They said nobody knew what the effects of the killing curse was, because nobody survived.
Did it mean Harry had some hidden cache of powers so deep and strong that he would be the next Merlin? Did it mean Harry was destined to be evil, ruin the world of magic once and for all?
In Harry’s opinion, that lightning bolt was just a blinding sign on his forehead: ‘I got my parents killed! I was a curse from the start!’
And like attracted like.
If asked, Harry couldn’t tell you when the first time he tried to kill himself was.
He’d been fascinated with his own death for as long as he could remember. He’d learned once, in muggle primary, that humans void their bowls when they die. He asked Aunt Petunia if it was true, because Harry didn’t want to leave behind a pile of waste with his corpse, and she scoffed at him-
“What? Planning on killing yourself?”
Compassionate woman, his aunt was.
Was the first time Harry tried to take his life the time when Dudley had said something that drove Harry to find the rat poison under Aunt Petunia’s sink and swallow a dozen of them like pills? He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have been. Harry went to sleep in his cupboard that night expecting to die.
He woke up to Aunt Petunia yelling at him and no relief in still breathing.
Harry tried another time too, when he was still young. He’d written a note, calmly explaining that life just wasn’t for him, no thanks, and took a handful of Uncle Vernon’s antihistamine tablets.
His aunt had found his note before he’d went to sleep that night and read it to Uncle Vernon and Dudley over dinner, cackling all the while. Harry expected to die that night, to just painlessly drift away - or even painfully, he wasn’t fussed - and then he woke the next morning.
Again.
He’d been a few years older the next time he clearly remembered trying to die. He was on a medication from a doctor that Sirius took him to, a ‘mood stabilizer’, and Sirius trusted Harry to take his medicine every morning.
Which was brilliant and Harry took twenty of those tablets with pumpkin juice before he grabbed his bag and headed to class. He wound up getting so sick during his first hour potions class that he’d stumbled blindly to the loo and threw it all back up.
And he never drank pumpkin juice again, apparently he’d retained the taste of it coming back up as a core memory.
At some point Harry began to believe he was either invincible or had an incredibly poor understanding of how the human body functioned.
Who fucked up their own death that many times?
It was always ironic, being called the Boy-Who-Lived because all Harry wanted was to be the Boy-Who-Died.
The few times Harry ever opened up about his lifelong death wish, people blamed his mood disorder.
‘You’re depressed.’
‘It’s just your brain tricking you.’
It was easier for people to blame the chemicals in Harry’s brain. Harry, personally, blamed Uncle Vernon, Ron, Blaise, and Marcus.
Somehow the lightning bolt on Harry’s forehead didn’t just mark him as a curse, it also screamed: ‘TAKE WHAT YOU WANT’.
‘I DONT CONTROL MY BODY, DO WHAT YOU WANT.’
‘AUTONOMY IS OVERRATED, TAKE ME, I’M FUCKING USED TO IT.’
It seemed like a fucking joke, how many times could one person deal with people taking and taking from them? It was as if something about Harry, some hormone leaking through his pores and infecting the air, screamed ‘prey’ and predators found him.
Harry knew it wasn’t his fault, the situation with Uncle Vernon. Harry was a child, a bloody child, who just wanted someone to love him. Dudley and Aunt Petunia could deny it with their dying breath, but Harry would never forget the feeling of Uncle Vernon’s fingers on his body, inside his body.
It wasn’t possible to scrub away the memories of Uncle Vernon insisting that Harry couldn’t do something as simple as take a bath alone - ‘Little freak would just find a way to ruin the floors!’ - and he’d touch every inch of Harry’s body.
Harry could remember laying in bed on his mattress, terrified of what the night would bring. Harry would always remember purposefully wetting the bed, fruitlessly hoping to keep the man away with sheer disgust. He could remember wetting the bed on accident, through his own sheer terror. Harry couldn’t even bend his legs on his bed without remembering when he would pretend to be asleep, hoping to avoid interaction, and Uncle Vernon would chuckle and say that he knew Harry was faking it.
“People don’t bend their legs in their sleep.”
It hadn’t made sense at five and it still didn’t twenty years later.
The most vivid memory Harry had was when his relatives had been forced to take him on vacation with them once. Harry was little and quiet, still young enough to be pathetically naive. Dudley had gotten to stay up late to watch a scary movie and Harry had, driven by some instinct he didn’t understand, ran to the sofa where his uncle slept that night, whimpering from a nightmare.
