Scars of the Heart

A birthday fic for Liz Jean Tonks! I hope you like it, and sorry I'm a few days late.

Prompts: HarryLuna, hurt/comfort, self-harm

IPC # 204 - [Dialogue] "I would say I'm sorry, but we both know I'm not."
365 #83 - Edge

Warnings: Self harm, PTSD, depression, alcholism, strong language [swearing]

o . o . o

Harry stumbled into the house, his eyes unaccustomed to the dark after being outside. He hated going out during the day - hated going out at all, really. He wanted to stay in bed all day, but that would bring concerned parties knocking on his door, and he wanted that even less. Since the war ended, Harry had spent his days toiling away at Hogwarts, trying to rebuild every inch of the castle that had been destroyed. He turned down any help that was offered and insisted on doing things with his own hands, rather than use magic. Of course he knew that others were working too, in different parts of that castle. That was alright with him, after all he couldn't rebuild walls ten stories tall. As long as everyone left him alone, Harry didn't care what anyone else did.

It wasn't as though there was a parade of people seeking his company anyway. For a while, reporters from the Prophet kept trying to find him for interviews, but Harry got rid of them pretty quickly, and they knew better than to come knocking now. But everyone else was caught up in their own aftermath. The Weasleys had drawn together to mourn Fred, a tight knit family that found comfort in sharing the burden of their grief. Hermione had gone to right the situation with her family. Everyone in the wizarding world was facing the fallout of the war in some way or another. So Harry was left to deal with it all in peace.

It could perhaps be said that he wasn't dealing with it. He worked all day to keep his mind from spinning, and when the sky grew dark he finally went home to Grimmauld Place. There, he would either get to work tearing the house to its studs and rebuilding or he would pull out a bottle of firewhisky and drain it. Sometimes both, if the day had been particularly bad. Anything to make sure his mind stayed blissfully clear of the dangerous thoughts that sometimes trespassed.

Toward the end of the summer, the moon rose full and clear in the sky, and Harry's thoughts turned to Remus and Tonks. They had so much life ahead of them, all gone. Sacrificed and who knew what for. Sure, Voldemort was gone, but the war could have been avoided. Harry could have gotten rid of Voldemort so much earlier if Dumbledore had told him the truth. They could have ended things together, saved so many lives. Harry took a long drink from his bottle of firewhisky, feeling the burn like some sort of penance.

Killing Voldemort hadn't truly changed things either. It hadn't changed what was in people's minds, what poisoned their hearts. There were still people out in the world who felt that muggle borns were inferior. Harry couldn't just forget how quickly most of the world had accepted the Ministry's abrupt turnaround and implementation of horrific policies. He gulped down more of the firewhisky.

The world was still fucked, and this time there wasn't anything he could do to fix it. He was damn tired of being the saviour or the chosen one or whatever anyway. Harry tried to take another swig from the bottle, but he found it infuriatingly empty. Angrily, he threw the bottle across the room and it crashed against the wall, shattering into tiny fragments that rained down on the floor. Harry groaned and stumbled across the room, realizing for the first time that night how blurry his vision had become. He fell into the wall and slid down, his head spinning unpleasantly, and his hand landed on a large shard of glass.

Harry hissed in pain, pulling his hand back and sitting back on the ground. He examined his hand, noting the swirling blood in his palm. As the initial bite of the cut faded, Harry felt relief sweep through his body, relaxing his mind. He felt as though the edge had been taken off his distress, like his grief was no longer a sharp knife carving away at his mind. Harry sank bankward and sagged against the wall, letting the endorphins flood his system.

When the effects began to wear off, Harry longed for the feeling to return. Experimentally, he rolled up his sleeve and dragged the jagged piece of glass across the skin of his arm. Seconds later, he sighed as the relief enveloped him again.

From then on, it became a ritual for Harry. He would carefully apply glamours in the morning, set off for the castle and work until his body ached all over, and then return home. The moment he returned to Grimmauld Place, he would pull out the glass fragment and draw it across his skin, and then open up a bottle of firewhisky to prolong the relief that each new cut brought.

Harry began to stay awake later and later, drinking more to get through the night. Staying conscious seemed to be the only way to keep the nightmares at bay. The problem - not that Harry was aware of it - was that the combination of excessive alcohol and lack of sleep was making him forgetful, and more than a little unreliable in his magic.

November had descended cold and wet on the entire United Kingdom, but Harry continued to toil away in the castle. As he worked, he rolled up his sleeves, unaware that his spell from the morning had failed.

