Disclaimer: This work contains mature and explicit themes including but not limited to violence, drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation and many more. Please consider your own triggers prior to reading this work. Please take care of yourself and skip this one if you need to.

"When you left, I allowed the darkness to take over; the anxiety to rule me. I was too stubborn to fix myself, so instead, I isolated myself. I hid from everyone including you."

December 2001

Harry sat in the Grimmauld kitchen, an ashtray on the aged wooden dining table in front of him and the smoke from his last cigarette hanging in the air and stinging at his eyes. He could almost convince himself it was the smoke that was causing his eyes to water. That the vapors were leading to his tears.

He drew in a shaking breath as his mind fixated on the single word he had been pondering so frequently recently.

Tolerance.

Last year on this day, the day before Christmas Eve, Daphne's tolerance for him had run out.

She had asked him to choose between his vices and her and he had chosen the former. He had wanted to choose her, really, he had. But when the time would come for him to make that decision; to pick between the woman he loved more than anything on the planet and the substances that made him feel good for a few short hours, he chose incorrectly every single time.

After a month or two, he felt too guilty to even seriously consider apologizing anymore. After three months he received the letter from Daphne's father formally calling off the wedding and their guests all received their cancellations notices.

He hadn't seen Daphne in a year. He missed her so fucking much, but she could no longer tolerate him.

Tolerance.

Eight months ago, the Ministry's tolerance had run out.

Harry had begun to sleep more and more. With Daphne no longer there, he no longer worried about hiding his addictions. Instead, he began to drink day and night. He drank while working, indulged in dreamless sleep at all hours of the day. Not long after the cancellation notices had gone out, he had been called into Department Head Thomas' office.

"Potter what's going on with you?" the older man had asked him from the highbacked leather chair across the desk.

Senior Auror Willem Thomas was a stern man with salt and pepper hair and a thick black moustache. He had never much liked Harry, who suspected it was because he knew his office was being prepared for him, even now. He pushed Harry hard, harder than the other juniors. He watched him intently and relentlessly.

"Nothing, sir." The lie came easily.

"Potter—Harry. You're weeks behind on your paperwork, your combat training has gone from best to worst in class, and I've had half a dozen people complain that you smell like a pub during your shifts."

He hesitated for the briefest of moments.

"I…I received the cancellation notice. If you're going through a little too much right now, I would always be willing to give you some time off. Heaven knows you could use it more than just about anyone else here, especially during this time of year."

This time of year.

Ah. It was nearly the three-year anniversary of the battle of Hogwarts.

Harry swallowed thickly.

"Thank you, sir. But really, I'm fine."

Thomas looked at him intently for a minute and then nodded. "I'll take your word for it but know that your leash is short. I want you caught up on your paperwork by the end of this week. And no more drinking. You may think it isn't a big deal, but I won't allow you to kill a fellow auror because you're drunk."

Harry nodded his acknowledgement. "Sir."

He had left the office then; had tried to catch up on his work and stop his day drinking. He lasted another two weeks before another junior, Rachel Little, had caught him sneaking a swallow in the break room and told on him.

He had been placed on leave that day pending clearance with a mind healer. His first appointment had been scheduled for May. He hadn't attended it. Instead, he spent his time at home, asleep. When he awoke, he drank his alcohol and potions until he passed back out. At times he pondered the thought of just drinking enough so that he would never wake up again, but he feared death. Feared how those who loved him and had died for him would react to what he had made of himself.

Tolerance.

In August, Andromeda, Ron, and Hermione's tolerance had run out.

"An intervention," they had called it.

"An ultimatum." Harry had heard. The same as Daphne had given him. The alcohol or them. The potions or them. Not in those words of course.

"Harry we're worried," Hermione had told him, tears in her brown eyes and her bottom lip trembling.

"This life you're living isn't a life, mate. It's just…existing," Ron said.

Harry laughed. It sounded slightly manic, even to his own ears. "The potions and the alcohol are the only thing that let me forget. It's the only time I can close my eyes without seeing his fucking red ones staring back at me. It's the only time I can rest." The last word had come out as a plea. An appeal for them to recognize his predicament, begging them to understand.

"Harry, we know." Hermione's voice was gentle, but he scoffed anyway. "We were there too, we—"

"You know, Hermione?" Harry's voice spat out, louder than he intended. "You were there too? Do you mean to tell me you had him crawling around inside your mind? Had him chase you year after year? Were you there to watch Cedric die, and take part in a fucking resurrection ritual? Was it you who was inside Nagini when she tried to kill Arthur, and watched Sirius die? Were you the one who fought him countless times as a fucking child?!"

Harry's head was hot, his voice loud. He knew it was unfair, but he couldn't stop himself. "Did you had to hear your mothers dying plea over and over anytime he came near?" he asked more quietly. "Have you had a fucking lifetime of nightmares?" His voice cracked at the end.