Uncle Vernon stuck his fingers inside Harry that night and made Harry touch him as well.
The next morning, when Dudley got taken to a grand toy store, Uncle Vernon let Harry pick out any toy he wanted-
for being ‘such a good boy’.
So fuck you, Dudley.
Harry told him once, when they’d met up as adults, that his dad was a child molester. Dudley called Harry a liar, said he was sick in the head, but Harry couldn’t even look at Lego sets without getting a spike in anxiety.
Sirius saved Harry, and Harry could say that unabashedly. Sirius might not have known what he saved Harry from, but in Harry’s opinion Sirius was the greatest human to walk the earth and nobody would ever be able to convince him otherwise.
Harry legally changed his name when he’d been old enough to Harry Potter-Black. He swore that he’d die a Potter-Black because he was so proud to be Sirius’ son.
But Sirius couldn’t save Harry from his own burning idiocy.
So when Harry started dating, as most teenagers eventually do, he started with the friendly bloke who always made him laugh and called Harry cute and flirted so easily.
Everyone loved Ron. Sirius loved Ron. Ron’s family loved Harry. Harry thought they might be together forever.
They snogged in corridors, giggling and necking like teens in their first relationship. Everyone assumed, as Ron and Harry essentially lived together in the Gryffindor dorms, that they were sexually active.
And it was true, in a way.
Harry would take his medicine, the pills that made him sleepy but kept him from diving off the tower in a fit of mania, and Ron would cuddle with him and they’d whisper about their future together. Then Ron’s hand would slowly roam from Harry’s stomach downward, barely tracing the waistband of his sleep pants. Harry’s breathing, slow from the fog in his head, would hitch and Ron would retreat.
But when Ron thought Harry was asleep, his hand would return.
And it was hard to understand what it was-
Ron thought Harry was asleep and he’d tease his skin until Harry’s hormones kicked in and he’d be hard. Then Ron would get Harry off with his hand, always stopping if it seemed like Harry was waking up.
Harry confronted him about it the first time, the next morning when Harry was awake and his brain was functioning, and Ron cried. He sobbed on Harry’s lap and told him about the man that hid in his house until he’d been ten, the man that would slip in his room and touch him at night.
Ron was sorry, he didn’t know any better. He thought it was normal. And Harry forgave him because who knew more than Harry how a messy childhood could fuck you up so much?
But then it kept happening. And eventually, Ron began denying it.
‘You’re crazy.’
‘You had a nightmare.’
‘This is some sick side effect of your medicine. I would never do that.’
Even years later, Harry never was able to untangle it in his mind. Was it assault? Was it normal? Was Harry placing his trauma from Uncle Vernon on Ron?
Or was Ron reenacting the abuse he suffered as a kid on Harry?
Were they just two incredibly messed up blokes trying to make a go at sex and hurt each other in the process?
If it wasn’t wrong, if it was normal, then why did Ron deny it?
Harry learned gaslighting at Ron’s hands and for that he would always be whatever the opposite of grateful was.
Harry was so messed up for so long, such a tangle of messed up wires and thoughts in his head, that it hadn’t been surprising when he’d turned eighteen, quit the pills that were nothing but a trigger for anxiety, and began partying.
It was fun, with the right crowd.
Harry and the Slytherin’s that never talked much to him in school would go to clubs and they’d drink and dance and Harry was so powerful when people looked at him.
Harry felt attractive and they all knew it and they couldn’t have him.
Harry felt giddy on that rush, he felt like a bloody God.
In hindsight, that was definitely the mania that Sirius and Remus warned him would happen when he quit taking his pills. But Harry didn’t care.
Harry didn’t care that Remus said he had to take his medicine or move out. Harry didn’t care that Sirius looked so broken when Harry chose to leave. Harry didn’t care that he was hurting someone who loved him because Harry hated the pills.
He was eighteen, attractive, and having fun. They didn’t understand him. He wasn’t sick, he was finally alive.
So when someone in their group suggested they go to a nearby motel to continue the party one night, hell yes Harry was in.
Harry was a God.
They went to a motel, about a dozen of them, and got conjoining rooms to continue the party. Someone had marijuana, someone had acid, and someone had a boot full of booze.
Harry wanted to try anything, everything.
