Thanks to the people who reviewed! I enjoy the feedback.

Additionally, thanks to akuma-river for the thought provoking analysis.

A/N:

Yes, I know Hermione and Lucius, decidedly disturbing. However, it is intentionally for that purpose.

Additionally, the end of chapter 1 shows Harry is not cracked. Just…sedated and confused by pain.

And finally, this story deals with the effect of Harry's disappearance and injury upon those close to him. Thus, there will extensive content involving Ron, Hermione and others along with appearances from the Potter boy. Eventual romance.

Not your cup of tea? Feel free to skedaddle.

Chapter 2: O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.

0000

Another day. Another day, wanting to die, die, die.

But resigned to a fate that didn't want to just let him fucking go, Ron sighed deep into the safety of his pillow (It wasn't damp. That was good. He hadn't hacked up anything during the night as he had nights previous.)

Ron pushed himself upward, arms stinging, chest burning, his body struggling to wake up to increase the still mellow pain that he knew would be operating at full capacity by his first class of the day. The intangible bond with his friends drew them together by mutual understanding and friendship. It also pushed them apart simultaneously by pain, and unbearable personal hurt.

It wouldn't let him die. He'd found this out the hard way. Accidents that should have split open his head and spells that should have left the red head an incoherent, destroyed mess merely threw him unconscious or happened to magically stitch him back together again, good as new.

To make matters worse, no one could tell. His mother's eyes looked into his own without worry. For all appearances, he was a healthy growing boy. She didn't know. She wouldn't ever know. The bond shielded them from other eyes and healed his arms by morning.

So he had to inflict the same wounds again, every day, just so he wouldn't tear out his heart to end it all.

But then, the bond would probably just grow him another one, in spite.

It wouldn't let him die. And to prevent himself from going mad by thinking about what he was going to do, when there wasn't one thing he could do, he just cut again and again, to forget, as well as to make his torment ease, marginally.

On the urge of being depressed, which wasn't a good way to start a morning, Ron thought caustically, he bandaged his bleeding wrists automatically, savoring the sweet hurt.

0000

A large, warm hand was stroking Hermione's side, silky hair brushing against her cheek as lips breathed a kiss onto her forehead. Lucius was apparently in a good mood this morning.

"It is time for you to return to school, girl," he whispered in his deep voice, lips brushing her ear. A moment later he pressed a kiss into the side of her head.

Hermione opened her eyes and looked up into a set of cool, gray ones that were focused on her expressionlessly.

"Yes, I understand," she said quietly, voice hoarse from last night's screaming. He'd took her very roughly that time, with no forewarning.

She was obviously quite insane. She had to be when she'd been in a terrible state of ecstasy while he savagely fucked her, making her bond hurt go away.

He moved back while she made to sit up, finding grooved scratches down her chest and purplish bruises on her hips where he had gripped her hard. As she slid out of the bed, not looking at the older wizard she…she didn't know how she felt about him. She wanted to hate him, but she didn't. Yet, neither did she enjoy this arrangement. If it had been before…well, she never would have done this.

A nasty little voice in her mind said there was no way she could possibly know that.

Bending down to pick up her panties, Hermione felt something warm sliding down her inner thigh. Looking down, she saw blood. Casually, she wiped it off with the edge of the expensive sheet and pulled up her panties slowly, trying not to smile at the spectacular inner hurt of her womb. He'd gone particularly deep last night. She'd forgotten.

0000

Voldemort hovered in the in-between place restlessly, unable to keep still.

Something or someone was calling for him, inaudibly. It pulled at his non-form. But it was exactly as if one were trying to cup air in one's fingers. He wasn't corporeal. He couldn't be summoned when there was no essence to summon.

Like a whisper on the wind, it called to him again, maddeningly insistent.

0000

"How is he today?" the man with sad, desperate eyes asked.

The young Healer looked up from where she was smoothing down Harry's quilt. "Oh Mr. Black, I didn't hear you come in," she said pleasantly, tucking some of her auburn hair behind her ear. "He's doing much better than yesterday."

After Harry defeated the Dark Lord at the end of his own curse, again, he bound and Stunned Peter Pettigrew and forcefully took him back to Hogwarts. Sirius Black was free after a full confession, and then some.

And this is how he repaid his godson: he wasn't there to protect him when the boy needed him most.

He should have been left to the Dementors. He didn't deserve even the liberty of looking at the boy when he told James he would care for him. He was so useless.

The Healer was prattling on about meaningless things, like how Harry had gotten so pale, and how when he woke he would love to go out into the sun.

Stupid, foolish woman. Sirius knew it could never be that simple.

