“Why did you start cutting?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said irritably while not so subtly glaring at the medi-witch-shrink-or-whatever-she-was.

“No idea? One day you just picked up a knife and that was that?”

“Scissors,” Harry muttered. “Not a knife, scissors.”

“You used a knife during your relapse, however,” she stated more than asked.

Harry shifted on the couch, pulling his bandaged arm closer against his chest. Protectively. Defensively. “It was the only option available. Severus banished my scissors when he caught me last year.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

Harry resisted the urge to groan. Was she going to ask him about his mother next? Did his dead mother contribute to his issues? “Like I’m a child who can’t be trusted. Severus has even baby-proofed the house now.”

“You feel no great sense of loss when thinking of your scissors?”

Harry bit his lip. “Well… yeah.”

The therapist uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “What do you think it is about that particular tool that causes you to feel attached?”

Harry sat back on the couch, thinking. He really wasn’t sure. In the beginning, they had just seemed like they would work. But then, anything else he had tried just didn’t do it for him. ‘Until the knife the other night, anyway…’ he thought absently, tugging his arm closer.

“It’s the only thing I’d ever really used,” he said finally. “I… carried it with me everywhere in primary school and kept it in my trunk at Hogwarts.”

“And so it feels like an old friend,” the therapist offered gently. Harry nodded.

“Do you feel any resentment towards your guardian for destroying it?”

“Not really,” Harry said honestly. “I asked him to do it.”

She blinked, seeming surprised. “You did?”

“Yeah… he had to take it away from me and I… I knew that if I knew he had it, I would probably go to great lengths to get it back from him.”

“And so, you displayed a great amount of self-control to prevent that from happening.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, feeling just a bit proud of himself. “I guess I did.”

***

“How did your session go?” asked Severus.

“It went,” Harry said shortly.

***

“Tell me about your family,” the therapist, whose name he had learned was Claire, asked.

“Family?” Harry asked blankly. “My parents died when I was a baby.”

“Your aunt and uncle I mean, the people you grew up with.”

Harry shrugged, pulling his arms to his chest again. The one was no longer bandaged, but big, ugly scars hid underneath his sleeves. “There’s not much to tell.”

“Are you certain of that?” Claire questioned softly.

Harry stared at his denim jeans for a moment, contemplating. “They made me sleep in a cupboard,” he said after a while.

“Did they?” Claire asked, a slight edge straining her voice.

Harry nodded slowly. “They… My cousin and his friends would beat me up a lot. My uncle liked to yell and complain about me a lot.”

“And your aunt?”

Harry chewed on his lip. “She… she didn’t pay me much mind. She told me what chores needed to be done. That was kind of it.”

“Oftentimes, pure ignorance can sting more than a thousand cruel words.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed quietly. “It can.”

***

“Sometimes, I really just don’t see the point. Like… why try so hard to stop when I’ll just start again?”

“You don’t know that,” Severus murmured.

“I do,” Harry sighed. “You really shouldn’t think so much of me. If you hadn’t removed the knives already, I…”

“Even if you did, I still wouldn’t think any less of you. I don’t think any less of you.”


***

“Have you discussed this with anyone else? Your new guardian?”

Harry shook his head. “Why would I?”

Claire leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees. “Keeping it all locked inside yourself won’t help to ease the pain.”

“Severus doesn’t want to hear me whine about my relatives calling me a few bad names.”

“It was more than that. And it would not be whining. I assure you, Severus would appreciate honest and open communication in your relationship.”

Harry placed his head on the armrest of the couch. “Maybe.”

***

“Would you like bacon or sausage?” Severus asked.

“Sausage,” Harry said after a moment of hesitation. “I don’t… I used to cook bacon for my relatives a lot. I didn’t really get to eat it very often, but… I don’t like it much.”

“No?” Severus inquired, sitting down on a kitchen stool next to Harry. Harry very rarely ever even mentioned his relatives.

“No,” Harry said quietly, shaking his head a little. “I don’t like them much, either.”

***

“The final task,” Claire said one afternoon.

“The final task,” Harry muttered in response when it became clear she had nothing more to add to it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Would you even believe me?” Harry grumbled, staring at the fire where Severus had burned this morning’s Daily Prophet issue. The headline claimed him to be deranged and disturbed, and while not in the way they believed, it ironically did seem to ring true.

