CHAPTER 5: HITTING ROCK-BOTTOM

Harry kicked at a rock dismally as he shoved his only functional hand into his pocket. He had decided to just skip class again – CPS couldn't seem to remember to forward the flag on his file that said that he didn't have a clue what he was doing in school, and Harry would much appreciate not being subject to the whispers and laughs and stares. He might be tempted to attack somebody again, and he'd probably end up losing function in his other hand this time, not to mention landing himself in jail.

Originally, he had regained some mobility and dexterity in both hands. They were still restricted, but they still worked somewhat. But one good right hook to the face of the last idiot to make a sneering comment about Harry's intelligence had destroyed the brittle nerves and muscles. Everything from the fingertips to the wrist joint was useless. His Quidditch days were long over, and that stung. The only thing that had made him feel somewhat better had been that he had at least broken the guy's jaw. That, and the three-hour cutting session right after he'd gone back to the fosters.

Smeltings wasn't far from here, he thought vaguely as he looked at the distant building. He'd heard that the 'posh little swotty boarding school nancy boys' often came into the small town he had been sent to for weekend outings. Maybe he'd see Dudley, and he could take out all the anger and frustration on the one who'd wrecked his life.

Dropping to the ground, Harry dug around in his schoolbag until he found what he was looking for. The cutting just hadn't been doing it for him lately – he needed something else. That was when one of the guys in his last school had introduced him to crack. When the cutting didn't help enough, he took a bit of crack and everything just sort of floated away. Yes, Harry was very aware that it was illegal, but if it helped, who really cared about it anymore?

He wouldn't bother with the cuts this morning, he decided as he took out some blessed crack and lit up. He'd do that this evening, after he'd gone and gotten more bandages. And he'd stash away his pill for the day, add it to the growing stockpile in his schoolbag. These fosters were really green, they weren't even bothering to hide the bottle. He could've taken the whole thing and he doubted that they would've noticed.


"What in Merlin's name is he doing?" Remus asked Sirius in a low, confused voice.

"He's 15, he's far too young to be smoking," Sirius agreed, fingering his wand as if wanting to blast the strange glass pipe out of Harry's hand.

"That's no pipe I've ever seen," Remus muttered, putting a warning hand on Sirius' arm. "Maybe it's a Muggle thing."


"Harry, would you mind giving me an explanation as to why you skipped school today?" his new foster mother asked as she stood in the doorway of his bedroom.

Harry shrugged, picking at the sleeve of his sweater. He couldn't dare show his arms, the fosters and Ms. Colton would haul his drugged-up, scarred self back to the psychiatrist. "Didn't feel like going," he replied indifferently.

"That's not an acceptable excuse, Harry, and you know that," she said sternly.

"Fine. What's the point?" Harry said. "I'm so far behind, I'm never going to catch up anyway."

She finally sighed in defeat and closed the door again. She was probably just going to concentrate on the easy foster son, the little 9-year-old who wasn't out of her control.


The next morning, Harry slipped out early. Again, he didn't quite know where he was headed, but he knew one thing: he wasn't coming back.

He finally found himself a nice, quiet, isolated patch of woods somewhere that nobody passed. Settling down against the trunk of a tree, Harry steeled himself for what he was about to do as he pulled out his knife, his new stash of crack, and the entire bottle of little white pills.


Harry groaned softly as he felt an animal of some kind nudging at his head. The world was spinning, he felt weak, shaky, sick to his stomach. Merlin, he still wasn't dead.

A small whine came from the animal as it nosed his face with a wet nose. Harry tried feebly to push the animal away, but his muscles felt as limp as spaghetti. The animal insistently continued to nose him, paws pressing into his side with an increasingly painful weight.

"Sirius, you're going to crush the poor boy, get off," came a sharp, familiar voice. "Harry? Harry, dear, you awake?"

He couldn't seem to focus on anything. The weight lifted from his side and he felt his body bounce painfully as the animal presumably jumped off of wherever he was – a bed? Where was he?

"Wre'my?" he asked blearily, feeling another bounce on the bed and then a warm, furry body curling up next to him and the wet nose started nudging his face again.