Harry was a God and then he was so high, nothing could touch him.
And then, like Icarus, Harry flew too high to the sun and his wings melted in what was a quick moment.
Blaise had been flirting with Harry, complimenting him and brushing on him, and driving Harry mad with lust. So when he suggested the two of them move to the empty room, to ‘talk’, Harry went with him.
He was so stupid. So unbearably stupid.
Harry thought they’d snog, maybe go down on each other. Harry didn’t want to do anything more than that, he was nervous and anxious when he thought about sex too hard, but Blaise wasn’t asking for Harry’s opinion.
Blaise planned to get laid and he did, Harry’s objections aside.
Harry could never hear the word ‘hard’ without wanting to scream.
‘You’re still hard, I knew you wanted this.’
‘You’re so tight, fuck, am I the first one in here? I thought you were joking about being a virgin.’
‘Do you like this? Is this good? Do you like it? Fuck.’
Harry didn’t scream, he didn’t fight, and he knew he should have. After his initial objections - ‘I don’t want that, please, stop’ - Harry did what he’d been conditioned so sweetly to do.
He just laid there and took it.
And people could talk about ‘fight or flight’ all they wanted but Harry knew that ‘freeze’ was a viable third option because that’s what he did.
He froze.
He blamed Uncle Vernon for that, because he’d been the one to condition Harry right from the start.
Afterward, when Blaise rolled off him and Harry quickly pulled up his trousers, Harry stole a car from the parking lot of the motel they’d been partying in.
He drove it clear from the north end of the A215 to the south end, blowing through red lights and speed limits alike. He wanted to be hit by a truck or stopped by an officer-
Killed or forced to confess, something.
Neither happened because Harry was fucking invincible.
Harry couldn’t be broken on the outside, only the inside. Healthy body, sick broken mind.
That same night Harry went to his mate Seamus’ flat and got pissed on his booze before he traded a hand-job for Seamus taking Harry’s opening shift at the cafe they both worked at.
And two weeks later, Harry had an automobile of his own loaded up with his belongings, ready to move on somewhere fresh.
He’d gotten ahold of another friend, Ginny Weasley, and she said she needed a roommate and Harry quickly accepted.
Harry loved Ginny, as a sister, and he was ready to start over with a clean slate somewhere that people didn’t know him.
Except trauma was a heavy suitcase and Harry had dragged it with him clear to Ginny’s place where he found narcotics and booze and ghosts from his past.
Ginny had pain killers that dropped Harry in oceans of blue, offering him sleep free of any memories, and then he’d wake up groggy just waiting until they got more. Harry loved those pills, those pills could cure every thought he had- just take them away in a haze of nothing.
Eventually, Harry took himself back home after begging Sirius to let him come back. Ginny was terrifying when she was on a bender and Harry couldn’t stand seeing Ron with his wife, openly judging Harry when he’d pass out on Ginny’s sofa from the pills.
Harry was so self-destructive, he wondered how nobody saw it. Nobody questioned it when Harry made decisions on a dime, always running from things he couldn’t process or speak about. Nobody wondered why Harry was stealing pills from Ginny to sleep or swallowing them down with scotch- they just said ‘Harry’s so self-destructive’.
So Harry returned home quietly with his tail between his legs and his head spinning with trauma and mental illness and scars deeper than he thought possible.
And then Harry met Susan. And Susan came with pills and speed and manic episodes that Harry couldn’t always remember later.
Susan had little green pills that made Harry fly. He could do anything with those pills. He didn’t have to evade nightmares, because he didn’t sleep. Harry got a job in a muggle cafe, serving diners, and used the pounds he earned to buy pills with Susan to split.
And when Harry was speeding on those pills, flying through life, it was fighting that gave him a rush.
Harry would fight anyone then- he’d fight with Sirius, with Remus. Harry would fight with Neville, the only friend from Hogwarts he’d managed to keep, and he’d fight blokes he didn’t even know.
Remus and Sirius would kick Harry out, make him sleep in his car, and Harry went without question. He’d fight with them, then move in his car. Then he’d turn around and crash on Neville’s couch until he’d inevitably fight with him and be right back in his backseat.
Fighting everyone else made Harry feel better about himself.
Harry wasn’t the problem, they were.
As most things, that era of Harry’s life ended with sex.
He and Susan had been moving slow, bonding more over drugs and speed than sex, and then when Harry wanted to have sex, he couldn’t do it.
