands as she literally sewed a boy back together again, confidently and with a beautiful care.

"What are you and Kaise doing?" she asked immediately. I was taken aback by the abruptness of the question and it took me a few moments to gather my thoughts.

"What?" I finally asked.

"I'm Kaise Sommerson's roommate, and I sit next to her in Dark Arts," her eyes flicked momentarily to the door behind which Madam Pomfrey had disappeared but she didn't appear to have heard that the students were no longer calling it Defence, "She's doing something, stopping his spells or whatever. It's been driving him nuts. He's been on edge all the time lately, looking over his shoulder, his spells becoming more rash," her eyes wondered down to Frank.

No.

But of course, why else would dark magic interfere with Madam Pomfrey's healing? Because dark magic caused the wound. Frank Longbottom was one of the sweetest boys in my year, but he was still not the brightest sneakoscope on the shelf. And he tended to stumble over his words. If he met Malignatious outside the greenhouses in the state Kaise and I had put the teacher in, it was unlikely he would get away with it unscathed.

And Frank Longbottom had looked very much scathed.

"You think...?" I asked Alice in a frightened voice, wincing as she nodded sincerely. It was our fault this had happened, me and Kaise's. I felt sick as the realisation struck me over the head. We had unhinged the professor hoping that he would slip up, do something horrible and drastic and we could go running to Dumbledore or better the Ministry and he would be fired, leaving all of us in peace. But of course, all of this meant that he had to do something drastic, and I had never considered what that would be.

I had never considered that Malignatious would hurt somebody, not just choke them but properly hurt them. After what I had just witnessed however, I knew I had been stupid. Of course, the teacher who was evil to the core would have no trouble torturing a student, the man's soul was too fragmented for a conscience. Of course our actions would therefore lead him to hurt someone like I had just seen, and we could do nothing about it.

When he had hurt Davey Gudgeon, poor Davey had been too afraid to tell anybody lest Malignatious seek to reprimand him, and therefore nothing could be done. It would be the same in the case of Frank Longbottom.

So I couldn't live in the infirmary. I had to get out of bed and finish what I had started, get rid of this horrible teacher for good. After what I had just seen, such things couldn't wait another minute. I got out of bed and grabbed the robes that laid folded on my bedside table. They were the robes from when I first came into the infirmary a month ago. I had wasted too much time indulging myself. The holidays had been over for a week. I had things to do, I had to stop being selfish.

I had to think of Felix and the Falmouth Falcons, I had to go to the Quidditch practices and make up what I'd missed to give him the chance of playing for the team of his dreams before the season ended and he had nothing but a few lower-than-average NEWTs to fall back on and no backup plan.

I had to think of Remus and get back to trying to become an animagus, to go back to work with Sirius and Peter so we could help our friend not tear himself to shreds every month.

I had to think of humanity, and find a way to put Malignatious behind the unforgiving bars of Azkaban.

With this new resolve, I changed quickly, smirking at the blushing Alice Fletcher for a moment, and strode out the room and towards my dorm, ready to pick up where I'd left off.

Summary for the squeamish among you: Frank Longbottom was brought in after being cursed with dark magic causing a large wound. Alice Longbottom sat by him. She made James realise that the wound was the work of Malignatious and that he just couldn't sit around in the infirmary, he had to make things right. The chapter ends with his walking out the infirmary.

A/N: Hello readers, sorry for putting you through that horrible imagery but I swear it was necessary. Nothing will ever be as horrible as that again, I promise, don't stop reading! I am getting rid of Malignatious soon, I promise, so stay tuned! My exams finish next week and then I'm all yours.