Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue

It isn't the scars on the outside that mark Harry Potter for who he is. It's the scars on the inside. His outside scars--shiny, ridged flesh that yield no sensation when touched--are mere indicators of wounds past, moss-covered tombstones at the heads of old graves long since covered over with grass.

His inside scars, however, are invisible, amorphous, and all the more powerful, because they have not healed. They are barely-concealed living wounds that reopen regularly, oozing guilt, regret, and sadness. Not only have they not healed, but they refuse to heal. Or rather, Harry refuses to let them heal. He cradles each wound close to his chest, tearing each one open again should even a hint of the hard, sensation-less tissue of forgetfulness start to cover it over. To him, each injury is a name; each name a face; each face a friend; each friend a death--a death he could not prevent.

Ginny--the freshest, deepest cut. He had thought he would marry her. It hadn't consciously occurred to him till after she was dead, but when her picture had looked up and smiled at him in that shy way she had always smiled at him, he realized that he was supposed to have married her someday. Ever since that realization, he'd taken to imagining what their lives would have been like together--he'd even named their children. It is as if by imagining her alive and then giving her himself, he can almost begin to make up for the fact that he hadn't been able to stop her death. It never lessens his remorse, but he thinks he owes it to her anyway.

"Potter." The tone is cold enough to freeze lava. Harry doesn't reply.

"You're in my chair," the voice snarls.

"Am I," Harry says. It isn't really a question.

"Piss off, wonder-boy, before I call Pince."

Harry gets up out of the chair and turns to leave. It isn't worth the fight--not over a stupid chair. He shifts to walk past the voice, eyes already empty. Suddenly, two hands slam into his shoulders forcing him down into the chair.

"Dammit, Potter!" The hiss is scathing. "Bloody. Wake. Up! You've been nothing but a zombie for months now. Dumbledore's worried, McGonagall's worried, even Snape's bloody worried! And I'll be hexed if I'm going to put up with you mincing about feeling sorry for yourself. Grow a damned spine, why don't you?"

Harry looks at the hand on his right shoulder and follows it up to find a boy pinning him to the chair. The boy's eyes are angry, Harry can see. Harry wonders if he is supposed to be angry in return. The almost unfamiliar emotion turns sluggishly over in the pit of his stomach, but it is not enough to reach his eyes. No anger can cover the scars he treasures. He dredges up a phrase that he uses often to make himself invisible.

"Leave me alone," he says tonelessly.

"No," comes the immediate reply.

Harry's eyebrows draw down slightly in mild consternation. Why won't the boy go away? All Harry wants is peace. Except...he doesn't want peace.

"Leave--"

"I bloody well will NOT leave you alone, you ponce. You've cried and moped and been left alone enough. You're not the only one with scars, you know."

This catches Harry's attention. For the first time in weeks, he blinks and looks at the person who is speaking to him.

"What?" Harry says, suddenly noticing his dry throat.

"Scars, you imbecile. You're not the only one with them. Have you thought about that? You're not the only one to lose someone in this war." The boy's quicksilver eyes are snapping. A flicker of recognition brings a name to Harry's mind. But it is not a name of the dead.

"I didn't lose them. I failed them," Harry replies without changing expression.

The other boy sinks onto his heels, not touching the chair or Harry. "You're so full of shit, Potter," he says in a conversational tone.

Harry blinks again, something like surprise moving up through his chest. "Excuse me?" he says.

"Shit, Potter. As in excrement--the waste a body leaves behind. As in the substance you are full of. Get over yourself. This is war. People die. People even choose to die. To stop an enemy, to follow an order...to protect someone they love. And even if they are innocent, even if they don't choose, I can promise they don't blame you."

Harry shakes his head. "It doesn't matter who they blame. I blame myself."

The boy moves so fast, Harry sees only a blur. One moment the boy is sitting on his heels sneering up at Harry, the next he's in Harry's face, one fist clutching the front of Harry's robes. Instinctively, Harry tenses, pulled from his prison of introspection into the immediacy of the moment.

"And how many more people are going to die while you sit here and rot, you useless prat? Would your precious girlfriend have wanted that? Would she sit by and let her friends fight her battles for her? Would she do nothing and watch them die for her one by one? Or would even your little rat-faced weasel have more courage than you?"

