Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter, nor any characters
This is intended to be a 5 or 6 chapter fic focused around different scar from someone who attended Hogwarts during the 1997-1998 school year.
Written for the Life at Hogwarts (1997-1998) Competition in Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges
After the battle, Neville sits in the Room of Requirement, counting his scars. They criss cross across his face and arms, cuts and bruises covering his skin. At least, what skin is left. The battle has been rough, and no matter how hard Madame Pomfrey has worked, there are still new white lines drawn along his arms and legs.
The Room is still the setting he resided in for the latter half of the year. Seamus's bed is still unmade, one corner of his football poster unstuck from the wall. Lavender's tie is still knotted around one of the ropes holding up her hammock, resting on one of Padma's skirts hanging from the same cable, drying after a wash.
Neville remembers days spent in here, all of the people brave enough to stand up to the cruel hold Snape had held the school in. Well, maybe they weren't just the brave enough. They were the insane, ridiculously driven, forced into bad circumstances by the law and the school enough to decide they wanted out. His memories are of quiet days with pillow fights and sneaking down to Aberforth's pub in the cover of the happy hour crowd. But there are other days too, worse ones, the sort that tie a knot in his stomach when they cross his mind.
Those days are full of shouted curses and dodging green lights, running and fear and hoping he hadn't left too much blood in front of the Room of Requirement while he waited for it's doors to open.
Now it's all over. Neville's relieved, of course. Watching his scars fade is something he has no problem with. Even so, he'll miss the good days, at least.
His fingers absentmindedly trace over a scar on his thigh, hidden by his trousers but still apparent when he presses his hand into his leg. He remembers getting that scar, and he almost wishes he didn't.
It was a day in mid October, and the castle was already preparing itself for the Halloween festivities. Unfortunately, because of the tight grip on the school, many students were just planning to sit the whole day out in the hopes that they wouldn't have to see their teachers for a weekend. Even this early in the school year, the children whose parents disagreed with the new regime were being pulled out of Hogwarts to the apparent safety of home.
He and Ginny were weaving their way through halls, ducking into empty classrooms to avoid prefects. The moon hung low that night, casting shadows in the gaps between windows. The dark hallways of the castle after curfew were dangerous to traverse, with monsters disguised as Voldemort-supporting prefects roaming the corridors.
Ginny was confident as always, flashing him mischievous grins as she dashed from shadow to shadow, turning around once to shush him when he slapped his feet too hard on the floor. Her red hair might have been noticeable in daylight, but now he could only see her when moonlight hit the right spot on her head.
It wasn't until they only had one more turn until the safe haven of Gryffindor tower when they heard footsteps other than their own close by. Neville watched as Ginny tensed in their weak hiding place behind a stone statue, and quietly slid his wand out of his sleeve.
They waited in silence, hoping desperately that whoever it was would pick a different hallway than the one they resided in. Unfortunately, they were out of luck. The person- Neville could see now that she was a Slytherin prefect, had come their way.
Ginny drew her wand in front of him, and, fighting off Neville's hand that grabbed at her sleeve to keep her sitting, stood up, flicking her wand at the girl. A red jet of light lit up the hallway before disappearing as it hit a shield charm from the prefect.
"Damn," Neville heard Ginny mutter. He stood up abruptly, moving to the center of the hallway to get a better angle. The girl, cast another shield charm with a hurried wave of her wand.
"I've got students in the hallways! They're not prefects! They're-" Her voice was cut off as Ginny's stunning spell shattered her shield, the subsequent silencing charm following through the now open passage to the girl.
Neville sent another stunning spell, watching as the red jet flew toward the girl. She blocked it, casting a curse that he dodged. It hit the wall, searing through the stone.
"You could have killed him!" Ginny shouted, heatedly flicking her wand and sending a hex. The girl blocked it again with what would have been an indignant shout if she had been able to speak.
"We need to get out of here," Neville said. "There are more of them coming." Sure enough, he could hear shouts as the other prefects circled in on them.
"We said we'd teach them a lesson," she countered. "Maybe they need more persuasion than a little graffiti in the entrance hall." She dodged another curse before shooting another hex.
The two girls continued to duel as Neville caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye. Turning around, he noticed a Slytherin boy with his wand raised toward Ginny.
"No!" He shot another stunner, intercepting the curse the boy had sent.
"Found them!" The boy shouted as he cast a shield charm. "Courtyard hallway! They must've put up the graffiti!"
Neville ignored the rest of the Slytherin's shouts to the rest of the prefects. He was in the zone now, feet scuffing the stone floors as he dodged jets of light and shot ones of his own. He tried to focus on casting silent spells, using his wand with just a push of his thoughts, but in his desperation to win he soon found himself muttering the spells under his breath.
The boy was falling to the ground, one stunner in a volley of red lights finding his mark when Ginny screamed.
"Duck!"
Whirling around, Neville spotted another prefect, a Ravenclaw this time, her wand raised.
"Sectumsempra!"
He didn't remember much after that. There were flashes of stone, Ginny shouting, students in uniforms with prefect badges running away, blood dripping in between his fingers as they grasped desperately at his leg. But everything else was white noise and blurry images tinged in red at the edges of his vision as searing pain cut through his thigh.
Dimly he could recognize the much less intense pain of crashing to the ground, but it was forgotten as his wounded thigh hit the floor as well, sending waves of trauma up to his head. His already whirling vision went spotty, black splotches dancing under his eyelids as he passed out.
Neville doesn't realize his fingers a clutching at the fabric over the scar until his hands unclench and the fabric slips out of his grasp, creased against his leg. There's sweat on his brow and the muscles around his eyes are tense, narrowing his vision. Shaking his head slightly, he relaxes his face, sighing.
That was the first large scar he'd ever gotten, and he remembers shaking fingers tracing the lines as he does so familiarly now, marveling at the torn skin. He and Ginny returned to class in a week, facing punishment for missing class. Luckily, the shadows in the hallway had masked their faces, and the prefects, all fifth years, hadn't recognized their voices.
The graffiti, short slogans hovering under the entrance hall chandelier, wasn't removed for nearly two weeks, it's success mostly attributed to the other teachers refusing to give any information on how to remove it, leaving Snape and the Carrows to figure it out on their own.
That day had been more than just a start in the open defiance of Snape, but the first of many scars. A trip into the terrifying world of teenagers in an adult war, something Neville still wishes he hasn't seen.