Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Vices	By : BurningNebula Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 8682 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or any related characters. I do not make any money from the writing of this story

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
I usually don't like to write review responses at the beginning of chapters, but I thought I'd write a few for some of those I thought needed responding to. Thank you to everyone else who wrote a review, and please don't hesitate to do so again :)
DiamondFloodedDemons: I forgot to mention in chapter six that that chapter was for you, since you updated Blank Spots so promptly after I reviewed :)
Delia Cerrano: I feel like you have good things to tell me, but I have a hard time understanding a lot of what you write.
Sera21: Thank you for reviewing and I really appreciate this sort of criticism. I’ve thought a lot about the things you’ve pointed out, but you’ve made me realize that I need to explain these things in the story, which I hope to achieve from here on out. I originally planned for this to be a much shorter story, with short glimpses of incidents surrounding the addictions of both Harry and Severus, but around chapter 3 decided I was going to make it longer. So I feel like by the time I got there it was really too late to go back and do anything about it. Then I faced the challenge of going on from a sort of rushed beginning.

                Also, I wanted this story to be about addictions in general, because I’m writing solely from my own experience with addiction, depression, and drug treatment programs. I wanted the detox to be a hard pill to swallow, because a lot of people in real life seem to think that addiction is gone the moment the drug is. As you pointed out, that is entirely untrue.

              I agree that Severus is not the same person I am used to, and I miss his snarkiness too. My thinking was this: In my experience, the thought processes and actions that accompany addictive behavior temporarily strip you of the person you know yourself to be. I hope to convey that Severus is in the process of getting himself back (Harry too). As far as the Hermione thing, to my mind it made sense. She is someone he hasn’t seen in six whole years, and I’ve been writing this with the mindset that they have all changed drastically through their experiences and turmoil in this time period. I imagine Severus to be remorseful and guilty of what a bastard he was to these people in the past, and to be making a somewhat stilted, Snape-ish attempt at treating people differently, even if he only turns his bastard-ness inwards upon himself. Also, I think that the trauma of war would take the wind out of his asshole-sails, so to speak.

“Oh something has me

Acting like someone I don’t want to be…

Oh something has me

Acting like something I know isn’t me…

Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed,

Temporary is my time,

Ain’t nothin’ on this world that’s mine

Except the will I found to carry on…”
-Ill With Want by The Avett Brothers
Interlude No. 1
                “All I’m saying Harry, is that you don’t have to do this,” Andromeda said softly. She rocked the baby gently in the stroller next to where they sat on a park bench. “If you don’t want to, that is. Everyone would understand.”
                Harry’s eyes flickered up to her concerned ones before resting back upon the currently maroon-haired head of little Teddy.
                “I do want to,” he muttered. He did want to. He wanted the child to have some semblance of a proper family, and he wanted to get to know the closest thing he had to a real cousin. A cousin in the way that Harry thought of family. After all, Remus was one of his father’s best friends. As Teddy’s godfather, he supposed that made him like a sort of uncle… or something. Perhaps they’d be friends at the least.
                But Andromeda knew. She and Ted Sr. both knew about Harry’s “issues”. They spent enough time with him and the Weasleys after the war ended that they’d heard, but had never confronted him about it. And only insane people hand over a baby to a depressed person living by themselves with a known drug problem. Except, he was Harry Potter, so he supposed that might make a difference. In fact, it seemed to have.
                “All I’m saying is that if, after a few weeks or months or… days or whatever,” Andromeda continued (why did her voice have to be so accursedly kind?) “You feel like it’s too much to handle, you can always call on us for help. We love Teddy, and we want to help you. To help him. I know you don’t know Ted and me very well yet, but we know Remus loved you, enough to make you godfather. So, you’re sort of family by proxy, Harry.”
                Harry nodded eagerly, though it made his head spin. It’d been a few days since he’d eaten properly.
