- CHAPTER THREE -

The Scar

Tonks stared down at Harry, as he lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running, and as he stared back up at her. She had heard him screaming and had come running in to find him violently tossing and turning, saying odd things that sounded like a conversation between two people. Tonks quickly wiped away the sweat on Harry's head as he sat up and she sat on the bed, cross-legged.

Harry placed a hand on his scar as he sat up, the other reaching out for his glasses. Tonks realised what he was reaching for, and grabbed the glasses and passed them to Harry. He put them on and she could tell he could see her and the room properly now. The room was lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window.

'Does it hurt?' Tonks said, as Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. Harry nodded. Tonks grabbed the towel she had gone to get when she saw how sweaty he was, and dabbed his scar with it. She could feel Harry relax against the cool, coldness of the towel. 'Did you wet this?' he said. She nodded, smiling at him. 'Yeah. I heard you screaming, so I came running. When I came in, you were tossing and turning, and covered in sweat. So I went and dampened the towel and came back.' She said. 'And woke me up?' Harry said, managing a smile through the pain.

Tonks shook her head. 'No, actually. I tried for about five minutes to wake you. But you didn't wake until the conversation you were having finished.' She said. She saw his face change at this, gone was the smile, replaced with a grimace. 'I wasn't having that conversation, Tonks.' Harry said. Harry gave her the signal that the scar was okay and she took the towel away. 'What d'you mean? You were screaming all sorts, like a back and forth.' Tonks said.

Harry nodded. 'Yeah, that was in the dream, that conversation. But I wasn't part of it, more like I was watching it.' Harry said. 'So, who was having the conversation?' Tonks asked. It was five thirty in the morning now, so they might as well stay up. 'One of them was Peter Pettigrew, but in the dream the other man called him Wormtail. And the other man was…Voldemort.' Harry said. 'You saw Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew in your dream?' Tonks said, fear creeping into her voice, as Harry nodded back.

Tonks could see that Harry was trying to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It had seemed so real… there had been two people he knew, and one he didn't know… he concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember…

'Yeah. They were talking about Wormtail's reward for something to do with a woman, Bertha something…' Harry said, the details were becoming hazy now. 'Bertha Jorkins.' Tonks said, as Harry finished. 'Do you know her?' Harry asked. Tonks nodded. 'Yes. She worked in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. She's been missing for a few months now. Suppose you've just wrapped up the mystery of her disappearance. Poor woman.' Tonks said, the sadness evident in her voice.

As Tonks looked at Harry, she could tell more of the dream was coming back to him. He described it to her. 'I can see it, the room they were in. It was dimly lit but still a little bit darkened… there was a snake, on a hearthrug, Wormtail and Voldemort were there, in front of a lit fire, that's where the dim lighting came from…' Harry said, as he strained himself remembering, burying his face in his hands.

'Harry, what else did they talk about? It's crucial you tell me.' Tonks said. 'It sounded like they were plotting to kill someone else…' Harry said. 'You.' Tonks said, as Harry nodded. 'Probably, yeah. There's no one Voldemort hates more than me, and all I had to do was exist.' Harry said, managing a weak laugh.

Tonks managed a laugh too. 'Always thought he was a sad-case for putting so much energy into hating a child.' She said, as she and Harry laughed a little more. 'I always thought he was pathetic. I remember thinking how pathetic he had to be to have to come up with a spooky nickname to make himself sound important.' Harry said. Tonks laughed hard at this comment. Who knew Harry Potter could be so cheeky? Maybe the stories of how much like his father he was, were true after all, Tonks thought to herself.

Harry and Tonks talked some more before leaving each other to get showered and dressed for the day. Tonks went for a shower first, and as she did so, Harry sat on the edge of his bed trying his best to memorise the dream. Dreams like these, ones that concerned Voldemort, were always memorised and relayed to Ron and Hermione.

He closed his eyes tightly, burying his face in his hands, and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible … all Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror which had awoken him … or had that been the pain in his scar?

And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused; Harry put his face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them … Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, who Harry now knew to be Bertha Jorkins, and they also been plotting to kill someone else…him…

Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes and stared around his bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened, there were an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black robes and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; he had been reading it before he got lost in his train of thought about the Dursleys, and Dumbledore's orders regarding them the previous day, before Tonks turned up. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks, throwing a red ball to each other.

Harry walked over to this book , picked it up and watched one of the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty-foot-high hoop. Then he snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch – in Harry's opinion, the best sport in the world – couldn't distract him at the moment. He placed Flying with the Cannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window and drew back the curtains to survey the street below.

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.

And yet … and yet … Harry went restlessly back to his bed and sat down on it, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn't the pain that bothered him; Harry was no stranger to pain and injury. He had lost all the bones from his right arm once, and had them painfully regrown in a night. The same arm had been pierced by a venomous foot-long fang not long afterwards. Only last year Harry had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick. He was used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had a knack for attracting a lot of trouble.

