Blood for Blood

"Professor Dumbledore did not have me do anything for him," said Oleandra truthfully. "I'm not on anyone's side in particular in this little conflict of yours."

Professor Umbridge narrowed her eyes.

"I would highly suggest that you choose your next words carefully," she spoke softly. "It's not too late for you to do what is right."

"Listen, I'm telling you the truth," said Oleandra irritably. "But if you really must know, I spent most of my summer in a coma inside my coffin, and then I went vacationing in France with my Muggle friends. It's a bit dark underground, you see, and I wanted to get a nice tan before summer ended."

Why was it that Oleandra could only speak the truth, but nobody ever believed her?

"I see," said Professor Umbridge coldly. "Very well then, take a seat next to Mr. Potter. You will do lines: I must not tell lies."

Harry had already noticed that Umbridge hadn't given him ink for his lines, but he'd waited for her to finish speaking with Oleandra to ask for some.

"You haven't given us any ink," he pointed out.

"Oh, you won't need ink," said Professor Umbridge with a small coughing laugh. She handed Oleandra a quill identical to the one she had given Harry.

Oleandra and Harry put their quills against their parchments and wrote: I must not tell lies.

Harry let out a gasp, while Oleandra yelped in pain; the words they had just scratched into the parchment had appeared in red ink, and at the same time, the individual letters had etched themselves on their right hands in shining red welts. Oleandra stared in disbelief at her hand, but the cuts rapidly healed themselves, leaving her perfect jade-like skin good as new.

Unwilling to give Professor Umbridge the satisfaction of seeing them in pain, Oleandra and Harry quickly lowered their heads and began writing the same line over and over again.

As Oleandra continued slowly bleeding herself dry by a thousand cuts, murderous feelings began to arise within her as she imagined herself subjecting Professor— no, she didn't deserve to be called Professor— the Umbridge woman to the worst tortures she could conceive of.

Hours seemed to pass; Oleandra's hand began stinging painfully all the time, not just when she was writing. The letter-shaped wounds seemed to be healing slower and slower, until they finally stopped healing altogether. Blood began flowing freely down her wrist, so Oleandra had to roll up her sleeves to avoid staining her blouse.

Oleandra had already puzzled out what kind of so-called cursed wounds the quill was inflicting on her: it possessed a two-part enchantment: first, it cut into the hand the shape of the words it wrote, and then it accelerated the natural healing process of the skin. There was no Dark magic involved, but it was certainly evil: by forcing the wounds to heal naturally, the skin would age faster and it would scar in the shape of the lines they were made to write.

In Oleandra's opinion, there would be two ways to prevent permanent scarring:

First option: she could immediately use a healing spell on the open wound on her hand, as ordinary healing magic does not leave scars. Her skin had already stopped healing by itself hours ago, since her cells had already exhausted their natural healing potential over the evening.

Second option: she could wait until the last detention to use human Transfiguration to undo the cosmetic damage. The only problem was, she hadn't learned that sort of magic yet.

Whichever option she chose wouldn't leave a scar; since the wounds weren't technically cursed with Dark magic, any damage would be reversible.

"Let me see your hands," Umbridge finally said. Oleandra looked out the window; night had already fallen.

Oleandra and Harry reluctantly offered their hands for inspection, but Umbridge simply tut-tutted.

"I don't seem to have made much of an impression yet," Umbridge said with a happy smile. "Well, we'll just have to try again tomorrow evening. Miss Greengrass, you will be accompanying Mr. Potter for the remainder of his punishment."

It was just as Oleandra feared; the amount of lines she would have to write in the future would depend on the extent of the damage on her hand. Anger surged within her; if she waited too long to heal herself, the knotted scars on her hand would become her skin's new natural configuration; even if she healed herself in the future, her skin would default to the I must not tell lies template, and then only Human Transfiguration would be able to help her.

Fine then, if that's how Umbridge wanted to play it, then Oleandra would tell her everything she wanted to hear, and more! If Umbridge wanted to think that Dumbledore was trying to take over the Ministry, then that's what her reality would become!

A plan began to form in Oleandra's fevered mind. She could already feel a faint thread of Fairy magic ensnaring Umbridge; simply by existing, she had already begun fooling her. By the end of the year, she was certain that she would be able to steal what Umbridge held most dear…

Harry had already slung his bag across his back and stalked away, but just as he was about to exit Umbridge's office, Oleandra caught up to him and spoke just loudly enough so that Umbridge could overhear her words.

"Professor Dumbledore called me to his office yesterday, and you'll never guess what he wanted to ask me…"

Oleandra crossed into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and slammed the door to Umbridge's office behind her, so that Umbridge couldn't hear the rest of their conversation. She immediately felt her Fairy magic's influence on Umbridge grow stronger, but she pushed down the urge to steal something right away. As it was, she would only be able to steal something minor, but Oleandra had her eyes on a much bigger prize…

The pair walked away in silence, but as soon as they had turned a corner…

"What the hell were you thinking?" Harry rounded on her. "Don't you think we're in enough trouble already? And she already thinks Dumbledore's up to something—"

"Don't worry, I won't say anything important," said Oleandra with a wink. "I'll get back at her if it's the last thing I do, so just play along, okay? It's all part of my plan."

"Part of your plan to land yourself in even more detention?" said Harry, thoroughly unconvinced. He then added hesitatingly, "so, what did Dumbledore want with you, anyway?"

He was curious, and maybe even a little jealous, that Dumbledore was paying attention to her, since he had basically ignored him all summer; even when he had defended him before the Wizengamot during his trial for underage magic.

"Oh, you'll see by the end of the week," said Oleandra with a nasty laugh.