Harry Potter and the Year he Broke Free
Chapter Seventeen: Potions
After slaving away for almost an hour, Harry finally corked the top on the bottle of his concoction. Wiping sweat off his brow, he put it up to the light and smiled, admiring his handiwork. The potion shimmered a brilliant purple against the light, and the grin that spread across his features felt like the first one in months.
"Harry, are you- are you done?" asked Neville in disbelief, almost choking from the grey matter congealing at the bottom of his cauldron.
He turned to face him, and nodded before turning back to the lemon on his chopping board, adding, "I'd restart if I were you. Snape won't give you anything for that."
The other boy sighed heavily, and picked up his cauldron, promptly burning his hands on the scalding-hot metal. He cried out in pain as it blistered his skin, attracting the attention of everyone in the class.
"Hey, slow down! I can just vanish it!" Harry swished his wand, and the sloppy mess in the cauldron disappeared. He delved around in his bag until he found what he was looking for. "Burn solution. Rub it on the burns, once every hour. Should be gone within two, depending on how bad it is."
Neville looked at the small bottle Harry had just set down on the table, and after deciding to trust him uncorked it, and rubbed it on his sore palms. The strange yellow goop soothed the burns, and Neville squeaked happily.
"Woah, it actually worked!"
Harry smirked. "Well duh. Do you need any help with your potion? I think last time you added too many-"
"Mr Potter, I will thank you if you stop doing my job for me. Longbottom, 10 points from Gryffindor for being a disgrace to this school, and you can remake the potion with no guidance." Snape was leering above them, lips curled back in distaste. "Potter, what are you laughing about? Have you finished?"
Harry frowned, and gestured to the (in his opinion) impeccable draught for headaches. It was sitting innocently on his workbench, and was swiped up almost immediately by the haughty potions professor. He examined it, greasy locks swinging far too close to the pristine bottle for his liking.
"Not bad," he growled, and then slunk away to go and pick on some more students.
"The greasy git, that potion was perfect!" mumbled Harry under his breath. Why did Snape have such a grudge against him? At least he didn't take points away this time. He turned back to poor Neville, and began blatantly instructing him, not bothering to keep quiet. Some of the class looked quite surprised at Harry's civility towards Neville, but quickly snapped back to their own potions when Snape began doing his rounds. Ron looked to be in a spot of trouble - his was smoking ominous pink steam. Probably not enough counter-clockwise stirs, thought Harry. Easy to correct with just turning the fire up, but why should he tell him that?
Hermione's was shaping up nicely, but Harry noticed the dull, green tint to the potion. Marks would definitely be taken off for it, but pretty much a prefect potion apart from that. Again, easy to correct with some bat spit, but why should he bother telling her? Besides, that's a beginner's mistake. Surely she would've noticed that off sheen by now? However, Hermione was completely oblivious, still stirring in chameleon scales.
After giving Neville a good head-start, Harry sliced his lemon in half deftly, and squeezed it into the potion. He never bothered measuring this - eyeballing it always worked fairly well. It made the potion sweet with a tart undertone at the same time, a combination of flavours that he enjoyed. It had taken quite a bit of trial and error to get it right (resulting in more than one explosion) but it was so worth it. It made the potion easier to stomach for sure. Next, the Dewstone was grounded in a mortar and pestle, then sprinkled it into the potion. Only two pinches, though, or the whole lot would be ruined.
Neville watched him curiously, then raised his eyebrows when the deep purple of the potion turned into a lighter, almost magenta. Harry scooped some of the mixture into some more bottles, and pocketed them.
"Harry, what're you doing? It doesn't say anything about that stuff on the board..." he trailed off into silence, thinking he'd missed an instruction.
"I'd like to know that too," Snape said smoothly. He was standing behind Harry, arms folded tightly. "Well?"
"Makes it easier to stomach," said Harry simply, neutral expression fixed back onto his face. "Lemon makes it sweeter, Dewstone makes it smoother."
Snape raised an eyebrow. "Surely you don't intend to take your own experimental concoction? I'm afraid I can't condone this - children shouldn't brew their own potions." Despite his words promising sincerity, the crocodile-like grin unfurling across his face convinced Harry otherwise.
"Then come and test it. I've made this a million times; I assure you it is completely safe."
"How dare you order me around? Your head has appeared to have grown in disproportionate volumes to accumulate your enlarged ego. Tell me, would you like to be the teacher instead? You're certainly cocky enough to think so."
