Springfic: "Battle Scars" for magikcat112
Title: Battle Scars
Author: Gm_Weasley
Recipient: magikcat112
Character(s): Theodore Nott; several canon characters in supporting roles
Rating: PG
Word-count: 3,000
Warnings (highlight to view): Interview canon?
Summary: "And even if it does scar," his father said, "it isn't a bad thing, you know. Sometimes scars can tell stories. They can be really useful."
Betas: mrs_muggle
Battle Scars
1.
"Reparo!" he said. His voice cracked under the weight of desperation. He waved his mother's old wand (kept hidden in his bedroom in case of need) again in a new pattern. That wand movement did not work either, even though he was sure that it was close to the one his dad used to fix things that were broken. He paused, trying not to wince in pain, and then cast the spell once more. This time, he focussed on getting the inflections in the incantation just right.
It still didn't work, and his knee continued to bleed; a drop of blood ran down his shin and stained his sock. Theodore frowned and swallowed against a sob, unable to bring to mind any proper healing spells.
In the end, he stashed the wand back under his bed, found his father in his study, and asked him to heal the graze. His father rolled up his sleeves, revealing the Dark Mark burned into the skin of his arm; Theodore's eyes lingered on the ugly scar that left nobody in any doubt of his family's past allegiances -- before the war ended, naturally.
"It won't scar, will it?" Theodore asked, watching his dad Summon fragments of gravel and clean the wound. A sharp edge of gravel scraped the sore skin on its way out, and Theodore winced.
"No, I shouldn't think so."
A bandage was applied, along with a Sticking Charm to keep it in place while the graze finished healing.
"There you go, Theo," his dad said, patting his leg just below the graze so as to avoid hurting his knee. He smiled. "I think you'll live."
Though he knew that it was only a turn of phrase, inwardly, Theodore shuddered. Outwardly, he nodded and stood up, carefully straightening his leg before testing his weight on it.
"And even if it does scar," his father said, "it isn't a bad thing, you know. Sometimes scars can tell stories. They can be really useful."
Theodore nodded, but he didn't really believe it. His mother had had a cut that bled, and the Healers said that it would leave a nasty scar, and then she died.
2.
On the Hogwarts Express, Theodore sat alone.
He didn't do it deliberately: people chose not to sit with him, and walked past his own nearly-empty carriage to sit in the ones that were full of people to chat to. It made sense, he supposed: if there was only one person on a carriage, there was nobody to fall back on if the conversation drew to an awkward ending. Anyway, he already knew a few people through his father's friends. He supposed that he could go and talk to Draco or somebody if he got truly desperate. But the last thing he wanted was to be conscripted into a Malfoy's group of friends, and so he waited for somebody else to come along. He gave it five minutes, carefully measured on the watch his dad had given him, which used to belong to his Great Uncle Matthew.
Nobody entered the carriage, and then the train inched out of the station, and so he sighed, gave up waiting, and decided to go for a wander.
Though most of the carriages were full of people, few of them were at all interesting. One girl caught his eye because she had so much hair that it blocked his view of anybody else, and he had to resist the urge to ask it if it would please move out of his way. As he edged past the girl -- and her hair -- he overheard a high-pitched, worried fragment of conversation: "...but what if they expect us to know...."
Theodore shrugged, as did the leggy Indian girl she was talking to.
Further down the train, he encountered Draco Malfoy, already surrounded by a small gang of cronies. Theodore was careful to give Draco a small smile, because he was certain that they would be in the same house. Niceties out of the way, however, he made sure to walk by quickly before anybody could invite him to stay and chat.
He came to a halt outside Harry Potter's carriage. Theodore knew he would be on the train somewhere: his father told him to keep a vague eye on him ('I only mean that it might be nice to be his friend, of course, Theo'). Obediently, he stood outside the door and peered inside, taking in a long-nosed, red-headed boy as well as Potter himself.
Theodore's eyes lingered on the scar.
He hated scars. He had three, despite his best efforts to avoid them: there was a little one behind his ear from when he had dragon pox, which his hair covered; there was another tiny one on his knee where a childhood graze had not quite healed; the last one was one the sole of his left foot, from stepping on a spilled potion, but nobody was likely to notice that one. He tucked his hair back over the dragon pox mark, and peered harder at Potter's scar.
