Chapter Text
Harry is fine. He is doing alright. He is tired of the worried looks Hermione and Ron have started sending his way. He has told them that he is doing absolutely fucking spectacular, so why can't they bloody leave him alone? He wears hoodies in the summers despite the Sun blaring in his goddamn eyes because he is cold. There is no other probable reason for him flinching whenever anyone tries to touch his arms. It bloody hurts when they try holding him, but he cannot tell them why.
He doesn't want to tell them and risk being called an "attention-seeker." Draco and his peers do that just enough, and he cannot handle more people calling him that.
Harry would have never resorted to slicing open his arms if his legs weren't already full of scars. (But in truth, he would be lying, really. Arms or legs— it's all the same. It's the pain he craves. It's the blood that matters.) The canvas of his legs had no more space for him to cut open his skin and cry tears of blood, pain and relief. He liked the way blood trickled down his cuts. He was not able to cry anymore. His wounds, however, could. The inside now shows on the outside. His mental pain is now physical too.
Harry didn't know when the thought became comforting.
And then people started noticing. Of course they did.
Harry was on his way to the changing room after Quidditch practice when Ron stopped him. "Harry," he said, his mouth open, as if, he had seen the Dark Lord himself. Which was ironic in itself. "What have you.. Done?" Harry, being confused at first, followed Ron's eyes to look at his own arms. Fuck. His sleeves must have rolled over during practice. Harry looked up at Ron again, trying to form words in his head, but none came out from his mouth.
Then, Ron, almost expressionless, said, "You're so.. Bloody selfish. Did you ever stop to think about us— Hermione, me, and everyone else, before doing.. This?"
And then Harry laughed. Harry bloody laughed. An attention-seeker for self-harming, and selfish for not telling anyone about it?
Over the next few days, his friends, the Professors, and naturally, the whole school, found out about Harry's little problem.
"The Boy who Lived? Not for long, it seems."
"How exactly is he the Chosen One?"
"What was the point of his parents dying for him if he is going to kill himself after all?"
"Attention-seeker."
But it wasn't long before the Professors, and Dumbledore, made the mutterings of the students come to a stop. Were the adults on his side, after all?
Harry walked into Potions class, arms and legs long healed because of all the stupid healing charms and Madam Sprout's "exceptional magic remedy." His inside wasn't showing on the outside anymore.
No one was spewing, in hushed whispers, ghastly things about Harry anymore, and he reckoned Professor Snape's death stare to his students was responsible for it.
Harry quietly sat on his seat, acknowledging the smile from Hermione and the squeezing of his shoulder by Ron, as if, he wanted to say, everything will be okay, mate. Who was he to tell his best mate that everything was, in fact, not going to be okay?
"Harry," Snape had said one day when Harry had come to submit his assignment to him in his office, "Do sit down. I need to talk to you."
The use of 'Harry' and not 'Potter' was not unnoticed by him, but he sat down anyway, because it's not as if anything fucking mattered anymore anyway.
"Yes, Sir?" He said, his voice coming out weaker and more fragile than he had intended. He cursed at himself, cringing at his own voice. Why was he so bloody pathetic?
Snape stood up, walked towards Harry, and towered over his desk, continuing, "I would rather you not do such peccable and unnecessary things to yourself again. You are, as much as it pains to admit, a brilliant wizard, Harry. Do not let your... Inner demons... Win."
But Harry's inner demons had already won, because why else was he standing on the railing of the Clock Tower, looking down at everything and everyone, with a sick smile on his face, as if he wanted to tell Voldemort to fuck off, and to Hell with it, to Hell with all of it?
So, Harry jumped.
But he didn't die.
He must have died for a minute there, because he swore he saw his parents in some white room, and they had told him how proud they were of him for being such a strong boy, and how he needed to continue, now that..
Voldemort's Horcrux inside Harry died.
Did Voldemort, out of literally anyone else in the world, just give Harry another chance at life?