"Heya Harry!" Neville greeted cheerfully, walking down the hall and giving his friend a wave.

"Hi Neville," Harry answered, straightening up and turning around. "How's the training going?"

"Great!" he said excitedly. "Professor Sprout has been teaching me so much."

"That's great," Harry replied, plastering a smile on his face. He reached up to wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, and Neville's eyes followed the movement. A concerned look flickered across his face, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. "I should probably get back to work, Neville."

"Sure, sure," he said, sounding a little distracted. "Have fun or, you know, whatever."

Neville left and Harry continued with his work, all but forgetting their brief conversation. When the sun was almost below the horizon and the sky was stained with pinks and purples, Harry called it a day and returned to Grimmauld Place earlier than usual. He snatched the glass shard from its place of honor on the kitchen table and brought it into the living room, collapsing on the worn out velvet sofa that he hadn't gotten around to throwing away yet. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes - he had learned that it was easier if he didn't look. Easier to make the cut, easier to believe that the cut was the source of all his pain. Harry ran his fingers over his skin, searching for a blank canvas. When he found an untouched space, he adjusted his grip on the glass and carved.

Harry sat that way for a long time, draining half the bottle of firewhisky to replace the blood that was slipping out of his veins.

"Harry," a voice said, quiet and ethereal, so dreamlike that he almost thought he was imagining it until it spoke again, more forceful. "HARRY."

He sat up and opened his eyes to see Luna standing in front of him. She looked more cross than he had ever seen her before.

"Heya Luna," he slurred, offering her a sloppy smile. He should be shocked that she was there, that she'd gotten into the house, but he still wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't an apparition.

"What have you done, Harry?" she asked crossing the room to sit next to him on the couch and pressing her hands over the oozing cut on his arm.

"I would say I'm sorry," he snorted, taking another swig of firewhisky, "but we both know I'm not."

"How long have you been doing this?" Luna asked, looking at all the scars that ran over his arm with a horrified expression on her face.

Harry didn't answer, tipping his head back again so he didn't have to see the expression on her face. He knew it all too well. Pity, sadness. Disappointment that he couldn't manage to end the war before all those people died. He saw it on everyone's faces, he saw it in the mirror.

"Why didn't you tell anyone how much you were hurting?" Luna said, her voice as soft as a velvet blanket.

In a way, it felt as though she were seeing into his mind, though it wasn't quite legilimency. More than once, Harry had wondered if Luna had a gift for empathy far greater than any of them knew.

"Everyone's hurting," Harry answered with a shrug. It was the truth, albeit a much simplified version.

"That doesn't mean everyone's stopped caring about you," Luna replied, tenderly running her fingers through the long hair around his ears. "No one would want you doing this to yourself. You can't kill yourself trying to stay numb. You need to feel the pain in order to heal."

"I can't," Harry said, squeezing his eyes shut as tears burned. "I can't feel this pain, Luna, it'll kill me."

"No it won't," she countered, drawing her knees up onto the sofa and curling into Harry's side so she could hug him. "I promise it won't."

"Luna, you don't know…" Harry protested, bringing his free hand up to fist in his hair. "I know you lost your mum, but that was an accident and it's not the same. It's not the same as everything being your fault."

"My dad didn't…" her voice quivered and she shook against his body, and Harry opened his eyes to look at her. It was the first time he'd really seen another person in months, and it was sobering enough to make him feel like the alcohol had evaporated from his body. "The Death Eaters tortured him pretty badly. He was okay for a while, but the damage was done and he just couldn't come back from it."

"I'm sorry, Luna, I didn't know," he whispered, leaning into her.

"It's okay," she said.

They were quiet for a long time, curled up together on the weathered sofa. Harry felt a different kind of comfort from what he had been chasing the past few months. He knew instinctively that it was healthier, more healing, though he still craved the numbness. Part of him knew that it was time to let go of that now and move on to better methods of coping, loathe as he was to admit it.

"Promise me you'll stop," Luna said, breaking him out of his thoughts and looking up at him with wide eyes. "Please, Harry, you've got to."

"Will you help me?" he asked, speaking what was probably the most difficult sentence of his life.

"Of course I will," she answered, smiling as she said the words. "We'll help each other."

Harry smiled probably the closest thing to a genuine smile since the battle, feeling muscles strain from a lack of use. He knew in that moment, with the same certainty that Luna knew that crumple horned snorkacks were real, that they were going to be okay.