Chapter One
Track Marks
Track Marks: The line of bruised needle holes in the arm of a junky produced as he shoots up at a slightly higher point on his arm each time.
—Urban Dictionary
He'd been lying in bed the first time it happened. His heart began to race, his palms grew wet, and a sudden and intense wave of nausea swept over him, for no discernable reason.
His Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape had been an abysmal failure, to be sure, but he'd guarded his mind, as best he could, so as not to leave it open and vulnerable to attack. It was, then, not unreasonable for him to assume, as he breathed heavily and deliberately through his nose, that Voldemort had broken his admittedly weak mental shields. He realized, though, as the churning in his stomach lessened somewhat, that the feelings were not accompanied by the burning sensation in his scar that he associated with Voldemort's presence—corporeal or not.
Moments later, a tightening band around his chest constricted his breathing and he wondered, as he lay gasping on his tattered bedcovers, if he was dying. Had the Death Eaters utilized a spell that could hit its target from incredibly long distances, he wondered, or were they, even as he lay immobilized, outside the Privet Drive house, plotting and preparing to capture and steal him away to their Dark Lord's headquarters?
That thought, more than any other, compelled him to move from his bed to the window in a flash. He peered through the blinds, scanning the lawn and surrounding neighborhood for any movement or unusual shadow. A half moon shone brightly in the clear, night sky, aiding his impromptu reconnaissance, to which he was suitably able to determine there were no persons with dark intentions lingering outside.
He paused; unless, of course, they were scaling an attack on the other side of the house. His hand tightened around his wand. He was uncertain as to how he came to be holding it, but he was more conscious of the knife-edge of fear that threatened to blot out all awareness.
He struggled to direct his shaking legs out of his bedroom and down the stairs. He crept quietly across the floor, once his feet touched the bottom. He moved stealthily into the kitchen—the only room, on the bottom floor, that had a full view of the backyard—and peered cautiously through the curtained windows in the kitchen, whereupon he determined that none of Lord Voldemort's minions were outside.
Now that the sharp rush of adrenaline had subsided, Harry was left, shaken, with lingering feelings of muted dread. He breathed slowly and deliberately trying to slow his racing heart and make the fine tremors running down his body, subside. Harry withdrew a chair from the kitchen table, sat down, and did not move for a very long time.
The same strange and inexplicable attack happened two days later, and once more before the summer holidays were over. Each time, he waited anxiously for lurking Death Eaters to unveil themselves—even though the last attack had occurred in the relative safety of Grimmauld's Place—as he rode the waves of certain anxiety and doom.
Over time, it became evident that he was not being attacked from outside forces, but from within. He told no one about the strange occurrences, ashamed of his apparent weakness; certain that he'd finally cracked under the strain of being the Boy-Who-Lived and all it entailed.
But he was found out when the first attack to happen in broad daylight, occurred in the middle of Professor McGonagall's Transfigurations lessons. He hadn't any choice but to allow himself to be escorted to the infirmary as there really was no good reason why a perfectly healthy teenage boy dropped like a stone to the floor, gasping for air like a landed trout.
Harry was non-communicative about his condition, and his answers were deliberately misleading, when he was subsequently questioned by Madam Pomfrey about his episode, as he'd begun calling them. She was unable to come to a conclusive diagnosis, and she had him stay in the infirmary, overnight, dosing him with liberal amounts of the Pepper-Up Potion, although it had nothing at all to do with a cold.
Harry took up drinking with the fellows later that year, in the privacy of the Sixth Years boy's room. They were eager to enter the ranks of manhood, and they all thought—even little Neville Longbottom—that imbibing Fire Whiskey, and other illicit, intoxicants would allow them to join their worldlier brethren, more quickly. They were the very specter of dissipated youth.
And much to Hermione's disapproval, Harry was soon introduced to the wonderful world of narcotics—marijuana, of course—and its much more innocuous counterpart—cigarettes, via Dean Thomas.
Harry enjoyed the camaraderie he experienced with his year mates. It was a far cry from the previous year's doom and gloom. Some of his more keen friends, though, couldn't help but notice that he enjoyed being in his cups overmuch. They questioned him about it, and he increasingly began to indulge in drink and smoke, apart from his friendly get-togethers, alone.
