This is a fic I wrote for the Twenty Minute Drabble Challenge, using the prompt "Burn".
Lysander Scamander never thought there'd be a day when he'd regret the decisions he'd made in his life.
He'd never given it a second thought at the age of five when he was asked that life-changing question, "Do you want to go with Daddy or stay here with Mummy?" Of course the answer would be Daddy; it made sense! Daddy had adventures and swung on vines like a wild thing, while Mummy stayed behind to watch him and Lorcan, heading the Quibbler as Granddad Xeno got too tired to do it anymore.
So Lysander went marching off gleefully with his Daddy, unaware of the consequences. He learned quickly that Living with Daddy was like living with fire; easy to get hurt. The burn in his lungs as he ran endlessly to keep up with longer strides, falling onto sharp stones and bee's nests and having no time to stop and coddle the wounds like Mummy would. He grew tough and mean fast, like Daddy.
And so by the time he went to Hogwarts he held himself with an air of arrogance, thinking that he was highest on the pecking order, because he knew how to use hexes and jinxes, had learned while travelling in foreign lands less strict about underaged magic use. And so that is how he set his path; with stinging hexes and cruel jinxes designed to humiliate and pain the victims, all hidden under his guise of a studious Ravenclaw.
And he thought he was safe, until the dark evening just before Halloween in fourth year when the older Slytherins grabbed him and held him down in a bathroom, holding a wand-conjured flame close to his face to frighten him, singing bangs and eyebrows and lashes, making his skin flush and redden until he was crying from the pain, still only a little boy when it came to it.
They left him there, sprawled across the stone in a puddle of robes and stagnant water, trembling and trying not to cry out from the pain of his injuries, thinking of all the days he'd spent with his father travelling, learning that complaining or crying only got you a stinging hex to the hand or leg. He lay there lost in memories until his brother, kind loyal Lorcan in Hufflepuff robes, knelt beside him, whispering healing charms and making the pain stop. Hazel eyes looked up into blue, silently begging for forgiveness that he knew he didn't deserve.
But Lorcan just nodded and smiled softly, the look his twin hadn't seen in so long. "Mum misses you." He murmured, "You could come home at Christmas and see her." And Lysander nodded, a promise he knew he'd never keep.
The next morning it all went back to before; anger and bullying and cruel smiles at frightened children. Lorcan's pleading looks went unnoticed, the pain of the night forgotten as quickly as shadows fade in sunlight.
For Lysander Scamander, it all fell into place in his mind. Keep others away and you'll never be hurt. Let them too close and your heart will open and it will burn.
Fin