I'm working on Reforming the Unreformed, promise. In the meantime, I'll detract a little. I started to write, and this just came together. P.S. I don't own Harry Potter and any related material.

Rating: M for Mature

Summary: A chance attack in the summer before Harry's 5th year leaves him physically and mentally hurt and hospitalized. Six months have passed, and those close to Harry find different ways of coping. Many different pairings to start with and to come.

Warnings: This story may have content, such as self mutilation, cursing etc., that may offend some readers. If this is not for you, here's your chance to take a hike.

A/N: This isn't really meant to be angst, and it isn't really romance until later. Additionally, the format of this story is different. Don't like, don't read.

Chapter 1: First, came the pain.

0000

He'd forgotten how high he had held back the pain. He'd pushed it beyond, beyond reckoning like a spring and now it leaped toward him, eager to subdue its prisoner.

It made him remember…remember why he'd wanted to die, again.

He'd tried so many times…he'd forgotten count.

There had been that time in Sirius' bathtub. He'd cut deep and taken all the necessary steps. And no one had found him, and he'd bled out. And yet he still woke up, sticky with his blood and dried, dirty bathwater after what seemed to be days later. The gashes on his arms were scabbed over and lank red hair plastered his forehead.

Foggy sunlight was seeping through the dusty window above him. The room was just as he had left it: his second hand clothes were in a pile by the tub, and the razor gleamed near the edge of the filthy sink.

Yes, it was all the same.

0000

It never changed. Potter always stared up at the ceiling, staring at something only he could see. Anyone who was foolish enough to venture into the sick ward could feel and nearly hear the hum of the Golden Boy's magic. Magic that was contained, and had nowhere to run free. They'd made the mistake the first time…of touching him…when he first arrived, broken, bloody, and scarred with magic unknown. He'd unconsciously lashed out at the well meaning Healers and shoved them back and out. Though his magical energy wavered, it never paused, holding the beaten boy together at the seams.

Currently, it was like that one day, and the rest of the boy's life had never existed. Potter healed, but never woke, and the restrained magical power grew, day by day.

0000

"You've been here quite some time, my boy."

He was between both worlds. Living and dead. Limbo, apparently.

Magical energy anchored him to that powerless, misused and dreadful body.

His resurrection had failed.

When he'd drawn the blood, and made himself whole once again, thankful to even feel the white hot metal of the cauldron at his white, white fingertips, there was a deep seated joy in his heart. He was complete.

But then his most loyal curse failed him, rebounded a second time, and he was torn apart. Again.

Yet, there was no in between form this time. There was an in between world.

And he'd been so confident in his ability to kill the foe he'd marked at a year old.

0000

"I'm sorry, but have we met before?" asked the boy with fire filled emerald eyes with an upturn to lips. Heavy magic buzzed in the ears of the room's occupants like a hoard of nervous bees, intimidating.

The man with the twice broken nose, twinkling blue eyes, and ruby and mandarin robes smiled gently. He made no move to reach forward to establish a connection with his student in a gesture of comfort, lest he be killed.

"I'm afraid not. My name is Albus Dumbledore, my boy. It is nice to meet you."

Without his glasses, The-Boy-Who-Lived was near blind. But he didn't know this, and could only wonder why this silvery man was faded around the edges.

But wait, he did know. He knew-!

"Don't think I don't know what your plan is old man. I know-"

No, he'd never known. What had he been thinking about again? Well, never mind that. The morning sun cast such interesting shadows against the wall. It was almost as if it could be mist…and he knew someone with a mist form.

Did he? No. Never.

The boy was unaware he'd cut off abruptly and that a plum colored liquid was seeping like tears from the sides of his eyes. All he knew was that this old man insisted on staring at him.

"Pardon me, but is there any particular reason why you must stare at me so?" he asked, his magic on the verge of rising in threat. There was something wrong about this deceptively simple man.

0000

In the beginning he'd cried. It hurt. But, because he hurt, he wanted the hurt to go away; he wanted to make it any opening he could make it run out of.

So, he accepted the other pain, the sweet pain that made the other agony pale. It made him feel better every time, all the time.

