A/N: Thank you for staying with me on this I know the updates have got slower and slower. Trust me when I say I haven't given up on this story and have no intention of abandoning it. Real life since October last year has been sheer hell and my focus has not been on my writing, either fanfiction or otherwise. This chapter may contain self-harm triggers for those of you who struggle daily with self-harm issues. Like me. I have marked it if you want to skip past.

Harry sat on an isolated rock at the edge of the Lake, his dull red rimmed eyes seeing nothing, so focussed was he on his grief. The water was still, unruffled by the breeze and resembled a smooth black mirror. The sun tracked across the sky unseen by the grieving boy until the sky was as black as the lake. He had sat unaware on the rock since early morning, his thoughts churning in his mind since his escape from the Hospital Wing where he had awoken.

The first thing he had been aware of was his father's voice. A dull throb in the back of his head followed. Then a bone-chilling, stomach-clenching knowledge that the boy who rescued him, the boy who had called Severus to help them was gone. Dead. Departed. Tears started to flow, pouring down his face through closed lids. That feeling was joined by a vague feeling of guilt – he had known there was something wrong with Tristan when he had seen him at the feast so why hadn't he done something? He had spent the evening with Draco instead, reassuring the blond that he would always be his friend despite the scars, both inside and out.

A hand stroked his hair and wiped away his tears, a futile measure as they continued to flow. The smoky smell of Potions ingredients with sandalwood and jasmine enveloped him and Harry launched himself upright and buried his face in his father's robes, sobbing brokenly and spluttering incoherent apologies.

"Hush child…you have a concussion…I am here…calm yourself…it will be alright," Severus ineffectually tried to calm the hysterical boy who was soaking his robes with tears.

Much reassurance and hair stroking later, Harry was coherent enough to take the Headache Potion being proffered by Madam Pomphrey and to submit to her scans of his head where he had apparently bumped it both on the table and against the floor as he had collapsed in his shock.

Severus glanced around to the other occupants of the room and shot a pointed look at McGonagall.

She returned his look with a questioning gaze. He upped the ante with a raised eyebrow and indicated the distraught boy. She saw the eyebrow and raised him a smirk. Severus huffed in annoyance and tried to look dignified as Harry surreptitiously wiped his nose on a handy corner of Snape's robes. McGonagall smothered a snigger of amusement and gave a her collegue a brief nod to indicate his request, subtle as it had been, was going to be considered. She left the Hospital Wing in search of the Herbology Professor.

Harry hadn't noticed her leave, indeed he hadn't been aware she was there in the first place. Severus continued to stroke his hair and murmur reassurances even though he knew there was nothing he could say or do that would help Harry overcome his guilt and grief. He glanced up over the messy head of hair to the Matron, who had returned to Harry's bedside holding a sleeping potion. She gestured towards the distraught boy with the potion and after a few moments thought, Severus nodded. He untangled an hand from his son and took the potion, turning the grief-stricken teenager around so he could see the potion as Severus uncorked it expertly with one thumb, sniffed it briefly and put the flask to Harry's lips.

"One swallow only, or you will sleep all day. You need to calm down so the potion for your concussion can do its job. Carefully now, yes that's it. Let me tuck you in," said Severus gently.

Harry's eyes rolled up in his head as the potion took effect and he sagged bonelessly against his father's arms. Severus manoeuvred him back into the bed and drew the covers up over his shoulders. He sat at his son's beside with his head in his hands and let out a great sigh. He had only himself to blame, he knew that. He should have gone to find Harry himself last night rather than send another student, even if that student was a prefect. He wasn't blind to the way Marcus looked at Harry, especially now he was no longer the skinny waif that had first sat at the Slytherin table. When Marcus hadn't appeared with Harry in tow, Severus had gone looking for him, only to find the older boy in the gym in the Room of Requirement, punching the living daylights out of a heavy bag suspended from the ceiling. After expressing his displeasure in a manner only he could achieve, Severus was reduced to escorting the snivelling Flint to the Hospital Wing after the stupid boy had missed the punching bag when his eyes blurred with tears and hit the wall with considerable force, apparently breaking just about every bone in his hand.