                “Of course, I know. And I totally agree,” Harry insisted, wanting her to know he would do his damnedest as a godfather. “I promise I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure he’s happy and well.” He looked into her eyes, trying to display all the sincerity in his heart.
                This could give him what he needed to make a new life for him and this tiny kid, both orphaned by the works of the same man and left dazed in the aftermath of war. Maybe Teddy was hope, and companionship. At the very least, he was duty and not being alone (because Harry knew kids weren’t a joy all the time). Perhaps that was motivation enough to take on the task. He knew it wasn’t required of him, but he felt like it was what he had to do, in so many ways and for several different people, including Harry himself. And more than that, he wanted to raise his godson.
                That presence which lurked in his life, however, gave him reservations. He knew he was caught in by something clever, insidious, and cruel. It was something born from his own psyche and the memories that lived in his mind, and so it was in his nature and unmovable. Harry knew he was still his same Gryffindor self, but at the same time, there was this thing that made him act like someone that no one knew, not even him. It felt to him sometimes as though another being entirely was controlling his thoughts and body. But all of the things he did were his actions, and he’d always been one to own up to his own actions. Well, the important ones at least. He wondered if all the sneaking and dodging authority he’d done at Hogwarts hadn’t in some way been very good training for, or maybe an early warning of, his behavior the last couple of years.
  Harry figured addiction was something you could avoid forever and never know it, but once you acquired it, could never be unknown. You can stop doing drugs, but addiction is always going to be there, even as an echo of a distant past. Once you know you’re capable of it, you know you’re capable of your own ruin, and he thought that might be a very dangerous thing indeed, given the right circumstances. He would do whatever he could to keep the compulsion for self-destructiveness at bay in order to care for Teddy, but a little voice whispered in his mind, it’s only a matter of time.
                As he pushed the stroller down the street after they said their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Harry was confident that he would do right by Teddy; he always had been good at dealing with whatever came his way.
***
                The piercing shriek of an infant echoed through the cool air of Harry’s apartment. It was about quarter to four in the morning, the same time Teddy woke up almost every night of the seven weeks he’d been living with Harry. Harry’s eyes shot open, and he was suddenly awake, not having experienced the blurry haze of restful sleep after awakening in so long. He dragged himself from bed and checked on the baby. After one diaper change, a bit of milk, some attempted Cheerios, a burping, and a lengthy plea for mercy, forty-five minutes had passed and Teddy was still fussing.
                Harry had given up trying and simply sat on the sofa with the baby against his chest, slowly tuning out the small whining noises and rubbing Teddy’s back. To his surprise, Harry woke several minutes later to find that the baby had fallen back to sleep, his tiny ear pressed to Harry’s sternum. As silently and as gently as he could, he carried the little boy back to his crib alongside Harry’s bed. Just as he was about to pull the door closed, a loud rapping sounded against the windowpane of his front door.
                Harry spat and cursed under his breath as he bolted for the door. He looked out of the window to see just who the hell was knocking on his door at four thirty in the bloody morning.
                “Seamus?!” Harry whispered furiously as he unlocked the door and wrenched it open. Seamus stood outside in the chill wind, pulling a grey wool coat (which belonged to Harry, he realized) closer around himself. “Could you keep it down?! Do you know what the fucking time is?”
                “Yeah, I do, Harry,” Seamus said as he shivered. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
                Harry had told him to get the hell out two months before, and not to come back around unless he was serious about quitting. Seamus had shouted in his face, asking why a year and a half together, not to mention being friends since they were eleven, meant so little to Harry that he’d throw him out like this, or when did Harry get so fucking high and mighty, hadn’t they done all the same shit together? They’d argued for hours, but in the end, the apartment was in Harry’s name and Seamus was forced to concede.