It, too, was partially covered by hair, but Theodore had seen pictures in books, and so he had no trouble filling in the rest. He shuddered. The scar was jagged, faintly pink despite years of healing, and obvious even from this distance. To other people, it was useful, because it marked Potter out immediately, and that didn't seem quite fair. It told a story, too, but the whole world knew it without being told.
For a moment, he wondered if perhaps being Potter was a little like everybody knowing that your father used to be a Death Eater, but he decided that perhaps the two things were not quite comparable.
3.
"I imagine," said Draco, his voice a loud whinge that cut across all of Theodore's attempts to ignore him, "that I'll be scarred for life."
They all knew this, because they had heard about it constantly for days, but that didn't stop Pansy leaning forward to console him, and the Baron swooped forward to glance at Draco's arm. As far as Theodore could tell, the Hippogriff hadn't done any lasting damage, but the Baron still lingered with a slight grin. He liked blood and anything vaguely bloody, be it Quidditch injuries or rare steak. It was one of the millions of reasons why Theodore did not quite trust the ghost.
"Let me see," Theodore said, and Draco frowned confusedly, perhaps because Theodore did not make a habit of joining in the conversations at the Slytherin table. Even when he did, it was usually to correct an incorrect assumption, and then he shut up again.
There was a pause, and their gazes locked. Theodore was warned not to point out that the damage was minimal if it even existed; Draco was told, silently but pointedly, that not saying it did not mean that Theodore wasn't thinking it. After a moment, Draco extended his hand, and Theodore took it to examine the damage.
There was a faint line, though it was thin, because Hippogriffs' talons were extremely sharp. He had seen far worse scars; hell, even the scar on his foot was probably more impressive, though he had no intention of pointing this out.
Theodore shrugged. "Madam Pomfrey can probably make the scar fade," he said, and Draco snatched his hand back and slid it into its sling. He used his good arm to cradle the bad one, which drew an instant look of sympathetic panic from Pansy.
"Oh, poor Draco, does it hurt so badly?" she said, gazing at Draco wide-eyed.
"You'll be fine," said Theodore, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice.
"I really hope so," Pansy said.
Draco was forced to agree with her, and conceded that recovery was a possibility.
Behind his hand, Theodore smiled. "If nothing else, Draco, you'll have a story to tell for the rest of your life," he said in an attempt at consolation. "The tale will be far better if you have a scar to go with it."
"Suppose so," said Draco.
Theodore had a sudden mental image of Draco sitting surrounded by his Death Eater grandchildren, bragging about his battle scars gained during the war that everybody present had to know was coming.
His smile vanished at once, and he shuddered.
4.
For once, he was alone in the library, and he relished the peace, even if the total silence was a little unnerving after most of a term at a noisy school. He opened a book, his potions textbook, and read, because even Granger didn't know the work well enough to satisfy Snape, and she seemed to know the book off by heart.
The other Slytherins would not be back for ages, not now that they were guaranteed an easy time in Umbridge's lessons in return for joining her precious Inquisitorial Squad. Even if they were let off duty early, he doubted that anybody would fancy working after a night of spying on Potter and friends. Theodore sighed loudly, earning a glare from Madam Pince, and then settled in for a long evening of revision. He had the ingredients and methods down for three potions when Eloise Midgen appeared.
"Can I sit here?" she asked, gesturing at the chair opposite him.
It was tempting to say no, because he revised far more effectively in silence, but Eloise seemed quite determined not to have to sit on her own. Theodore had never much minded her company -- maybe it was her off-centre nose, but she was neither as full of herself nor as irritating as a lot of the others -- and so he nodded.
He hoped for quiet, but she smiled at him expectantly. She glanced at Madam Pince, confirming that she wasn't looking in their direction, and then lowered her voice. "What do you think of Umbridge?" she asked.
Theodore shrugged.
Truthfully, he had a multitude of thoughts on the subject. He thought she was a terrible teacher, and ought to be fired immediately; on the other hand, she was a bit better than Trelawney, and far, far better than Hagrid. Her quill was already renowned throughout the school and the thought of it terrified him; then again, he suspected that Filch would have liked to do far worse, and he had worked at Hogwarts for decades. He didn't like the idea of giving Malfoy's gang more power; on the other hand, if it stopped Potter and friends from getting the House Cup yet again, the Squad couldn't be all bad.
He glanced downwards, not quite sure which side Eloise was on, and thus, which thoughts he ought to voice. Against her pale skin, words stood out in blood red, and Theodore read them with a frown: I must pay attention.