Although Madam Pomphrey was able to heal the idiotic prefect fairly swiftly, the delay and diversion to the Hospital Wing meant that by the time he and Flint returned to the Slytherin Common Room it was so late at night it had become early morning. With no wish to disturb Harry's sleep given how badly the boy slept even and the best of times, Severus admitted defeat and shuffled back to his own rooms to try and get some sleep. After glancing at the time he debated whether sleep was worth it given that the school would be awake in a few hours anyway. A jaw-cracking yawn convinced him otherwise and he set an alarm to rouse him in time to catch Harry before breakfast, removed his shoes and stumbled in the direction of his bed. His usual dignified manner abandoned him and he fell face first onto the covers and was asleep moments later.

His exhaustion was such that the alarm he had set brayed for over an hour before he awoke. Cursing when he realised the time, Severus abandoned his usual refined stalk and set off for the Great Hall in a flat sprint hoping to catch Harry before he sat down for breakfast. As it was, he skidded to a halt in horror just outside the doors of the Great Hall in time to see Harry stand up, scream an inarticulate sound of rage and grief and fall backwards, striking his head sharply on the Slytherin house table as he fell, and then again on the floor as he crumpled to the ground.

Severus sighed and shook himself from his recollections. He ran his hand one last time through Harry's hair and left his son's bedside in search of the Matron. He found her in a small side room that very few people even knew existed. Unsurprising really – how many children should be aware that Hogwarts had a morgue? School was supposed to be a safe place after all. Poppy was cleansing the body in the traditional manner – by hand but with a white cloth charmed to Vanish any dirt it cleaned off the body of the departed. Severus stopped in the doorway, watching her clean the stray blades of grass and smears of dirt from Tristan's face. It was difficult, his head was sort of flat where it had struck the paving of the courtyard and he knew that the boy's skull was shattered into pieces. He cleared his throat to announce his presence to the Matron and took a few steps into the room.

Such was her concentration on her task that Poppy only became aware of the Potions Master when his feet entered her view as she bathed the poor boy's face. She startled and the additional pressure on Tristan's forehead created a stomach churning grinding noise as the fractured pieces of his skull moved under his pallid skin.

"Oh, Severus! My apologies, I was miles away. I was just…" she indicated with the ritual cloth and continued, babbling nervously, "not my first obviously, during training you had to do a whole month rotation in the…the…yes well, not my first here either although not since you became Potions Master, Horace lost a few to inability to brew, how is he have you seen him lately? I wonder if he, oh Severus by the Mother herself he's so young, why would he do this?" Poppy ended her rambling with a sob and covered her face to hide her tears.

Realising immediately what the problem was, Severus stepped closer and removed the ritual cloth from her hands before she did something sacrilegious like absent-mindedly blow her nose on it.

"Poppy, while I realise you have dealt with death in your field of work, you have not been personally involved in the suicide of a child under your care have you?"

She shook her head and Severus steered the distraught mediwitch to a chair with gentleness that would have surprised many of the student body. He took up her task of cleaning the child. Tristan had climbed up the stonework arches surrounding the Transfiguration Courtyard, using them to access the pitched rooves of the shorter towers surrounding the North Tower, managing in his determination to achieve a height of approximately thirty feet. He had then fallen backwards, arms outstretched, apparently making no effort to twist in mid-air perhaps in fear or to save himself by trying to grab at the ledges of the tower or courtyard roof as he fell. Severus knew that the height Tristan had fallen from was not always fatal, depending on what one landed on and how one was falling. The absence of any effort from Tristan to save himself meant that he hit the stone paving flat on his back, shattering his skull, and breaking just about every bone in his body.

Severus cursed himself for not doing more. He knew Harry had been convinced there was something wrong, and he had agreed. He had been expecting Tristan to come to him as he had done in the past. Several other students had stealthily made their way to his office during the evening after the feast, including a Hufflepuff girl he had not seen before. The length of time he spent with the second year girl meant that it was quite late when he realised that the Rawn boy had not come to him as anticipated. He had escorted the Hufflepuff back to the corridor where the Sett was located and prowled onwards, determined to find out what had happened to the boy during his time with his family. Given that his abuser had been jailed and the child prostitution ring broken, Severus was at a loss to understand what could have happened.

