A/N: Okay so it's been around 4 years since I've updated this, and I firstly want to say that I am so sorry. I started this when I was 17, I'm now 22 and I've spent the last 4 years getting an undergraduate and master's degree, so life has been very busy for me. I've thought about this story a lot, and I really enjoyed writing it a few years back. I am determined to finish it, and I feel that I now have the time to do that. I've gone back and edited the previous chapters for some grammar/punctuation mistakes and tried to put together some sort of plan for where I want this story to go. I'm not sure when the next update will be, but I'll aim to have one written in the next week or so. I feel slightly nervous about continuing this, so I really hope you all like the update. Thank you for those of you that have stuck by this, I really appreciate your support.

As the days stuck inside Hogwarts continued to drag on Harry found himself becoming more and more alone. His friendships with Ron and Hermione were becoming more strained and formal, with him either too high or too depressed to make an effort with them. He mostly just mooched around old abandoned corridors by himself in the evenings after his classes, lost in past memories or ducking into secret passageways to smoke and relieve his anxieties. His ongoing detentions with Snape had become particularly tiresome, as his improvement in occlumency meant the lessons were a lot less frequent so he was usually tasked with some sort of manual labour job, which were of course aided with snide comments from Snape. Harry had been forcing himself not to retaliate, it had been two weeks since Snape had seen the memory of him drinking and he was in no hurry for it to happen again.

The boredom of Hogwarts was starting to catch up with him, and Harry found himself questioning why he was even bothering to go to classes and do homework; it wasn't like it would help him in the future. It all felt so pointless to him, he was on borrowed time and whatever he was learning in school wouldn't help save him from death. He was sat in an alcove near an unfrequented staircase on a Monday night, contemplating this when he heard the all too familiar voices of Dumbledore and Snape. Leaning back against the stone wall so they wouldn't see him, he strained his ears to listen in.

"...It is as we already presumed Albus, nothing more can be done presently until the Dark Lord divulges more information."

"Very well. And what of Harry? As you know Severus, I am having concerns. Not only the memory you saw, but yesterday Minerva told me that other students reported his behaviour to be very erratic at the Quidditch tryouts."

Harry cringed as he remembered what had happened on the weekend. He'd had an awful night's sleep that was filled with nightmares of Voldemort and Sirius, and in his panic to get rid of the memories he'd thought it had been a good idea to sniff coke. He'd been off his face and had ended up screaming nonsense at his team before storming off.

As their conversation drifted away, Harry was just able to catch Snape's reply.

"I'm certain it's merely attention seeking Albus. I highly doubt Potter is becoming unhinged, he's far too much a Gryffindor for that."

Harry couldn't help but smile at their ignorance, they were making it all too easy for him to get away with his new pastimes. However, Dumbledore was clearly getting other teachers to report back to him; he couldn't become too comfortable. Sighing, he got up off the cold floor and slowly made his way back to his bed, ignoring the looks other students gave him as they hurried off to their own common rooms. He knew he was the cause of many whispers thanks to the near constant Daily Prophet articles written about him, and his increasingly odd behaviour. It set him on edge.

He stepped through the portrait hole and went straight up to his room with his head down, eager to have a fix so he could have a few restful hours of peace. When he opened the door, he found Ron, Dean and Seamus laughing and joking with each other. As soon as they saw him, the atmosphere changed, the laughter dying on their lips at one look at Harry's gaunt and deadened face.

"Oh, hi there Harry," Dean said awkwardly, whilst Ron stood behind him, biting his lip.

"Hi." Harry replied shortly, walking over to his bed and throwing himself on the covers.

"We were just talking about Snape at Dinner this evening, he-" Ron started, but Harry cut him off.

"Cool. I'm going to bed now. I'm tired." The look on Ron's face made him feel full of guilt for a moment, but he reminded himself that it would be better to cut himself off from them now before they started hating him. He didn't deserve friends.

After pulling the curtains round his bed he grabbed his stash and expertly cut up a couple of lines on top of his potion's textbook. He had found coke to give him a much bigger buzz than weed, and it meant he could stop going up the tower every day. He snorted it as quietly as possible and chucking the book to the ground he lay down silently as he felt the foreign substance course through him. Relaxing against his pillow, he allowed the false perception of happiness to spread warmth through his body. Sighing, he shut his eyes, and without bothering to take off even his shoes, fell into a deep stupor.

