With Teeth

**I believe I can see the future

Cause I repeat the same routine

I think I used to have a purpose

But then again, that might have been a dream**





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Harry spent an inordinate amount of time in the dormitories. An even more ridiculous amount of that time was spent hiding within his own bed-curtains. A number of images burned into his mind’s eye, and he seemed unable to rid himself of their haunt. When he tried to sleep they assaulted his brain, one after another, like a slide-show. So he kept his eyes open. They burned; were rimmed red with exhaustion. When he managed to drag himself from his bed long enough to pass by a mirror, the circles under the red rims made him seem thin, ghostly. His reflection scared him.



This was the price he paid for his weekly visit to Draco Malfoy.



Paying close attention to his surroundings when he ventured out into the real world, he learned that he was quite lucky to see him more than once or twice a month. It seemed that the Sex God of Slytherin had a veritable harem at his disposal. There were simply too many of them to keep up with. That wasn’t Draco’s fault though. As Harry’d heard so often, it was “what he was there to do.”



It prickled at Harry’s skin though, to think of all the boys (or girls?) that his… Draco… fucked while he wasn’t with him. He knew he had absolutely no right to be jealous, or even unhappy with his situation. He had agreed to the terms. He knew the terms before he’d even had a chance to agree to them. And the fact that he felt this way just prickled more. Harry just felt so conflicted and he hated it. He hated himself more than the situation at hand. He KNEW what he was getting himself into, and yet it still hurt to think that Draco was paying attention to more than just him. If he was going to keep it up, he had to suck it up and let it go.



And he did.



One night a week (for he never knew which it would be) the cord singed at his neck and he dropped whatever he was doing and ran (if he could) down to the dungeons, to the secret room down the hall from the Slytherin common room, ready for whatever his Blonde Angel would have prepared for him.



Angel…



And, oh what he had prepared for him. The only words Harry could ever have to describe any of it after the fact were, “bloody brilliant”.



However, ‘after the fact’ is also where everything crashed light-speed downhill. The full weight of what Harry was giving up settled on his thin shoulders. The over-used silencing charm was the only thing saving him the embarrassment of being seen sobbing into his pillow, tear stained face sticky with his emotions.



The five to ten days in between calls were absolute torture to the sinking Gryffindor. While he waited for the burning around his collar he both never wanted it to happen again and prayed it would happen immediately. The only thing saving his school career was the fact that Hermione would NOT let him fail. While the trio studied in the common room, Harry staring miserably into space, she would whisper spells filling his parchment with the required information. Harry, completely oblivious to all of this, went about his daily life. He was an automaton; go to class, hand in papers, watch lesson, repeat.



In between classes, the dull buzz of people’s voices roared in the background. There was no time spent in the Great Hall. No time spent in the library. There was no time spent loitering between classes. Harry spent an inordinate amount of time in the dormitories.





**





“Harry?”



“Go away...”



Of course the mumbled reply was not heard, due to the silencing charm, so the intruder on Harry’s privacy had no clue that he was unwanted. Pulling the bed-curtains to the side, the intruder broke the charm long enough to slide into the bed next to the prone figure. A hand reached for the shoulder of his friend, only to have the shoulder violently torn away from his grasp.



“Just go away, Neville,” gasped Harry.



“Harry… what’s the matter?”



“I don’t wanna talk about it.”



Neville reached another hand out for his friend, just grazing the edge of his arm resulting in a flurry of an outburst; Harry scrunched against the headboard, knees curled against his chest and eyes wide with fright trained on the other boy in his bed.



“Harry…”



“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”



Neville took in the heaving form of the other boy; the tear stains coupled with the pain in his eyes told a very clear story.



“Harry, is this about… him?”



He didn’t think mentioning “his” name would gain his end, so he stepped around it. Harry didn’t give any sign of an answer. He just stared hard at him, lip trembling. Finally a soft, one-armed shrug accompanied more tears threatening to spill over his lashes. Suddenly Harry could no longer meet Neville’s gaze and hugged his legs closer, looking down, not really seeing anything.



This was why Neville never got involved with the Slytherin sexually. His relationship with the blonde was purely about control. He knew that if he ever gave in and asked for anything more physically intimate, he would turn into the mess that his friend was now. Gryffindors were simply too soft-hearted for this sort of confliction.



During his musing, Neville was surprised to find an armful of sobbing Gryffindor.



“He can, I know he can, he’s done it before!”



“He’s done what before, Harry?”



The response came through as garbled sobs into his shoulder, and his sleeping shirt was slowly getting soaked from tears. Neville pulled his arms around his friend, grateful that he was now accepting of his contact. The heaves wracking the slighter boy seemed never ceasing, and Neville’s heart broke for his friend.



