Requested by ImaginationStories - thank you so much!
I still don't own Harry Potter. Well, I do, but that's just in my dreams, and seeing as I've pinched myself, I'm pretty sure I'm not dreaming. All the bolded words are not my own.
I Must Not Tell Lies
"Well, wasn't that enlightening? Next up, we'll be watching...'I Must Not Tell Lies.'"
At these words, Harry, of course, winced, to let everyone know that he was not looking forward to the next scene.
"Harry," Ginny asked, because she was his girlfriend and felt obligated to ask. Also, of course, everyone needed to know why the Chosen One had winced at the title, so she was the one to ask. "What's wrong? What does that mean?"
"I must not tell lies," Hermione whispered dramatically, and her eyes grew wide and she said, "Oh!" thus furthering other audience members' needs to know what had happened.
"Harry, mate?" Neville Longbottom inquired.
"You'll see," Harry said, his voice a bit quieter than normal, sounding mysterious and unhappy.
Now the audience turned to the screen, as if realizing that they would've found out faster if they'd just watched to begin with.
She was watching him with her head slightly to one side, still smiling widely, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking and was waiting to see whether he would start shouting again. With a massive effort Harry looked away from her, dropped his schoolbag beside the straight-backed chair, and sat down.
"Who's this 'she?'" asked George curiously.
"Our least favorite teacher," replied Ron.
"Snape?" George answered. "Wait, Snape's a girl? That's weird, but I'm actually not all that surprised. He always wore his hair long, and - "
"No, Umbridge, you idiot," Angelina said, rolling her eyes a bit, but sounding very affectionate despite her exasperation.
Some other snickered at George's ramblings about Snape being of the female gender.
"Oh," the only living Weasley twin said, flushing as red as his hair and letting everyone wonder just how much blood had rushed to his face. "I guess that also makes sense. Wow, congrats Umbridge. You beat Snape in the worst teacher ever category."
"But that's mostly because Snape redeemed himself," Hermione said pointedly.
"He was always on our side," Harry said in reply, his voice still mysteriously quiet.
"There," said Umbridge sweetly, "we're getting better at controlling our temper already, aren't we? Now, you are going to be doing some lines for me, Mr. Potter. No, not with your quill," she added, as Harry bent down to open his bag. "You're going to be using a rather special one of mine. Here you are."
"This doesn't sound good," Neville muttered, remembering Umbridge particularly vividly.
"I told you it was Umbridge," Angelina said unnecessarily, just because she wanted to feel triumphant.
"Ugh, everyone hated her," Lee Jordan complained.
"Well, not everybody," Ron disagreed, shooting a look at Draco, who'd been on the Inquisitorial Squad.
"What?" the Slytherin huffed. "Joining that squad was expected of me, no matter what my opinion of it was."
"On a different topic, her cat plates freaked me out," Ginny said.
"Oh yes, she was simply infested with Nargles," Luna said agreeably, before smiling at her fiancé.
She handed him a long, thin black quill with an unusually sharp point.
A few of the people who knew about various magical artifacts and who, for some reason, specialized in quills, narrowed their eyes at this description.
"I want you to write 'I must not tell lies,' " she told him softly.
Hermione sucked in a breath, creating even more tension.
Symbolically, almost, the scars baring the faded message seemed to tingle on Harry's palm. Ginny, holding his hand, finally noted the slightly raised and scarred skin, but she could only barely make out the message - but nevertheless, being the bright young witch she was, she connected the dots. She pursed her lips, continuing to watch, desperate for the scene to prove her wrong.
"How many times?" Harry asked, with a creditable imitation of politeness.
"Oh, as long as it takes for the message to sink in," said Umbridge sweetly. "Off you go."
Now more people were connecting the dots; some of Harry's friends who'd seen the scars realized where he'd gotten them, a question that, of course, they'd been wondering about for years, because all of Harry's scars seemed to bear some sort of significance.
Hermione was mumbling furiously, promising to harm Umbridge harmfully when she got the chance to, although that might be difficult, because the annoying toad-like woman was very far away and hard to reach nowadays.
She moved over to her desk, sat down, and bent over a stack of parchment that looked like essays for marking. Harry raised the sharp black quill and then realized what was missing.
"You haven't given me any ink," he said.
"You don't need any," Hermione said sourly, and a few of the people who still hadn't figured things out looked at each other, confused at the witch's bitterness.
"Oh, you won't need ink," said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice.
"SHE WAS ENJOYING IT?" Ron raged suddenly, interrupting the scene and causing a few people to jump.
"Is that really much of a surprise, Ron?" Ginny asked, seeing now that she'd been right - she and Harry would have to have a talk about this later.
"No, but still," her brother said, shaking his hand. "I can't believe it. I have no regrets for what happened to her."
Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies.