Eloise followed his gaze. "She caught me reading Witch Weekly under the desk during her lesson," she whispered with another glance at Pince. "I don't advise it."
Theodore read the writing again: he suspected that it would leave a scar, and in her own handwriting, so it would, to an extent, be a battle scar of her own making. He frowned in disgust; he couldn't imagine that that particular scar would do her any favours in the future. He shuddered.
"Things will sort themselves out," he said.
Eloise did not look at all convinced, but she shrugged and looked back at her essay.
5.
"You see that?" said Draco to Pansy, and he pointed up at Dumbledore.
The headmaster was delivering a speech to the whole hall, and everybody else in the room gave him rapt attention. Theodore, though, stopped listening and instead followed the direction of Draco's gaze. He stared, because Dumbledore's hand was blackened and shrivelled.
"Yuck," said Pansy, and she shifted a little closer to Draco. "What happened?"
Draco shrugged. "My father's trying to find out," he said, and lowered his voice so that Theodore had to concentrate extremely hard to hear him. "He thinks Snape might know what's going on."
"That's magical damage, that is," said Theodore, inviting himself to join in their conversation; they ought to have held it in private if they didn't want his input. "Only Dark Magic leaves marks like that."
Draco seemed irritated by the intrusion, but Theodore's comment seemed to strike his attention, and so he allowed Theodore to be drawn into the conversation. Draco leaned forward. "Are you sure?" he said. "Dark Magic leaves marks like Potter's, not, well, like that."
They both looked back up at the headmaster, and Theodore shifted uneasily in his seat.
"But if it was anything but Dark Magic, Madam Pomfrey could heal it," said Pansy. "That looks really nasty."
"His hand's been burned, I think," said Millicent, letting them know that their conversation was even less secret than they had hoped.
"It's dead," said Draco with certainty. Pansy looked sickened.
"It'll leave a horrible scar," said Theodore.
"Who cares about that?" said Pansy. "If his hand's died, he probably has bigger problems."
Theodore shrugged. "Sometimes scars can be important."
6.
He was unsure why he had returned to Hogwarts at all, but Millicent thought they might need help clearing up, and it seemed like a good idea. They had been there for most of the past week and all of that morning, shifting rubble, stepping carefully around loose fragments of flagstones and shards of glass. A lot of people glared at him because it was widely known that his dad was a Death Eater, but a few others thanked him for his help, which was kind but unnecessary.
They took a break around lunchtime, and Theodore sat alone on a small pile of rubble. He peered around, taking in the mess and the two piles of corpses. One was surrounded by grieving relatives who were slowly shifting the bodies away, but the other was made up of Death Eater uniforms, and was hidden and overlooked by everybody. Theodore looked away quickly, and focused on the clouds, which were white and fluffy when they should probably have been grey.
"Hello."
The voice was dreamy and contrasted completely with the dusty remains of the fight, but went rather nicely with the clouds. When he looked at her, Loony's smile was as vague as her tone.
"Hi," said Theodore.
"You didn't fight."
"No," he said. "Wasn't my battle to join."
"But you're helping to clean up the mess."
"Yes."
She nodded. "Okay."
There was a silence that would have made most people uncomfortable, but Theodore shrugged it off and offered her a sandwich, which she accepted with a small nod. They ate in silence, and he wondered whether she minded everybody thinking that she was batty. He considered asking her about it, but she might have taken offence, and he wasn't in the mood for consoling crying girls.
Instead, he studied her, noting that she appeared to be wearing a miniature imitation-Erumpent horn as an earring. Her forearms were bare and sunburned, and a red scratch stood out against her skin in the same place as his father's Dark Mark was. Theodore studied it for a moment, and frowned.
"What does your dad do?" he asked after a while.
She smiled proudly. "He's a writer. He edits the Quibbler. My mum used to do the illustrations."
"Oh." The 'used' caught his attention, and he struggled to think of an intelligent comment, but there didn't seem to be one. Instead he focussed on the first part and said, "You're lucky."
"Why?"
He glanced at her, but Loony Lovegood was as much a loner as he was, and she was not remotely judgemental. "My Dad has the Dark Mark burned into his skin. You can't fight in battles when everybody knows you're a Death Eater, and even if you don't fight at all, people assume you've picked a side."
