Hi all!! Lately I've discovered that I can't make a decent fic without diverting it to another ends... this had planned itself to be a happy, fluffy Hm/H, really!! But it took another direction, and truth to be tell... I like this better... sorry for awful grammar (English is not my first language.)

Scar

"I know you hate this, I know you always preferred to ignore the truth about me... about my feelings for you, but... I've been offered something that I can't turn down before asking you... I've been offered a torn soul and heart. If you say no, I'll pretend this conversation never happened, I'll take his love and give him mine... he certainly deserves it, but... if you say yes...you know... I'll kiss you, I'll hold you close and I'll never leave you alone. Tell me, and tell the truth, I'll believe you: do you love me?"

He closed his eyes while the rain softly covered his skin. His clothes were soaked, his glasses useless, and his hair was, for once, straight and soft.

A tiny white hand reached for him, and he felt its touch travel from his cheek to his forehead, from his forehead, to his lips. He kissed the fingertips in a slow motion, and the hand drew back.

She was looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for something. He knew what she was waiting. But he had so many doubts, and stand here in the rain wouldn't erase them.

So he took off his glasses and looked down at her. The waving hair was falling down her back and at the sides of her face. Great chance, covering her torso where her white shirt was betraying her. Her eyes were shining with tears or rain, he couldn't tell apart what it was.

He stepped closer to her, and traced with his forefinger her jawbone, ascending from her chin to her temple. Here he stopped and the finger travelled to the middle of her forehead. There was a scar, here. Nothing like his. This was a scar in a half moon shade, curved, exotic, even pretty.

The memories of its origin were not that pretty... back in their third year, when, not for the first time, nor for the last one, she endangered her own life to help him. He could not be sure if she had got that scar from the Whomping Willow or from their struggle with Buckbeak.

He lowered his eyes. Memories are heavy, and this one was placed in the back of his head... safe place to try and forget.

But lowering his view he cloud see yet another bad memory: in her shoulder there were another scar. This one far too present in his memory: past year, when she tried to face the Death Eaters to protect her parents. It had been lost time, of course. If she was not killed then and there, it was due to him... she was too valuable a hostage. In the while she endured atrocities that never could confess to anyone. She saved herself, by the way. She used her own cunning to fool the king of cunning. And she was successful.

Of all it there were three witness: the horrid mark drawn on her left forearm for ever, the long straight scar from the right side of her neck to her left shoulder... and the darkness behind her usually brilliant eyes. More lost innocence.

He took her hands. More scars here, some antique, most recent. Cuts in her fingers, burns in her palms. A Potions Mistress has to deal with most dangers. And it had been his fault too.

If he had told her the truth, if he had told her that, in fact he preferred her to stay with them in the Aurors training... She would had rejected Snape's apprenticeship, she would be safely with him... but he had to be stubborn, he had to be foolish... if she was so stupid as to doubt where she would be better (if with Snape or with Ron and himself) she could be damned... Foolish, childish... he had lost her. Given the chance of chose, she chose knowledge over friendship.

Her arms, too, were covered with more scars. As her back and her legs were. Invisible, covered by clothes, but yet present. Too many scars for so young flesh. But the one that made him tremble was alone, three inch above her navel. Always covered by clothes, he had seen it only once, and quite by accident.

It was the scar from their fifth year. The one time he was most scared, and with a reason. He was paralysed, thinking she was death and it would be his fault ... prologue for the real death that night. All of it his blame... his bravado, his foolish behaviour... and never listen her. Luck Neville was there, luck Snape agreed to make her so many potions... (Snape!, again!, for her...). Over all it, luck her life didn't depended on him. He could bring her just unhappiness and danger. He had never saved her... never moved a finger for her. When she had done everything and more. All within and without her power... following him to the end of the world. Her love was so great and his was so unimportant, so unworthy...

Oh, yeah, he loved her, but the scars were still there, reminding him just how a horrible friend he had been, how much he owed her. He wouldn't let her follow him into yet another silly adventure. She deserved something much better than him. Something like what she had been offered: the tore soul and heart of the one giving her all of his knowledge.

He despised Snape, he hated Snape, but over all the things, he admired Snape, for being able of seeing always what his impulsive behaviour had neglected. The truth inside all things.

He stepped back, closed his eyes and told her a lie.

"No."

The End

For so many, and so deserved protests, click on review... (It would be just so easy to have put a "yes" instead...)

Iremione