When Harry wanted it, his body didn’t respond.
It had been embarrassing, humiliating, and Susan handled it like a professional. Like a twenty-one year old professional who held their naked and sobbing boyfriend in bed and whispered so sweetly, “Who broke you?”
Harry should have asked her who didn’t.
But nobody broke Harry as effectively as Harry broke himself.
Then Harry met Draco.
And Harry loved Draco like he’d never, and would never, love another human being again.
Draco was mature, he worked a steady job, he had a charming smile and a charismatic personality that made everyone want to be his friend.
Harry felt safe with Draco, he felt loved, he felt cherished.
Draco helped Harry settle down some, open up about his past, and Draco never wavered from his side.
Harry told him he was bipolar and Draco said he’d set up appointments with psychiatrists.
Harry told Draco about Uncle Vernon and Blaise and Ron and Draco held him through his nightmares when he’d talked about it for the first time in his life.
Harry told him about the pills that he loved and Draco said he’d keep Harry away from them.
Harry said he wanted to die and Draco said he would help him live.
They got married quick, both still young and desperately in love. Draco settled in a career he loved and Harry struggled to keep a single job. Harry was always on the look for something better, something more interesting, and Draco hemmed and hawed about Harry getting back on his medicine.
Despite Harry’s refusal to treat the bipolar, choosing to occasionally take antidepressants to keep himself from drowning, they were happy.
Harry was happy.
They built a little family with the adoption of their daughter and Harry thought he finally had what he’d always been looking for.
He finally had reasons to live and to love.
And, like all good things in Harry’s life, it crashed to an end when Draco left Harry.
Draco found in his coworker Theo what Harry could never give him- a partner willing and eager to make love to him.
Draco needed affection through physical touch, he’d become insecure and anxious when Harry wouldn’t, couldn’t, hold him or kiss him or treat him the way that he’d always thought he’d be able to treat a spouse.
And Harry hadn’t known agony until Draco left him.
It wasn’t that Harry didn’t deserve it, he’d put Draco through hell in the first four years of their relationship. Harry would start medicine, stop it. Draco dealt with the pills and the booze and the nightmares and the wild ideas born from a manic mind. Draco dealt with the trips to the Janus Thickey Ward and the overdoses.
Draco was the one who took all the shattered pieces of Harry and gently glued him back together, paying no mind to the cuts it put on his own hands.
Even after they separated, Harry knew that Draco deserved a bloody Order of Merlin for dealing with him as long as he did.
Harry apologized, he was sorry, but it was too late.
After Draco came Harry’s return to Sirius’ home again, a suitcase in one hand and his daughter in the other. And Sirius let Harry spiral out of control, drinking and crying, calling Draco and begging him to give him just one more chance.
Harry spiraled so quickly it was as if his brain had merely been waiting for an excuse to do so and obliged immediately.
Along that spiral, that thankfully avoided drugs now that he was a father, came booze and Oliver.
Oliver and Ginny had separated around the same time Harry and Draco did, and the two of them bonded over their marriages that they’d wanted to save and the other person wanted to end. And despite neither of them wanting to enter another romantic relationship, they managed to enter a physical one just fine.
Oliver was just brilliant enough at sex, teaching Harry and guiding him, joking with him and keeping him relaxed, that Harry discovered that he could enjoy sex.
His body wasn’t broken, nobody had been doing it correctly before.
Was finding that out worth losing Ginny as a friend?
Harry thought maybe it was.
Oliver made Harry think that he wasn’t doomed to be alone; that Harry could be in a normal relationship. As long as his partner was excellent in bed and had a knack for keeping Harry from becoming triggered, Harry could keep the next person he found happy in a way he couldn’t with Draco.
They wouldn’t leave him, Harry would be perfect.
It took time, time to establish himself in a set job as he was a single father to a perfect little girl who needed him. Harry went to university, got a degree, got a job, and everything got better.
Harry’s moods were stable. Harry wasn’t drinking much. Harry wasn’t fighting anyone.
Sure, money was tight, as Harry wasted his inheritance on drugs and partying in his youth, but Harry had his little girl and that was what he focused on for a long time.
Making Scarlet happy made Harry happy.
Being a father was truly the greatest thing that ever happened to Harry, and Scarlet was who he thought of on the bad days when he would be drowning in depression.