Besides, he reasoned to himself, when he occasioned to examine his actions too closely, if he was to die—and it was almost a certain thing—before his seventeenth birthday at Voldemort's wand, he ought to enjoy the time he had left.
And he couldn't help but think his company was improved, both to himself and others, when he'd indulged, a little.
The boy—almost a man—is pressing her into the mattress with great urgency. His cock drives, relentlessly, into her body and her hips snap helplessly up to meet his.
The force of her pleasure drive sharp cries up from the core of her body, and out the back of her throat. His mouth is pressed against the underside of her jaw and gusts of great, panting breaths brush her neck as he grunts his pleasure into her ear.
Her arms are stretched above her head, her hands gripping the rails of her wrought-iron head board, tightly, for maximum leverage, and she watches him suspended over her, his hands fisted in the sheets on either side of her body while his arms tremble and strain to support his weight.
Heat pools, low in her belly, at the sight of his body—his back glistening with sweat—planted firmly between her splayed legs. Her feet are braced in the small of his back.
His need is raw and desperate and obvious. The force of his thrusts is driving her up the bed with each frantic push.
Her cries ratchet up a notch. "Harry." His name is a fractured sound, as she moans his name with a strained voice, sounding as if she is being tortured or fucked within an inch of her life.
He is pounding harder into her, now, his urgency obliterating any rhythm in his movement, and she can only cling to him, cries growing more frantic, as she relishes the sensations quickening through her body.
One, two, three strokes and she comes, the heat in her loins coalescing into a single point, before it spreads, in a rush, to all her joints and muscles and nerve endings. Her body sags, limply, into the bed under him as his body stiffens over hers, and he utters a harsh, guttural cry into her neck, as he, too, comes. Heat suffuses her as his seed expels, violently, into her body.
He lays sprawled and heavy on top of her. Then he raises his head off her heaving chest, still breathing heavily. His eyes glitter at her in the dark, and he declares, his voice rough and hoarse from sex, "Merlin! That was a good fuck."
He rolls, summarily, off her body with a low groan, and she feels him sliding, wetly, from her body. He lands on his front, slumping next to her, against the rumpled sheets; he closes his eyes. She is nearly offended, but she feels much too sated to allow his boorishness to raise her ire.
After a short while, she rouses herself, and sits up, drawing the sheets over her breasts. She reaches over the side of the bed to the night stand, and fumbling briefly, withdraws a post-coital cigarette from its pack. She touches her wand to the tip, mutters a spell, and lights it. She congratulates herself when this did not result in a small conflagration, as it nearly had the last time.
She inhales deeply, and turns back, looking down at the boy—man—lying beside her. She exhales and a puff of gray smoke filters through her nose. "So, you want to tell me what brought that on?" she asks, bright eyebrows lifted. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
He mumbles incoherently into the bed covers, not moving an inch.
She looks at him, studying his features. His face is flushed attractively. His dark, tousled hair sticks damply to his forehead; some strands cling, wet and curling, to the back of his neck. He needs a haircut, she muses, briefly. Then she runs her eyes over his body which is young and fit and trim.
Her lips curl at the edges of her mouth, smirking, as she considers him as he'd been then, a little over three years ago, the Boy-Who-Lived, sharp angles and coltish limbs. He'd been her summer shag. She'd been his first sexual experience.
He'd been the typical teenage boy, of course; short on foreplay and quick on ejaculation. But he'd also been a willing and eager student, employing himself to the task of lovemaking with an intensity he usually reserved for Quidditch.
And he really is quite good in bed, considerate and inventive by turns. She gives herself a small mental pat on the back. She hadn't taught him all he knew, but she believes she'd gotten him off to a ripping good start.
He is always an enthusiastic and lusty bed partner, employing all his working body parts with skill and dedication. She really is quite fortunate, she tells herself.
She smiles fondly down at him, and lifts her hand, running contemplative fingers through his hair. He makes an annoyed, sleepy sound, and she pulls her hand back, leaning over to stub out her cigarette. She slides down, pulling the duvet over them, both. She reaches over, pressing a kiss to a muscled shoulder, sighs, and falls asleep.