"You just have to do what's right and let people make new decisions," she said, as though it was simple. "Anyway, we've all got scars. I have. So have Harry and Bill Weasley and Marietta. They only mean something if you want them too."
"Or if they're shaped like a lightning bolt," he pointed out, and she smiled faintly.
"Or that."
"They last forever," he said, with certainty. "They always tell stories to the people that see them. They can tell the truth and betray you, and when they don't, they just mark you and you can't get rid of them. They're like a curse."
She shook her head. "There isn't a Dark Mark or a lightning bolt on you. There's just a scar under your ear, and it doesn't look like a curse. In fact...." She leaned forward. "I think it's from a Nargle bite. They can be lucky."
Confused, Theodore smoothed his hair over his ear to hide the scar, but when she smiled at him, he smiled back. "Maybe you're right," he said, and she nodded.
"You'll find something to do that's all your own."
7.
"Will I get a scar?" the girl -- a glance at the chart on the table reminded Theodore that her name was Roxanne -- asked with apparent excitement.
Theodore shrugged. "Unlikely," he said. "This potion ought to help it heal pretty cleanly. But you might end up with a small mark, I'm afraid."
Roxanne shrugged. For a moment she watched him examine the cut on her forearm, and he used the silence to ponder the least painful method of removing the gravel. "My uncle has a scar from where he got attacked in a battle during the war," she said while he debated the relative merits of Summoning Charms and tweezers. "He told me all about how he got it. It's really cool. Are you sure I won't get one?"
"Unlikely," he repeated. "Perhaps. I really have no idea."
He elected to use a Summoning Charm, and Roxanne winced when the gravel was removed. He set it in a Petri dish, and she peered at it with a wrinkled nose. "Ugh."
There was a moment of quiet while she watched him dab potion onto the deep cut and the surrounding skin. After a moment, Theodore stepped back and surveyed the damage, before casting another charm to help the skin of her arm knit itself back together.
"I think you're going to be fine," he said, smiling at her. "Let's hope we don't see you back at St Mungo's for a while."
"I hope not," she said, hopping down from the lime green chair, and her mother thanked him for his help.
There was a pause while Theodore clutched for polite parting words. "If you do get a scar," he said to Roxanne, "I hope it's as cool as your uncle's."
"Me too," said Roxanne, and she smiled.
Author: Gm_Weasley
Recipient: magikcat112
Character(s): Theodore Nott; several canon characters in supporting roles
Rating: PG
Word-count: 3,000
Warnings (highlight to view): Interview canon?
Summary: "And even if it does scar," his father said, "it isn't a bad thing, you know. Sometimes scars can tell stories. They can be really useful."
Betas: mrs_muggle
Battle Scars
1.
"Reparo!" he said. His voice cracked under the weight of desperation. He waved his mother's old wand (kept hidden in his bedroom in case of need) again in a new pattern. That wand movement did not work either, even though he was sure that it was close to the one his dad used to fix things that were broken. He paused, trying not to wince in pain, and then cast the spell once more. This time, he focussed on getting the inflections in the incantation just right.
It still didn't work, and his knee continued to bleed; a drop of blood ran down his shin and stained his sock. Theodore frowned and swallowed against a sob, unable to bring to mind any proper healing spells.
In the end, he stashed the wand back under his bed, found his father in his study, and asked him to heal the graze. His father rolled up his sleeves, revealing the Dark Mark burned into the skin of his arm; Theodore's eyes lingered on the ugly scar that left nobody in any doubt of his family's past allegiances -- before the war ended, naturally.
"It won't scar, will it?" Theodore asked, watching his dad Summon fragments of gravel and clean the wound. A sharp edge of gravel scraped the sore skin on its way out, and Theodore winced.
"No, I shouldn't think so."
A bandage was applied, along with a Sticking Charm to keep it in place while the graze finished healing.
"There you go, Theo," his dad said, patting his leg just below the graze so as to avoid hurting his knee. He smiled. "I think you'll live."
Though he knew that it was only a turn of phrase, inwardly, Theodore shuddered. Outwardly, he nodded and stood up, carefully straightening his leg before testing his weight on it.
"And even if it does scar," his father said, "it isn't a bad thing, you know. Sometimes scars can tell stories. They can be really useful."
Theodore nodded, but he didn't really believe it. His mother had had a cut that bled, and the Healers said that it would leave a nasty scar, and then she died.
2.
On the Hogwarts Express, Theodore sat alone.