Harry scoffed. Why was he being such a dick? Fine then, if Snape wanted Harry to take over, he would do so gladly. "Sure. First of all, Ron, your potion is smoking like that from not enough counter-clockwise stirs. Turn up the heat and you should be fine. Now, Hermione-"
"Get out of my classroom, Potter, before I kick you out myself! 20 points from Gryffindor!" Snape snarled, eyes glittering madly as spit frothed at the corner of his mouth.
Harry smirked. "But I'm right. And I make a damn better teacher than you ever will. See ya, this class blows anyway. I won't be coming back." And with that, Harry cleared the remains of the potion from his cauldron, shrunk it, stuffed it in his bag and strode out.
Ah shit. He'd lasted an hour at least, Harry reminded himself. Snape had been getting on his nerves with his incessant hissing, always picking on students like Neville whose only problems were lack of confidence, which was thanks to that plonker. All of that stuff he'd been spouting about playing it cool and just suffering through his lessons had just been thrown out the window, and he wasn't in any mood to retrieve them. No doubt McGonagall would force him to, probably backed up by some stupid bill the ministry had just passed. Harry wanted a word with the Minister, and about how he was dooming all of them to an eternity of misery if he didn't start taking his claims about You-Know-Who returning seriously.
At least he got some more headache draught out of it. Harry turned the handle to the familiar Room of Requirement, and practically fell into his room. It was good to be home - or his home away from home. The Shrieking Shack was where he felt the safest. Turning to the rack of bottles of all shapes and sizes he'd mounted on the wall, Harry began placing sorting all of the bottles methodically, checking his stock. He had headache draught, some dreamless sleep potion (bit pointless really), burn ointment, a potion that got rid of inflammation, pepper-up, blood-replenishing, bone-repairing, and a few other various healing potions. It was always good to be prepared.
The teachers were probably going to request more meetings, try and compromise with him and make him behave. But he was getting quite fed up of that. Sooner or later they would realise it was pointless trying to control him, because he would be a few steps ahead of them. Hopefully. The room he was supposed to be staying in had been vacant all week, and Harry was shocked they hadn't already pegged he wasn't sticking to the terms him and McGonsie agreed. Dumbles would have probably put some sort of way to spy on him, the pervert. Probably Ron and Hermione, who he suspected had been following him all week. Except Harry would bargain he knew the most secret passageways in the school, and often spent nights exploring them. Well, he wasn't sleeping, so what else was he supposed to do?
Harry lived off pepper-up potions these days, since he was unable to sleep. And he didn't really want to. The nightmares, then the cutting that ensued... he would rather skip that. But skipping sleep wasn't a wise idea. Sometimes he could barely stop himself from falling asleep. He could get away with naps, although there was still a chance he would wake up screeching.
Relieving the emotions bottled up inside through cutting had become a daily habit, and there was rarely a day he didn't do it. Only five days back here, and he was already struggling. Great. At least the Christmas holidays were a mere week away, and he had quidditch tomorrow. Maybe Harry would chance getting a good night's sleep: the team would never forgive him if he lost this game. He had a lot to prove to a lot of people, mostly that he wasn't some slob making money off his name who fancied going for an extended holiday, drinking and doing drugs by day and shagging by night. Well, there was a little of that, but not much... a lot more of it was training and studying. Speaking of training, he needed a good workout, to clear his head. Unfortunately, that was becoming more and more of a struggle. He couldn't do much from fatigue and lack of sleep, and it frustrated him.
Harry knew he would have to tell someone eventually. About the dreams, the cutting, everything, otherwise how would it ever get fixed? But part of him still insisted that it could still sort itself out. Being alone before meant that he could ignore it, pretend that everyone lost the contents of their stomach whenever they felt panicked. But being around everyone else had reminded him how odd he really was. How different to all of the other people his age. He'd experienced far more than they ever probably would in their entire lifetimes, lost so many people. Not every teen was antagonised by Voldemort on a yearly-basis.
Hogwarts had made everything worse. Would it have killed them to release him back into the world, where he desperately wanted to be?
He knew that soon people would notice. Glamours weren't always guaranteed, and there were plenty of times that they had broken under moments of stress. And Harry knew he had probably lost some weight on account of him not being able to keep his meals down. How long before someone twigged? And what happened when they all found out the horrible truth - Harry Potter was nothing more than a weak shell of a human, unable to do anything without freaking out. The Prophet was right. Maybe he had gone mad.