With glee, he sent the edge of whatever sharp material that was on hand into himself, again and again. Every time it was a little deeper. Every time a little farther. It always was on his arms, always where no one would see.

Hermione knew, but wouldn't and couldn't tell. After all, she had her own secrets to keep. She hurt like Ron did, but differently at the same time. She managed it in another way, in a more acceptable way. It just had to be that pureblood's cock that made her feel better. And he hated it with a passion.

But then, it didn't matter much what he liked or disliked. What mattered was another day with bandaged arms and a pleasant excruciation that kept the other, throbbing agony at bay.

He didn't dare think about Harry. That always made things worse.

In their fourth year at Hogwarts, after that damned Triwizard Tournament where Diggory was murdered and sodomized, the Trio had awoken a magic that bound each one to the other. It linked them in ways that friendship could never. So, when Harry was…injured (other terms made Ron ill)…they'd felt the soul blinding, entrail expelling, brain bursting agony. For days, the torture went on into infinity, and it was all Ron could do to curl up into the darkest, smallest corner of the Burrow.

He couldn't escape it; it followed him possessively, almost as if it knew he would do anything to run away.

It was one of the early days, where he was still trying to distance himself from the pain that chained itself to his fourteen year old frame, and he was huddled in the back of his closet. The closet was the quietest. Here he could sob until his tears ran dry, and tear at his skin and hair and howl his pain to the darkness. And no one would hear. After all, the darkness didn't judge him for his red hair, freckles, or the abominable pain that seethed and twisted in every particle of his being.

He'd been gritting his teeth and making attempts to claw at his back where the agony seemed to have settled when he nicked his wrist on something crude and sharp in the depths of the closet. To his absolute astonishment, the pain lessened fractionally. In horror, Ron flicked on the closet light and saw a few small drops of blood welling innocently on the inside of his wrist.

Without thinking and too reckless to think about anything about making the pain just go away, he buried the offending top of the wire coat hanger with a violent stab into his forearm. He nearly shrieked in ecstasy when the pain grew fainter.

And so, the disabling, awful pain of the bond grew lighter with the new sweet, sweet pain of self-harm.

0000

As he moved in her, tears of relief of suffering abated slid down her flushed cheeks. He pushed his cock into her, deep into her being, making the hurt lessen a little bit more with each thrust forward. Muscled arms held her tightly as she made little whimpers of a different hurt. He was large, and sometimes he made her bleed, but this pain helped erase the agony of the bond with her companions.

Harry hurt her and Ron. Ron hurt himself because of what Harry provided to him and thus hurt Hermione. She returned the same to the boys accordingly. But it was Harry's torment that was immeasurable, something he unknowingly provided to his friends.

It had been months since that first dreadful stab of anguish that divided and multiplied like a virus.

At the start, she hadn't known what to do. The pain was staggering, like she was being drawn and quartered and then mutilated, but even to a point beyond that. She and Ron hadn't spoken since that day, the torment too high for either one to be close to other, or by any insanity, touch each other…

Though she wasn't sure of the exact date because the days meshed together, it was one day while she was blind and muddled with her personal burden of affliction. She was huddled in a darkened doorway of Knockturn Alley with her hair cropped short because the long hair threatened her nerve aware skin as an additional source of ache. The resonation of Dark magic in this area dulled the pain of the pure bond faintly enough that it mattered. And so, she wandered in this looked down upon part of wizarding society many hours of the day, seeking a place where the burn in her chest wouldn't be so much, where her pounding skull wouldn't beat so terribly so.

It was only when she was poked with the tip of an expensive, Italian styled shoe that she was alerted to persons being in her near vicinity.

A familiar voice was making disparaging remarks about her blood status. A deeper voice replied with something lower and more indistinct.

Unwillingly, she opened her eyes, feeling a dreadful sting against the dim light of the alley way. In confusion, she looked up, as only dark robes made up her immediate vision. She found herself looking up at Malfoy Senior and Junior. Draco was talking disdainfully about her. She could tell because she saw his lips form the words "Mudblood" more than once. She heard none of this however: there was a magical humming filling her ears. The pain always racked up to fearful heights when this sensation came upon her.