When he awoke the next day, he initially thought it must have been early due to the lack of noise. It was only when he sat up and realised the dorm was empty that it must have in fact been very late; his clock was showing it to be 9:00, meaning he was meant to be in charms now. For a moment he felt a wave of panic and jumped off his bed, but his thoughts from yesterday echoed around his head. Why was he panicking? He already had detentions every day and he didn't care about points, and he would be late anyway. Allowing himself a small smile, he had a shower and afterwards went to his trunk to pull out his version of school uniform. He wore his school shirt rolled up and his tie loosely, but flat out refused to wear the jumper or robes, and wore his own black jacket, jeans and converse. McGonagall had yelled at him every time she saw him, but he had brushed it off. He didn't care about such small, insignificant things anymore. As he pulled his clothes out, his bag of weed slipped out. As he bent down to pick it up, he stared at it for a few moments. He could get in serious trouble, but he wanted some excitement; he was so sick of feeling depressed all day.

Fuck it. His comedown from last night's fix was making him feel shit, and he knew a joint would sort that out for him. It wasn't like he was going to turn up to lessons completely fucked up, just a bit of a high to mellow him out.

He lit the hastily rolled joint in the bathroom, letting it hang from his lips as he attempted to style his hair. His weight loss had made him pale and sickly, but had accentuated his cheekbones, and with his messy hair and bright eyes he secretly thought it suited him. Putting both hands either side of the sink, he stared deeply at his reflection, his bright eyes now rapidly turning red and the blackness of his pupils swallowing up the green as they dilated. As the weed took control over his mind, he hoisted his bag over his shoulder and stumbled towards the charm's classroom, well aware he was thirty minutes late and stoned enough that he couldn't even feel his legs carrying him through the corridors. Oops. Praying they were having a practical lesson so he could slip in unnoticed, he pushed the door open. As per usual, he wasn't in luck.

"Why are you late Potter?" Professor Flitwick asked him.

Harry simply stared at him, his brain not registering that he was supposed to respond.

"Potter?"

Not trusting himself to talk, he shrugged and went and sat in the last available seat, ignoring the sniggers from his classmates. It probably hadn't been the best idea for him to go to class this high; he couldn't hold his quill due to shakes, and the writing on the chalkboard appeared to be moving. As the lesson continued, he found himself enjoying being in his own world; the weed had made it easy to block everything out, he was able to let his freeing, happy thoughts dance around his mind with no distractions as the lesson droned on. He was broken out of his reverie by the sound of scraping chairs, and Hermione grabbing his shoulder.

"Harry, what on earth are you doing?!"

"What am I doing?" He replied stupidly.

"You were 30 minutes late! And you've been sitting there all lesson smiling at nothing! What's happened?" She spoke to him in what she thought was a threatening tone, but he couldn't help but laugh. She had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him, and he wasn't about to tell her.

"Oh, you know, the usual stuff, it is what it is." He replied nonsensically, and walked off, leaving behind a bewildered Hermione.

He was getting bored of people's constant need to get involved in his life; what more could he do to make it obvious he wanted nothing to do with anyone? The rest of the day passed as usual, with people still giving him weird glances and muttering when he walked past. He didn't bother go to lunch, instead choosing to chain smoke a pack of cigarettes in an abandoned classroom. He then fidgeted through his afternoon classes, agitated at being sober once again. He had definitely found they were a lot more interesting when he was stoned. He stopped off in the Great Hall for dinner before his evening hell began, opting to sit by himself at the end of the table and leaving as quickly as possible; Harry doubted Ron or Hermione even noticed he was missing.

He had gotten through the first month of detentions, yet he found they hadn't gotten any easier. Snape was still on his case, and Harry was certain he'd cleaned his classroom at least six times in the last three weeks. He had started noticing small yet irritating changes in his body too. He had found being sober for more than twelve hours made him feel uncomfortable, like an itch that couldn't be scratched. The feeling put him on edge and made him more pissed off at everything. Bad timing now meant Harry was feeling the itch creeping up through his body thirty minutes before his detention. Fuck. Did he risk it and snort a couple of lines? A sudden twinge of pain passed through him and his mind was made up.