                For two months, Harry had seen neither hide nor hair of Seamus, and he had gotten on with his life with Teddy fairly well. When he’d taken Teddy, Hermione had agreed to manage his money for him, aware as they both were of Harry’s proclivity for spending it quickly these days. So now he was nearly always broke, as Hermione doled out his Galleons to him very sparingly, but it suited him. Harry was finally starting to get a glimpse of what it might be like to build a solid foundation for the rest of his life, to make some happiness he could build off of after everything that had happened. Before, he had been drowning in a sea of crushing guilt and sorrow and desolate prospects for his future.
                “Well, what is it?” Harry asked impatiently. “Teddy was awake and I’ve only just got him down again.”
                “Look, I’m sorry about the hour, please just let me inside a minute to talk, I’m freezin’ my nuts off,” Seamus said with a particularly pitiful tremble. Harry swore under his breath and pulled the door open for Seamus to come inside.
  A few months after the war was over, Harry and Ginny had finally decided to stop trying to salvage the happiness or normalcy they’d had between them before. That was aside the fact that Harry eventually had to admit to Ginny his increasing interest in men. It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved her, he did love her. It wasn’t even that he was not attracted to her; in fact, she was the only girl he’d ever been attracted to (he didn’t count Cho, she’d really been more of an experiment, in the end). But they just weren’t happy anymore, and the feeling was gone in a way that could not be reclaimed. Shortly after, Seamus and he had come together through a night of drunken groping, seeking desperately for comfort and finding it briefly in each other. They continued to find comfort in the small corners of their interactions, and though they fought over money and drugs constantly, they still managed to find those moments of contentedness often enough to keep each other going. Then the time came when they couldn’t manage it anymore. So Seamus had had to go only a week or so before Teddy had come to live with Harry.
                “What’s happened to you?” Harry asked as Seamus stepped through and declined to take off Harry’s coat. Harry took notice of small bruises peeking out from the edges of the sleeves and collar, and how they were located over several choice veins. Seamus pulled up the collar a bit more as he saw Harry’s eyes examining his neck.
                “I was stayin’ with Dean, but his old lady’s made him kick me out again,” Seamus said with a defensive tone, though Harry was not sure why he should be. Dean was most likely perfectly right to boot Seamus out.
                “What about your parents? I thought you and your mum were speaking again.” Seamus looked at him with a shifty expression, one that always made Harry think Seamus was about to lie to him.
                “My dad’s convinced her I can’t be trusted to stay with them,” Seamus said as though it took a lot of willpower to grind the words out.
                “Well, can you blame him?”
                “Yes, I feckin’ can!” Seamus’ voice was rising.
                “Shh!” Harry hissed as he glanced down the hallway to the bedroom before turning an incredulous look to Seamus. “Oh, really? After the time you nodded out at their dinner table then stole fifty quid from him before we left?”
                “That was a long time ago!”
                “That was five months ago!”
                “That’s a long time,” Seamus seemed to be getting more stubborn as the conversation went on.
                “Hardly, when you’re talking about regaining someone’s trust!”
                “Well, it doesn’t matter does it? I can’t go ‘round there at the moment,” Seamus muttered, the first hint of defeat entering his eyes. “I can’t keep on like this. I’m sick all the time, I haven’t eaten in days. I just need someone to help me out a bit, and I’ve got no one else left.” He looked at Harry with so much sadness and despair, that Harry’s mind was transported back to a time when he and Seamus had a relationship of perfect understanding. They each knew how the other hated using drugs, but at the same time both were more devoted to using them than they’d ever been to each other. It was that sort of understanding that gave them a relationship based solely upon not being alone in their own misery.
                “You can crash on the couch tonight,” Harry said, already regretting the words. “But only tonight.”
