Disclaimer: The wonderful world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling and not myself, yada yada yada...
"The Scars that Never Healed"
I'm not important. Years from now, no one will remember my name. No one will think of me in reverence and awe. I might has well have… never existed.
It might not mean much to you, but this revelation, although painfully obvious to everyone else, I'm sure, struck a rather painful chord as it abruptly dawned on me.
To this day, I remember the precise moment. It was my seventh year. I was lounging in the Gryffindor common room, idly scanning through my Potions text book, Merlin knows I needed all the study time I could get with that damned book, and glancing up every now and then at none other that The Boy Who Lived and his fellow cronies.
I laughed dryly to myself. Everything always revolved around him, didn't it? He was the hero. His life was full of dangerous adventures and ghastly situations, and he always seemed to come out on top. He might have fought evil on a daily basis, but he always got everything he wanted.
And it was then I had something resembling… one could only call it… an epiphany. Truth be told, it all happened rather abruptly. Deafening laughter suddenly filled the room. I looked up, startled, from my Potions book.
There were seven of them circled around the fireplace. I saw the back of what could only be the heads of Ron and Hermione. It appeared as though they were leaning over, and I could only assume that they were doubled over in laughter. Seamus and Dean, who stood beside the duo, exchanged looks of mirth and guffawed rather loudly. Lavender and Ginny were giggling insanely, so much so that Lavender had to lean on the lush crimson chair which Hermione was seated in for support… and Ginny… well, it appeared that Ginny was leaning, rather flirtatiously, on Harry for support rather than a mere inanimate object like Lavender. My jaw clenched. But I can't say I was surprised. After all, Harry was the hero. And the hero always gets the girl.
And there Harry was. He had that slightly cocky look about him of someone who had just told a hilarious joke and was now basking in the glory of it. He was facing in my general direction but not seeing me. No, why should someone great and heroic like himself ever bother to acknowledge an insignificant speck like me?
I suddenly felt a very powerful emotion building within myself… an emotion that felt remarkably like blind fury.
Even in my youth I wasn't nearly as ignorant as people would like to have thought. I wasn't a prodigy or anything of the sort, but I was certainly no Crabbe. It was just sharing coherent thoughts with others that brought me down. I was easily intimidated, you see. And for a young lad like me, who needed a heroic figure to look up to, where else would I turn but the famed Harry Potter?
But it was at that very moment in time when I completely and utterly… there are no other words… snapped out of it. Why the bloody hell should he get to be the peoples' hero? Just because his damned mother had sacrificed herself for him didn't make him any better than the rest of us… didn't make him any better than me.
While I could console myself with these niceties until my heart's content, deep within my soul I knew the truth. No matter what the outcome of this damned war, his would be the name remembered. He would be the one wizards of all kind would be telling and retelling stories of for generations to come. Not me. When I died, my name would go along with me. Disappearing into oblivion.
My breath caught in my throat.
I might as well just… not exist.
Now, recalling these times in my life, I look down at my arm. The Dark Mark is almost symbolic to what my life has become.
I didn't even know about the contents of the prophecy made about the defeater of the Dark Lord until after the actual final battle. And it was of little consequence to me then. After all, the deed had already been done.
Nothing in our world is perfect. I'm no Seer, but it's my philosophy that prophecies are a way for divine powers to communicate with us mere mortals. But, considering nothing in our human world is perfect, I believe it would be reasonably safe to assume that some content of prophecies may be… shall we say… lost in translation. And it doesn't help that they're very ambiguous to begin with.
The Dark Lord never exactly marked me "as his equal." At least, not in my eyes, and I'm sure not in his. When one receives the Dark Mark he becomes something of a permanent employee. And employees and employers are certainly not what I, nor the Dark Lord, would deem "equals." But, maybe on some cosmic scale, it's different. I may be less ignorant than I once was, but I won't pretend to know all the secrets of the universe.
My point is, when the day of the final battle came, I was on the Dark Lord's right hand side. Ironically enough, I was the Death Eater he trusted the very most, and I was fine with it. This was how I would be remembered. Neville Longbottom would no longer be a name to be snickered at, like it was in my Hogwarts days, but it would be a name to be feared for generations to come. Until she went and mucked everything up.
She came in with that same stubborn determination I remembered, ready to fight, even though she was risking her life in the process. I hadn't seen her in years, but she was as beautiful as I recalled her being, if not more so. Her hair was a little darker that I remembered it. More scarlet than orange. But her eyes… they would never change. The huge, chocolate eyes that could see through me into my very soul. And I knew. I knew that if she were only to ask me to stop this madness, to abandon the Dark Lord, to go back to their side… I would.
But she didn't ask.
She didn't have time to. She was one of the first to go.
Harry was furious, so it certainly didn't take long for him to begin his sure-to-be-infamous battle with Voldemort. And in so doing, the Dark Lord turned his back to me. That was the last mistake he ever made.
I'm fairly sure you can guess what I'm going to tell you, but I'm also fairly sure you won't believe it. Fortunately enough for me, it doesn't matter what you think. All that matters is fact.
And the fact is… I killed him.
It all happened so quickly, the Dark Lord probably died still thinking I could be trusted.
The oddest part was this wasn't some master plan of mine. I hadn't planned this from square one, as Harry was probably thinking, or at least I assumed he was thinking something along those lines. He was staring at me with his green eyes wide and his mouth open in shock. And I stared right back, not knowing what to say. To this day, I'm not sure how long we stood there… staring.
Well, I got my foolhardy wish. Every wizard knows my name. And they always will. And even though I killed the most evil wizard who ever lived… my name… the name I had wanted so desperately to register in the minds of all wizards... will always be associated with "traitor."
And Harry? I haven't heard from him in a while. I hear he travels a lot now. He leads a fairly quiet life, void of ghastly situations and dangerous adventures. And, as it turns out, that's what he truly wanted all along.
Go fucking figure.