Garnet

Harry had just finished unpacking his belongings in a room that used to belong to someone named Regulus Arcturus Black.

The room was all dark greens and blacks, the theme was clearly Slytherin but it just didn't feel like the room.

It almost felt like an act, in corners and drawers hidden away, you could find small keepsakes or a photo of what looked like his friend group smiling in their sixth year. You could see the sadness in all of their eyes and their tight smiles, looks like war may have gotten them too.

Something about Regulus's room felt right and as Harry was unpacking he realized one reason that might be, and that was a blade similar to his own he found in Regulus's sock draw.

It was a pretty shit hiding spot if you asked Harry but hey who was he to judge someone as equally fucked up as him and who was probably dead by now.

Something Harry couldn't say he had yet accomplished.

Harry decided to name his snake Arie after Regulus's middle name Arcturus which was the brightest star in the northern constellation Bootes.

¨What would you think of the name Arie?¨ Harry asked the snake wrapped around his neck.

¨ That is what I shall be named if you think it is a suitable name¨

¨Okay perfect Arie¨

Now that naming his snake was out of the way and he unpacked all his belongings in his new room he decided to go downstairs to get a glass of water.

He would get food but he wasn't hungry.

Or that's what he kept telling himself half hopping it would make it come true because he was starving.

Harry knew he should eat something seeing it had been 3 days but he just couldn't bring himself to without making himself feel sick so he just didn't.

He liked the feeling of emptiness in his stomach, he couldn't do anything right but maybe he could do this.

Why should he get to eat anyway when Cedric and so many others would never get to eat or do anything again because of his actions?

What's a bit of hunger when he caused others so much more pain?

He didn't deserve to eat.

He didn't deserve to sit here, living, and breathing.

He started to feel the bone-deep tiredness he knew so well start to roll over him.

Give it a week and Harry knew he was truly fucked.

But hey at least he didn't have school to worry about since he had no one here forcing him to go or do anything.

He could stay in bed as long as he had to. He could cut his wrists outside of the bed curtains he was usually confined to. There were numerous ways he could try to kill himself when things got hard like Harry knew they soon would.

So he might as well enjoy the last bit of semi-normalcy he would be experiencing for who knows how long.

Maybe he'd be lucky and it would be over in two weeks, maybe he wouldn't and it would last a month.

There was no way to know.

The current calm he was feeling was short-lived as it always was as he heard the fucking front door open.

What had Griphook told him?

Promised him?

¨Dont worry Mr. Potter Black no one can get in and no one will be able to find you¨ or some shit like that and what an utter lie that was. He hadn't even been at this house for an hour and someone already came waltzing in like they owned the place.

Well, guess the fuck what Harry is not going to let this happen.

He's going to curse them before they even had the chance to do shit to him.

Kill or be killed and all that.

Harry crept around the corner and pointed his wand in the person's face pinning them to the hallway wall and was about to curse the fuck out of them when he realized who he was looking at.

Snape.

Severus fucking Snape somehow found him and even weirder was able to get in.

The wards had to be broken because there was no way that he had never wished or done acts of ill intent toward Harry.

Or had the last four years just been forgotten?

He also worked for Dumbledore and The Dark Lord which were the two main people trying to get Harry killed. He had to be at least guilty by association after countless years of that.

Out of everyone in the world, Snape cannot be one of the only people who can get in, he just can't be. There has to be any other explanation.

He heard Snape gasp and it snapped him out of whatever trance he was in.

Snape looked just as shocked to see Harry as Harry was to see him and he couldn't tell if that made this situation better or worse, to be honest.

Harry didn't think he could move if he tried so it was probably for the best that Snape shoved him off of himself.

¨Potter what the fuck are you doing here. Do you know how everyone spent countless hours looking for you? Do you not care about the trouble you cause others?¨

Harry couldn't believe it. No one sent him any letters all summer or any sort of communication and he was the one being blamed for people looking for him when they had done nothing to make him think they were coming?

Nope, not happening.

Harry was not going to get blamed for something else that wasn't his fault.

But before he could say anything Snape spoke again, this time he sounded confused, and even weirder he sounded almost worried.

¨Potter why do you look like that, what did you do?¨

Harry did not like the tone of voice Snape was using or the way he was slowly walking towards him and putting his hand on his shoulder so he said the first thing he could think of and ran.

¨I dont owe you any answer Snape so if your just here for that or even if you are not there's the door.¨

__________________________________________

Severus was speechless as he looked at Potter.