***
                The next morning, Harry woke earlier than the baby for once. He tiptoed into the kitchen to fix a bottle, noticing as he did that Seamus had left his bag on the breakfast counter. He turned to look for a moment at Seamus sleeping on the couch, before returning to his task. He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but Harry kept finding himself glancing at Seamus’ bag as he puttered around the kitchen warming milk and setting up tea. After changing Teddy, who had just started to stir, and fixing him up with his bottle in the play swing in the kitchen, Harry picked up his tea and leaned against the sink. He chewed his lip as he glanced nervously between the couch and the bag on the counter. He knew it was wrong to want to snoop through it. He was almost certain what he would find.
                Eventually his resolve cracked and Harry picked up the bag as quietly as possible and moved it to the opposite side of the kitchen, out of line of sight of the couch. He unlatched the flap and was almost breathless, after he’d dug past the layers of old receipts and cigarette packets and empty plastic baggies, laying eyes upon the large amount of cocaine and needles hidden in a black zipper pouch beneath.
                The sound of Seamus stirring on the couch alarmed Harry, and his body froze with his ear turned in the direction of the living area. He listened intently for a few moments before he heard Seamus turn over on the couch, and the slow breathing of sleep continue. Harry released a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding.
                His eyes returned to what he’d uncovered and for a long minute he just stood there staring at it. The temptation was great. In fact, the battle waging in his head right now was not focused around doing the drugs or not doing them, it was whether he could get away with it or not. He figured he probably couldn’t but if he just made sure Seamus didn’t notice before he left, then it didn’t matter. He felt like he had never actually decided to take some (he thought it wouldn’t be too noticeable as long as he didn’t take too much, there was an awful lot there to begin with) before he found himself in the act of doing it.
                Harry gathered some of the flaky white powder into one of the empty bags with a spoon and closed up the bag. He was glad he’d been able to master the trick of shooting up with a wand, so he never had to find a clean needle. It was harder for Seamus, who was not aces at wandwork even without the trembling in his hands.
                He stuck the bag and the spoon in his back pocket, replacing Seamus’ bag to its spot on the counter and turning to gather up Teddy. He tiptoed back to the bedroom and locked the door. It took a few minutes to get Teddy settled down in his play pen, and by the time he sat down on his bed and took out the bag, he was jittery with nerves.
  He didn’t want to do it. Two fucking months. Hermione told him not three days ago how well she thought he was handling it. Even Teddy’s grandparents noticed the difference. What was he doing? But then, it wasn’t even that much. Surely such a small amount wouldn’t make or break him. Though he knew that was just lying to himself.
                He continued arguing with himself in this way for at least twenty minutes. Eventually he couldn’t fucking stand it anymore, and his breathing accelerated as he felt his mind jump completely overboard.
                He fixed it up and got himself settled, his perfect aim never failing as he felt the miniscule stream of liquid from the end of his wand mingle in his blood. There was tingling, and then numbness and cold, and then the sound like a screeching train hammering between his ears. He had done this plenty of times before, but it had been months and that seemed like eternity as he lay there on the bed. His heart and lungs felt like they were on pause for a moment, and he knew it was essential to stay focused, not to let himself slide too fast, too far. It lasted several minutes, maybe ten, and the aftershock left him tingling and fidgeting. Teddy had fallen back to sleep, and Harry began to quietly pace across the carpeted floor. There was an unbidden feeling of panic welling up in him, and he didn’t know if it was the drug itself, or horror at what the repercussions of doing it might be. As it began to be too much, and the feeling was only exacerbated by the pacing, he sat down on the edge of the bed again and tried to take deep breaths.
                Just as he was getting himself back together, Harry heard a quiet but insistent tapping on his bedroom door. His head jerked up and for a moment he couldn’t move.
                “Harry!” Seamus said from the other side of the wood, and Harry thought he sounded furious. Harry sprung into motion almost before he was even aware of telling his body to move. He opened his nightstand drawer and scooped all the trappings of his misdeed into it, moving frantically and uncaring of how much noise he made. The baby woke and began to whine. Seamus started to bang on the door, and Teddy’s whine became loud crying. Harry rushed to the door, unlocking it and pulling it open.
