Harry sat perched on the edge of the astronomy tower for the fifth night that week, staring out at the stars. Or well, he would have been, if not for the cloudy sky. The weather seemed to be in the same dreary mood as he was tonight.

He sighed, looking down at the cool metal he kept turning over in his hand. Cuticle scissors, he thought they were called but wasn’t quite sure. He had snagged them from Aunt Petunia’s nail kit, she had never used them and therefore never noticed their absence. He wasn’t really aware of what he needed them for at the time, just that he needed them.

And now they were his crutch. These tiny scissors that he wasn’t even sure of the name of were the only thing keeping him together. Or were they only helping to tear him apart? It was hard to tell, sometimes.

He hadn’t used them in a long time, actually. He just brought them with him to Hogwarts, kept them stashed away in his trunk because the thought of being without them just didn’t feel right. Just as he held onto every letter from Ron and Hermione to re-read when he was feeling alone and isolated at the Dursleys, he had to keep this piece of stainless steel with him to help hold on to his sanity…

Harry scowled, thinking of Ron… his so-called best friend had abandoned him when he needed him most. He hadn’t even attempted to listen to Harry when he tried to tell him he hadn’t put his name in the Goblet of Fire.

Hermione was stuck in the middle, believing in Harry but still speaking to Ron… While he appreciated her situation, it still didn’t help to make him feel any less lonely and hopeless. He did not even want to go through with the tournament, not at all. But as usual, he did not have a choice.

He turned the scissors over in his hand once more, contemplating.

Harry wasn’t quite sure when he had started to hurt himself, just that it seemed to make him hurt less on the inside. What did Dudley’s fist and Uncle Vernon’s cruel words mean to him when he could simply cut it all away from his mind? The transfer of pain from mind to skin was more than a little fascinating, and Harry found himself looking for that euphoric high more and more all the time.

Then his Hogwarts letter had come and things seemed a little bit easier to handle without the blade by his side. Not that it wasn’t by his side, mind you. He just didn’t find himself turning to it quite as often as he used to. There were times, of course, mostly during the summers… but now he was at the start of his fourth year, and he hadn’t purposely hurt himself since just after he had blown up Aunt Marge, which was more than a year ago now.

Sometimes he would go for long stretches of time like this and it seemed like he was actually finally over it, he didn’t need it any longer. He rarely even thought about it. But then one day he would just open his trunk and see it and even if he was feeling perfectly fine, he felt a need to pick it up and test his limits, to see just how deep he could go...

As it was at the moment, however, he was not feeling perfectly fine at all. And he felt like he needed this now more than ever before.

He had carried it up with him to the tower every night this week, just looking at it, debating. He was proud of himself for resisting for so long, but honestly in the end, what did it matter? What was the bloody point of denying himself something he wanted so very bad? It’s not as though it really hurt. It actually really didn’t.

Even if it did hurt, it still wouldn’t be hurting anyone but himself and since when had that mattered in the least? Harry seemed to exist solely for the purpose of hurting…

And so, without any further ado, he pressed the thin metal against his wrist, bracing himself for the first delicious sting in a year and eighty-four days…

But it never sunk into his flesh. Harry was too shocked by being stopped to notice who he had been stopped by, but the perpetrator became clear when he spoke.

“Potter, what in the hell do you think you are doing!?”

Harry stared blankly at the hand that had been holding his scissors, still trying to process what had just happened.

“Of all the… suicide?!”

Harry snapped out of his daze then, looking up to meet the eyes of his professor. His tone had been angry as usual, but the man looked… scared? Concerned, even? For Harry?

“I- I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Professor,” Harry said softly.

Snape glared at him, only slightly less cold than usual. “Then just what were you trying to do?”

“I was just going to… cut myself.”

Snape blinked and kept his eyes closed for a moment, rolling them as he opened them once more. “Obviously.”

Harry huffed, feeling irritated. Not an unusual feeling to experience when around this particular professor.

Snape sighed. “Fine. If not trying to kill yourself, why were you trying to cut yourself?”