He had turned a corner only to come face-to-face with the Headmaster. Severus felt something cold apparently lodge itself in his gut when the Headmaster simply looked at him tiredly, twinkle absent from his eyes, shoulders stooped with weariness. With shock, Severus realised the Headmaster looked old. For the first time in his career, Albus Dumbledore actually looked his age, the stress of over a century of living etched into every wrinkle on his usually jovial features.

"Severus…Severus, my dear boy…"

The cold in Severus' gut spread across his entire body as he realised the old man in front of him was struggling for words. Grasping the roughened stones of the wall next to him for support, Severus tried to slow his frantically beating heart and rapid breathing. Whatever had happened would not be helped by his admission to the Hospital Wing. The coolness of the logic did nothing to calm the worry that grew with every passing second that the Headmaster didn't (or couldn't) speak.

"Headmaster?...What?" croaked the Potion's Master.

"I'm so sorry Severus, I…" The Headmaster trailed off, unable to find the words.

Severus had followed the Headmaster through the corridors of the school without speaking, neither man seemed either able or willing the silence between them. The sight that greeted them in the Transfiguration Courtyard clarified for Severus the reason for Dumbledore's uncharacteristic lack of words. He knelt by the body, feeling the full weight of guilt – Harry had known something was wrong and he hadn't listened as well as he should have.

Severus arranged a group of House elves to transport the body to the small room off the Hospital Wing that served the school as a morgue the few times it had been needed and dispatched another to find Flint and get him to bring Harry to him. Harry deserved to know first-hand, to be allowed to say goodbye to the boy who had helped him escape the horror that his home life had been. Severus also knew Harry would struggle with the same guilt he himself felt for not doing something to have prevented this tragedy.

***Warning – possible triggers***

Harry was no stranger to pain. Most of his short life he had been in pain, whether physical, emotional or mental. He had started to heal some of the wounds, with the help of Severus and the Occlumency training they were doing, by talking to Draco and Marcus and by having a group of people who actually understood what it was like to feel like the only abused kid in the school. Sat on a rock looking over the lake, Harry dug his fingernails into his arm. The pain now helped him focus – everything else faded into insignificance behind the sharp immediate pain in his forearm. He knew it wasn't exactly an ideal way of getting his thoughts in order but it was the only way he could get any kind of perspective. No matter what he did, his mind kept whirring and unsurprisingly given the circumstances, it always came back to the same subject: Tristan. So he sat on his rock oblivious to the growing chill of the evening and continued to mark the insides of each arm with the nails of the opposing hand. In a weird way it looked kind of cool, the red half-moon shapes his nails left behind overlapped into a pattern that looked like scales. His amour against the world.

Two hours later, Severus found him. The rock Harry had chosen was deliberately out of immediate sightlines and therefore only a detailed search would find him. By then he had matching scales down both arms, inside and out. He had heard his father's progress down the path to the lake clearly – the former spy was stumbling in his exhaustion and had made no attempt at being stealthy, and Harry had plenty of time to button up the sleeves of his school shirt again, covering his coping mechanism from view. Tiny beads of blood seeped through the white cloth from places he had dug just that bit too hard or for a moment too long but in the gathering twilight none of them showed.

Severus staggered to a halt next to Harry's rock and parked himself on a nearby boulder. The two of them sat in silence until Harry turned to look at a small noise, only to realise Severus had fallen asleep on the rock, head in head and was snoring lightly. He looked dreadful Harry realised, suddenly feeling even more guilty – in addition to Tristan, Severus had been worried about him all day and he had just disappeared from the Hospital Wing as soon as the sleeping potion had worn off. He probably shouldn't even be outside unaccompanied with a concussion and he hadn't told anybody where he was going. Realising he had been rather stupid, Harry scrambled off his rock and gently woke his snoring father.