                “What the fuck?!” Harry spat, though he knew what he must look like, and he knew Seamus did too. Harry knew he had no defense.
                “What the fuck, yourself!” Seamus said as he shoved the door inwards, sending Harry reeling backward. He fell back against the wall, only just managing to stop from sliding down. Before Harry could collect himself, Seamus was pressing against him, pinning him to the wall. Harry’s head spun. “You went through my bag!” Seamus nearly shouted, and Teddy began to wail in earnest. Suddenly it occurred to Harry that he had more right to be angry than Seamus did.
                “So what if I did?” Harry hurled back. “I let you stay here when you were out in the fucking cold! You told me you had nowhere to go so I gave you the benefit of the doubt! And still you gave me a bunch of rubbish about ‘not being able to do it anymore’!”
                “I was going to sell it!” Seamus yelled, inches from his face. Suddenly the argument was making Harry’s head hurt.
                “Like I haven’t fucking heard that!” Harry said, and for several moments, he thought Seamus wasn’t going to answer. Seconds later, he realized that Seamus was listening for something. Harry listened too, and heard a gentle knocking on the front door.
                “Shit, it’s Hermione!” Harry whispered fiercely, and Seamus backed up as Harry moved quickly to pick up Teddy and the bottle of milk. He turned to hold a finger to his lips, indicating that Seamus should be quiet.
                Harry tried desperately to soothe Teddy a bit in the seconds it took him to walk down the hall. When he opened the door, he was more than a little surprised to find not only Hermione standing there, but Ron, who Harry had thought was out of the country. Neither of them looked too thrilled.
                “Hey guys,” Harry said, honestly confused at why they were both here, but knowing his guilty conscience showed on his face. Teddy’s crying abruptly ceased as he caught sight of Hermione and Ron; he’d always liked Hermione especially. “What’s going on?”
                “I got an owl from Dean Thomas this morning,” Hermione told him, looking a bit wary. Harry’s mind froze. What did she hear from Dean? “He told us something… unsettling.”
                “Oh, what’s that?” Harry asked in what he hoped was in innocent voice.
                “Only that he’s had a row with Seamus for selling drugs out of his house!” Ron said loudly. Apparently, he saw right through Harry’s innocent act. Harry felt like ice water had poured down his collar. This information was at once disturbing and enlightening. So, Seamus had lied about why Dean kicked him out, but had not lied about selling the drugs. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted Harry to know that he had any drugs at all because he knew Harry would think that he was doing them, or maybe that Harry would steal it. Well the latter at least was not a very unreasonable assumption, given that Harry did steal some of it.
                “Harry, don’t be mad,” Hermione began tentatively, “But did Seamus come here last night or this morning?”
                “No, of course not,” Harry always knew when it was pointless to lie to Hermione. This was one of those times, which was why he wasn’t sure why he decided that he would insist upon the lie wholeheartedly.
                “I call bullshit!” Ron suddenly exclaimed. “Harry, it’s obvious someone was on your couch last night! You can see the pillows all mussed up and there’s a pair of shoes that’s not yours! Where else would Seamus go if not here?”
                “Just because he lived with me previously doesn’t mean I’d let him come back at the drop of a hat!” Harry said, trying for indignation.
                “If he was selling drugs you would!” Ron’s face was his trademark crimson.
                “Thanks a lot!”
                “Harry,” Hermione said sounding stern, but close to tears, “You have to see why we’d think that. You have to admit how plausible it is.”
                “Plausible!” Ron erupted, “Highly probable, more like!”
                As much as it pained Harry to admit it, even to himself, they were right. It was true wasn’t it? And at the same time, he felt betrayed, like these were the people who were supposed to believe him, to back him up.
                Harry looked over his shoulder to make sure that Seamus wasn’t watching before stepping out of the front door and shutting it behind him quietly. He hoisted Teddy up on his hip and pulled his blanket more tightly around the little boy, shielding him from the chilly morning air.