Snape is oblivious, just keep calm and he won't notice any difference. Harry attempted to reassure himself that his plan wasn't the stupidest idea he'd ever had in his life as he rushed up to his dorm. Was he really sniffing cocaine before spending time with a man who would probably kill him on the spot if Harry slipped up? As his hand closed in on the bag of white powder, he found his apprehensiveness replaced with a new feeling of adrenaline. He wasn't scared of Snape anymore, he was going to be high and happy and not have any more pain, that was all that mattered. The dormitory was deserted with everyone at dinner, so he didn't need to hide in his bed, instead cutting a couple of lines on the side table and snorting them straight off there. He straightened up, walked over to the window and lit a cigarette, letting the high wash over him. Snape wouldn't realise, of course he wouldn't. Harry was invincible, no one could make him leave Hogwarts, especially not Snape. Why hadn't he done this sooner? It would have made being around the git a lot more bearable. Harry smiled to himself, his high thoughts always made him laugh. He chucked his cigarette out the window and went to check his face in this mirror.

"Wow! I look weird, so many pointy bones!" Harry said out loud to himself. The coke made his speech strange, his words jumbling together. He turned his face to different angles, suddenly finding himself fascinating. The only slight problem was that his eyes were no longer showing any green, instead glazed black holes were staring back at him. Remembering the detention and shrugging, he walked out of the bathroom. What did it matter if Snape noticed? He could make up some excuse and get away with it. He strode confidently through the halls, ignoring the stares and dirty looks being thrown his way from students leaving dinner. Whatever, Harry knew they weren't important. He arrived outside Snape's office and exhaled slowly.

"Act normal, don't look at him, he won't know."

Snape looked up at the clock opposite his desk. Fantastic, Potter would be interrupting his evening any moment now. He heard someone breathe loudly and then a slight muttering outside his office door. Was Potter talking to himself? As the boy knocked loudly on the door, Snape didn't bother contemplate what the boy would be saying to himself, instead telling him to enter. As he walked in, Snape looked up at the boy who lived to ruin his life. The boy was standing far away from his desk, sniffing with his eyes averted to the floor.

"Clean the desks. No magic." Snape gestured to the cleaning products in the corner of the room.

"Yes Sir."

Severus frowned slightly as the boy answered him; his voice had sounded strange, as if he was excited. He then watched as the boy jumped up and down as he went across the classroom to start his detention. Snape crinkled his brow in confusion; the boys behaviour seemed increasingly erratic and today was yet another situation where he felt like he was missing something important and it was infuriating him not to know the answer.

Sighing and accepting he was going to have to play the long game, he carried on marking the third-year essays and tried his hardest to block out the boy for the next few hours.

Harry smiled to himself as he got to work. If even Snape didn't suspect anything was different with him, none of the other teachers would. He still needed to be cautious, but this meant he would be able to get away with being wasted in class and not have to be paranoid his teachers would notice. He gave another sniff as the drug was irritating his nose, it was making it difficult to concentrate too. He felt like he could run across the whole of the school and not get tired, he didn't want to be sitting still cleaning desks. He started tapping his feet impatiently when suddenly he felt something cold trickle down his face and drip off his chin. Harry looked down at the just cleaned desk to see his blood dripping down.

"Sir, can I go to the hospital wing?" He asked Snape, praying the man would let him leave early.

Snape glanced up at him and sneered. "No, you'll live Potter."

Snape was such a prick. Harry sighed and let the blood continually drip down his face as he carried on cleaning the classroom, unaware of his professor watching him.

Severus couldn't help but watch the boy. Since his return to school he had been growing steadily worse, and even Severus had to admit it didn't seem to be attention seeking anymore. He was at a loss with what to think of his behaviour, he had never seen anything similar to this before. He was irritated that neither him nor Dumbledore had any idea what the reason was for this, but Snape was determined to find out.

After watching the boy continue to bleed over his classroom for another 30 minutes, Snape had finally caved.

"Go to the hospital wing Potter."

The older man watched the boy stumble as he stood up, blood still slowly dripping off his chin and the signature deadened look on his face. God damn it Potter.