Harry shrugged, feeling self-conscious now that the shock of the situation had worn off. He slightly shook his arm to get the sleeve of his robes to slip back down over his wrist.

“A verbal answer, if you please,” Snape said, narrowing his eyes at Harry’s movement. Suddenly he swooped down beside him, causing Harry to flinch as he pulled down his sleeve, revealing the scars usually kept hidden under the long sleeves of his robes.

Snape stared for a moment before Harry thrust his sleeve back down, glaring at the Potions Master as he hugged his arms across his stomach protectively.

There was silence for several long moments before Snape voiced a question, just one word but it seemed to speak a million. “Why?”

Harry nibbled on his lower lip and thought about it for a moment, as he never really was quite sure why. What drove him to think that slitting his wrists would somehow make him hurt less? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the first time, but he seemed to be able to remember every time after, and how it always made him feel a little less like nothing. Like for just a moment, he could forget that he was nothing more than the boy who slept in a cupboard under the stairs and drift into not exactly happiness, but a feeling of something other than the loneliness and despair that he experienced every single day at the Dursleys.

“It just… helps,” Harry said finally. “It’s better to feel… something… something you can control. Rather than… something bad that you can’t control. Or nothing at all... “

He knew that he wasn’t making any sense, but Snape seemed to understand, somehow, for he didn’t object or criticize. “How long?”

Harry’s eyes drifted to his shoes, struggling to remember a lifetime he had tried so hard to forget. “I dunno. I think I started when I was… nine. Or ten, maybe.”

If Snape had been anyone else, Harry would have thought his mouth was hanging open. As it was, Harry’s eyes were still focused on his feet and he could not see him, only hear him. “Nine?”

Harry just nodded.

There was silence once more, and Harry decided to break it. “I haven’t done it in a long time, more than a year, I, I… honestly, most of the time I don’t even think about it. Sometimes it almost seems like I’ve grown past it but then randomly I’ll just see it in my trunk and it’s, I just have this like need for it, even when I don’t really even need it… it’s just a craving, an urge… I could be feeling fine but then if I see it I just... want it.”

“Perhaps the problem is seeing it? Why do you keep it and carry it around like this?”

Harry shrugged. “I dunno… it’s… it’s like a security blanket. I need to have it to know… that I always have something to anchor me, just in case, I guess…”

Snape stared at him and Harry flushed, looking away. “I know it sounds crazy-”

Snape shook his head. “It’s not crazy. But it’s not the solution.”

“What else am I supposed to do when, when…”

“Take a walk, read a book, talk to someone. This isn’t the coping mechanism you should turn to at the first sign of trouble.”

“Who am I going to talk to!? Everyone hates me because they think I put my name in that goblet, my best friend isn’t even speaking to me because of it!”

“What about your relatives? What would they say?”

Harry snorted. “Probably ‘go deeper, Harry, you can’t even commit suicide properly.’”

Snape just stared at him yet again and Harry looked away, tugging his sleeves down further and tightening his arm’s hold against his stomach. “Forget what I said,” Harry murmured after a moment.

“I think I’ll have a difficult time forgetting that,” Snape muttered.

Harry closed his eyes, resting his heavy head on his knees. Snape blew out a heavy breath. “I can not allow you to keep this any longer, I’m sure you realize.”

Harry whipped his head back at him, desperation shining in his eyes. “Professor, please, I need it! It’s not hurting anyone!”

“But it is hurting you, and that is unacceptable,” Snape said, his greedy fingers encasing Harry’s only source of emotional support.

“Why?”

“You… no one, save for perhaps the Dark Lord deserves to feel bad enough to do this to themselves. This won’t help you in the long run.”

“No offense, Professor, but you don’t know that. I just had to explain the whole thing to you. It does help.”

“It sounds like a temporary fix that won’t help you in the end, only leave you with more scars.”

“Scars are the whole reason I’m alive, they’re the key to my survival in more ways than one,” Harry said, pointing to his forehead.