Severus had vehemently disagreed with that line of thought when Harry had voiced it.

“I would,” Claire stated, nothing but good intention shining in her voice. She was one of the good ones, someone who tried to help people even when they couldn’t be helped, people like Harry.

“There’s not much to say,” Harry said, just as he had when she had brought up his relatives.

Once again, Claire disagreed with that.

***

“Could… would it be okay for me to visit Cedric’s grave sometime?”

Severus looked up from his potions book, surprised at the sudden question. He closed the book and stood from his chair, taking a place on the couch beside Harry.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Of course. I will take you.”

“You don’t have to, I can do it alone.”

“Yes, I do. And you don’t.”

***

“I just feel so guilty. And I know that I should, but it’s still not a good feeling.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” Claire murmured. Harry shook his head.

“No, it’s more than that. I told Cedric to take the cup with me. He shouldn’t have even been there…”

“You shouldn’t have been there either.”

Harry shook his head again. “Voldemort was after me.”

“You still shouldn’t have been there.”

***

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. “I could’ve… I should’ve…”

Severus squeezed Harry’s shoulder as they stood at Cedric Diggory’s gravesite. There was no use in telling Harry once again that it was not his fault, not just now. Severus and Claire both knew that he would not believe it for some time.

Harry sighed heavily, gently shaking off Severus’ hand as he bent down before the grave, placing his contribution of lilies on top of the mounds of flowers already representing the great loss felt over the Hufflepuff.

Harry did not get back up after bending down, and after a few moments, Severus kneeled beside him.

“Severus?” Harry said after a while.

“Hmm?”

“I… do you know where my parents are buried?”

***

“Everyone falls apart at some point. The important part is putting yourself back together.”

“I’m always falling apart; I don’t know if I’ve ever been together…”

“No one is perfect, Harry. Everyone has cracks in their foundation. Just not everyone is brave enough to show it.”

***

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured, already on the ground. Severus sat beside him.

“You simply must stop blaming yourself for everything, child.”

“I don’t know how,” Harry whispered, tears straining his voice. “I don’t even remember them. But I miss them so much. I miss what I never had. What I should have had.”

***

“When your guardian first contacted me, he informed me that you had become suicidal. Do you believe that to be true?”

Harry scowled, remembering the night he had gone off the rails in front of Severus. It had been pretty awful.

“No.”

“You feel strongly about it?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

Harry sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I just… I’m a survivor. Sometimes it hurts so bad I just want it all to end, but I know that deep down… I would never do it. Kill myself, that is. My survival instincts are too strong.”

“I think you should try to find a reason to live rather than just survive.”

“Well, I have to take care of Voldemort, don’t I? That’s a pretty good reason to keep kicking.”

“Despite what some may suggest, you do not exist solely for the purpose of defeating Voldemort.”

Claire wasn’t afraid to say Voldemort’s name, and that was what helped him to almost believe her when she said things like that.

***

“Relapses are part of recovery,” Harry mentioned casually. “Clarie says so, anyway.”

“What do you think?”

“I think… I think I messed up and I feel really bad about it.”

“I think,” Severus started softly, “that beating yourself up over it isn’t any better than cutting yourself. Both are harmful to you. It happened. I’m not disappointed in you. I’m proud of you for holding on for as long as you did, and trying to do so once again. I think that you should be proud of yourself.”

***

“Do you think that keeping track of the days helps or hinders?”

“I don’t know,” Harry replied honestly. “It… I always did it. Just to remind myself, I guess, that I could take it. I could make it without it, I had so far. But then, I was always thinking about it, as I marked the days on the calendar… But maybe it’s better to just try to let it go and stop counting.”

“That could work,” Claire offered. “But I suspect it will be a bit more difficult to let go of than you might hope. You’ve been dealing with this for a very long time.”

“That’s the thing,” Harry said. “No matter what I do, I think that it will always lurk in the back of my mind but maybe somehow…”

***

“Do you think I’m a hopeless case?” Harry asked suddenly.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Why don’t you think I am?”

Severus looked at him seriously. “You want help. You want to stop. If you didn’t, we wouldn’t be here now having this conversation.”

“But what if it doesn’t matter what I want? What if I can’t stop?”

“You already have.”

“The definition of relapse is a deterioration after a temporary improvement. I’ve never stopped, not really.”

“All things are temporary. Our lives are temporary. That does not make them meaningless.”