14. We're all mad here

There is a troll in a girls' bathroom.

The creature is a little short, its face is not smiling and it probably won't regenerate a lost limb in a matter of minutes, but it is beautiful to Harry.

Girl with the bushy hair screams, standing in the corner of the bathroom completely petrified, not even trying to dodge the flying debris (-stupid girl, what the hell is she standing still for – just a child, doesn't know better – civilian-), troll waves his cub around, roaring in challenge (they never did have cubs), and Harry takes out his knives and jumps into the air.

He absently wishes for his 3d maneuver gear, even though its usefulness in such a close quarters is questionable at best (and it doesn't exist anymore - or maybe never existed at all). He also wishes for his blades – heavy, wide and sharp; missing their reassuring weigh, missing the sharp bite of leather from straps, missing the hiss of compressed gas as hooks hit the air. But none of it matters when there is a giant man-shaped beast for him to slaughter.

He read that troll's hide is impervious to all but the strongest spells and very hard to damage otherwise, but his knives meet no resistance. His magic, his angry, vicious magic, is running out of his hands in a poisonous-green electrical current into the steel alloy, making the metal sharper, the wounds – deeper, the damage – permanent.

Harry doesn't know exactly what kind of expression appears on his face, as he jumps, light and nimble, from the troll's elbow to its shoulder, rebounding from the wall towards the back of the creature's neck, all the while carving a bloody path straight through its flesh and bones, but he suspects it is a smile. He is covered in blood, metallic and salty, from head to toe, there are little pieces of torn skin and meat sliding from his hair and the girl in the corner looks much more scared of him, that of the troll. His knives (the ones he stole from Aunt Petunia's kitchen when he was four; the ones he never lets himself to part from, clutching them in his sweaty grip under the pillow as he sleeps; the ones, that were specifically made to butcher) slice through the muscles and the neck vertebrae without any resistance, nicking the trachea.

A strange odor of a burnt meat, heavy and pungent, rises in the air. Harry know that smell (-the bodies, piled upon one another – greedy fire, licking the skin, letting out a black oily smoke – better to burn them, that to let them be eaten-) and he never liked it before, but now it tastes sweet and loving upon his tongue. The troll's body, that fallen on the ground with muted crash, is jerking, convulsing, like someone stuck an electrical cord straight into its pith and, Harry idly muses, following the green sparks of lightning with his eyes, it may as well be true.

The girl is crying. The beast is dying. Someone is laughing a quiet, happy, giddy laugh.

It takes a long moment for Harry to realize, that that person is him.