Whatever was going on with him (it was pointless to deny it at this point) Harry would search in every book and resource he could get his hands on for the disease, or condition, that was ruining his life. Only when he was at his wit's end would he reveal the truth to someone else. Harry had learnt that relying on people only made things worse. What if they blabbed your secrets, or were only using you for information? He wouldn't trust anyone with his deepest secrets; much safer to keep them locked away where only you can see them.
Harry set his alarm for one hour, and bunked down in his bed. He may as well get some extra sleep when he had the chance - hopefully he could loosen his dependence on pepper-up potions if he managed to replace it with actual rest. His body needed time to repair. If only his mind could get the message.
"H-Harry? What are y-you doing?" squeaked Hermione, cowering in the corner of the room. There were tear-tracks down her cheeks, and she stared back at him in fear, wide-eyed.
"Harry mate, calm down... you-you're not yourself, alright? Just put the wand down, okay?" said Ron, stepping in front of him. His arms were splayed out, clearly trying to block his view of the girl crumpled in the corner, now resignedly sobbing on the ground.
Harry laughed, his usual snicker replaced with a high, cold laugh. It rang out in the air like clanging bells. Almost symbolic, like they meant something. "Oh Ron, did you really believe I would forgive you? After all you've done? And Hermione, get up and face me. I want to kill you and see it."
She responded by wailing even louder, rocking herself as the tears flooded down her face.
"I warned you," he whispered softly. Then, twirled his wand, and brought the girl down in front of him on her knees. She was pulled by her neck, body twitching and convulsing as she tried her best to escape. Hermione was thrown to his feet, barely able to look him in the eyes. Ron was frozen in place, unable to move - Harry had already taken care of him. He could watch as his beloved mudblood was murdered at his feet.
"Say sorry, and I'll let you go." he told her kindly.
She lifted her shaking head, and looked him square in the face. "No... no you won't..." she mumbled slowly. "Ron! Escape, escape-"
But that was all she got out. Harry had snarled in rage, and whipped his wand, at the same time saying those dreaded words that had claimed so many. "Avada Kedarva!"
How dare she oppose him! He was showing her mercy by not having killed her on the spot immediately. Or not. He wanted her to suffer, like Harry had. Ron's eyes filled with tears, and they spilled down his face silently as Hermione crumpled to the floor. He was helpless, only able to stand and watch as his former best friend killed his replacement.
Oh, it was wonderful. The utter terror and loss painted on Ron Weasley's face brought unimaginable pleasure to him. Harry smiled. "Now you know how it feels, Ron. To have someone you care about be taken from you. How arrogant of you to assume you knew what I was feeling when Cedric died. You were wrong, weren't you?"
Harry nodded, grabbing Ron's head and pulling it up and down stiffly, making him copy his movements. "Very wrong indeed."
He stepped over Hermione, kicking her hand out of the way. Could she have died without sprawling all over the floor? Harry looked at her with contempt, something Ron didn't miss. He struggled against the spell Harry had cast over him, finally breaking free.
"YOU BASTARD-" he exploded, only getting out two words before Harry slashed his wand through the air like a sword. A deep cut appeared on Ron's throat, dribbling small beads of blood until the warm crimson spilt out of the wound in great crashing waves. Ron made an odd choking noise, and slumped to the floor, his motionless body falling a good distance away from Hermione's. His hand creeped over to her lifeless form, inching closer and closer until his heartbeat finally gave out. His eyes lay open, the clear blue irises reflecting Hermione's cold form.
Oh, how poetic, thought Harry. Two young lovers (c'mon, it was pretty obvious at this point) who never got to admit their feelings for each other before they died. Harry laughed, his uncontrolled shrieks growing louder and louder.
Suddenly, his stomach dropped. What had he done? He lifted his gaze to the two bodies lying feet away from each other, barely able to look at what he'd done. He backed up into the corner, cowering as he let his head fall into his hands. Why? What? What came over him? How could he do this? His best friends! He- he fucking murdered them, and enjoyed it! Harry could only imagine Mrs Weasley's face when she got the news her son had been killed, and by Harry, who was like family to him. He should be locked up - thrown in Azkaban, or a mental hospital. What was wrong with him?
