AN. No song for this one, I couldn't think of one… but 29 seconds of silence seemed to fit. It's short again, but there's no way I could have made it longer, so I hope you don't mind. xD There's probably going to be one more chapter after this one, just in case you were wondering.

And please, REVIEW! I'm begging, I need my jelly bean substitutes. (:

WARNINGS. I don't think I need a language warning (don't hold me to that, though), but there's cutting/self harm and implied slash and incest. Whoot.

DEDICATION. CAKETIN. There, you finally get your name in… er, not quite lights, but big block capitals, anyway. You know where your references are in here, but that (not that, obviously) is over, right?

DISCLAIMER. Still not mine, surprise, surprise. The characters are JKR's, and Non Musical Silence is off the All-American Rejects album, When the World Comes Down.

NEON GREEN LACES AND BAD INFLUENCES
PART III (NON MUSICAL SILENCE)

Al's eyes were stinging with tears as he apparated into James and Teddy's flat. Technically it was Teddy's, but as James had been living there since he graduated (he had moved in with a promise to move out as soon as he got a job, but then had been too lazy to find his own place), and was helping to pay the rent, everyone referred to it as James and Teddy's. Al knew that they would both be at either his and James' parents' house or Teddy's Grandmother's, so he would get some peace.

As soon as he had regained his balance, Al didn't waste any time. Tears now streaming unnoticed down his cheeks, he began to rifle through drawers in the living room and bedrooms, hunting for the cigarette stash James would have undoubtedly hidden from his flat mate.

Albus eventually found them in the back of a kitchen cupboard, but only after leaving odd-looking muddy footprints (if he had been thinking about it more he would have been regretting only wearing one shoe) across a lot of the wooden floor throughout the flat. A quick 'scourgify' fixed that, although it did leave the places where the footprints had been slightly cleaner than everywhere else.

It was a good hiding place, the back of the cupboard, Al had decided, because knowing James' love of fast food and raw carrots, and Teddy's Grandmother's great cooking (not to mention Grandma Molly's), he doubted the pair ever actually used the kitchen properly. He grabbed an unopened packet from the pile in the corner (hidden behind several dusty tins of baked beans) and ripped it open impatiently. He dropped his old cigarette butt into James' ash tray and lit another. Then, holding the cigarette between his lips as he shoved his wand and the packet into his jeans pocket, Al made his way into the bathroom.

He was relying on the fact that James still didn't trust himself with hair-removal charms, or just still preferred the solid reliability of a razor. It only took Al a moment or two of searching to find that he was in luck. He took a deep breath, not noticing when his cigarette fell into the sink. Even after all this time it scared him (James had always said that it wasn't just Al's Slytherin-like traits that had prevented him from being sorted into Gryffindor, but also a severe lack of courage. Al had always protested, but he knew there was some truth in it), and there was a small voice in his head telling him there was still time to back out. He didn't. He couldn't.

The razor blades left jagged red lines across his wrist, but the pain was far from close to the level he wanted to feel.

The tear tracks had dried on his cheeks, but his eyes began to sting again as he replaced James' razor. He had barely noticed the blood stain on the bathroom floor, and he left the room without doing anything to clean it.

Once back in the kitchen, Albus began to root almost frantically through the cupboards again. He quickly found what he was looking for, opened a bottle of Fire Whisky with his teeth and downed almost half the bottle.

His head spun, and he grabbed the countertop to steady himself. His grip slackened and the bottle slipped from his fingers, falling to the floor and smashing. The brief thought of his cigarette abandoned in the bathroom crossed Al's mind, but then his head began to spin again and he stumbled.

What the hell was he doing here? He had planned to come here, but he couldn't for the life of him remember why. The flat was empty… but he would be back soon, no doubt. James: the damn reason why he had broken up with Scorpius in the first place. James and Scorpius hated each other. And James and Al? They hated each other, but they were closer than two brothers were supposed to be.

James had seen his scars, but he hadn't said anything. He hadn't done anything to try and help Al. Hadn't cared. He had unquestioningly accepted Al's explanation that they were old, from third year, even though many obviously weren't.

So let James learn from his mistakes. Let him see the truth.

Al sank to his knees, his fingers trailing above him down the cupboard door, trying in vain to grip and keep him upright. He grabbed the largest piece of the broken glass and, his vision blurred with tears, ran the sharpest edge across the already-marred skin of his left forearm once, twice, several more times. He barely winced, but as he watched his own blood mix with the spilled Fire Whisky, it was both pain and tears blurring his vision.

The last thought that occupied his mind was of how horribly cold Scorpius had been, and then he blacked out.