A/N: This is a response to Lairyfights123's "Scar" Challenge

Scarred

"SCAR!?! He's going to WHAT?"

"Umm… Scar, sir."

It was an evil glare. Truly evil. In fact, the young boy never knew his father could have that evil of a glare.

"I highly suggest you leave while you have two fully functioning legs," the boy said helpfully. The young orderly nodded mutely and scampered off towards another Healer who – though looking a tad bit crueler than the one assigned to the young boy – was working with considerably quieter charges.

"Sir, werewolf bites are a tad bit more peculiar than others," the Healer began explaining once again, still as calmly and rationally as before. "They don't heal as nicely as one would like, no matter what we do to it. It won't be a particularly bad scar."

"A particularly bad scar?" his voice dropped to an almost hiss-like quality, and the young boy seemed to drop a little in his bed.

"Really, sir. Your son is alive, and he's going to be fine," the Healer said firmly. "Let's all be thankful for that, shall we? Especially with him getting bitten so very young."

"THANKFUL!?!" The young boy cringed. He hated it when his father yelled. It wasn't very often that anyone in their small cottage home yelled at all. It was, as his father had jokingly said one day, 'against their religion.' It took a lot to get his father to yell, and he hated the sound more than anything.

Something about this must have shown in the young boy's face, as the Healer continued, rather more forcefully than before, "Now, sir, I must insist that you quiet this moment or leave this room immediately. You are acting like a spoilt child, and I will not tolerate it any longer."

"YOU WON'T TOLERATE IT!?!" It would take a lot more than that to get rid of his father, and the young boy knew it. He really wished everyone would stop yelling. It seemed like that was what the entire ordeal had been, and he wished more than anything to go back to the way things had been. He wished more than anything that he hadn't wandered off on his own. He wished more than anything that everyone wasn't so angry. He wished more than anything to be in his own bed, safe and comfortable, protected from the true cruelties in the world.

"Leave this room right now, or I'll be forced to make you," the Healer ordered. "Right now. GO!"

His father looked at her furiously for a few moments, trying to stare her down, but he apparently lost, as he left the room a minute later.

The Healer let out an audible sigh and turned to regard the quiet boy in the stiff hospital bed. "Remus Lupin, is it?" The young boy nodded mutely. "Everything's all right now. Don't you be scared, okay?" Again, Remus nodded mutely.

The Healer gently tousled Remus's light brown hair, as he spoke, "Now, a friend of mine's going to come in and speak with you. Is that okay?"

Remus raised his head to regard the Healer curiously. Was it okay? Why on earth wouldn't it be? But he resigned himself to nodding silently. The Healer smiled – the odd sort of smile that you give to crazy people to keep them calm – and left just as a younger man entered. The man was dressed smartly in a set of black robes. His hair was neatly trimmed and set carefully on his head. He had a set of thin wire-rimmed glasses and held out his hand as he approached the bed.

"Remus Lupin, right? Robert Zeller. Pleased to meet you."

Remus took the offered hand carefully. "Nice to meet you too, sir," Remus said politely.

"And he has manners," Robert Zeller said as if it was a miracle and then he quickly added by way of explanation. "It really is hard to find manners in boys as young as yourself."

He settled himself in the chair beside the bed, as Remus watched curiously. "Now, let's not beat around the bush. You are a werewolf."

Way to state the obvious, Remus thought, though he would never say it. Remus was raised to be a polite boy, and he would never say anything so blatantly disrespectful. "I know," he said quietly.

"Yes, I suppose you do," Mr. Zeller said absent-mindedly. "Well, as I'm sure you have figured out – or are about to figure out – I'm blunt, and I really have no tact at all. So don't expect me to treat you like a hurt little boy. This is a burden, a very heavy burden, a terrible burden to place on the shoulders of a boy so young, but it's your burden and you must carry it. As you probably realize – a sharp young boy like yourself – most people aren't exactly… open to the idea of werewolves, and I'm sure you'll find with time that this isn't exactly something you'll want to shout off the mountaintops." Mr. Zeller gave a good-natured smile, patting Remus's bed.

These people were so… weird, Remus soon realized. They treated him like he had no idea what werewolves were. Remus prided himself in being well educated. He loved books – reading was his favorite pastime. He didn't, of course, know quite a lot about werewolves in particular but he would. In time, Remus would know everything there was to know about werewolves. Because that was what Remus did.

Lycanthropy or no lycanthropy, Remus had always been a painfully shy boy. He wasn't, by any means, a loner or secluded from the world in any way. He liked to spend time with other boys his age, and he liked to spend a lot of time outside. It was simply that Remus had an intense fear of being disliked. He was afraid of being left behind, so he worked harder than most other boys his age did. He made sure he could keep up with any person on any subject. And, most importantly, he always seemed to cut the boys around him an awful lot of slack. After all, a smart boy with the slight tendency towards being a pushover was more likely to be kept around than an over controlling tyrant.