He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry's right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel — yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth.
Finally, finally, everything was confirmed. The last few people who hadn't understood what was happening finally got it, and their faces, with the exception of Lucius Malfoy, who was mostly stoic, because Malfoy's didn't show expression - their faces were masks of horror and anger. Harry'd already gone through enough - he didn't need something else unnecessarily cruel.
"That's a Blood Quill," a few of those people who were knowledgeable in the varieties of quills (e.g. Hermione, because she loved to read, and Draco, because he liked to know which quill was the best).
"But I thought those were illegal!" Molly fumed, more to Kingsley, the Minister, than anybody else.
"They should be," came his slow reply. "But knowing how close Umbridge was to Fudge at the the time, I'm sure he was willing to bend a few rules for her rather...sadistic tastes."
"I hate her, hate her, hate hate hate her," Hermione muttered.
"We all do," Lee Jordan corrected.
"And we have the satisfaction of knowing what happens to her!" Insert Awesome Name Here chimed in, eager to be part of the conversation again as she hadn't said anything for a while.
"But Harry, why didn't you say anything to us, mate?" George asked.
"Believe me, we tried to convince him to go see Dumbledore," Ron said with a sigh. "And besides, it's Harry, right? Putting others before himself."
No one else commented on this, even though they were thinking very angry thoughts.
Harry looked around at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile.
"Yes, Ron, we know, she was enjoying it," Harry said.
"Yes?"
"Nothing," said Harry quietly.
He looked back at the parchment, placed the quill upon it once more, wrote I must not tell lies, and felt the searing pain on the back of his hand for a second time; once again the words had been cut into his skin, once again they healed over seconds later.
Cue several incoherent threats and some sentences that should've worried Umbridge about her health, if she could've heard them, which she couldn't have, unless she had super sensitive hearing.
And on it went. Again and again Harry wrote the words on the parchment in what he soon came to realize was not ink, but his own blood. And again and again the words were cut into the back of his hand, healed, and then reappeared the next time he set quill to parchment.
Darkness fell outside Umbridge's window. Harry did not ask when he would be allowed to stop. He did not even check his watch. He knew she was watching him for signs of weakness and he was not go- ing to show any, not even if he had to sit here all night, cutting open his own hand with this quill. . . .
"How awful," Molly muttered. "Honestly, what went wrong with that woman?"
"Anyone know anything about her childhood or anything?" asked Bill curiously; she was clearly much older than him, but he seemed to be able to remember some of the older kids at his time at Hogwarts mentioning Dolores Umbridge's name with a barely suppressed shudder.
"Nope, but that's when the internet steps in!" trilled Insert Awesome Name Here, eager to be of help.
"What's the internet?" asked Draco.
"It's complicated."
"Come here," she said, after what seemed hours.
"Probably was," Harry muttered.
He stood up. His hand was stinging painfully. When he looked down at it he saw that the cut had healed, but that the skin there was red raw.
There were winces of sympathy.
"That woman ought to be arrested," Molly said. "Isn't that child abuse? A form of cruel unusual punishment?"
"Well, that's technically not against wizarding law, if I'm correct," Hermione trailed off. "But yes, she ought to be arrested anyhow."
"She already has been," Insert Dark and Dramatic Name Here said.
"Hand," she said.
He extended it. She took it in her own. Harry repressed a shudder as she touched him with her thick, stubby fingers on which she wore a number of ugly old rings.
"Ugh, everything about Umbridge was ugly," Draco moaned, earning a few stares.
"Yeah," Hermione agreed after a moment.
"Poor Harry," George lamented, "stuck for hours with that old hag...watching her enjoy making him bleed..."
"It wasn't as dramatic as that, George," Harry amended.
"Sure it was," came the redhead's response.
"Tut, tut, I don't seem to have made much of an impression yet," she said, smiling. "Well, we'll just have to try again tomorrow evening, won't we? You may go."
"HARRY JAMES POTTER, YOU MUST REPORT THIS TO DUMBLEDORE AT ONCE," Molly demanded, a bit out of character. She was trying to show her motherly love and also convey how concerned everyone was for the Boy-Who-Lived.
"It's already happened, Mum," Ron said.
"And I'm fine now," Harry added.
"Besides, she got to burn Umbridge badly later on," Hermione added proudly. "Using those exact same words."
"Well, that is the end of that scene," Insert Awesome Name declared. "Wasn't that exciting?"
"Just as exciting as the last one," her brother muttered in a glum fashion that somehow managed to come off intimidating and dramatic. "Next up, we shall we watching...Sectumsempra."
Author's Note: And here's another snippet! Hope it was enjoyable - and if you have any scenes you'd like to see, please let me know. I'll also accept scenes from the Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, or other Harry Potter books not in the main series. Thank you for reading! Any feedback is appreciated.