Disclaimer: Still not mine. You will know when I own it… -evil grin-
Warnings: Nothing. A bit angsty and sentimental is all.
A/N: The last line popped into my head as I was reading fics, and I thought it deserved to be turned into something. I actually wrote is starting with the last paragraph, then the first, then working my way up from the end XD Anyway, I hope you like it. Enjoy! :D
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Many people had called him beautiful.
Teachers since kindergarten thought it would be nice to tell the poor little boy, something to build his confidence. Some thought it was true, while others merely tried to help him. None saw the teasing and beatings he received for the praise.
The other students, both girls and boys and none of them friends, hissed it in anger and no little part jealousy. They felt they were more entitled to the recognition, felt he did not deserve it as they did. They only wished to bring him down, to make that wonderful word a word of pain and misery.
Ron had said it many times, mostly when he was angry as the girls paid little attention to him. He knew Ron meant it, but he also knew the word was filled with all his jealousy and hurt, all his bitterness.
Hermione said it almost as often, but it was always an analysis. She sought the reason so many girls were after him or the reason so many boys were jealous of him. She saw it in him, both inside and out, and acknowledged it, but it didn't really matter to her.
Ginny had been the one to use it the most. She would whisper it when she thought he couldn't hear her, had announced it to the world when she admitted she loved him, and murmured it as tears ran down her face as he softly rejected her. She may have thought it was a compliment, but to her that word, a description of the outside, was all he was.
Even Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and Dudley had said it, although it never felt good coming out of their mouths. Instead, that word that should be cherished and wonderful felt dirty and hateful and so horribly wrong. They saw it inside him and out, and hated him all the more.
But this man, who had tried to kill him when he was just a babe and many times since then, who had killed his family and friends, who so many thought was filled only with hate and a greed for power, was looking at him with such adoration and lust and, dare he say it?, love. However they had gotten to this point, Tom Riddle, the infamous Lord Voldemort, had called him the one thing he had always heard and never really trusted.
And for the first time in his life, Harry truly felt as if someone thought he was beautiful.
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A/N: Sorry it's so short. But that's the way it is XD I really like this, actually. And I hope you did too!! Please leave a REVIEW and tell me what you thought!! :D