He didn't do it deliberately: people chose not to sit with him, and walked past his own nearly-empty carriage to sit in the ones that were full of people to chat to. It made sense, he supposed: if there was only one person on a carriage, there was nobody to fall back on if the conversation drew to an awkward ending. Anyway, he already knew a few people through his father's friends. He supposed that he could go and talk to Draco or somebody if he got truly desperate. But the last thing he wanted was to be conscripted into a Malfoy's group of friends, and so he waited for somebody else to come along. He gave it five minutes, carefully measured on the watch his dad had given him, which used to belong to his Great Uncle Matthew.
Nobody entered the carriage, and then the train inched out of the station, and so he sighed, gave up waiting, and decided to go for a wander.
Though most of the carriages were full of people, few of them were at all interesting. One girl caught his eye because she had so much hair that it blocked his view of anybody else, and he had to resist the urge to ask it if it would please move out of his way. As he edged past the girl -- and her hair -- he overheard a high-pitched, worried fragment of conversation: "...but what if they expect us to know...."
Theodore shrugged, as did the leggy Indian girl she was talking to.
Further down the train, he encountered Draco Malfoy, already surrounded by a small gang of cronies. Theodore was careful to give Draco a small smile, because he was certain that they would be in the same house. Niceties out of the way, however, he made sure to walk by quickly before anybody could invite him to stay and chat.
He came to a halt outside Harry Potter's carriage. Theodore knew he would be on the train somewhere: his father told him to keep a vague eye on him ('I only mean that it might be nice to be his friend, of course, Theo'). Obediently, he stood outside the door and peered inside, taking in a long-nosed, red-headed boy as well as Potter himself.
Theodore's eyes lingered on the scar.
He hated scars. He had three, despite his best efforts to avoid them: there was a little one behind his ear from when he had dragon pox, which his hair covered; there was another tiny one on his knee where a childhood graze had not quite healed; the last one was one the sole of his left foot, from stepping on a spilled potion, but nobody was likely to notice that one. He tucked his hair back over the dragon pox mark, and peered harder at Potter's scar.
It, too, was partially covered by hair, but Theodore had seen pictures in books, and so he had no trouble filling in the rest. He shuddered. The scar was jagged, faintly pink despite years of healing, and obvious even from this distance. To other people, it was useful, because it marked Potter out immediately, and that didn't seem quite fair. It told a story, too, but the whole world knew it without being told.
For a moment, he wondered if perhaps being Potter was a little like everybody knowing that your father used to be a Death Eater, but he decided that perhaps the two things were not quite comparable.
3.
"I imagine," said Draco, his voice a loud whinge that cut across all of Theodore's attempts to ignore him, "that I'll be scarred for life."
They all knew this, because they had heard about it constantly for days, but that didn't stop Pansy leaning forward to console him, and the Baron swooped forward to glance at Draco's arm. As far as Theodore could tell, the Hippogriff hadn't done any lasting damage, but the Baron still lingered with a slight grin. He liked blood and anything vaguely bloody, be it Quidditch injuries or rare steak. It was one of the millions of reasons why Theodore did not quite trust the ghost.
"Let me see," Theodore said, and Draco frowned confusedly, perhaps because Theodore did not make a habit of joining in the conversations at the Slytherin table. Even when he did, it was usually to correct an incorrect assumption, and then he shut up again.
There was a pause, and their gazes locked. Theodore was warned not to point out that the damage was minimal if it even existed; Draco was told, silently but pointedly, that not saying it did not mean that Theodore wasn't thinking it. After a moment, Draco extended his hand, and Theodore took it to examine the damage.
There was a faint line, though it was thin, because Hippogriffs' talons were extremely sharp. He had seen far worse scars; hell, even the scar on his foot was probably more impressive, though he had no intention of pointing this out.
Theodore shrugged. "Madam Pomfrey can probably make the scar fade," he said, and Draco snatched his hand back and slid it into its sling. He used his good arm to cradle the bad one, which drew an instant look of sympathetic panic from Pansy.
"Oh, poor Draco, does it hurt so badly?" she said, gazing at Draco wide-eyed.
"You'll be fine," said Theodore, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice.
"I really hope so," Pansy said.
Draco was forced to agree with her, and conceded that recovery was a possibility.
Behind his hand, Theodore smiled. "If nothing else, Draco, you'll have a story to tell for the rest of your life," he said in an attempt at consolation. "The tale will be far better if you have a scar to go with it."