No, the thing that was bothering Harry was that the last time his scar had hurt him, it had been because Voldemort had been close by … but Voldemort couldn't be here, now … the idea of Voldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impossible …

Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half expecting to hear the creak of a stair, or the swish of a cloak? And then he jumped slightly as he heard his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room.

Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid; there was no one in the house with him except Nymphadora Tonks, the mysterious woman who had turned up at the front door yesterday afternoon. He hadn't known her long, but she had already proven herself to be exceptionally caring and kind, especially when she came through and helped rouse him from another Voldemort centric nightmare.

She'd even said he didn't ever have to come back to Privet Drive, that Dumbledore could kick up a fuss all he wanted, but that she would stick to her guns and fight him on it all the way. No one had ever really fought this hard for him, he thought to himself, and he really wasn't used to it, he didn't how to respond to it and was left speechless.

Harry even admitted to himself that she had made his heart jump and had given him butterflies multiple times. He wondered, despite the absurdly low likelihood of it, if he had made her feel the same. He laughed at himself, and his, as he put it, 'pathetic teenage mind.'

Tonks thought about Harry from the second she left him in his room, to the second she was finished getting dressed and packed. She had decided that they were leaving for the Burrow today. After Harry's dream, she knew she couldn't leave it any sooner. In her mind, she knew he needed to be in a place he felt safe, that way the likelihood of another nightmare would drop dramatically…hopefully, she thought.

She changed her hair colour to white, smirking to herself. She loved doing this, changing aspects of herself on the fly and waiting for people to notice and question. It was her own little prank. She used to get the Professors at Hogwarts with it every time, until Professor McGonagall figured out she was a Metamorphmagus. She couldn't wait to see Harry's face when he noticed the change, and, just Harry, actually. She had known Harry's older self in the future, and while that Harry was still as confident and strong as the one she was with now, but Older Harry was broken, so utterly broken by a past Younger Harry has yet to live through.

These were the thoughts that raced through her mind as she made her way down the stairs, picking up the smell of cooking bacon and eggs and sausages and beans, as soon as she got to the bottom.

Her first thought after was that the food smelled incredible. Better than any other food she had ever smelt in her life. She had never known anyone who could food that smelled this good, she thought to herself, as she entered the open plan kitchen/dining room/living room to find Harry cooking. 'Oh my god, Harry, that smells delicious.' She said, as she sat down at the dining table.

Harry grinned as he turned around and began putting food on two plates. 'Cooking was one of the few things the Dursleys taught me, with big emphasis on being really good at it.' Harry said, as he finished placing the food on the plates. 'I'm sorry.' Was all Tonks could say, as Harry shrugged. 'It's fine. I'm fine. Another couple of days and I'll be at the Burrow. Freedom.' Harry said, managing a laugh.

'No, it's not fine. You should've been moved out of here permanently, a long time ago. Dumbledore failed you by leaving you here.' Tonks said, as she ate her food, finding that it really was delicious. 'Dumbledore said me being here was for my own protection.' Harry said, as they ate. 'Well how wrong he was. You weren't protected here, you weren't cared for…you were abused, you were treated as a slave – you never should have been left here.' Tonks said.

'I could've gone with Sirius, but he got locked up for my parents' murder, so he was a bit inconvenienced.' Harry said, smiling cheekily. Tonks let a laugh escape as well. The Sirius comment led Harry into a tangent of thought of how it was because of Voldemort that Harry had come to live with the Dursleys in the first place. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry would not have had the lightning scar on his forehead. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry would still have had parents …

Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort – the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years – arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. Voldemort had then turned his wand on Harry; he had performed the curse that had disposed of many full-grown witches and wizards in his steady rise to power – and, incredibly, it had not worked. Instead of killing the small boy, the curse had rebounded upon Voldemort. Harry had survived with nothing but a lightning-shaped cut on his forehead, and Voldemort had been reduced to something barely alive. His powers gone, his life almost extinguished, Voldemort had fled; the terror in which the secret community of witches and wizards had lived for so long had lifted, Voldemort's followers had disbanded, and Harry Potter had become famous.

It had been enough of a shock for Harry to discover, on his eleventh birthday, that he was a wizard; it had been even more disconcerting to find out that everyone in the hidden wizarding world knew his name. Harry had arrived at Hogwarts to find that heads turned and whispers followed him wherever he went. But he was used to it now: at the end of this summer, he would be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts; and he was already counting the days until he would be back at the castle again.

But there was still a fortnight to go before he went back to school. He looked hopelessly around his room again, and his eye paused on the birthday cards his two best friends had sent him at the end of July. What would they say if he wrote to them and told them about his scar hurting?

At once, Hermione Granger's voice filled his head, shrill and panicky.

'Your scar hurt? Harry, that's really serious … Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I'll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions … Maybe there's something in there about curse scars …'

Yes, that would be Hermione's advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky, blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort's; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the Headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion into his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry's owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write?

