Chapter Nineteen: The Trio
Their odd 'suicide pact' of sorts seemed to work. After the potions lab with Snape, the two would wander the less visited halls of the dungeon for a few minutes and check in with each other. Harry was surprised to find that he could actually talk to Draco, perhaps because the other boy didn't expect anything from him, and he was just as messed up as Harry. Draco never looked at Harry with that sad, sympathetic smile that the others did, Harry didn't have to worry about upsetting him.
The whole group that came to the potions lab seemed to have some type of understanding. They rarely talked about 'real' things, but Eliza made jokes about panic attacks, and Ava casually mentioned night terrors, and they all pretended it was normal.
Soon Harry felt comfortable enough to joke with them, finding their dark senses of humor easy to fall into.
One afternoon when Harry had messed up a potion he was brewing, Snape reviewed the steps with him to discover what had gone wrong. "You waited until the solution was violet to add the fairy wings?" A nod. "And you stirred clockwise four times before reducing the temperature?"
That had been where Harry went wrong. "Erm, no… I stirred counterclockwise twice… then I realized the mistake and stirred it clockwise six times to make up the difference." Harry admitted.
"And did that seem like a wise alternative?" Snape pressed further, his manor frustrated, but not unkind.
Harry shrugged "better than suicide." He offered.
The rest of the group burst into giggles, Snape glowered at him for a moment, but then also broke into a grin. Or as close as Snape could come to a grin. "Touche Mr. Potter" he said with a smirk as he set about showing Harry how to fix the healing drought.
Ron and Hermoine were another story. Harry did his best to act happy and rambunctious, the way Ron did, but they seemed to see through it. One day as they sat by the lake, enjoying the last warm rays of sunshine for the year, Hermione confronted him.
"Harry" she said hurriedly, as she often spoke when she was worried she wouldn't be allowed to finish. "Ronald and I are concerned about you." Ron shot her a look, but she shook her head. "Yes, I'm drawing you into this. I know you didn't want me to say anything, but we both agreed that he is acting strange!"
Harry gulped, waiting for the worst. "I'm fine " he tried to say, but his friend cut him off.
"Listen to her mate, she's been fretting about this all week."
Hermione shot Ron a sort of thankful but annoyed glance. "Harry, I know you are a private person, and it's fine if you don't want to rehash this whole summer over and over again… but we feel like you've been trying to play a role… like you're pretending around us." She paused, seeming as though she was trying to gauge Harry's reaction to her words. "We just want you to know you can be yourself around us, even if it isn't always the happy and brave version you show everyone else. And we won't pester you about how you are doing, or ask you to share your feelings all the time, unless you want to."
Harry sighed, then smiled at his friends. Maybe I can be myself just a bit around them, he thought cautiously. They don't need to know about the nightmares or anything… They just want me to be myself again. "Thank you Mione, I'm sorry if I've seemed fake… I guess it's just been hard being back at school, with everyone knowing everything… I just wanted everyone to think I was okay."
Hermione beamed "I know Harry, but we aren't everyone. You need some people who you can be yourself around."
"Thanks Mione" he muttered, turning back to his transfiguration essay and hoping that she would let that be the end of the conversation, which she did.
One Saturday during practice as Harry soared high, scanning for the snitch, his vision started to blur. Harry sighed, and pulled a few of the caffeine pills out of his cloak, swallowing them dry. These things are a godsend. He thought to himself as he resumed his search.
He had been surprised when a fifth year ravenclaw approached him during the third week of school. He introduced himself as Peter, and said he had something he thought that Harry might be interested in.
Harry still wasn't sure how Peter had known that he needed the caffeine pills. At first he had worried that one of his dorm mates had been spreading rumors about his nightmares, or had noticed his odd sleeping habits. But he was desperate enough to take the pills anyway, and once he started taking them, he couldn't stop.
Harry finally caught sight of the small golden sphere hovering around Ron's ear, and shot towards it. Halfway across the pitch Harry heard a rushing in his ears, why is it dark out already?
The next time he opened his eyes he was hurtling through the air, the rest of the team screaming and rushing towards him. With only a second to spare Harry grabbed his broom and veered upward, succeeding in slowing his fall to a hard stumble.
Within seconds the team was around him. Ron was at his side, with the twins and Angela close behind.
"What happened mate? Are you alright? Bloody hell you scared us!"
Harry gulped and nodded "I'm, I'm fine." His heart was still racing, but he couldn't risk being sent to the hospital wing. He hadn't asked, so he didn't know for sure, but he was fairly certain that Madam Pomfrey would not approve of the use of caffeine pills. And he could only imagine how Sirius and Remus would react.
