Harry was 8 weeks sober when it happened.
It’d been hard. So hard. Harry didn’t want to get sober but he couldn’t lose the last thing of him he had left. Couldn’t lose the last of his family. Even if they were foolish enough to welcome him back when he’s the one who got their son/brother killed.
So he went to rehab. Did the work even though it killed him. Even though all he wanted was to find a nice corner and a needle.
And it was working. He graduated from the program and moved in with Ron. He was getting a job. He was going to therapy.
And then he saw Fred.
Not really. It wasn’t actually Fred. But he’d seen Fred’s face and forgot for a moment that he was dead. Forgot that his fiancé had died in his arms.
He knew then why George had never come around. Once Harry realized who it was he ran like a bat out of hell.
He was numb and he couldn’t think straight and all he wanted was relief. So he went to his old haunts. Found a dealer and then a nice abandoned house and he finally, finally, was able to breathe.
Only for a minute.
He had relief for 60 seconds before the guilt came crashing down.
The shame.
He had failed.
8 weeks sober and he’d thrown it all down the drain.
And he couldn’t go back to face them after this. After he threw his sobriety in their face. So he didn’t. He stayed on the streets and the familiarity comforted him as much as it hurt him.
He didn’t move around as much as he used to. He kept around the abandoned house and it became his home in a twisted sense. He wondered if anyone was looking for him. Wondered if they still cared.
He hoped they didn’t almost as much as he hoped they did.
It would be better though. If they didn’t care anymore. Harry wouldn’t be able to drag them down with his grief. It’d been three years and they all moved on but he was stuck in that moment and unable to let go.
Maybe they’d think he was dead too and move on. Maybe they could finally be happy without Harry ruining everything for them.
He thinks about all of it while he lays in the aftermath of maybe shooting a little too much.
“You’re weak. Pathetic,” the man gazing back at him says.
Harry stares at his unrecognizable form in the mirror, cheeks gaunt and sunken in, bags so deep under his eyes they look like bruises, red-rimmed eyes that are dull and lifeless. Fred would hate him now. Gone were the laugh lines and rosy cheeks, eyes filled with joy as Fred made him giggle so hard he lost his breath. Harry was nothing but a ghost of who he used to be.
Fred may have been the one who died but Harry was the one left haunting the living, a shade amongst those he used to call family.