Dear Professor Dumbledore, Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning. Yours sincerely, Harry Potter.

Even inside his head the words sounded stupid.

And so he tried to imagine his other best friend Ron Weasley's reaction, and in a moment, Ron's long-nosed, freckled face seemed to swim before Harry, wearing a bemused expression.

'Your scar hurt? But … but You-Know-Who can't be near you now, can he? I mean … you'd know, wouldn't you? He'd be trying to do you in again, wouldn't he? I dunno, Harry, maybe curse scars always twinge a bit … I'll ask Dad …'

Mr Weasley was a fully qualified wizard who worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, but he didn't have any particular expertise in the matter of curses, as far as Harry knew. In any case, Harry didn't like the idea of the whole Weasley family knowing that he, Harry, was getting jumpy about a few moments' pain. Mrs Weasley would fuss worse than Hermione, and Fred and George, Ron's sixteen-year-old twin brothers, might think Harry was losing his nerve. The Weasleys were Harry's favourite family in the world; he was hoping that they might invite him to stay any time now (Ron had mentioned something about the Quidditch World Cup), and he somehow didn't want his visit punctuated with anxious enquiries about his scar.

These thoughts flooded Harry's head as he and Tonks ate. The conversation had gone silent, and Tonks had noticed Harry's mood changing. 'What is it?' Tonks said, staring at Harry intently. His expression changed in nanoseconds, he looked like a deer in headlights. 'N..Nothing.' he said. Tonks chuckled. 'When are you going to realise you make it awfully easy for people to tell when you're stressing about something?' she said, a mischievous grin wearing her face.

'And here I thought I had a good poker face.' Harry said, managing a grin. 'You don't.' Tonks said, her face pregnant with warmth and calm. In her head she was thinking about how safe she felt with Harry, and then about how she hadn't ever felt this safe with anyone before, and then about the Older Harry in the future she hoped to negate.

'Tell me, Harry. What's wrong?' Tonks said, gentle. All she wanted was for Harry to feel safe with her, to feel like he could let her in, to trust her. She watched as Harry opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but unable to do so. It was as if he was fighting himself internally. He's probably fought himself internally more times than he ever should have had to, Tonks thought to herself, as she watched him struggle, until, finally…

'It's my scar.' Harry said, finally getting it out. He looks relived, thought Tonks. 'It's been hurting again.' He said. 'Cos of the dream?' Tonks replied. Harry nodded. 'Yeah. It hasn't done that for a while, though.' Harry said, as Tonks nodded. 'It hasn't hurt since your second year, right?' Tonks said. 'Yeah, how did you..' Harry said. 'I know future you, remember.' Tonks said. 'Anyway,' Tonks said, as they finished eating. 'I think it's time you left this place behind. For good.' She said.

It took them no time at all to get all of Harry's things packed up, because he had so few things. As Harry locked up his trunk and gathered it up with his broom and Hedwig's cage, and took a last look at his old bedroom. He wasn't going to miss it.

He and Tonks headed downstairs. 'Ready to go?' she asked. 'Yeah. There's just one more thing I need to do.' Harry said, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and turned in the direction of the kitchen, stopping once he reached the cupboard under the stairs.

He unlatched the door and opened it. 'This was my first bedroom.' He said, as Tonks approached and looked in. 'They had you in here?' Tonks said, incredulous. Harry nodded. 'Dudley had two bedrooms until I came back from Hogwarts after First Year. I got the second one when I got back.' Harry said. Tonks looked at him, an intense blazing fury evident in her eyes. 'These fucking muggles…' Tonks said, turning away from the cupboard under the stairs and walking toward the front door, because it disgusted her too much.

Harry saw his old army man figures. He grabbed them and put them in his bag. Tonks watched, and smiled at the small act of sentimentality. Harry closed the door and latched it. He walked to the front door as Tonks opened it and stepped out. Harry looked back before he stepped out. And smiled. This was the day he had been waiting for. The chance to escape the Dursleys and never have to go back to them.

He turned and walked out the door, closing it behind himself. Outside, he and Tonks walked on, exiting Privet Drive, never to return.

'Leaky Cauldron, then Diagon Alley to get our new school books?' Tonks said, as Harry looked at her like she had said something odd. 'Our?' Harry said. Tonks grinned and winked at him, as they walked on, leaving Privet Drive behind.

Harry Potter smiled as a thought came to mind. This what it felt like. True freedom. Sure, Voldemort was coming back soon, but for now, he was still weak as hell living in some broken down shithole of a mansion with his only company being a bloke who looked like a rat and hid in a child's bedroom for thirteen years.

Despite all that, Harry felt truly free for the first time in a long time. He let himself smile properly, and Tonks noticed. 'Happy much?' she said, smiling back. 'Yeah as it happens.' Harry said. 'Care to elaborate?' Tonks said. Harry just smiled and winked at her, repeating her earlier actions. To which Tonks could only blush.