Author's Note: Written for…

All You Need Is Love Competition. Pairing: Harry/Tom

Weekly AU Competition. Prompt: Support Group!AU

Triwizard Tournament Competition. Prompt: confidence

Summary: Support Group!AU

On the anniversary of a school shooting, the leader of a small support group reflects on how good can come from bad situations. Harry/Tom

From Darkness

Harry didn't know what he expected when he started the group, but to be fair he hadn't intended to start the group in the beginning. It had all been an accident; a snowball effect when the friends he was counseling started to invite more friends over to his flat every week. Before he knew it, the teenager was renting out a church basement to accommodate the amount of people he was counseling.

When the second of May 1999 rolled around – the one-year anniversary of the school shooting that brought them all together – Harry knew it was going to be a long night. Every part of him was screaming to cancel the meeting that night. Lock the door, shut the blinds, and grieve in peace. But that had been all he'd done before the support group began, and he owed it to all those people to go through with the meeting.

"Thank you all for coming," he greeted later that night, standing in front of fifty-five full seats. "I know this is a hard night for us all, but I'm glad to see so many of you here, new faces and old." He took a quick glance around the room, doing a silent roll call. After the meeting, he'd make calls to the regulars who hadn't bothered to show up. The absence of George – a man who had become something like a brother to Harry – worried him the most.

"I'd like to start this evening with a memorial of sorts. I thought, with it being the anniversary, and since we have new people here, maybe some of you would like to talk about the people we lost that night?" A few hands shot up immediately and he called on the first person he saw. "Parvati, would you like to start us off, please?"

He took his seat and listened to his former classmate talk about how much her friend, Lavender, had meant to her. About halfway through he felt his mind wandering and locked eyes with the middle-aged man sitting in the chair directly across from him.

Tom started coming to the group a month in and had missed a total of four meetings in the ten months since. He had once been a teacher at the school in question, though never one of Harry's. If the nineteen-year-old was being honest with himself, he'd always had a small crush on the professor, watching him in the hallways and during lunch. He never imagined the man unexpectedly showing up at his flat for a meeting and describing to everyone there how his life had been ruined with the shooting – his nephew dead, his career over. He stated at least a dozen times in those first weeks how the support group was the only thing keeping him going.

It took Harry five months to get up the confidence to ask him out, and was thoroughly surprised when Tom agreed to stay for a drink after a meeting. Things had escalated after that, and maybe they'd gone too fast, maybe their relationship was built on a mutual need for company, but Harry thought seeing Tom smile again was worth it.

It was the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. No one would care if they went public of course, but they kept it a secret just the same. The only hint they gave to their relationship was a wink or smile every now and again. If anyone ever saw or suspected – and Harry thought that maybe Hermione had – they never said a word.

"For many of us, we will look back on this year as the worst of our lives," the young man began when the meeting was coming to a close. "We have been through so much pain and heartbreak. Together, we've overcome a lot, and I hope that we can continue to help each other through whatever obstacles may arise in the coming years."

His eyes flicked to his boyfriend as he said it and was pleased to see Tom smile and nod along.