She opens her eyes the next morning to the half shadows formed by the light of morning sunlight streaming around the edges of her curtains. She then takes note of her arrangement. Sometime during the night she and Harry had shifted and changed positions. His arm is slung over her hip, and she is facing him, her head tucked under his chin. It is an intimacy they rarely share in the bright light of day.
She mentally shakes off the quick stab of regret this thought engenders, and she slips gently from under his arm, so as not to wake him. She decides she will enjoy a hot shower in the facilities that are available in the Ministry's Auror Division. She mutters a quick cleansing charm, selecting some clean clothes and puts them on; a pair of well worn trousers, for comfort, and a cool, short-sleeved, green shirt—a nod to the summer's warmth. She convinces herself that she is not fleeing, merely utilizing avoidance techniques.
She further convinces herself that there is a difference between the two.
This morning she feels strangely without armor, and ill-prepared to meet his apathy and cynicism with her usual wit and good humor.
She looks in the mirror and for moment she is horrified, until she remembers she is a witch. She utilizes her Metamorphmagus skills and grows her disarrayed, close cropped, bright red hair into azure colored, shoulder length ringlets, which she secures into a high ponytail with an antique, heavily-brocaded barrette.
She locates one boot, evidently flung there during last night's wild bout of bedtime high-jinks, in one corner of the bedroom, and spies the other peeking out from under the ruffled, white eyelet bed skirt. As she tiptoes over to retrieve it, she stumbles over the braided edge of the bright red rug whose design is inspired by 1930s Art Deco Expressionism. Though the noise is slight, she freezes, hoping that he will not waken, but he only mumbles, shifts, and settles onto his back with a sigh.
She is about to heave a sigh of relief when she notices an odd pattern of marks on his out-flung arm. They are five tiny puncture holes with starbursts of broken blood vessels around them.
A yawning pit forms in her stomach and her heart begins beating, rapidly. There are, she knows, witches and wizards that abuse various potent and habit-forming potions, like Lethe and Hemlock, but she is well acquainted with the knowledge that quite a few of them resort to Muggle methods. She knows what the seemingly innocuous pin-prick marks mean.
This is not her first inclination that Harry uses drugs, but it is her first confrontation with hard physical evidence. She can no longer deny what she has suspected for some time.
She shakes her head, frenetically, stifling a hysterical giggle, with great difficulty.
She takes a deep breath, preparing to flee when she hears a muffled moan and his voice, sleep roughened and confused. "Dora?"
She has to clear her throat, the certainty of what she knows trembling on the tip of her tongue. "Yes, Harry."
"Where're you going? It's rather early, isn't it?" He is squinting at her in the dim light, propped on his elbows.
She cannot look him in the eyes, and her gaze drifts over his face, cataloguing its well-known features. "Er...Yes...well...The early bird and all that. I'm sure we can all learn a valuable lesson from him."
He raises a skeptical eyebrow. "You?"
"Yes, me," she says firmly. She doesn't like being reminded of her unfortunate habit of always being late.
"Alright, then," he acquiesces.
"Yes...Well..." she realizes she's said this already and hastens to add, "See about getting up, soon, please. I'd not like to come back and see your lazy arse still abed." She winces, internally, because she knows she sounds like her mother.
"Yes, Mum," he says, wryly.
She ignores him, retrieving her boot, instead. She straightens up, turns, and moves to Disapparate, when she trips over the same section of the rug she had tripped over before. She hears a distinct snicker coming from the direction of the bed, and she wishes mightily at that moment that she had the power of wandless magic at her fingertips. Were she to strike Harry with a hex, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would be unable to perform a Prior Incantato on her person and trace the signature back to her.
She gathers the tattered remains of her dignity and Apparates, changing her intended destination as she does so. She decides to forgo her much needed shower, for a while longer and lands in front of the foreboding presence of Grimmauld Place instead.
The characters are the inspiration of the inestimable J.K. Rowling. The story is mine.
Note: Tonks is twenty-six years old. Harry is nineteen.