Harry would never risk Draco ripping their daughter away by turning back to pills and he would never hurt his daughter by killing himself.
Parents who killed themselves were selfish, in Harry’s opinion. They only thought of their own pain, not the pain their kids would bear once they were gone.
Things got better, slowly.
And when Harry felt like a person again, a normal person who functioned without mood stabilizers or antidepressants or drugs or booze, Harry thought he’d found a partner.
Marcus was a bit older, a bit more worldly. He grinned and told Harry he loved him at first sight and even if Harry didn’t love him back - Draco was always in the back of his mind - Harry enjoyed their easy relationship.
They went out to dinner and Marcus always insisted he paid. They met each others families and Scarlet and Marcus got on like a house on fire. Marcus was always buying Scarlet gifts, helping Harry when he’d be stressed over her birthday or Christmas, and Harry cared for him even if he didn’t love him.
Sirius told Harry there was something wrong with Marcus, something that was ‘off’ about him, and Harry waved him off.
“Sirius thinks you’re a serial killer,” Harry laughed when Marcus came over to his and Scarlet’s flat to watch a film together.
Marcus, who was kinder to Harry than anyone had been in a long time, huffed and looked disappointed.
“I hoped your family would like me,” he said quietly, looking insecure and hurt.
“I like you,” Harry offered with a bashful kiss to Marcus’ cheek.
Marcus smiled broadly and kissed Harry on the lips. “And I love you,” he murmured.
And Harry could see a bit of what Sirius did sometimes. He could see the way Marcus would snap at people, the way Marcus didn’t have a good relationship with anyone in his own family.
But Harry liked that small thrill of danger. Harry liked the way that Marcus would help him any time he needed it, no questions. He liked the way that Marcus never pushed for them to ‘be official’ or have sex.
Harry was self-destructive and Marcus was just another tool to destruct with.
When Marcus snapped, Harry hadn’t been expecting it.
They’d been out drinking with a group of Harry’s friends from work. It had been silly, a bit ridiculous. Harry drank more than he should, but Draco had Scarlet for the weekend and Harry wanted to cut back some.
So when they returned to Harry’s flat, Marcus having to carry Harry as he was so close to passing out in a stupor, it had been fun fighting with him.
Marcus said Harry had been mocking him that night, and Harry had been a bit. Marcus wasn’t much of a scholar while Harry managed to remain relatively intelligent.
Sometimes Harry enjoyed flaunting it and drunk Harry was more of a pretentious prat than Harry would have been sober.
Harry asked him who cared?
“Who cares if I mocked you?” Harry slurred from the couch, drunker than he’d been in a long time. “Nobody’s going to remember.”
The answer had been Marcus, apparently.
One moment Harry’s head was spinning and he was drifting toward a peaceful blackout, and the next there was a large hand on his throat and acidic breath in his face.
“You just use me,” Marcus hissed. Harry was too drunk to open his eyes really, he just whined beneath the iron grip of Marcus’ hand.
“You like it when I buy you things, give you money, but what do you give me?” Marcus demanded. His lips crashed down on Harry’s roughly, without warning, and Harry squirmed as much as he could under his grasp.
“Not a damn thing,” Marcus said after he pulled back and took his hand from Harry’s neck briefly. “You won’t call yourself my boyfriend, you won’t say you love me, and we aren’t even fucking!”
“I’m sorry,” Harry whimpered, curling up on himself on his sofa. “I’m sorry.”
Marcus kissed Harry again, tried to force his tongue in Harry’s very uncooperative mouth.
It was as if Harry’s body had been disconnected from his brain. Whatever nerve had once connected the two had dissolved in the shots of tequila and vodka he’d taken, leaving Harry an easy target for Marcus’ anger.
Harry tried to block it all out, focused on breathing and not suffocating on his own tears or the lack of oxygen when Marcus choked him again, but little things would never leave his memory—
“I don’t want to do this, please.”
“Oh, you don’t like being used? Neither do I.”
Marcus’ sharp teeth nibbling down Harry’s body, turning Harry’s stomach and causing his skin to crawl.
Marcus rimming Harry quickly when he realized he wouldn’t be able to shove himself in dry without at least discomforting himself.
“I love you,” Marcus panted, thrusting himself in Harry’s body. “I love you.”
Marcus’ hand tightened on Harry’s throat and released him long enough for Harry to rasp out a broken return of his own words.