Harry reacts. He doesn't realize he's hit the other boy until the boy picks himself up off the flagstones, wiping at a cut lip. "How dare you?" Harry spits, twin emerald fires blazing. "I didn't ask for any of this. And neither did she."

Cool eyes gaze back, unmoved. "There you go, Potter. Blame it on fate. That's so easy." Harry knows those eyes, and he hates them.

"Shut up!" Harry shouts. "What the fuck do you care anyway? You serve the enemy."

"Potter, Potter, Potter." The boy flicks Harry on the forehead. "You don't keep up, do you? Haven't you heard? Voldemort is so last season."

"What?" Harry snaps.

The boy steps closer, voice brittle. "As in, I serve no one but myself."

Harry crosses his arms and glares at the boy whose nose is now a mere inch from his own.

"Which is far better than you," the boy continues. "You are no one, not even yourself. You're just a useless lump that used to be a hero."

Harry sucks in a breath as if he has just been slapped. "I'm not a hero. Hero's don't let their friends die."

"And here we go with the self-pity again. Harry Potter--Boy-Who-Sniveled."

Harry grimaces. "You have no idea what this feels like."

The boy steps back, still glaring at Harry.

"You bastard," he said softly. "My mother died a month ago because of this war. I know exactly what this feels like."

Harry shifts uneasily. He doesn't know how to respond. "I didn't know...I'm sorry."

"Of course, you didn't know, you blind git. You've been a self-imposed outcast since Christmas."

Harry sighs and rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. "Another name to add to the list," he says to himself.

"What?" the Slytherin snaps.

"I said it's just another name to add to the list of people I couldn't protect from Voldemort." Harry looks up into the boy's stormy eyes, and he's sure that, for the moment, at least, all the scars he's been carrying inside are as visible as the marks left on his skin.

The blond-haired boy opens his mouth, but he seems to have changed his mind about what he is going to say. "She wasn't killed by Voldemort, Potter. She was killed by an Auror."

Harry blinks. "Oh. I'm-I'm sorry," he stammers.

"She's dead, Potter. And if I can bury her, then so can you." The boy's pale face is like marble.

"I don't understand," Harry says, shaking his head.

The boy wraps his fingers around Harry's wrist. "You've been living in the land of the dead, Harry. It's time to rejoin the living."

Harry looks down at the slender fingers encircling his wrist, holding it gently. Harry is for a moment amazed that this boy is capable of doing anything gently. Harry then looks up into the boy's shuttered face.

It's hard--so very hard--to push up through the thick layers of blame blanketing him from sharp, unforgiving reality. He realizes in a way that is not so much realization as a subconscious knowing, that all his self-deprecation has not been about remembering the dead--it's been about protecting himself from the blame of those still alive. He's been punishing himself so that he doesn't have to endure the grief, the disappointment, of the rest of the world. He has been a coward, and he feels ashamed.

"What are you thinking, Potter?" the boy asks, the ice in his voice cracking a little.

"I'm not in love with Ginny Weasley," he blurts out. Harry has no idea what he means by this.

The boy arches an eyebrow at him. "Oh, really?" is all he says.

Harry shakes his head, not knowing how to elaborate.

"Care to elaborate, Potter?"

"I just mean..." Harry began. "I just...have been an arse. I'm sorry."

The boy seems surprised by the apology, though Harry speculates that gaining it was the boy's purpose for drawing Harry into the argument in the first place.

"You're not the only one who let her die," the boy says after a long pause, perpetual sneer melting into an expression more akin to weariness.

Harry startles, flinching a little. "What?"

"I don't like repeating myself, Potter. Try and pay a little more attention," the boy said without malice. "The others--all of us--are not blameless. We all let her down. We all let her die." Somehow, Harry feels that the boy is not referring to Ginny, and something new wells up from the wounds in his mind, something other than guilt--something like empathy.

Harry reaches out to the boy, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. Harry half expects him to draw back. But the boy does not. Nor does he look at Harry.

After a few moments in silence, the boy steps back. Harry lets his hand fall to his side. The boy looks up and meets Harry's eyes.

"Welcome back, Potter," he says, turning to leave.

"Malfoy, wait," Harry says, finally giving voice to a name still living. The boy turns to face him. "Thanks," Harry says.

The boy smiles, a fleeting upturn of lips, and walks away. Harry smiles back, though the boy doesn't see it. A thin, beginning layer of scar tissue knits itself over his soul.