"You're at the Burrow, dear," the voice replied. "Sirius, get off." A slight growl from the animal apparently was enough to make the voice back down.

Slowly, it started to piece together in Harry's fragmented mind. The voice was Mrs. Weasley. He was at the Burrow. The animal frantically nosing him was Sirius, in his dog form. How had he gotten here? The last thing he remembered was blacking out in the middle of an isolated forest.

Another voice – Lupin, maybe? – came into the room. "Sirius, don't crowd him, he's only just come to. Get off there, give him room to breath."

Reluctantly, the nose stopped, but Sirius stubbornly refused to leave the bed, settling down as Harry started to slowly have his world come back into focus – or as much focus as it could without his glasses on.

Harry managed to grab his glasses after a few clumsy attempts and put them on, blinking a few times to try and clear the last of the fog from his vision. This had to be a dream. How many times had he wished he was back here, how many times had he dreamt this exact scene, only to wake up and find himself still trapped?

He was still dizzy as he forced himself to sit up. "What happened?" he asked, a little faintly as he tried to force his focus to straighten out on Mrs. Weasley. The world was still a little spinny from the drugs – evidently he was still slightly high.

"Why don't you tell us?" Lupin asked quietly.

"No, I mean, how'd I get here?" Harry corrected himself.

"Remus and Sirius brought you straight here," Mrs. Weasley replied. "You gave us the scare of our lives, Harry dear. Lie down, you look as though you're about to pass out." Gently, but firmly she forced him back down. "The others will be home from Hogwarts in a week. They wanted to come straightaway, but what with OWLs and NEWTs, they really couldn't leave. Especially with that foul Umbridge woman nosing around…"

"Don't even speak of Dolores Umbridge to me," Lupin said darkly.

Sirius growled in a low tone before he worriedly nosed Harry again, a small whine escaping.

"Sirius, really," Mrs. Weasley said in exasperation. "Leave him be, you don't need to be disturbing Harry every two – don't you dare growl at me!" she added fiercely when Sirius' hackles went up and he growled warningly at her, baring his teeth.

"Molly, Sirius, both of you, calm down," Lupin sighed tiredly. Then he looked at Harry, worry clearly still present in both his eyes and his voice as he said, "Sirius decided to hell with security and safety and just hauled you out of the forest. We thought you were going to die, Harry." Sirius whined in worried affirmation, nosing Harry again. He was really getting a bit annoying, Harry found. He didn't like being fussed over.

"That was the whole point," Harry finally said, averting his eyes from everybody in the room.


Harry didn't think that Sirius left his side for even five minutes over the next week. If Harry plucked at his bandages on his arm, trying to fight the desire to cut himself, Sirius snapped and grabbed his sleeve in his teeth, yanking his hand away. He had never appeared in human form even once, for security purposes. Mrs. Weasley had ordered him to stay as a dog if he wanted to remain at the Burrow.

The withdrawal from the drugs was making Harry surly and short-tempered, unpredictable and he was overreacting to every little crisis. And that was just the mental withdrawal. Physically, he felt as though he were dying. Dying a slow, painful, torturous death. It was making him act in strange ways: on his better days he would pace around, desperately worrying away at his sleeves or his bandages; on his worst days he would rave madly and beg to be killed.

On the day the Weasley children and Hermione (who was simply coming straight to the Burrow) were due to arrive from Hogwarts, Harry was in one of his worst days. He was snarling at Sirius, who seemed to be losing patience with him as he snarled right back at Harry.

"Just kill me already!" Harry snapped, writhing in discomfort on the sofa. "Don't make me suffer, just let me diiiiiiiiiiie…"

"You're not dying, Harry," Lupin repeated tiredly as he walked in.

"I am…" Harry insisted pleadingly.

"No, you're not."

"Kill me if you've any decency at all."

"Nobody's killing anybody here, Harry."


Harry had calmed down into a somewhat normal state by the time Fred, George, Ron, Ginny and Hermione had arrived from London.