"Suppose so," said Draco.
Theodore had a sudden mental image of Draco sitting surrounded by his Death Eater grandchildren, bragging about his battle scars gained during the war that everybody present had to know was coming.
His smile vanished at once, and he shuddered.
4.
For once, he was alone in the library, and he relished the peace, even if the total silence was a little unnerving after most of a term at a noisy school. He opened a book, his potions textbook, and read, because even Granger didn't know the work well enough to satisfy Snape, and she seemed to know the book off by heart.
The other Slytherins would not be back for ages, not now that they were guaranteed an easy time in Umbridge's lessons in return for joining her precious Inquisitorial Squad. Even if they were let off duty early, he doubted that anybody would fancy working after a night of spying on Potter and friends. Theodore sighed loudly, earning a glare from Madam Pince, and then settled in for a long evening of revision. He had the ingredients and methods down for three potions when Eloise Midgen appeared.
"Can I sit here?" she asked, gesturing at the chair opposite him.
It was tempting to say no, because he revised far more effectively in silence, but Eloise seemed quite determined not to have to sit on her own. Theodore had never much minded her company -- maybe it was her off-centre nose, but she was neither as full of herself nor as irritating as a lot of the others -- and so he nodded.
He hoped for quiet, but she smiled at him expectantly. She glanced at Madam Pince, confirming that she wasn't looking in their direction, and then lowered her voice. "What do you think of Umbridge?" she asked.
Theodore shrugged.
Truthfully, he had a multitude of thoughts on the subject. He thought she was a terrible teacher, and ought to be fired immediately; on the other hand, she was a bit better than Trelawney, and far, far better than Hagrid. Her quill was already renowned throughout the school and the thought of it terrified him; then again, he suspected that Filch would have liked to do far worse, and he had worked at Hogwarts for decades. He didn't like the idea of giving Malfoy's gang more power; on the other hand, if it stopped Potter and friends from getting the House Cup yet again, the Squad couldn't be all bad.
He glanced downwards, not quite sure which side Eloise was on, and thus, which thoughts he ought to voice. Against her pale skin, words stood out in blood red, and Theodore read them with a frown: I must pay attention.
Eloise followed his gaze. "She caught me reading Witch Weekly under the desk during her lesson," she whispered with another glance at Pince. "I don't advise it."
Theodore read the writing again: he suspected that it would leave a scar, and in her own handwriting, so it would, to an extent, be a battle scar of her own making. He frowned in disgust; he couldn't imagine that that particular scar would do her any favours in the future. He shuddered.
"Things will sort themselves out," he said.
Eloise did not look at all convinced, but she shrugged and looked back at her essay.
5.
"You see that?" said Draco to Pansy, and he pointed up at Dumbledore.
The headmaster was delivering a speech to the whole hall, and everybody else in the room gave him rapt attention. Theodore, though, stopped listening and instead followed the direction of Draco's gaze. He stared, because Dumbledore's hand was blackened and shrivelled.
"Yuck," said Pansy, and she shifted a little closer to Draco. "What happened?"
Draco shrugged. "My father's trying to find out," he said, and lowered his voice so that Theodore had to concentrate extremely hard to hear him. "He thinks Snape might know what's going on."
"That's magical damage, that is," said Theodore, inviting himself to join in their conversation; they ought to have held it in private if they didn't want his input. "Only Dark Magic leaves marks like that."
Draco seemed irritated by the intrusion, but Theodore's comment seemed to strike his attention, and so he allowed Theodore to be drawn into the conversation. Draco leaned forward. "Are you sure?" he said. "Dark Magic leaves marks like Potter's, not, well, like that."
They both looked back up at the headmaster, and Theodore shifted uneasily in his seat.
"But if it was anything but Dark Magic, Madam Pomfrey could heal it," said Pansy. "That looks really nasty."
"His hand's been burned, I think," said Millicent, letting them know that their conversation was even less secret than they had hoped.
"It's dead," said Draco with certainty. Pansy looked sickened.
"It'll leave a horrible scar," said Theodore.
"Who cares about that?" said Pansy. "If his hand's died, he probably has bigger problems."
Theodore shrugged. "Sometimes scars can be important."
6.
