[Intro] N-not every hero looks heroic first. Sometimes they’re the kid dropping vials in Potions, standing there while everybody avoids eye contact out of secondhand embarrassment. I know that feeling better than most. [Verse 1] Snape cutting through me with a look from the desk, cauldron smoke in my lungs, heartbeat wrecked. Hands went numb, whole class went stiff, I’d forget my own name if the pressure got thick. Remembrall glowing red in my palm all day, could never remember what I’d done wrong anyway. Gran kept saying, “Your father had more fight.” Funny thing to hear every single night. St-stuttered through spells, words came fractured, fear moves fast till your thoughts can’t catch it. Kids laughed hard when the wand work failed, so I learned how humiliation smells. Hot metal. Potion ash. Sleeves half-burned trying not to react. [Hook] People love courage after the blood dries. After the screaming stops. After somebody else survives. But fear’s not weakness. Fear’s just your body forgetting how to stay calm while the world starts breaking. [Verse 2] St. Mungo’s smelled like old blankets and rain. Same hallway. Same chairs. Same look on their faces. My mother pressed candy wrappers into my hand like they still meant something I should understand. Never threw them away. Still got every single one. See, people hear “Longbottom” now and think rebellion, war, all that. Back then? I was the boy professors corrected mid-sentence. The one classmates talked over. The spare Gryffindor. Then Dumbledore’s Army started meeting at night, kids whispering curses like learning to bite. And something in me— I dunno— finally stopped apologizing for existing. Bellatrix laughed the same way fire spreads. Light, loud, sick in the head. Wanted revenge so bad my jaw locked tight, but rage weighs different when you’re terrified. Still— I stayed. [Hook] People love courage after the blood dries. After the screaming stops. After somebody else survives. But fear’s not weakness. Fear’s just your body forgetting how to stay calm while the world starts breaking. [Bridge / Offbeat Doubletime] C-cause courage ain’t clean, ain’t noble, ain’t smooth, it shakes in your hands while you’re trying to move. Trips over words, over rubble, over fear, still drags itself forward when death gets near. Heartbeat sk-skipping, castle half gone, stone dust sticking to the sweat on my arms. Everybody thinks heroes know what they’re doing— Most of us don’t. We just hear screaming and run toward it anyway. [Outro] And Voldemort looked at me like I was insignificant. Honestly? Most my life I agreed with him. Then the Sorting Hat caught fire in my hands. Sword heavy. Smoke everywhere. People screaming. And for the first time since I was little— my hands stayed steady.