Ginny and Hermione both squealed in excitement when they spotted him, dashing over to throw their arms around his neck. Harry instinctively stiffened: he had avoided affectionate touch all year and it felt strange, uncomfortable to him now.

"Harry, you're all right, we were so worried," Hermione gushed, she and Ginny both releasing him when they figured out he didn't like the touch. Eyes tearing, she said, "We were so scared we weren't going to find you, Harry, it's been the most awful year…"

"You are all right, aren't you?" Ginny asked worriedly, looking at his thin, wan face.

"I'm fine," Harry said shortly, fingering the fraying edges of his bandages nervously.

"You don't look fine," Hermione persisted, gently tugging his hand away. "You look ill."

"You look half-dead," Ron spoke up from the doorway, watching Harry carefully. "We missed you this year, Harry."

Harry sent him a halfhearted smile. "So?" he asked. "Tell me what's been going on."

Grinning, Ron and both twins joined the other teens in the sitting room, jumped onto the sofa and launched into a tale of the last year: how Angelina Johnson, they were sure, was channeling Oliver Wood; how Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil had gone into hysterics when Umbridge had told them that they weren't practicing their counter-spells and the first time they could try it was in the exam; how Hannah Abbott was so hysterical by the time OWLs came along that she had to be sent home; how Umbridge had tried to take over Hogwarts and the entire school (inanimate objects, ghosts, professors and students) had rebelled.

Harry listened to all of it, hoping that they would forget to ask him about what had happened to him. He smiled and laughed in all the right spots, careful to avoid doing anything with his hands – he didn't want to have them know that his right hand was paralyzed. Lupin and Mr. Weasley and Mrs. Weasley and Sirius knew, they'd seen him at mealtimes for a week. Somehow he knew that dinner tonight would only require one utensil, likely a spoon.

Mr. Weasley had promised him that once he was back to his normal self, he would take Harry into St. Mungo's to see if the Healers could fix anything. He doubted that most of the scars could be removed by this point, they were too old, but perhaps Harry's hand could be repaired, his limp removed, full mobility and dexterity returned to his left arm.

Or at least that's what he told Harry. But Harry had heard those quiet conversations between the elder Weasleys and Lupin, the hurried whispers that happened the one time that Dumbledore and McGonagall had come, late into the night. The serious doubts that Harry could be fixed.


By the time dinner came around, the other teens appeared to be satisfied with Harry's performance, noticeably relieved. At Mrs. Weasley's call to dinner, Ron, Fred and George all shouted for joy and dashed into the kitchen, quickly followed by Hermione and Ginny. Harry sighed and dragged himself behind, trying to mask his limp as best as he could. He didn't think anybody noticed, except perhaps Hermione.

True to Harry's prediction, dinner was soup and garlic toast. Nothing that would make the paralysis glaringly obvious. However, he didn't think it escaped Hermione's attention that he was using his left hand, and somewhat clumsily, despite the fact he was right-handed. She frowned at him questioningly, but Harry didn't meet her frown, concentrating on controlling his hand as best he could. When he realized that he wouldn't be able to keep up the charade for much longer, he moved his bowl and then his plate of toast to the floor under the table for Sirius, who had been trying not to beg for food. Sirius growled in a low tone briefly to tell Harry he wasn't happy with him for giving up his not-even-half-finished dinner, but then butted Harry's leg affectionately in thanks and started eating.

She cornered him after dinner, once the Weasley children had all gone to wash up. "Harry," she said sternly, "you're not left-handed."

"Aren't I?" Harry asked evasively, passing a plate to her. His heart nearly stopped when he scrambled to regain a hold on the plate as it dipped dangerously.

"No, you're not," Hermione said, grabbing the plate from him. "What's going on with you?"

"Don't know what you're talking about, Hermione," Harry said smoothly as Mrs. Weasley pointed at a chair and ordered him to sit.

"Don't lie to me, Harry, I'm not thick. I saw the limp. I saw that you haven't used your right hand all day. And you're not doing particularly well with your left hand. What happened?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Hermione," Harry repeated.

Hermione watched him for a moment. Then she gave a sigh of frustration and stalked out.