Pulling her eyes of Draco's cold face, Hermione turned her head slowly to the head of the Malfoy clan. His eyes were in the middle of a sweep of her dirty clothes, gray, exhausted face, and curly boyish crop when his cold gray eyes met her bloodshot ones. Something flickered in his dark impassive eyes then and he moved forward so quickly that Hermione puzzled over the blond hair in her vision. It was then that, with a delighted scream, the agony soared upward like an eagle in joyous rapture.

Suddenly there was tunnel of darkness and she was hurtling through it at a breakneck speed, her eternal torment with its fangs in her skull, feasting away on her sanity.

And just as suddenly, Hermione found herself on her knees, heaving the contents of her stomach onto the gravel beneath her hands. Garbled voices she may have recognized came to her slowly through the hum of magical energy still fogging up her ears.

The agony muted any other possible emotion able to pass into Hermione's consciousness. Thus, when there was an unexpected ease to the hurt, a number of different feelings sifted through the uplifted curtain.

Slowly, as if it cost her a great deal, the young witch opened her eyes. To her horror, the face of Lucius Malfoy loomed over her, still as a marble statue. It was then Hermione recognized that a gentle, comforting pain pervaded somewhere deep inside here. Long blond locks of the older man's hair hung down, nearly touching her face.

Hermione had the irrational urge to twist a lock of the hair around her finger. Alarmed at her lack of sensibility, she looked up into the Malfoy patriarch's eyes in apprehension. Impassive, the older wizard stared down at the young girl and then deliberately moved in her.

And then, she was lost.

0000

Draco did not understand his father. Neither did he understand what in the hell was going on with Granger.

Something happened last summer. Potter had not been seen since the start of term. There was some stupid rumor going around that he was mentally unhinged and was in some special ward at St. Mungo's. Well, if it happened to be true, it would be fitting. Draco had always known that Potter's scar had fucked up his head.

Meanwhile, the remaining two of the Golden Trio were both acting oddly, to make matters even more disturbing. For one, Granger was being fucked by his father, and if that wasn't enough said for that matter, he didn't know what was. The girl always had an absent, faraway look in her eyes nowadays, her eyes and ears tuned to something only she was aware of.

The Weasel was also behaving strangely. He ignored Draco whenever the Slytherin tried to get a rise out of him. He was quiet and made a point of being inconspicuous, something he had never done before.

It wasn't as if he could go and ask the two idiots what the fuck was going on anyhow. For one, he didn't care one ounce about their well being. Secondly, his father would kill him if he asked about Granger. Thirdly, he hated Ron Weasely.

He was so deep in his thoughts about the three people he disliked most in his life that he uncharacteristically ran into a tall, broad shouldered form in the hallway near the Owlery.

"Sorry about that," a young male voice said pleasantly.

Draco looked up, and once recognizing who he was dealing with, adopted a sneer. "Watch where you're going Longbottom!" he hissed sharply.

The tall Gryffindor looked down at the pale boy who was a few decent inches shorter than him absently.

"Oh. It's you," he said, his expression turning thoughtful, as if Draco was an interesting plant he'd like to examine and catalog.

"What is that supposed to mean, Longbottom?" Draco asked sharply.

"I know what's going on with you. You're not subtle at all. So stop staring at my friends and stop poking your nose around in matters that aren't any business of yours," the tall boy said quietly.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," the Slytherin said roughly, walking off toward the direction of his Common Room, more than ruffled at his year mate's words than he would admit.

0000

There was giggling in the back round. Maybe it was in his head. Maybe he was dead.

Then again, if he was dead, there wouldn't be giggling.

Maybe he'd cracked.

Harry opened his eyes for the first time in a long time of staring at the ceiling.

Something was pulling at the corners of his lips. He let it go, and found himself in the middle of a stupid, earsplitting grin. Oh he was on some serious medication alright. No doubt about that.

And yet the pain still writhed in delight in his body.

Obviously, the medication wasn't that good.

And it was like he thought. The giggling was in his mind. Oh joy.

Then he wasn't really awake. It was probably another fever dream. Because the shadows on the wall didn't have ruby red eyes, nor did hot pink unicorns with black sunglasses spontaneously appear at the foot of his bed.

Of course not.