Addicted to You

Addicted to You

A Harry/Tonks Story

By Crazy Writer Girl

Chapter Three - It's not easy to be me

It may sound absurd

But don't be naive

Even heroes have the right to bleed

I may be disturbed

But won't you concede

Even heroes have the right to dream

It's not easy to be me

Five For Fighting - Superman

Yes Harry certainly never did anything by halves - he used both legal and illegal substances to help him deal with his grief, and Muggle and wizarding methods. Aquilia and its Muggle counterpart Class A drugs was a recent discovery of Harry's and it was not having a good effect on him.

The first week he had been living in Grimmauld Place with Tonks he had been drinking a lot of Butterbeer, but she had been prepared to let that go. It didn't have a very high alcohol content and it was particularly good at relaxing the drinker without allowing them to completely lose control of themselves and their faculties. It was also both perfectly legal for someone of Harry's age and something Tonks herself had indulged in frequently when she was younger, around the age Harry was now.

What Tonks hadn't known, however, was that the Butterbeer Harry drunk several bottles of per day in front of her was not the only alcohol he was drinking. Whenever she wasn't in the room and when he was in bed at night, Harry had been drinking Muggle Vodka too.

After one week she had caught onto the fact that there was more that Butterbeer involved in Harry's drinking but she hadn't been too concerned. Harry was 15 and it was common for Muggle teenagers to experiment a bit and try alcohol, even when they were three years younger than the legal drinking age of 18 like Harry was. As long as the teenager in question was mostly responsible and didn't hurt anyone other than themselves (and didn't hurt themselves too badly) when drinking, the parents of Muggle teenagers (and Muggle raised magical teenagers) would generally keep a close eye, but turn a blind eye.

And that was what Tonks decided she would do about her young charge's drinking. It was what her parents had done with her when she had experimented with both wizarding and Muggle alcohols when she was 16 and it was worked well for them, she had turned out alright after all. She wasn't that far out of her teens, being only seven years older than Harry and she remembered how much a drink could help when you had had a really bad time of it. She had been a relatively normal teenager though and unfortunately for Tonks, she forgot one very small, but very important little fact. Harry Potter, through no fault of his own, was not, and never had been, a normal teenager.

She had stuck with her plan to allow Harry to drink a bit, and to keep him in the dark about the fact that she knew he was drinking for five days.

On day six however, it soon became apparent that if she allowed things to continue as they were, the story of Harry's experiments with using alcohol as a way of escaping his pain was not going to have a happy ending. In fact it was becoming more and more apparent that more than likely it would have a very tragic ending unless she came up with a plan to get Harry out of his depression

It was a Friday morning, a very dark and dismal Friday morning for early July, a day that would have been more suited to the month of October. Tonks had made some breakfast for the two of them, but Harry had not come down to eat when she had called him.

this was very unusual for Harry, he had missed the odd lunch or dinner when she had been out working (although her main task at the moment was guarding Harry; she had gone on a few missions for the order when her talents as a metamorphmagus meant that she was best suited for them) and had left him food to help himself too, but he had not ever missed the breakfast - the one meal they always shared every day no matter what. That was the one main house rule she had made for him when he moved in with her. To be honest she hadn't wanted to make any rules whatsoever but both her own mother (who had recently joined the Order only days after her favourite cousin's death) and Professor McGonagall had told her repeatedly whilst they were making the arrangements for Harry to come to live at number 12 Grimmauld Place that despite the horrific treatment he had just suffered whilst allegedly safe in the house that was meant to be his home, she would be doing him no favours if she coddled him and let him do whatever he wanted. There would need to be some ground rules.

It really had gone against her fun lovely free spirit personality for her to do so but she was still slightly intimated by her old head of house having only left Hogwarts five years before and so when the strict but kind transfiguration Professor had stood there in front of her staring at her over the top of her glasses and told Harry "Now I know you have had a somewhat difficult time lately but I expect you to follow whatever rules Miss Tonks sets for you to the letter, Potter, do you understand me?" she had felt the need to come up with a couple of rules and explain them there and then in front of Minerva McGonagall.

The Dursley's with their mistreatment of him had impressed upon their nephew the importance of following the rules exactly when it came to food for fear that otherwise he would have to starve until they next so fit to feed him scraps from their table, So he had not missed a single breakfast since he had arrived from the hospital two weeks ago. Still, she thought there was probably nothing to worry about and knowing what Harry's legendary temper could be like at times, she thought it best to give him another chance to come to breakfast before she panicked and called the rest of the order. All of the Auror department and anybody else she could get hold of. Tonks also didn't do anything by halves either - especially when someone who had had as rough a deal as Harry had and who she cared deeply about, was involved.

When he still didn't come down or even answer her, she decided to go up to his room and check on him. He was probably just still asleep, she reasoned.

After knocking on the door four times and calling out to ask if she could come in and not getting any response, she was ready to admit to herself that she was becoming more than a little concerned about the boy who lived. She finally tried hammering on the door with both of her fists whilst screaming his name at the top of her lungs. But that didn't get any response either.