                “All right so he did come by, but you should have seen him!” Harry said, trying to justify everything without throwing Seamus under the bus. “It was freezing out! I told him he could stay the one night and that’s it.”
                “Harry!” Hermione said, her voice acquiring a shrillness that caused a pain behind Harry’s eyes to flare. “You said you’d not let him around anymore! You agreed when you took Teddy! You can’t have a baby around that stuff!”
                “I didn’t bloody well know when I told him he could stay!” Harry said. He was a little comforted that this at least was not a warped truth. “I didn’t know anything until this morning!”
                Harry had mostly been looking at Hermione as he said this, and was alarmed when he glanced back to Ron, who looked ready to combust.
                “Well, I’d like to have a word with him,” Ron growled with the stubborn sort of expression that reminded Harry of Mrs. Weasley.
                “Ron, no!” Harry pleaded, trying to step in front of the door. Ron elbowed him out of the way and stormed into Harry’s apartment. Harry stumbled and rushed to follow, but Ron was already at the door to the bedroom.
                They were already shouting when he reached the room, and Harry could hardly make out what was being said, due to the fact that they were yelling at the same time and Teddy had begun to whimper in his ear. Hermione appeared next to him with her hands covering her mouth and her eyes wide. His eyes met Hermione’s and he pressed Teddy into her arms as Ron lunged at Seamus and their shouting match turned into a brawl.
                Harry was trying to pull the two men apart, and nearly thought he’d succeeded in wrenching Ron out of the chokehold he had on Seamus. However, as he regained his footing and realized that Ron had stumbled backwards and fallen to the floor, Seamus spun around with his wand out and pointed at Harry’s face. There was no time to react; the hex had left Seamus’ mouth almost before he’d completely turned about, and a flash of deep orange spell-fire was hurled into Harry’s face. He saw the room spin in slow motion as he fell.
***
                For Harry, the nearest thing he experienced to consciousness was fleeting glimpses of his own bedroom, and while he had no sensation of time passing, the light from the window changed every time he managed to open his eyes. Once he saw Ron sitting next to him, but there was nothing else, no sounds of Teddy playing that he was so used to, no shouting or arguing indicating Seamus was still around, nothing.
                Eventually Harry managed to sit up, his whole body aching and the dim twilight in the room making his eyes burn. A few minutes passed in which he wondered at the stifling silence in the apartment. Soon enough, he heard footsteps in the hall, and he turned his head weakly towards the door. He had no idea how much time had passed, and did not know who might be about to walk through the door.
                It was, of course, Ron. He seemed surprised to see Harry sitting up and awake.
                “How long has it been?” Harry croaked through a dry throat. He reached a hand to his hair and it felt unpleasantly slimy, and flattened where he’d laid his head on the pillows. Ron sat down on the edge of the bed at Harry’s feet. He looked extremely tired.
                “This would’ve been the fifth day you were out,” Ron said, yawning and handing the cup of tea to Harry, even though Harry suspected he’d gotten for himself. He wasn’t going to complain. Oddly the tea was room temperature.
                “What happened to Seamus?” Harry asked, and then remembered that he had a more important question. “Where’s Teddy?” He looked to Ron through bleary eyes and saw that he looked nervous but resigned.
                “We managed to make Seamus leave,” Ron said, and then blushed unexpectedly, “Well… actually Hermione did it on her own. I’ve never seen her get so mad so fast.” He added with a rueful smile. Harry’s eyebrows drew together, a feeling of foreboding creeping over him.
                “And Teddy?” He asked quietly, feeling his eyes sting.
                “Harry, I’m sorry, but Her—Hermione took him to his grandparents.” Ron said, fidgeting and glancing at his hands. “We didn’t know what else to do. Hermione thinks Seamus’ hex got muddled somehow and ended up mostly an extended parlysation curse with a little bit of a blasting hex. We didn’t know how soon you’d wake up out of it. She’s been around every day to give you potions and check on you and stuff.”