This wasn't the same boy he had seen merely three months ago. Something had happened and he had half the heart to tell Potter to go sit down and take a few deep breaths.

He could now realize he may have been a bit too harsh with the way he greeted Potter but could you blame him after the shock of seeing him here?

Potter looked like a whole new person, he had dark tanned skin and he was at least 4 inches taller and broader than he had been, he stood eye to eye with Severus now. And his eyes or should he say eye? His right eye was Lily's eye, he felt taken aback by how exact the color looked to hers. But his left eye couldn't be more different, It was a bright white which only made his green eye more vibrant, and it also stood out more by the fact he no longer wore glasses. The boy's scar twisted over his whole face and looked like lightning out of the night sky.

The boy also had a snake wrapped around his neck he was currently hissing too.

Since when had Potter owned a snake and why was he hissing at it?

He had to realize he looked mental hissing at a snake.

Oh wait, Potter was a parseltongue so at least the hissing made sense now.

The boy hadn't moved from where Severus shoved him with surprising ease, and he was looking at him with a distant look in his eye.

Now Severus was generally getting concerned for the boy since it wasn't like Potter not to come up with some witty response.

The half-assed answer he just gave didn't count after years of insults.

Doing the only thing he could think of he went up to the boy and started to lead him by the shoulder planning on pushing him onto a couch or a chair but the boy gave a full-body flinch and Severus immediately dropped his hand and slowly bacled away.

Severus didn't know what to do. Potter had never acted like this around him, he flinched sometimes at loud noises or when someone unexpectedly touched him but Severus had never seen him react this severely.

He always just assumed the boy was jumpy even though he knew this wasn't the case.

Severus didn't have to think of what to say because he was jerked out of his thoughts as the boy quickly turned on his heels and ran up the stairs.

Severus heard a door slamming and for the first time in years, he truly didn't have any sort of plan or idea on what to do.

__________________________________________

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Fuck

Snape was here and he had seen what Harry now looks like.

He knew where Harry was staying and by morning Dumbledore and Voldemort would know where Harry was staying because there's no world where Snape wouldn't tell both of them.

Stupid fucking useless wards ruining Harry's life.

At least he knew Snape wouldn't stick around because he doesn't care about Harry in the slightest so he would soon be left alone again.

Until he inevitably comes back that is.

Should Harry move somewhere else?

He had other homes, but then he would need to go back to Gringotts and who knows the kind of trouble Harry got into for underaged magic and he didn't want to go to Azkaban.

It was safest to wait here until morning when he could see if Snape had done anything to the place.

Harry wasn't even going to try to sleep.

Now that his life was going to shit all over again, and all of his cuts were healed it was time to pull out his blade once again.

He dragged it over his left arm until he stopped thinking.

Stopped worrying.

Stopped feeling.

Except in the back of his head, he still pictured the way Snape's hand felt on his arm and he couldn't stop the feeling of dread in his stomach.

So he moved to his right arm and left even more cuts.

But it didn't work.

Nothing was working.

Nothing was fucking working.

Snape would make him go back to Hogwarts, he would make him go back to Gryffindor, and school that hates him.

Here's the part where his life gets worse and worse because nothing ever good happens for the boy who lived.

Why should it?

That's when a tapping brought his focus to the window beside the bed where an owl was waiting to be let in.

Harry had no one to write to him so he had no idea who it was from till he saw the crest.

The Ministry.

He was going to Azkaban.

That was the only explanation for the Ministry owling him.

Well, nothing he could do about it now so he opened the letter with more force than was probably necessary.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

This was so much worse than Azkaban could ever be.

Dumbledore the meddling fool had gotten him reinstated from Hogwarts when he was originally expelled.

No trail or anything.

Harry was just going to get expelled and that was that, no Azkaban or anything.

He would have been happy with this.

He could have done anything and Dumbledore had to come and ruin Harry's life once again?

And the worst part wasn't just that he had to go back to school, it was that he had to have a fucking resort.

This has only happened once in Hogwart's history decades ago.

The school was going to hate Harry even more than it currently did and that's saying something.

There was no chance Harry was going back to Gryffindor.

The hat wanted Slytherin the first time around and Harry was even more Slytherin now than first year.

There would be no arguing with the hat this time.

Dont get him wrong, he didn't hate Slytherin but Slytherin hated him.

Not a single person in that house didn't want Harry dead, and now that was going to be the place he is stuck for the next three years.

You know what?

Why would he expect any differently, why would he expect he could have one year of nothing?

There was no way of getting out of this, Harry was truley and utterly fucked.