What would the others say if something had happened to the saviour of the wizarding world on her watch? Molly Weasley especially would kill her if Harry had come to any harm - he was her honorary seventh son and she was like an angry lioness defending her cubs when it came to her children. And Hermione Granger would have a lot to say about that too. For the young Auror knew that although Hermione's feelings for Harry were strictly platonic, they were deeper then friendship - she might have had a younger sister, but she considered Harry to be the brother that she and Nicole (her sister) had never had.

Tonks wasn't quite sure which of the two women's reactions she dreaded the

most, but she knew it would be a lot worse if she didn't do something straight away. So after calling out to Harry one more time, and finding the door locked when she tried it, she reached over her head and drew her wand from the holster she wore on the small of her back.

Then she cast "alohomora" and entered cautiously as the door swung slowly open.

The sight that she found was one that shocked her more than she had thought possible at that point in time. She was an Auror, and Harry was simply a teenage boy - he might be a very special and unusual one at that - but deep down inside he was just the same as all the other boys his age, surely there was nothing on this earth that he could be doing that she couldn't take care of, that would shock her. Three years of Auror training prepared you for any situation - it was *that* thorough.

Harry was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn't even glance up as the pink haired metamorphmagus forced the door open with magic and walked (or half walked, half fell as was her normal clumsy way) into the room that he was staying in (Tonks referred to it as "his" room, but it didn't feel like it, everyone knew he didn't deserve a room of his own). Instead he stayed sitting where he was on the floor in the middle of the dark and dismal room, an almost completely empty bottle of Ogden's Old Fire Whiskey off to one side of him, a glass with about an inch of the amber liquid in one hand - and a carving knife in the other.

He had pulled the tattered and ripped old blue jeans which had once belonged to his obese whale of a cousin down so they lay around his ankles in a puddle of wrinkled faded denim that really and truly belonged in the rubbish bin. So he sat there on the floor with nothing more than his black boxer shorts with golden snitches on which were doing absolutely nothing when it came to covering his pale and scrawny legs.

Inwardly Tonks once again cursed those damn relatives of Harry's and Albus Dumbledore for believing that Harry would not come to any harm living with them, for the effect of years of malnutrition was all to obvious as she looked at Harry's naked legs. Legs which were so thin the bones could plainly be seen, and which looked as though they could be snapped just as easily as an old eagle feather Quill.

Barely thirty seconds later, however, she was shocked out of her musings when the shocking realisation of exactly why Harry was sitting there half naked with a newly sharpened kitchen knife in his hand. Slowly, painstakingly and all to obviously deliberately took the blade and pressed it against his leg just barely hard enough to draw blood and then made a slashing motion with it and continued the cut until it ran the entire length of his leg from hip to knee.

"Harry?" She questioned softly. She had known that deliberate self harm was a common way to deal with pain for some people and had even tried it several times herself when things had gotten really tough for her but she would never have thought Harry was hurting badly enough to try something like that. Inwardly she reflected that whilst she really cared for him and considered him a friend, she didn't actually know the real Harry Potter very well.

Harry looked up from what he was doing, obviously startled to see her in the room with him. He wasn't ashamed though or embarrassed to be seen by her half naked, he just glared at her with an oddly defiant look in his eyes. Then he looked back down at his legs, ran his middle and index fingers along the newly made cut and took up the blade once more, preparing to make another cut and try to banish a little more of the mental pain and anguish he was in the only way he knew how.

He simply took the knife and once again started slashing it across his legs, this time making a matching cut on his left leg to the one she had just watched him make on his right leg. Then he repeated the hand movement he had made after the first cut this time clearly pressing against it as hard as he could so as to increase the pain he felt.

Tonks knew that for that one moment immediately after you cut up the immense emotional pain and mental anguish you had been feeling disappeared and all that remained was a physical pain which served to make you feel more alive and in control of your life than you had in the moments before. It made you feel as though your emotions were no longer the deciding factor in your life, your actions were and the scars which would be left behind if the cuts were not properly healed were the visible proof that the cutter needed to remind himself of that fact.

The trouble was, however, that the moment of physical pain was very brief and also the release it provided was quite addictive. Sometimes the scars left behind also served as a reminder that a sure fire way to banish the pain felt inside was to cut once more, tempting the cutter to get out their blade once more and reopen the cuts or find a new part of their body to mutilate in order to find the supposed peace they believed it would bring.

As she stood their lost tin her thoughts, Harry glanced back up at her as if daring her to comment on his actions, to rebuke him and try to take the stolen kitchen knife away from him.

What she did instead, really shocked Harry but it was the best thing she could have done under the circumstances.

Taking another four steps forward she clumsily attempted to sit down on the floor on the opposite side of the fire whiskey bottle. Of course being the complete and utter klutz she was she lost her balance and came extremely close to knocking over the bottle of alcohol as she ended up lying lat on her back on the floor.

Picking up her mahogany wand from where it had landed when she had fallen she pointed it towards the still open door and called "Accio Shot Glasses."