Harry, of course, had no intention of going to the hospital wing. Instead he headed up to the fourth floor, where he had discovered a nice secret passageway. Pinching his nose to stop the bleeding, he sighed and leaned back against the stone wall. He knew using coke on a regular basis was likely to have some physical side effects, but he hadn't expected them to occur so soon. He wasn't even using that much, just the odd line here and there. It wasn't like he had a problem. He knew he could stop at any time; it was just that he didn't want to. So what if he took drugs every day? He definitely didn't have an addiction.

He sank down to sit on the cold floor. Snape had let him out early, so at least he finally had some time to relax. He knew he should probably go back to the common room and start writing his charms essay, but he couldn't find the energy to care. Instead, he found himself automatically reaching into his pockets to fish out a joint he had half smoked. If he was honest with himself, his work hadn't been particularly of a high standard this year. He was somehow achieving decent grades in potions, but that was only because Slughorn was practically falling over himself to get him to join his stupid club. In his over subjects, he was getting P's and D's, which wasn't surprising as he was writing his essays at night when he was stoned or rushing them in the mornings before breakfast. He sighed again. Why couldn't he just be left alone?

After getting nicely stoned, he decided to head back to the common room. Stretching out his stiff and aching joints, he wondered up to Gryffindor tower. Hermione and Ron were sitting by the fire, both bent over essays, although Hermione looked a lot more engrossed in what she was writing compared to Ron. Harry sank down next to them, enjoying watching the light from the fire dance across his vision.

"How was your detention Harry? You're back early tonight." Hermione commented, looking up from her essay.

"Same as always really. Snape is such a prick." He replied, still staring into the fire. He didn't see his friends that often anymore. They usually went down to breakfast together, with Harry either forcing down a slice of toast or piling his plate full of food if he'd got the munchies from smoking too much weed in the morning. He tended to disappear at lunch, choosing to either hide out in the astronomy tower or out in the grounds behind the greenhouses, where he wouldn't be disturbed. He then wandered the halls until dinner, where he'd reappear for a few minutes to placate Ron and Hermione. By the time he'd returned from his detentions in the evening, they had usually gone to bed. He found it easier this way though. He knew they didn't want him around anymore; they were probably secretly happy he was leaving them alone.

He was snapped out of his depressing thoughts by Hermione.

"Harry, why is there blood on you?" She asked sharply.

"I had a nosebleed in my detention. It's fine now though, don't worry."

Hermione looked at him closely. He seemed far away, his glazed eyes staring intensely into the fire. Ever since he'd come back to Hogwarts this year, she'd often catch him staring into the distance, his eyes always with a dead, closed off expression within them. She knew he was still deeply upset about what had happened last year, but she hadn't expected him to change this much. After Cedric had died, he'd been upset, but he had leaned on them for comfort and was back to his old self after a few months. But now it seemed like he was drawing further and further away from them, and his behaviour didn't make any sense to her. The lack of effort in classes, his constant disappearing, his meagre eating habits…She looked up at him worriedly as he disappeared up the stairs towards the boy's dorms. She could only hope that he'd snap out of it soon, although a small voice in the back of her head told her that something deeper was going on.

Ron caught her looking and raised his eyebrows at her.

"He's still acting weirdly isn't he."

Hermione sighed. "I don't know what we can do Ron. He'll freak out if we tell any of the teachers, but I'm worried about him." She bit her lip nervously.

"Look, I'm sure he'll come around. He seems to be doing a bit better, he doesn't seem to have nightmares anymore." Ron tried to reassure her.

"I just wish he'd talk to us; he seems to always be disappearing somewhere."

"I know, but I think he needs more time. Maybe once his detentions with Snape are over he'll be happier, you can't blame him for being miserable after spending every day with the git." Ron replied. "I'm going up to bed now, we've got quidditch practice early. See you tomorrow 'Mione."

Ron walked up the stairs towards his dorm, his conversation with Hermione playing heavily on his mind. When he opened the door, he looked over at Harry's bed. The dark-haired boy was passed out face down on his bed, still in his uniform and shoes. He looked more peaceful than Ron had ever seen him this year, but he couldn't help but feel concerned at his boney face and sickly complexion. His last thought before he drifted off to sleep was that Harry would be back to his old self soon. He always bounced back.