Not knowing that there was anything else he could possibly do for him, he pulled his wand from his back pocket and whispered a spell over the other boy’s head. The figure slackened, immediately dead to the world, and Neville laid him gently down on the pillow. He hoped this spelled sleep would be enough to cool his nerves, but he was afraid of what would happen between the two when Harry woke up. Would he even remember?





**





Blinking blearily at the ceiling, Harry’s reality came once more crashing down heavily upon him. Of course he remembered Neville invading his privacy the previous night, and he figured his friend had something to do with the fact that he had actually managed some sleep. He was marginally grateful to the other boy, but Harry had just returned from his most recent rendezvous with the blonde and, just like every other time, his mood had swung swiftly downwards with his return to the real world. He had come to develop a little ritual after his visits, for coping, and his dorm-mate had impeded...



Casting a quick ‘tempus’, and re-testing the silence charms on the bed-curtains, Harry decided it was safe to pretend there hadn’t been an interruption. He had only managed to sleep a few hours, and so had a few more left before classes started. Now that he was awake he knew he’d never be able to return, so he figured he might as well go ahead.



He shifted on his bed and reached under the mattress, fingers seeking sharp metal. His grazed the very tip of his special knife, silently rejoicing in the contact. He pulled it out and stared at the edge, breathing deeply and carefully, and listened closely to the sounds of the room outside his little zone. He knew no-one would hear anything. No one would have any cause to interrupt him this time, but lack of sleep and emotional stress tend to make one paranoid.



Harry leaned back on his pillow, balancing the knife on his stomach so he could more easily remove his sleeping pants. His heart pounded hollowly in his chest, thudding dully in his ears, and he picked the knife back up placing the cool flat of the metal against his thigh.



The act suddenly seemed empty and meaningless. He was used to doing this right after his visits, when his emotions were at their peak and swirling around his rib cage and making his brain fuzzy. After the removal a few hours of sleep brought, it all just seemed so unimportant.



Sighing heavily, no longer able to even feel stupid over his actions, he placed the knife gently underneath his pillow. Pulling his pants up and rolling over, he miraculously succumbed to sleep once more.





**



Harry woke once more, again only a couple of hours later. He hated how the shift in perception came so easily, fluidly sliding from ashamed of his every action to too tired to feel anything about them and right back into self-loathing for all the time he spent pining away for what he couldn’t have.



Now was another moment where he despised himself for giving up so much to the blonde. Draco held such power over him, and no matter what he felt walking into that room he always melted at the slightest look his god gave him.



Just thinking about it made him sick. He knew he was going to throw up, but he couldn’t move to go for the waste bin. Nor could he bother to care about it. The only thought repeating in his brain was how cheap he was; bought with a touch.



“Bugger it.”



He reached for his blade, once again deciding to go through with his ritual. He was sure he only felt so shaky right now because he hadn’t relieved the built up tension coursing through his veins. Steadying his resolve, he slid out of his bottoms once more and leaned back breathing deeply. Squeezing his eyes shut and pushing everything out of his brain, he thought of… nothing; just a black space delving forever into and around him.



The metal felt cool in his palm, and he would have smiled at the sensation if he wasn’t forcing himself to be completely blank. A slight tremble still rippled over his skin and he swallowed once, forcing away the very last of his trepidation. Placing the edge of the blade on his skin, he drew a thick line to match the now invisible scars. His eyes having been squeezed tightly shut, he opened them to a blurry view. Tears hovered just on the edge of tracking down his cheeks. Brushing them away, he looked again and ran a finger through the well of crimson trickling down his inner thigh.



A quirk twitched his lips, just at the corners, and he breathed again, blinking lightly. Another deliberate positioning of the silver, and he made another line. They didn’t like to be alone, after all. A third, to match the set, and he had a pool of blood smearing over his leg. Dragging his fingertips around in it he drew shapes, watching the cuts clot and begin to scar. Satisfied that he had let out all frustration at… what? He really couldn’t entirely remember what he’d been so upset about. He felt rather blissful, blessedly empty. Not in a vacuous crushing sort of way, just content. Like nothing that bothered him really mattered anymore.



He leaned back in his bed, not yet ready to clean up, thinking about a final cat-nap before breakfast. He was simply letting the subtle feeling of relaxation seep through his pores, when something happened that NEVER happened. The cord around his neck burned a white hot ring around his throat.



The blood drained from his face. The implications of such a simple occurrence were not lost on the Golden Boy. He knew exactly what was likely to happen. He just didn’t know which was worse: ignoring his call, or showing up with fresh scars on his thighs. No, not HIS thighs. DRACO’S thighs.



“Fuck.”





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**I can’t remember how this got started

Oh, but I can tell you exactly how it will end**