Four small glasses came flying precariously into the room. The zoomed around the corner racing from the ceiling to the floor and they very nearly got smashed into the wall, it was very clear that although she was an Auror, Tonks needed to spend some time working on her summoning spells. They were perhaps an inch tall and very narrow and were unlike any glass Harry had ever seen before other than on the Muggle television. He was not sure what the point on these glasses was though for they were shaped like egg cups and it was plain that it world not be possible to balance them on the table without spilling their contents everywhere - and that would be a waste of good alcohol.

Picking up the bottle of amber liquid, Tonks filled two of the glasses until they were full. The glasses were clear but the bottoms of them had been dyed the bright neon colours similar to those of Muggle highlighter pens. Conjuring a stand similar to that which they used to hold vials in potions class, she placed the two full glasses in there and filled the remaining two glasses as well. Keeping the pink one to herself, she held out the green one towards him but wouldn't give it to him when he first reached to take it.

"I promised Dumbledore that I would take care of you this summer and I've obviously not been doing a very good job of it. If you want to drink yourself into oblivion and inflict even more pain on yourself than you have already suffered since the incident at the department of mysteries then you can. But there is a new house rule I'm afraid. If you're going to drink Fire Whiskey you have to do it properly... it's not some drink that you drink whole glasses of as if it were simple tap water or pumpkin juice, you miss out on half of the fun. So that's going to be our first

lesson."

Harry couldn't believe he was hearing this, he had known that she was a pretty easy going and fun loving person and that it seemed as though she wasn't that much older than him. It was difficult for him to guess exactly how old she was because as a metamorphmagus she possessed the ability to change her appearance at will. He had even seen her go under cover as a harmless batty old lady a couple of times when she had escorted him and his friends on their way to Hogwarts last year. But he would have laid money on the fact that if she had found him drinking himself into a stupor at any time of the day let alone at 9 o'clock in the morning she would have shouted at him and taken the alcohol away. Instead here she was, offering to teach him to drink properly and hadn't mentioned a word about the fact that he had sat there in front of her and made some pretty nasty cuts in his legs.

Tonks still didn't hand him the glass of fire whiskey though, she continued speaking instead. "And I see you like many others before you have discovered the lure of deliberately harming oneself too, Harry. I used to love to cut myself whenever it felt like the world had turned its back on me and things were getting too much. But there are much better places to cut than you legs. So that will be our second lesson. Dumbledore told me to teach you anything I thought that you needed to learn and you very obviously need this, lover boy, so who's to stop me making sure you do it the best way possible."

As she finished speaking she finally handed him the shot glass. He just sat there and stared at her before she said "Now this is the proper way to drink Fire Whiskey Harry.", took her glass and drank it down in one long swallow before breathing out hard through her nose and shooting flames out into the air surrounding her face. Once the glass was empty she turned it upside down and attempted to balance it on her head to prove that she had drunk it all. Of course, it didn't work and it fell to the floor and shattered, she fixed it with an idle wave of her wand and a quietly muttered "Reparo." Before gesturing that Harry should do as she had and down the shot.

He had drunk Fire Whiskey before that was true. The half empty bottle on the floor between the two of them wasn't the first or the second or even the third bottle he had got the Weasley twins to send him. But he had never done shots of any alcohol before let alone a magical one like this which had a unique effect on its drinker.

he wasn't quite prepared for the rush he experienced after downing that one little shot to be as intense as it was or quite so much better than when he had drunk it by himself. And as he breathed out throw his nose the sensation of shooting fire from his nostrils as though he was a Hungarian horntail dragon similar to the one he had faced in the first task of the tri-wizard tournament back in his fourth year at Hogwarts, was absolutely amazing.

Tonks smiled inwardly to herself as she picked up the two remaining shots of fire whiskey and handed one to Harry. Holding hers up to the light she gave the toast "Slainte!" clinked glasses with him and repeated the earlier ritual she had gone through when she had shown him with the first shot exactly how one went about drinking a shot of fire whiskey in the correct manner. Some people might think that sitting down and getting drunk with a not quite fifteen year old after finding him cutting up was not a good idea, but to her it seemed like the perfect thing to do.

Harry was slightly behind Tonks in drinking his second shot because he hadn't expected her to move onto it so quickly. Once he had gotten over his shock at her sitting down and drinking with him he had figured that she world not let him have the second shot for a long time and not without their having to have a very serious adult talk about exactly why he should NOT be doing as he had been. And it would probably be the last alcohol he would be allowed anywhere near until he turned 17 in thirteen and a half months and was legally old enough to buy alcohol in the wizarding world. Because after they had their serious talk he just knew she would be sticking her head in the fire and calling Dumbledore over the floo to report on his bad behaviour. They would all know what a real failure he was - totally undeserving of their time or attention. The Dursley's had been right, he was a freak and he knew that both Tonks and Dumbledore would be confirming that fact for him in the very near future.

Noticing that her young drinking partner was once again slipping back into his depressed state, Tonks decided that now was the time to move on to their second planned lesson of the day - deliberate self harm and the best way to go about it.