Chapter Text
Harry potter has a scar. Well, to be fair, he has a few, but there’s one scar in particular that everyone notices when they see his face. Petunia Dursley tells herself that the boy came to her damaged already, so what was one more scar? But the sight of him will always make her stomach clench in disgust and grief and anger and guilt.
The child arrived in a basket on the doorstep of Number 4 Privet Drive one Halloween night. He came with a bleeding forehead and a short note. Even in the darkness his scarlet tufts of hair and bright green eyes were enough to make resentment rise in Petunia’s chest. She hadn’t seen her sister in over a year now. She had cut all ties when the foolish girl left and chose that unnatural world of magic and her wastrel of a husband over her own sister. She could have chosen to live a normal life, but normal wasn’t good enough for her, no, the ordinary world wasn’t good enough for Lily Evans and so she chose a world of freaks and monsters and got herself killed. She went and got herself killed and rather than disappearing from Petunia’s life good and proper she left behind this, this, infant. The abominable spawn of Lily and her awful husband to torment her. The boy even had Lily’s dark red hair and bright green eyes, as a constant reminder of the sister that abandoned her. Lily wasn’t a cruel girl by any means but she could hold a grudge, and wasn’t this the best way to get the final dig at Petunia? Leaving her with an unnatural child to haunt her every day with the face of a ghost Petunia had no intention of seeing again. Well, Lily wouldn’t be getting the last laugh because Petunia wouldn’t take this lying down. She would show that little freakish child that she could hold a grudge too. Petunia could hold a grudge every hour of every day that the child lived under her roof.
Harry Potter was four years old when he first realized Petunia would never love him. He still nurtured a tiny seed of hope in his chest, he still tried in small, unobtrusive ways to prove his worth, to be lovable, to be good, but nothing he did ever seemed to be good enough. He scrubbed the bathroom thoroughly, but it only seemed to get him more chores. He cooked their meals perfectly, but it only seemed to get him less food. He said “please” and “thank you” and even smiled when he wasn’t happy, but it only seemed to make them scowl at him deeper or ignore him altogether. His hope died when Petunia stood by as Vernon took a belt to his back, only to say “don’t make a mess,” in response to his pleading eyes. He had gone to bed aching and cried himself to sleep, resolving to change his priorities. His Aunt and Uncle would never love him, but he didn’t need their love to improve his living conditions. He didn’t have to try so hard to get them to love him because they would never love him. Being perfect and following rules didn’t earn him anything. So he started dusting less carefully, scrubbing less vigorously, under seasoning or over cooking the meals ever so slightly. They wouldn’t notice. But there would usually be a little more food leftover for him to eat if the food wasn’t as tasty, and his hands and back wouldn’t be so sore if he didn’t clean so diligently, and he could even sneak a book or a broken toy into his cupboard here and there and nothing bad would happen and he’d be able to do something fun for a change. All in all, he was able to make the most of his situation.
It was soon after he turned six that his life took a turn for the worst. Harry tried not to push the boundaries too far, but he was hungry. He had been locked in his cupboard all weekend because there were guests over and he was not to be seen. Now he was back at work cooking breakfast and he was so hungry. Maybe if he burned the first batch of eggs he might be able to eat them, even if he had to dig them out of the trash. He made the pan a little too hot and left them in the pan a little too long. He didn’t notice how much smoke was rising from the hot oil and he didn’t hear Aunt Petunia’s footsteps when she came into the kitchen.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” She yelled, grabbing the pan from his hands, “You daft child, are you burning them on purpose?!”
“No, Aunt Petunia, I didn’t notice, I’m sorry!”
“Didn’t notice?! You’re lying!” She shoved the pan under his nose and he flinched back. “Why would you do this?!” She shouted, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Did you think that if you ruined breakfast you’d get more leftovers to eat? You wasteful, deceitful boy!” She said, dumping the burnt eggs into the trash and putting the pan back on the stove as she stormed over to the fridge. Harry’s heart sank. “Do we even have enough eggs for another batch? We don’t!” She shouted, “Did you want all of these eggs to yourself? You greedy, gluttonous thief!” She screeched, picking up the pan again and gesturing with it as she often did.
Harry’s blood ran cold. He had been found out. His little trick to eating more had been discovered, and he felt guilty and devastated. His mind raced with what he was going to do now, how he was going to get enough food to eat without his secret trick. He was so hungry, he felt hollowed out from the hunger, dizzy from it, and Petunia’s screaming was only making his head spin faster. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that diligent worker in him noted that the stove was still on and the oil was burning onto the pan. That would be hard to scrub off. When Petunia picked up the pan he noticed the smoke still rising from the overheated oil, he hoped none of it dripped on the floor. When Petunia swung her arm and the pan went out of his field of view he saw a mess of oil and eggs burning onto the stovetop, yet another thing he’d have to clean. Then the pan swung back into his line of sight. And then he was on the floor.