Angela was at his side now, peering into his eyes. "Did you black out Potter?" She asked seriously.
He shook his head quickly. "No, I um… I just skipped off my broom, I saw the snitch and I got ahead of myself. Sorry I scared everyone." He glanced around at his team, seeing their worried expressions and hoping that he could calm their fears.
Angela nodded "okay, well… let's call it a day then. It's almost the end of our practice time anyway." She paused and gave Harry another long look. "You're sure you're okay? You don't need to go to the hospital wing to get looked over?"
Harry shook his head and stood up "Nope, I'm fine really I promise." He flashed her his 'savior of the wizarding world's smile, and started back towards the locker rooms.
I guess I need to be more careful before practice, he thought ruefully to himself as he changed, hoping that his heart would slow down soon.
The pills became a real problem, the more problems that they caused, the more Harry seemed to need them. Soon walking up a flight of stairs caused him to be winded and his heart to race. God forbid he tried to run somewhere, he started seeing spots after a few minutes.
Hermione noticed his hands shaking one day in class, and he had to think quickly to throw her off. Thankfully she supplied him with an excuse.
"Have they changed any of your medications recently?" She asked after class, her voice full of concern. "Because some of the muggle antidepressants have side effects like tremors, so maybe magical ones do too…"
Harry ran a hand through his hair, as he was thinking. "Um, yeah… Lou has been changing things around recently. She mentioned that this might happen, but it's supposed to go away in a couple of weeks…" that seemed to convince her because Hermione gave him a sympathetic hug and reminded him that if it got too bad he should tell Lucy.
Two months into school, their new defence teacher finally seemed to notice Harry, and not in a good way. It was his own fault, he got fed up with her one morning when she continued to refuse to teach them anything of use. Exhaustion and anxiety made him brave and reckless.
"When are you going to teach us something useful?" He murmured after her instruction to simply read another chapter of their dull text.
Her beady toad eyes pierced into him. "What was that, Mr. Potter?" She asked in her girly, breathless voice.
Harry clenched his fist, in an instant deciding not to back down. "I asked, when are you going to start teaching us how to actually defend ourselves?"
She stepped forward towards him, her smile growing wider. "And what, mister Potter, would you possibly need to defend yourself from?"
"I don't know, um, Voldemort?" He snapped with an eye roll.
She stepped forward, her prim pink sweater scratching against his arm now. "Mr. Potter, it would seem that you have a problem with telling the truth. The ministry has assured us that He-who-shall-not-be-named, is dead, and will stay dead." She smirked again. "I think detention, for the rest of the week, should help to teach you the price of your lies."
Harry stood in front of Umbridge's office that night at 6:58, cursing himself for mouthing off. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Remus and Sirius knew he had a detention, and Draco had even warned him before this that Umbridge wasn't someone to mess with. The Slytherin had been in more detentions with her than anyone else.
He knocked lightly, and entered after hearing the professor's soft, snake like voice call him in.
"Well Mr. Potter, I am glad to see that punctuality isn't another lesson you'll need to be taught." She commented smugly.
Harry chose not to respond, words were what had gotten him into this mess after all.
Umbridge was not phased. She nodded towards the desk that sat in the far corner of the obnoxiously pink room, facing a wall of magical cat plates. "You'll be writing lines tonight Mr. Potter."
Harry hurried past her and collapsed into the chair, thankful to be seated. He pulled a quill out of his bag and looked back at the professor, "What would you like me to write professor?" He asked politely.
But Umbridge was interrupting him. "No Harry, I think I'll have you use one of my quills… It might help the message to sink in better."
Harry hesitantly took the offered quill "Okay…"
"As for what you should write, I think given the events of this afternoon, perhaps 'I must not tell lies' would be most appropriate." She smirked, "From what I read over the summer, that is a lesson you've been struggling with for a while."
Harry blanched, his heart almost stopped. She can't mean… oh bloody hell… He glared down at parchment, forcing his face to remain neutral. "Erm, professor," He asked quietly, "I don't have any ink…"
Umbridge's smirk grew wider, almost falling off her face, as she turned back to her desk and turned her attention to a stack of essays. "I think you will find that the quill supplies ink on it's own."
Harry stared at her for a moment, then set the quill tip to the parchment. As he dragged the quill into the shape of an "I" he felt a prickling across his left hand. He dropped the quill to scratch his hand, surprised to see a small red line and a droplet of blood prickled against his skin. When he examined the back of his hand he noticed that the mark which had appeared from thin air, matched the mark on the parchment, which appeared to be written in dark red ink.
"Is something amiss, Mr. Potter" Umbridge asked, looking smug as ever.
Harry gulped, forcing down the dread building up in his stomach. "No Professor, nothing at all."