Indifference Towards Difference || Harry Potter

19 | The Children Of St Anthony's

"I woke up into a nightmare... Life."
Ned Vizzini

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⚠️SELF HARM + SUICIDAL THOUGHTS⚠️

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Lost in darkness.

A growl of words. Something punched through the gloom, a sharp sensation crackling through his nerves like electricity. Harry wanted it to stop.

The darkness held him still.

The cry came again. Determined. This time a sword stabbed through his head. A venomous fang through his arm. Pain, he realised. Harry wanted it to end.

Black tendrils loosened their embrace.

Words, muffled. He was on fire now, burning from the tips of his nerves to the core of his heart. The muscles in his throat groaned. Harry wanted death.

A ribbon of light slithered towards him.

"Ennervate!" Pale lids snapped open. Light hit emerald at full blast.

Harry gasped, a sound that clawed its way out of his mouth. His throat felt as though someone had ripped it apart and then sown it clumsily back together.

"Potter!" Green eyes flickered to black.

Memories slashed through the clinging confines of his unconsciousness.

—a white rose blackening under his touch—

—the praying Matron; he'd thought her a witch, residing close enough—

—the smell of roasting fresh; he'd inhaled the fumes as though they were sanctified ambrosia—

—wonder and awe at his own power; cold laughter amidst dying screams—

Harry retched.

Great, gasping heaves that made his head spin and the world dim and darken.

He hated this, he hated himself; he wanted his stomach to stop churning and his lungs to stop breathing and his heart to stop

beating—

Suddenly firm hands were holding him down, the top part of his body raised a little higher, resting on something that wasn't a hard wooden floor. A potion was being poured down his throat, soft fingers working on the muscles there in a way that forced him to swallow.

Harry wouldn't have minded if it was poison.

Instead, almost instantly, warmth flooded his veins, seeping through his body like the warm waters of a summer sea. Another potion went down, then a third—both of which Harry swallowed voluntarily this time— and the aching pain running through his body lessened to a constant, needle-pricking buzz.

Harry sighed, relaxing against something expensive but refreshingly mint-scented. He felt more human now at least; his fervent wish for death had stopped yelling about in his skull and retreated into a corner for another day.

"Open your eyes, Potter." A voice oddly soft; Harry was sure it ought to be harsher. But it was asking him to... open his eyes? He must have squeezed them shut at some point, but Harry didn't want to open them back up.

"Come on, Potter!" A panicked drawl. Pointed letters. Malfoy. A small jolt, and his skeleton rattled like a maraca. Harry almost whimpered.