Harry massaged his aching arm. The spots where the needle had passed through ached, and were marked visibly. He had taken recently to shooting up a new street drug known as Felix.
(Felix is similar in effect to morphine. Take powdered thyme, cut with rue and scilla (the three of these in combination are considerably greater in their effects than whatever raggy poppy-derived shit you damn muggles can get your hands on), and that in turn is cut with a powder fashioned from the tentacles of a Venusian octopus-boy (most of the time these are extracted from cadavers or abortions, but if you want the real tasty tasty shit you gotta take them from a living victim, cut them up good so they get nice and scared with the adrenal glands flowing and all.))
He heard, suddenly, two voices call to him from outside. He ducked his head out the window. Standing outside the dingy Hogsmeade hotel were Ron and Severus.
"Hallo, Harry!" Ron yelled, grinning, "Old Sev and I was just about to head to the pictures! Wanna come with?"
Harry glanced about his room. He had already shot up as much Felix as he safely could in one day, and most of his books and things were still over at Cho's. He really had nothing better to do.
He ducked his head out again. "Yeah, sure. I'll head on down." He grabbed his peabody which he'd laid flat across his bed and walked out of his room.
The staircase creaked and warped as he stomped down the stairs in his Wellington's, and dead grass crunched underneath Harry's boots when he reached the outside. This continued the whole walk.
The roads were not paved in Hogsmeade. A man sat at a street corner loudly playing bagpipes, accompanied by a grindylow who plucked inexpertly at a bass while submerged in a large clear tank of water.
Harry turned to his friends. "Do you suppose we ought to go back for Colin and Luna?"
Ron and Severus looked at each other and laughed.
"Well, we'd rather figured they wanted leavin' alone, considering." Said Ron.
"How do you mean?" asked Harry.
"What, you mean you don't know?" asked Severus.
Harry tensed up. "Know what? Are they hurt?"
Ron chuckled. "Naw, far from it, mate. Just the opposite. They're in fine condition, just fine. Just a little indisposed of at the minute, tha'ss all."
Severus grinned. "Busy, like."
Ron belly laughed. "Hur! Yeah, busy. They've gotten busy."
Harry furrowed his brow in confusion.
Ron shook his head. "Honestly, I'm surprised you couldn't hear it, old son. They weren't half loud, I gotta tell yer."
Severus laughed. "It's that shit he's been putting in his veins!" He slapped Harry's bad arm with the back of hand, making him wince. "He probably didn't know what was going on."
Harry was still confused. What was it they were talking about?
Severus sensed Harry's confusion and became exasperated. "Oh, for- they were fucking."
Harry nervously laughed along as Severus and Ron started howling away. He was still in a state of profound bafflement about the world around him, and was just going along with whatever the consensus in regards to acceptable behavior seemed to be, overcompensating to make his mental state less obvious to those around him. Needless to say, it did not have this effect.
"Look, I've been a bit… out of it since Cho. I'm not all there yet." Harry scratched the back of his head.
"My mum's fucking crockery, it's about Cho!" Ron gritted his teeth, "That's an excuse and you know it, old son."
"What you need is a good old-fashioned detox," Severus interjected, "Kept in a locked room away from the filth for a week or so, like. You know what, forget the film, Harry. You've got enough dopamine fucking you up as it is."
Severus was talking shit, as at that very moment they had just gone through the turnstiles. Ron handed some money to the ticket-boy in the booth.
"Uh, sir?" he called after him, "You forgot to pick up your tickets."
"We'll decide what we want to see inside," grumbled Ron.
"Sir, you have to come back here. That's, uh, that's not how that works..." the ticket-boy trailed off as Ron strode back over to the booth.
He slammed his fists up against the glass, making the ticket-boy jump back. "I SAID WE'LL FUCKING WELL DECIDE WHAT WE WANT INSIDE, DIDN'T I? ARE YOU DEAF, YOU STINKING BUBBLE-BOY FILTH, YOU? YOU WANT ME TO KNOCK SOME NOISE INTO THOSE DEAFIE EARS, HMMMMM?"
The ticket-boy stood almost frozen, shaking only slightly. Ron spat against the glass, disgusted at the youth's lack of resolve, and walked back to join Harry and Severus.
"Fackin' 'ell," Severus said, "You weren't half harsh with 'im, were you?"
"Ah, shut your hole. I never could stand them what watches the whole world through glass, that's all. Thought I'd put a bit of stick about." Ron said, now calmed down.
"I thought they didn't let us do that outside of school," Harry said. Lucidity had begun to return to him, enough so for him to make middle-of-the road witticisms.
Severus cracked a small laugh, mostly out of politeness. It was a bitter subject for him, whenever wands were brought up in conversation. Since his expulsion, he'd not once felt that rush of concentrated magic that comes from wielding a wand. He had tried many things since, and quit all of them with ease. For him, nothing had come close to wands, not in the pleasure of the fix, or in the difficulty of the kick. Since then, he had forsworn all substance. He was a pusher, not a taker. A procurer, first and foremost.
At random, they picked a screening room to go into. "You head in and save some seats for us, Harry," Ron said, "Sev and I'll get some popcorn and things."