It Left One
The gaggle of first years are transfixed on the moon-pale stretch of skin that Draco Malfoy is tracing with his just-barely-less-pale index finger.
He tells them that he was attacked by a rabid hippogriff. He turns his face away, begging for them to beg him to tell them more. Pansy embellishes eagerly from his right, taking every opportunity to trace the scar herself, though the story hardly needs illustrating.
It's a good story.
It's the kind of story people want to hear when they ask about a scar
So what if it wasn't a rabid hippogriff. Maybe it wasn't even a creature. Maybe you didn't get that bruise on the pitch, maybe you walked right into a table in Potions and then you spent the next 47 seconds swearing silently in your head and contorting your face in anguished concentration as you attempted to walk yourself better.
It's only a lie if you're omitting the truth. But what they want is a story, not a truth.
I didn't read the chapter on hippogriffs and I insulted it, but then I was fine. Not much of a story.
Who would that serve. There's no invisible scoreboard out there keeping track of how often you choose honesty. Actions shouldn't be measured in how strongly they cling to narrow, unyielding virtues. They should be measured by their aftermath.
When she asks me how I'm getting on at school, she doesn't want the truth.
I'm great, mother. Doing well academically. Huge group of friends, as well. That Astoria Greengrass is fond of me. Pureblood, of course, old money. Might try out for Quidditch.
School is necessary to obtain a job, which will be necessary to support myself once you cut me off for defying your hypocritically rigid ideals about marriage and family. I like ghosts and books and him and I'll never care about Quidditch.
When she asks me how I'm getting on at school, she wants to be placated.
Then she'll repeat my words to her friends, who only ask to be polite.
Then they'll repeat her words to the press, who only ask when they need to fill the last paragraph.
Her son, Blaise Zabini, 16, is currently attending Hogwarts. Sources close to him report he's getting top marks and follows his house Quidditch team closely.
When he wants to know about my scars, he doesn't ask. Asking won't get him the truth. Asking will only hurt, and he doesn't want to hurt me, he just wants the truth, so he doesn't dare ask.
But sometimes, I tell him anyway.
His eyes are bluegrey and sometimes they trace my scars while his hands are still busy sewing themselves in mine. And sometimes I tell him anyway.
That was the corner of the fireplace, I fell one time when I was little, coming in through floo.
This one is from the time I gave my mother's friend food-poisoning, except he wasn't supposed to let all of it spill out of him onto the table, he was supposed to keep it in and then keep the air in him and then never touch her again. But instead he threw up at the lake house, and he had a house elf but he made me clean it. And mother wanted to stop him but she got that look on her face and cleaned him instead. And then she went upstairs for a long time and he broke a lot of dishes and he made me clean them up with my hands and then he pushed me and then it went straight through my hand, and I couldn't stop looking at it, and he panicked. And then I panicked. And then all the pieces of all the plates, even the one jutting through my hand, they all rushed towards him. Stuck through him instead. Mother paid off the Italian ministry and didn't talk to me for a week. Now I have a line running from the bottom of my palm up towards my ring finger.
This cut on my finger was from parchment a few years ago. Usually those heal without a mark, but it left one.