Silence rang around the room, more deafening than his yelling had been. "Don't fucking do that, Harry," Ron said, his voice hard and his eyes harder. "We didn't have it as bad as you did, but we were there for you. Hermione more than anyone was there for you."

Harry rubbed his face with his hands. "Please," he petitioned them. "Existing is all I can do."

"You can get help. I know a therapist, and mind healers." It was Andromeda's voice. Her first time speaking during this intervention.

Harry sighed and looked towards the older woman. "Yeah, maybe," he agreed noncommittally.

Andromeda's eyes bored into his and he averted his gaze. "You will, Harry because you will no longer see Teddy until you've been cleared by both."

Harry felt as though he had been struck. "He's my godson," he protested. "I love Teddy more than anything else in this world. You can't just take him away from me."

"He is my grandson, and all that remains of Nymphadora. His safety is paramount, and I will not allow you to see him while drunk or when using potions illicitly. As soon as you get the help you need and are cleared, you can see him again and nothing will make me happier. If not for yourself, do it for Teddy."

An intervention.

An ultimatum.

"Fuck you all." Was all he had said, and before they could close their slack jaws, he had stormed out. If they cared, they would try to understand his point of view instead of forcing him to do what they thought was best.

Tolerance.

In October his own tolerance had reached its limit. He was so shocked by the nightmare that he awoke screaming from its mere presence more than the contents of the dream itself. He thought that maybe he hadn't taken enough dreamless sleep, so he drank twice what he normally would and closed his eyes once more, only to be awoken again by cold laughter emanating from a pale, reptilian face.

He thought it was a bad batch. Bought more the next day from a different brewer, but the results were the same. It didn't take long for him to find a book detailing the phenomena of potion tolerance, in which a potion loses its efficacy when taken consistently for an extended period of time.

He had searched frantically for a workaround, but there were none. Then he had looked to see how long it would take for the tolerance to wear off and had been met with a passage informing him that for most it took decades. He had screamed. Had punched the brick walls of Grimmauld until his knuckles were bent and bleeding, and his physical distress matched that of what he was feeling mentally.

He paced through the old house angrily, his thoughts a jumbled mess as his blood ran hot from the anger and alcohol that swam inside of it. "Fucking Tolerance." He snarled, and then without realizing it, he began to sob.

He sank to the floor and curled into a helpless ball as the gravity of his situation threatened to overtake him. His only reprieve was gone. He couldn't last a night without the dreamless sleep, how was he supposed to go decades? He took a deep breath and attempted to still his tears, but they continued to flow.

He contemplated reaching out to her then. What he wanted more than anything at that moment was for Daphne to hold him, but he had burnt that bridge, just like he had burnt the bridge with his friends and Andromeda and Teddy. He had isolated himself because he thought that's what he had wanted; he had called it freedom.

But suddenly the freedom he thought he had gained from them soured like wine in his stomach and all he could taste was loneliness. And the loneliness grew only more fetid still, until all he could taste was isolation like bile in the deepest parts of himself, threatening to spill out of him in uncontrollable heaves.

He was so terrified of sleep he didn't dare close his eyes for two days, and on the third night when his body forced him to rest, the nightmares returned as though they had been waiting eagerly for this moment; as if they had to make up for the lost time. He awoke covered in sweat; his throat raw from his screams.

It was on one such night a few weeks later that he had used for the first time. He rose from his bed and rubbed his eyes, trying to banish the latest nightmare. He drew in a deep breath and grabbed a coat. Despite the cold October night, he figured a walk would help clear his mind. He headed out of the front of Grimmauld and began at a slow leisurely pace, drawing the cold air into his lungs and letting it out. One breath and then another. Fifteen minutes into his walk, while he thought of nothing, but the shuffling of his feet against the concrete, he heard a cough.

A man sat huddled in an alleyway, his hands over a bin where the faint glow of fire danced. He looked Harry up and down and Harry studied him in turn. He was an old man, a long, unkempt beard covering a thin face. He was wearing a tattered jacket over a thin, holey shirt and what remained of the hair atop his head was grey and matted.

He smelled of smoke from both the fire in the bin and the snout in his hand. Harry was preparing to turn the other way and keep walking when his voice rang out, raspy and with a lisp caused by many missing teeth. "That's a nice coat lad," he said lazily. "Looks warm."

Harry surreptitiously pulled his wand from his pocket. "I suppose it is, yeah," he agreed.

"I'd love to have me a coat like that. Ye open to bartering with an old man?"

Harry once again felt the urge to turn and walk the other way, but his curiosity won over and against his better judgement he stuck around. "What do you have?" he asked, and the old man's eyes lit up.

"I see bags under your eyes, and a young lad like yourself should be asleep at this hour." His dark eyes glittered. "Are ye having trouble sleeping?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. "And if I am?"