The trilling of his alarm clock pulled him out of his dream so fast that Harry stumbled when he sprung from his bed. His stomach twisted, and Harry could feel himself itching to expel the contents of his stomach. Harry stumbled over to the bathroom, clutching his middle, praying he'd get there fast enough. He finally collapsed over the toilet, and clung to the sides of the bowl as he heaved. Soon, he had finished (there wasn't much to get rid of) and collapsed into the tiles of the wall beside him.
Tears clouded his vision as he fell dejectedly into the cool wall, settling his head against it. It was nice against his forehead, which was slick with sweat. His heart was pounding wildly, and his stomach was still shuddering from throwing up. It was a common ache these days. His head was throbbing, scar burning painfully. He'd have to find a spell or potion to fix that.
But the dream... it had felt so real... he could still imagine saying the words, calling Hermione that- that word, hear the soft flump of their bodies collapsing against the floor. It was absolutely horrible. And Harry had enjoyed it, revelled in the chaos of it all. It was sick, twisted. He was twisted.
It was all too much. Harry couldn't handle it. He wanted to- had to- in a frantic hurry, his trembling hands fumbled about on the counter, until he felt the blade nick his finger. Blood was littered in a small stream from the tip of his index finger to the immaculate surface of the blade. He tightened his grip around it, and lifted up the sleeve of his robes, pulling it across the already-scarred tissue on his forearm.
It was going to get everywhere - the blood - and Harry was past caring. It trickled down onto his robes, staining the pristine white of his shirt. Once wasn't enough. He lost control, slicing his skin in indecipherable patterns, some cuts deep, and some barely scratching the surface. He moaned, letting his head drop back onto the wall again as he felt the stabbing pain of the incisions on his arm. But it was a good pain: one he craved desperately. Waves of bliss rolled over him, smothering the thought of that awful dream completely. He let the razor-blade fall from his grasp, clinking satisfyingly onto the floor of the bathroom, and a smiled spread slowly across his face. He stood up shakily, letting his blood fall freely. Harry ambled into his room, and pushed the book and quills and papers stacked up high off his desk, where they tumbled to the ground.
Again, his emotions swung dangerously. Why had he done that? He would regret it later, especially when he had to pick it up. Harry moved over to his wardrobe, and began to listlessly tug items of clothing from his wardrobe and throw them around his room. Baring his teeth, he grabbed the stupid dress robes and chucked them across his bed. The letter fluttered out of the hanger, and Harry grabbed it and tore it to shreds. The Christmas ball can kiss my ass, he thought as he growled in frustration. He stormed around his room, unsure of what to do next. The dresser was pulled apart and destroyed, and Harry yelled and cussed at the top of his lungs. The mirror showed him, seething with rage, pale and sweaty, deep purple shadows smeared under his sparking green eyes. His arm was still stained with red, and Harry cried out, pushing all of his emotion into one punch.
His fist collided painfully with the reflective glass, shattering it. Small shards were littered all over the carpet, mingling with the torn paper and broken quills. Items of clothing were strewn about the room, and feathers were still up in the air. Harry had attacked the bed, upturning the frame and bursting the pillows. Looking down, Harry saw his own outfit stretched and ripped in places, stained with blood. His alarm clock was still ticking away uselessly, a large dent in its steel top. Harry's magic, along with his unpredictable, uncontrollable emotions had fuelled his rage, making him twice as destructive. At least that's what he'd observed the previous few times this had happened.
Harry sighed, kneading his head in his hands. Oh Merlin, why did he do that? It seemed like the fifth time he'd asked himself that in the past hour. He could still feel the sting of salty tears clinging to his face, the pain ebbing from his forearm and sore knuckles. His head was throbbing, and he was shaking all over.
He glanced at the clock, and saw it was time for third lesson. Screw it, he was going to blow it off. Harry didn't feel like going to lessons, and could only imagine the kinds of questions his classmates would ask if they saw him like this. Why do you look so tired, Harry? Why are you shaking so badly? All he felt like doing was settling down with a book and collapsing onto his bed. Except his bed was the one that had collapsed, at his hands.
Picking up a book on potions for experienced brewers, Harry pulled a cushion over, slumped into it gratefully, and began to read. The blood smattered on his robes would have to wait, as would the destroyed state of his room. He would deal with everything later.
*I don't own any characters, all rights to J.K. Rowling.
**Hey guys! I'm sorry if this story is progressing slowly, but I'm just having fun writing what I want. Hope you enjoyed! Thanks, Tea33.
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