                Harry could only close his eyes tightly and shake his head for a moment. After several moments, he managed to look back to Ron.
                “What the fuck is wrong with me?” Harry whispered. “Everything was fine, how did I let this happen?”
                Ron scratched the back of his head uncomfortably.
                “Harry, it’s not the end of the world,” Ron said, grimacing as Harry glared incredulously. “What I mean is, no one expected you to just stop doing drugs and live happily ever after.”
                “Oh, did no one expect that?” Harry spat bitterly.
                “Come on! What I meant is that, no one just starts to lead a new life without their past following. You went through more than most people during the war,” Ron said, throwing his hands up. “It’s not that we don’t think you’ll get there, but you can’t just forget everything that’s happened. Like with Seamus: no expected him to just disappear, we just know he shouldn’t be around a baby at this point in his life.”
                “And it was ok for me to be?”
                “Well, you at least have the right to try to be.”
                “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?” Harry said, covering his face with his hands and falling back onto the pillows.
                “Harry, mate, it’s like I said. It’s not the end,” Ron said in what was only a mildly reassuring voice. “It’s not like any of us are judging you. Hermione told me Andromeda was beside herself with worry.”
                Harry merely groaned into his hands. This was all his fault. Now everyone was worried and he just knew it would be unbearable to have to discuss it with his friends, the Weasleys, The Tonkses, everyone he knew he’d eventually have to talk to.
                There were several minutes of Ron shifting uncomfortably on the bed and Harry gazing through the ceiling, lost in thought. His musing was interrupted by Ron clearing his throat.
                “Look, I had an idea,” Ron said hesitantly. “I met Luna Lovegood in Diagon a couple weeks ago. She said she was looking for a roommate, and asked me to keep an ear out. Maybe you could get in touch with her? I think being alone might be making this harder for you.” Harry let this information sink in before looking back to Ron.
                “I wasn’t alone just five days ago!” Harry said, his voice cracking.
                “I hardly think Teddy counts as a roommate Harry!” Ron scoffed. “And you and Luna always got on well. She always seemed to… understand you.” Harry had to admit that Ron had a point. He and Luna had always been a certain kind of friend, where they could simply understand each other’s sadness and difficulty without having to talk much about it. And if Harry was honest with himself, the idea of being alone, while appealing a few days ago, was a little terrifying now. He managed to make his head nod as he swallowed a lump in his throat.
                “Yeah,” Harry said, daring to hope, if only a little, “I think that might be a good idea.”
                Ron nodded, looking a little at a loss, as though he wasn’t expecting Harry to agree.
                “Right… well, talk to Hermione and see what she thinks,” Ron said, “About the money and stuff. I was in Norway when Hermione flooed and asked me to come home for a few days, so I really do need to get back. But send an owl to Luna; I’m not sure where she lives, but I’m pretty sure it’s in London. I should be home in about a week, but I’ll write the floo address on your fridge in case you need anything.”
                Ron helped Harry out of the bed and into the kitchen. For the first time, the absence of Teddy’s things was apparent to him, and it made his chest feel as though it was in a vice. Ron wrote the floo address on a paper before casting a temporary sticking charm to adhere it to the fridge. Harry moved slowly around the kitchen, making new tea and trying not to hyperventilate. He was about to fail at the latter task, when he felt Ron’s hand on his shoulder, bringing his mind back to the moment.
                “Look, Harry, we’re all behind you,” Ron said quietly. “Hermione’s going to drop by in a little while. Get some food in you and clean up, you’ll feel better.”
                Harry nodded, and they said goodbyes as Harry showed Ron to the door.
                It was only a little later, after Ron had gone and the evening shadows had descended upon the apartment that Harry sat on the sofa, pulling his knees to his chest and crying silently into his arms, the feeling of powerlessness making it seem as though his world was imploding.
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