“I love you,” Harry said, crying all the while, terrified he wouldn’t survive the night. If Marcus wanted Harry to love him, then he would, just long enough to get away.
It made Harry sick to say it, he’d never said it to anyone in a romantic sense since Draco, but he didn’t want Marcus to kill him either.
If there was any positive to being assaulted (and Harry couldn’t even use the word ‘rape’ in his thoughts without wanting to cry) by Marcus, the man had been quick. And when it was over, he kissed Harry so sweetly and said he loved him and would talk to him later before leaving the flat.
Harry thought he would have bruises from him, marks, something, anything, to show the damage that Marcus inflicted on him but when he’d stumbled to the loo to throw up and scrub his skin until it was raw- it was only damage Harry could see on the inside.
Neville came that night, after a drunk, terrified, half-mad floo call from Harry.
Neville listened to Harry, encouraged him to report it, and helped Harry get to the shower when he staunchly refused, too ashamed of himself to even consider it.
Neville hid the knives and Harry’s wand when Harry began spouting crazed things about ending it all and being sick of life.
Neville let Harry lay his head on his lap and sob, broken and unsure if he could ever be pieced back together.
And so began a familiar spiral.
It was an old dance, one Harry was familiar with.
Sirius got Scarlet when Harry asked him to, offering to let her spend a week with Grandpa when Harry whispered an excuse of needing a break, and Harry broke.
For five days, Harry only moved from his bed to sick up in the loo or drink water. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t return any calls, and he wouldn’t answer the door when people knocked. Harry showered seventeen times in five days, each time trying to scrub away the feeling of his skin itching from the inside and failing every time.
Every time the wind blew and rattled his windows, Harry shamefully hid under his quilt in case it was Marcus coming over.
At that point, Harry didn’t care if Marcus simply wanted to kill him, but he didn’t want Marcus to touch him or say he loved him.
Neville came by after a few days, breaking through Harry’s wards, and coaxed him to eat a bowl of pasta while he quietly told Harry about his fight with Marcus.
Neville, who was a better friend than Harry ever deserved, had went to Marcus and called him a rapist and said he hoped he went to jail and warned him to never so much look at Harry again.
Marcus told Neville that Harry begged him to fuck him and that they hadn’t had intercourse, Marcus only blew Harry.
“Even if that was true, which I don’t believe him,” Neville said quickly, feeding Harry bites of pasta while Harry sat there with hollow eyes and a detached sense of self, “it’s still rape, Harry. You were drunk, you couldn’t consent.”
Consent had never mattered in Harry’s life before and Harry should have known nothing had changed.
After Harry’s weeklong breakdown, he forced himself to function. He picked Scarlet up with a smile and listened to her laugh about her time with Grandpa while he cooked her dinner and evaded questions about where their sofa went.
Harry went back to work, pleading that he’d been terribly ill and swore to not miss any more days in the future.
It still sent Harry in a panic attack when someone knocked on their door, sure it was Marcus who continued to try and talk to Harry, but Harry thought things were better.
Really.
Everything was fine.
Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived-Despite-His-Best-Efforts.
It would be fine.
Until Scarlet was at Draco’s and Harry had nobody to keep up the facade for and he pulled a small black metal box from the shelf of his closet.
Sirius had bought Harry the gun when he’d moved in his flat, insisting that he learn to defend himself against muggle burglars the same as magical, but Harry had never had cause to mess with the weapon much before.
That night Harry sat on his bed, spinning the small gun in his hands over and over.
It would be so easy.
It was foolproof.
Scarlet would live with Draco and Theo and their recently adopted son. Sirius would grieve, but he’d move on. Neville would understand.
Nobody could be surprised, they knew Harry was sick and broken and couldn’t do anything right.
Every single decision he made always had a way of making him regret it eventually. Not Scarlet, never Scarlet, but Draco was her father too and he and Theo could keep her comfortable, loved, safe, and happy much better than Harry could.
All Harry was offering his daughter was his best efforts, and those were clearly never enough.
Harry put the gun against the side of his head, pulling the chamber back almost curiously. When the bullet locked in place with a quiet snick, it felt like something clicked in place inside Harry’s mind.
For the first time in nearly thirty years, nothing was tangled in Harry’s brain anymore.
Harry was born to self-destruct, and pulling that trigger had been nothing more than his final act of destruction.