"How'd you like to have a night of peaceful sleep? I'm not usually one to share, but that is a nice coat, aye." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small clear bag with fine brown powder in it.

"This is brown," he replied. "It'll help you sleep, here, let me show you."

Harry watched as the old man pulled a spoon and a lighter from his tattered coat pocket. He opened the bag and poured out some of the powder onto the spoon, careful not to spill. He then took the lighter and began to heat the spoon until the powder had melted into a goo.

He then withdrew a syringe and pulled the liquid inside of it through the needle. "C'mere, lad," he said, and despite every instinct telling him to turn away, he listened. "Take the coat off and roll up the sleeve to your jumper," he commanded, and Harry again complied.

The man pulled out a piece of rubber and wrapped it around his upper arm, tying a tight knot. Before Harry could protest, he stuck the needle in a vein.

"What the fuck—"

"Shh. Trust me lad. I wish I could experience what you're about to experience for the first time again." He slowly emptied the contents of the syringe and then pulled the tourniquet off his arm.

Almost instantaneously, Harry felt the most incredible sensation he had ever felt. He couldn't even begin to describe it with words. It was sheer unadulterated pleasure, pushing far past the bounds of orgasmic. It felt like he was warm and safe and everything in the world was beautiful and right.

It felt like Daphne was holding him, like he could almost feel her pressed against him. He sank towards the floor. "Holy shit," he heard himself say. The old man laughed in response. Harry realized in a dreamlike haze that the old man had picked up his coat. In the back of his mind a voice screamed at him to do something when he unclasped his watch from his wrist and began to search his pockets.

Part of him noticed as the old man tossed his wand aside, assuming it was no more than a stick, and pocketed the few notes Harry had in a trouser pocket, but the rest of him was so focused on the sheer pleasure coursing through every nerve in his body that he couldn't bring himself to care.

He smiled dopily and heard the old man say, "A deal is a deal." As he tucked the small clear baggy into Harry's pocket and then left. Harry curled up on the cement and moments later he slept.

When he awoke the following morning, still curled on the cement next to a bin, he felt cold and stiff, and his joints hurt, but he hadn't dreamt. He found his wand a few feet from where he lay and noticed his fingers were turning blue from the cold, but he couldn't help but smile because he hadn't dreamt. He cast a warming charm, felt in his pocket for the clear baggy the man had left him and rushed home.

Tolerance.

Harry took one last drag from his cigarette and then stuck it in the ash tray on the table. Even now he knew he was building a tolerance to the heroin. He needed it just to function and no longer got high like he wanted when he took it. Instead, taking it allowed him just to feel normal.

The nightmares had abated, but he wasn't sure if it was from the heroin or because his body was too exhausted to dream. He hated looking in the mirror, his features were gaunt, his eyes hollow. He looked more like a corpse than a living man and felt like he was closer to dead than alive.

He looked at the syringe he had on the table, a needle sharp and ready at its tip and a tourniquet by its side. He should stop. This wasn't good. 'You need help,' his mind screamed at him.

He picked up the tourniquet, tied it around his arm. 'You're going to kill yourself.' He heard his thoughts yell as he picked up the syringe and flicked it, then flicked it again, shooting the last few bubbles to the tip. He pushed the excess air out of the needle carefully, not wanting to spill a drop. It wasn't like he didn't have the money to buy more, but he could only get access to substances like this from shady places, so he tried his best not to waste what he had.

He pushed the needle into his arm, the prick of pain causing him to grimace his teeth slightly, but the unpleasant sensation brought on a pavlovian response as his brain anticipated what was to come and his heart thumped eagerly in his chest.

As he pushed the syringe slowly his mind wandered back to his aunt and uncle. "Good for nothing, you'll wind up dead before you're 30, like your useless mother and father had." He could remember Uncle Vernon telling him once when he was six.

"A disturbed boy, unlovable and freakish. He'll turn into a vagabond; you mark my words." He recalled Petunia telling his Aunt Marge at nine. Part of him had wished he could prove them wrong, was telling him even now to put the syringe down. To run to Hermione, to Ron, to her, and beg them for help.

That part was bullied into submission by the rest of him that wanted nothing more than the cheap high. He finished unloading the content of the syringe into his arm and sighed before tugging on the tourniquet tied near his shoulder. Instantly, Harry felt the warmth and giddiness only this could give him. The only positive emotions he had felt since she'd left.

He closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. "She would be disappointed," he said aloud to no one. "She would tell me to stop. To get help." He let the words hang in the air, mingling with the smoke from his cigarette.

'Then she shouldn't have left.' His mind spat back at him bitterly. Harry swallowed thickly and reached for the glass bottle on the table. Empty. He set it back down and sighed, rubbing his hands across his face.

"She had every right to leave," he responded back to the voice. "But that doesn't mean I don't miss her. Fuck. Daphne, where are you?"