Suspension. That was the best word to describe how he felt at this exact moment - as though he were suspended not only in space, but also in time. His body felt light, yet his limbs heavy. As though he were being held aloft by some invisible hand.
He wasn't. Somewhere, in the back of his drug-muggled mind, he knew that. His thoughts were disjointed, however - another effect of the drugs currently running rampant through his system.
This particular drug was a mixture of muggle and magical components. Administered through an injection, it was a synthesized compound that somehow managed to capture the very essence of dark magic itself and inject it directly into the body of the recipient.
He had understood that when it had first been explained to him, but somehow none of it quite mattered to him anymore. All that mattered was this feeling of relief, of tension released and pain suspended if only for a short while.
It didn't take long after the drug had worn off for the pain to begin again. At first it was only a dull ache, but the longer he went the worse it got. Only dark magic would alleviate the pain, would give him a reprieve from this gnawing agony that twisted his insides.
In the moments after the drug had worn off but before the pain intensified, however, he would find the guilt creeping in. This wasn't who he was supposed to be. His friends would hardly recognize him now - and would be disgusted with what they found.
It had been two months since he had last slept in a bed that was his own, since he had seen family or friends. The narcotics in his system kept him numb to the rest of the world, and the alcohol helped to muddle his thoughts even further. Better that, than to remember what had brought him to this place, what had led him to sink so low.
He wasn't old - still a teenager. He looked younger than he was, which had served as a sort of mixed blessing. He was less likely to be attacked - but he was also more likely to be noticed in a place like this. Already he had been confronted by two well-meaning individuals who had wanted to 'help' him. Where are your parents? Where is your home? It was always the same line of questioning, and one he had run away from both times.
Well, perhaps not run. Evaded, perhaps.
His energy was pathetically low. Even at Hogwarts he had never been particularly athletic - Quidditch didn't particularly take a lot of stamina. Increased eyesight, perhaps. Honed reflexes, certainly. But the entire game was spent sitting atop a broom - and his stamina had suffered even then. Now, it was a joke.
The only thing that saved him from completely giving in - from completely giving up all hope - was the fact that this had been done to him. He could convince himself most of the time that it wasn't his fault, that this addiction was something somebody else had forced upon him.
Perhaps his relatives had never truly cared for him, but they had managed to instill a certain set of ethical beliefs in him - a certain code of behavior that had carried over into the magical world from the muggle one. And one of those beliefs had been that one did not get involved in drugs. One did not drink to excess. Drunks, junkies - these were the types of individuals his aunt would look down upon, the type she would go out of her way to avoid.
She had instilled that disdain in him - a belief that to fall to such depravities would be one of the worst things an individual could do. Alongside practicing magic, of course. While he scoffed at the second belief, he could find no fault in the first. He would never have sought out such individuals, such recreational drugs himself because of that belief.
What he was now - he was just as disgusted with what he had become as she would have been, if she knew.
It never once even crossed his mind that his aunt, his uncle, his cousin - that any of them might be worried for his well being.