Remus realized with a start that he was expected to respond to Mr. Zeller, who had been sitting patiently, as though waiting for Remus to accept the news. "Er… Yes, sir. I… I understand," Remus said.

Mr. Zeller seemed to accept this as he continued, "Ah… You'll go far in this world I'm sure, Mr. Lupin. Coming around to the fact that everything's different is the first step to acceptance."

There it was again, glaringly staring him in the face. Everything was different. Remus had never been one for change. Remus liked to consider himself very intelligent, especially compared to the other boys, and he couldn't see why everyone was making such a fuss out of this. It was perhaps the fact that he was so young, but young Remus couldn't see why he had needed to be here so long, speaking with people who – quite frankly – had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. He didn't feel any different, besides the occasional stab of pain where he had been bitten. It really was only one day out of the month – not even the whole day, just the night.

Once again, Remus realized that he was expected to give a response to Mr. Zeller. The only problem was that he had gone on for about five minutes, and Remus hadn't heard a word. He made a mental note to learn to pay more attention when adults speak. "Er… Yes?" he said, with a questioning tone.

"Ah… Don't be ashamed of being scared. It really is a common reaction," Mr. Zeller said, reassuringly patting Remus's arm.

To Remus's immense relief, the door opened at that moment, and his father came striding through, with his mother and the Healer in tow. He seemed immensely calmer than before, and Remus wondered for a moment if someone had slipped some sort of calming draught into his father's tea.

"Who're you?" his father asked protectively, as his mother crouched next to her son's bed, stroking Remus's hair and fussing over him as mothers are prone to do.

"Robert Zeller, Mr. Lupin. Very pleased to meet you." Mr. Zeller extended a hand, as he had done with Remus, but his father simply looked from Mr. Zeller's face to his hand and back again, not saying a word. "Right," Mr. Zeller responded to no one in particular. "It's been a pleasure speaking with you, Remus. Perhaps we'll finish our little conversation another time, yes? Mr. Lupin. Mrs. Lupin," he added, nodding to each of them in turn. With a curt nod to the Healer, Mr. Zeller left the room with a grand swish of his robes.

"I'm fine, Mum, really," Remus said hastily, as his mother started fretting about how his silence was a definite sign of some rare magical disease that Remus had never heard of before.

***

He really had been rather confident that the bite would never affect him as much as it did to other people. It was childish, of course, but as a boy, Remus had held a strong 'nothing will ever hurt me' attitude. The Healers had called it brave, but now Remus knew what it really was: naivety.

It had been a ridiculous attitude towards the subject, for everything that made Remus who he was lived around the fact that he, Remus Lupin, was a werewolf. A single moment, a single misjudgement, a single second where he had let his 'nothing can hurt me' attitude win, had changed his entire life.

But, of course, Remus, as a boy, could have never known what would come of his adventures that night under the full moon. He could never have known that his lycanthopy would push him towards being the Remus that he was, someone who was always in control of his actions, his movements. Someone who never let loose, never allowed himself the joy of having complete and utterly thoughtless fun. Remus needed to think everything through, needed to carefully consider his actions, because another wrong move, another misstep, and it could be another young boy's life that was ruined.

Remus leaned back in his chair, carefully. There was still some pain occasionally in the old scar of his, his first scar, the one scar that marked him forever. It throbbed painfully now but Remus was accustomed to pain, and he definitely would not let his third years know how much his shoulder really did hurt from a wound he had gotten years ago.

The only reason, really, that he had taken the job at Hogwarts – besides the fact that he needed the money, of course – was to see Harry. He had wanted to see James's son for many years, ever since Sirius Black had betrayed them all, and Harry had become everything Remus could have hoped for. He had good and loyal friends, he was smart with a knack for magic and flying like his father, and he was brilliantly carrying the burden that had been placed on his shoulders.

Burden. He remembered that conversation with Robert Zeller more vividly than anything else that had happened to him. And, perhaps, he realized – almost ashamed when a smile bordered on his lips – that Harry and himself were more alike than Remus had ever realized. They were both burdened at a young age with something that should never have been given to either of them, Remus considered briefly, and they were both scarred, in the most hideous way.

And, as he watched the young boy take his exam, annoyingly pushing the fringe out of his eyes – he really did need a haircut – and revealing the lightning bolt shaped scar upon his forehead, Remus silently and reverently resigned himself to the fact that everything in his life – everything that held any true meaning, any true purpose – would begin and end with a scar.