He was unsure why he had returned to Hogwarts at all, but Millicent thought they might need help clearing up, and it seemed like a good idea. They had been there for most of the past week and all of that morning, shifting rubble, stepping carefully around loose fragments of flagstones and shards of glass. A lot of people glared at him because it was widely known that his dad was a Death Eater, but a few others thanked him for his help, which was kind but unnecessary.
They took a break around lunchtime, and Theodore sat alone on a small pile of rubble. He peered around, taking in the mess and the two piles of corpses. One was surrounded by grieving relatives who were slowly shifting the bodies away, but the other was made up of Death Eater uniforms, and was hidden and overlooked by everybody. Theodore looked away quickly, and focused on the clouds, which were white and fluffy when they should probably have been grey.
"Hello."
The voice was dreamy and contrasted completely with the dusty remains of the fight, but went rather nicely with the clouds. When he looked at her, Loony's smile was as vague as her tone.
"Hi," said Theodore.
"You didn't fight."
"No," he said. "Wasn't my battle to join."
"But you're helping to clean up the mess."
"Yes."
She nodded. "Okay."
There was a silence that would have made most people uncomfortable, but Theodore shrugged it off and offered her a sandwich, which she accepted with a small nod. They ate in silence, and he wondered whether she minded everybody thinking that she was batty. He considered asking her about it, but she might have taken offence, and he wasn't in the mood for consoling crying girls.
Instead, he studied her, noting that she appeared to be wearing a miniature imitation-Erumpent horn as an earring. Her forearms were bare and sunburned, and a red scratch stood out against her skin in the same place as his father's Dark Mark was. Theodore studied it for a moment, and frowned.
"What does your dad do?" he asked after a while.
She smiled proudly. "He's a writer. He edits the Quibbler. My mum used to do the illustrations."
"Oh." The 'used' caught his attention, and he struggled to think of an intelligent comment, but there didn't seem to be one. Instead he focussed on the first part and said, "You're lucky."
"Why?"
He glanced at her, but Loony Lovegood was as much a loner as he was, and she was not remotely judgemental. "My Dad has the Dark Mark burned into his skin. You can't fight in battles when everybody knows you're a Death Eater, and even if you don't fight at all, people assume you've picked a side."
"You just have to do what's right and let people make new decisions," she said, as though it was simple. "Anyway, we've all got scars. I have. So have Harry and Bill Weasley and Marietta. They only mean something if you want them too."
"Or if they're shaped like a lightning bolt," he pointed out, and she smiled faintly.
"Or that."
"They last forever," he said, with certainty. "They always tell stories to the people that see them. They can tell the truth and betray you, and when they don't, they just mark you and you can't get rid of them. They're like a curse."
She shook her head. "There isn't a Dark Mark or a lightning bolt on you. There's just a scar under your ear, and it doesn't look like a curse. In fact...." She leaned forward. "I think it's from a Nargle bite. They can be lucky."
Confused, Theodore smoothed his hair over his ear to hide the scar, but when she smiled at him, he smiled back. "Maybe you're right," he said, and she nodded.
"You'll find something to do that's all your own."
7.
"Will I get a scar?" the girl -- a glance at the chart on the table reminded Theodore that her name was Roxanne -- asked with apparent excitement.
Theodore shrugged. "Unlikely," he said. "This potion ought to help it heal pretty cleanly. But you might end up with a small mark, I'm afraid."
Roxanne shrugged. For a moment she watched him examine the cut on her forearm, and he used the silence to ponder the least painful method of removing the gravel. "My uncle has a scar from where he got attacked in a battle during the war," she said while he debated the relative merits of Summoning Charms and tweezers. "He told me all about how he got it. It's really cool. Are you sure I won't get one?"
"Unlikely," he repeated. "Perhaps. I really have no idea."
He elected to use a Summoning Charm, and Roxanne winced when the gravel was removed. He set it in a Petri dish, and she peered at it with a wrinkled nose. "Ugh."
There was a moment of quiet while she watched him dab potion onto the deep cut and the surrounding skin. After a moment, Theodore stepped back and surveyed the damage, before casting another charm to help the skin of her arm knit itself back together.
"I think you're going to be fine," he said, smiling at her. "Let's hope we don't see you back at St Mungo's for a while."
"I hope not," she said, hopping down from the lime green chair, and her mother thanked him for his help.
There was a pause while Theodore clutched for polite parting words. "If you do get a scar," he said to Roxanne, "I hope it's as cool as your uncle's."
"Me too," said Roxanne, and she smiled.