Petunia stood over him with a look of shock on her face that he’d never seen before. She held the pan in her hand and it was sizzling. There was something stuck to the bottom of the pan, a layer of something dark and sticky that hadn’t been there before. Petunia unfroze after a moment and hurriedly shoved the pan under the faucet and Harry could hear the water pop and sizzle angrily as it hit the scalding metal.
When Petunia turned back to him her face was white and her hands trembled, she opened her mouth and pointed at his face.
“LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” She shouted, “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!”
Harry lifted a hand towards his face but his aunt snatched it in a vice grip.
“Stop doing that you evil child!” Petunia shrieked, looking around her.
Harry was confused until he realized the ringing in his ears was partially from the rattling of the kitchen cupboards, the chairs, and the dishes, and the fading of his vision was actually the light flickering on and off. Once he noticed it, the rattling and flickering stopped. Suddenly he felt a surge of pain in his head, on the side of his face and all through his skull and even in his brain. His neck ached and his body ached and his stomach ached but all of it was distant compared to the immediate, burning agony of his face. Tears welled up against his will and rolled down his cheeks, searing a path down one side of his face. He heard a whimpering that seemed to be coming from himself.
“Don’t cry you stupid child!” Petunia shouted and grabbed his arm to yank him up.
The sudden jarring of his shoulder snapped him back into awareness.
Distantly, Harry was aware that he was injured. A horrified part of him calculated just how badly he was hurt. The sizzling dark matter on the bottom of the pan had been his skin, had been his face, and there was a lot of it. His whole head was filled in pain but reasonably he knew his whole face couldn’t be burned. He hoped he could go to a hospital, though he’d never been to one before. Vaguely he remembered the kind nurse at his old school, while he was still in school, who had worried over his bumps and bruises. But Petunia didn’t bring him to the front door. She dragged him upstairs and into the bathroom where he was shoved stumbling into the bath. With his clothes still on Petunia turned on the shower and sprayed wheat felt like needles onto his aching face. He screamed and thrashed but Petunia held him fast.
“This is for your own good, boy!”
After what felt like hours of agony, but was likely only a minute or two, the shower was turned off and Petunia rifled through the cabinet and pulled out a first aid kit. Harry had never gotten to use the first aid kit and he looked longingly at the colorful superhero bandages that Petunia would apply lovingly to a crying Dudley, cooing and soothing him all the while. He wanted that. If Aunt Petunia would coo and kiss him and pet his hair and call him sweet names as she put on a colorful bandage it might almost be worth the pain. But instead Petunia pulled out a clear plastic bottle and opened it, hands shaking. The sharp smell of alcohol hit is nose and his stomach dropped.
“Close your eyes,” Petunia warned just before pouring the alcohol over the side of his face. Harry screamed. Some of the alcohol still got in his eyes but it was nothing compared to the burning of his skin.
“Don’t look at me like that, close your eyes!” Petunia snapped, “Don’t cry you stupid boy, if you weren’t such a greedy little freak this wouldn’t have happened. Shut your evil little eyes and stop looking at me like that!”
When the agony of the alcohol was over, Petunia squeezed out a generous blob of antibiotic ointment and dabbed it perfunctorily over his wound and then patted gauze over the whole side of his face. She then tossed him a towel and told him to go to his cupboard.
On shaky legs Harry wobbled, dripping, out of the bathroom, forgetting to look in the mirror, and stumbled down the stairs to his cupboard, shivering. His face burned like nothing he could describe, and he was wet and cold and somehow ached all over. And he was still hungry.
The pain was overwhelming. He sobbed as quietly as he could and tried not to move because every slight movement, even the footsteps on the stairs above him, shot stinging pain from his face to his brain.
The next few days or weeks passed in a fevered delirium. Petunia would drag him from the cupboard once or twice a day to make him use the toilet, feed him a sparing cup of oatmeal or crusts from Dudley’s sandwiches, and change his bandages. Sometimes she would repeat the agonizing alcohol treatment, muttering about infection. But finally by some miracle he recovered. His mind regained it’s wits enough and he remembered to look in the mirror furtively one day. The entire left side of his face from brow to chin, all of his cheek and even part of his eyelid was a shiny red scar, smooth and rippled and awful. When Petunia caught him staring into the mirror she turned him around to face her.
“You got that scar in a car accident, you hear? You got it when your parents died, in a car accident. You understand?”
Harry nodded absently.
“Where did you get the scar?” Petunia prodded.
Harry took too long and he could tell Petunia nearly slapped him, but held herself back from damaging his face further.
“Car, car accident.”
“Yes, that’s right. You got it when your parents died. Don’t forget it.”
And that is how Harry Potter received the second scar that would define his life