He'd overheard the Healer in charge talking to Dumbledore. He heard how Harry could probably never truly "wake up." The boy was frequently awake, but he was lucid and unclear about the people around him. He didn't know his godfather, and no one was allowed to touch him because his magic was confused, and he could kill without meaning to.

And so Sirius came to the same ward, every day, at precisely the same time, and sat beside his godson's bed, without hope but unwilling to abandon the boy who meant so goddamn much to him.

0000

Severus Snape was a very suspicious man. He had been a spy for too many years not to be.

With Potter in St. Mungo's, the remaining members of the Golden Trio, both equally infuriating rule breakers, were acting decidedly…odd.

Dumbledore had asked him to keep an eye on those hateful children, and that was the only reason he was making the observations he was.

For Granger, he expected the insufferable know it all to be researching methodically in Hogwarts' library for a solution to her friend's condition. She wouldn't rest until she found some obscure way to help Potter.

Instead, the girl was quiet, dreadfully so, in the hallways and in her classes. She was always alone with an empty face and a slowness to her step. Perhaps the children had a falling out beforehand. Or maybe, she was wallowing in grief over Potter's condition. Severus found that last probability highly unlikely. Unfortunately, she was a bright witch, and she knew better than to mope around when there was a possibility she could help.

Grudgingly, he admitted it would be a loss for the magical community if she were to commit some act of…thoughtlessness. Very, very grudgingly. He knew they signs. For the moment, they were not present. But her unusual behavior kept him wary.

However, Granger's personality changes were indeed questionable, her schoolwork remained excellent. Perhaps sometimes she didn't supplement her papers with extra information too much, or did not answer questions posed by his colleagues with the same fervor of days past. That wasn't life threatening, so Severus did not find himself terribly concerned with the girl who had hacked off her long, brown, curly hair over the summer.

Yet, the green, silver, and black bow she clipped in the short hair didn't help matters either, but Merlin help him, he didn't want to even think about the implications of that, because he knew from experience what it meant, and it was absolutely unfathomable. It also was likely completely irrelevant to Granger's behavior quirks.

That is, he hoped it was.

Now, the Weasley boy…

If that boy thought he was fooling anyone, it was most definitely not Severus.

Ronald Weasley was obviously in the depths of a serious depression. If his so-called friends couldn't seem to gather that after five years of friendship, then they were the dunderheads he'd proclaimed them to be.

The boy never spoke to Granger anymore. He made no attempt to be close to her, in fact. Weasley sat as far away as could during classes he took with the witch, so the other professors claimed. In Severus' Potions class it was the same; Weasley partnered with Longbottom frequently.

The only reason he allowed the two the liberty of remaining together was because they hasn't yet killed anyone. They seemed to encourage each others strengths and diminish the other's weaknesses, much to his chagrin.

But there was something…something else. It was something Severus could still not put a name to, something that nagged at the edge of consciousness.

It was a reminder to why Weasley had become agreeable and why his temper had cooled considerably.

0000

"Ron, want to go down to the Lake for a bit?" Neville asked good naturedly.

No, he definitely did not. The pain was wheedling him up the threshold of inaudible tolerance. Soon, he would need to scream. He couldn't hack and slash at himself while his year mates were near, after all. But he could put up a Silencing spell and vent his anguish into the sheets where no one would hear.

"No thanks, Neville. I think I'm gonna nap till next class. I didn't sleep well last night," he said softly, blue eyes desperate for the tall boy to believe his slightly false words.

The pain had dragged him through dreams of massacre and blackness.

"Are you sure," Neville asked uncertainly.

Ron folded his arms behind his back, fingernails willing the skin to break open through the gauze so it would hurt, would it please hurt, so he could manage for a few more precious moments. And then he could free that other, dreadful, despised soul bond pain, by screaming, shrieking, tearing at his skin in futility, something, anything.

It hurt all the same, no matter what.

"Yes," he said shortly.

"Well, okay then. See you in Charms then Ron," the tall Gryffindor said, looking back once to see Ron's anguished grimace upturn into a half smile. He waved after Neville stiffly, biting his lip.

At least he tried.

The moment the door shut with a soft click, Ron threw himself into his four poster bed, snapped the hangings shut and rasped out the spell so no one could know what was happening to him. They couldn't know. He couldn't explain his situation to his mother, his brothers, to anyone: the bond bound them in more ways than one. And if they found him out, they would haul him off to St. Mungos and that's where Harry was.

He couldn't bear to see Harry. Not to mention that the agony would probably bolt him down dead unconscious until…until the end? He didn't know when Harry would recover. It could be never. And since Ron couldn't die, and he couldn't tell, he was damned well not going to spend the rest of his life in a bloody hospital.

…The abrupt movements made his wounded arms tingle suggestively with a delectable hurt. Then, the real torture reared its head and struck, over and over till the red head could not remember even his own name.