“You should have none of these scars, not even that one… you should have never been attacked, never sent to live with careless relatives, never started this...”

“Yeah well, I did,” Harry stubbornly retorted.

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not have any other choice, Potter, there is no way I could possibly hand this back to you and just forget about it.”

“Fine,” Harry said, annoyed but resigned. “But if you’re going to keep it from me, then just… get rid of it, please. If I know you have it, I don’t… I don’t know what I might do to get it back.”

“Don’t you think that you would just go looking for something else to use?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said honestly. “I’ve never been in a situation before where I needed something else.”

“Very well,” Snape said, banishing it on the spot. Harry stared at where it had been, feeling despair tugging at his heart at the loss of the only constant in his life.

He could feel Snape’s eyes watching him carefully, so he forced himself to tear his eyes away and look back at his professor. Snape assessed him for a moment longer before nodding slightly.

“Come on, Potter, you need some sleep.”

“I’d rather not be in the same room as my dormmates right now, thanks…”

“Have they been tyrannizing you?”

Harry shrugged.

Snape sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve told your head of house about this?”

“Why would I?” Harry asked, genuinely confused.

Snape rolled his eyes. “Bullying is not tolerated at Hogwarts.”

Harry chuckled. “Doesn’t mean much. Nearly everyone is walking around with ‘Potter stinks’ badges on their robes.”

Snape seemed to pause a moment before nodding. “You are correct in that… you probably should be monitored tonight, anyway.”

“Hospital wing?” Harry asked, groaning a bit. “Please don’t take me there, I’ll die…”

“Don’t joke about that,” Snape responded sharply. “Follow me.”

And so Harry stood, feeling pins and needles prickling up his legs as they had fallen asleep, and followed Snape.

They journeyed down the stairs of the astronomy tower and made their way to the dungeons. Snape stopped at his office and ushered Harry inside. Just as Harry wondered if he would now be receiving a lecture, a door seemed to appear out of nowhere behind Snape’s desk and Snape gestured for Harry to follow him inside.

Harry did so, hesitantly, finding himself in what he guessed to be Snape’s quarters. Snape led him over to a leather couch and gently pushed Harry down to sit on it when he made no move to do so himself.

“You may stay here for tonight, but you will have to speak to your head of house and work something out with your dormmates eventually.”

“I… I don’t have to tell her about… you know,” Harry started tentatively, head inclining towards his arms, “do I?”

Snape studied him for a moment before sitting down beside him on the sofa, elbows placed on his knees as he rested his chin in his hands. “As you didn’t do yourself any damage tonight, I suppose you may keep the incident between us. Does anyone else know?”

Harry shook his head slowly. He hadn’t told anyone, ever, and no one before Snape had discovered his secret.

“If you don’t want anyone else to know, then I will have to monitor you myself.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, feeling very nervous.

“I will have to check to see if you have been harming yourself. I will not reprimand you if you relapse, but I can not stand by and allow you to continue to hurt yourself.”

Harry bit his lip before nodding. He felt like he was losing all control over his life, but he could recognize Snape’s position. “I understand, sir,” he said quietly.

Snape pulled a blanket off the side of the couch and conjured a pillow for Harry. “I know it’s…” he sighed, shaking his head. “I won’t lie and say that I can relate to your situation, but I can understand and sympathize with it. You do not have to deal with everything on your own, as you always seem to do.”

Harry stared at his knees, saying nothing. Snape put the blanket over him, almost tucking him in. He handed him the pillow and Harry took it, placing it against the armrest behind his head.

“It is late. I will leave you to rest,” Snape murmured. Harry nodded and turned on his side, tucking his knees against his chest.

Snape stood and seemed to hesitate for a moment before placing a hand on his head, lightly brushing his fringe out of his eyes. Harry closed them tightly and forced himself to relax and drift off to sleep, feeling just a bit of peace mingling in with the anxiety at last.

The clock chimed twelve times, it was midnight. One year and eighty-five days clean...

Harry wasn’t stupid enough to believe that everything would be okay, but well. It was fine for the moment, at least.