Harry Potter One Shots

Cauterize

All rights belong to the author, Lady Altair

Days after the battle, Dennis Creevey finds Colin's camera exactly where it was left, in perfect condition in his brother's room. And he leaves it again, because he is young and it is nothing but salt and lemon in a fresh and painful wound.

It's years later and the camera gathers dust. And Dennis finds it again, and the wounds are covered over in scars; he picks it up this time.

Lavender goes first. She's the easiest to convince; she's proud of the scars that mar her neck, shoulder, back, arm. Her wounds look new even years later; she wears them like high fashion, a beautiful lace of white and pink scars.

They're all she wears. Dennis feels like a rabbit caught in a predator's gaze when she pins him down with her eyes, hazel with a strangely amber-yellow sheen. She pulls up her long hair to uncover the thick webbing of scars down her back, glances at the camera over her shoulder and looks devastatingly, indestructibly beautiful in the black and white of the photograph.

Katie Bell would be terrifying if she weren't so sweet and friendly. When she sits for her portrait, she brings him a Bramley apple pie and worries after his slight build.

She poses twice, and Dennis displays the photographs together. Two profiles, each of her smiling prettily off to the side. She looks lovely in one, the unblemished side of her face innocent and clean. The other is a horror of purpled, ropey veins embedded into greying skin like some parasitic vine, weaving around to sink into the outer corner of her eye and poison it liquid black.

Morag McDougall and Anthony Goldstein are photographed together. He's seated in a chair and she's standing behind him, her wild auburn curls in a flyaway halo. She's grinning, her hands clasped over his eyes, her own brilliantly blue eyes sparkling. Anthony's hands reach up, clasped over her ears, his ears pink against the neat black curls of his hair.

Hear no evil, see no evil.

She's blind and he's deaf. Those pink ears don't do much hearing, her electric blue eyes stare at nothing. They wear matching wedding bands on their left hand and seem to exist in a space apart from the world where such a thing should never work.

George Weasley goes next. When Dennis displays the photograph, some ignorant critic finds fault with the framing. "Too heavy on one side...empty space on the left. Terrible photograph...missing something vital," he concludes.

Dennis doesn't quite know how to explain, that's the point. These are scars of the war; the blank white emptiness of the backdrop on the right hand side of the photograph is the scar, more than the missing ear that's barely noticeable.

Of course it's missing something vital. That's the point.

Charlie Weasley peruses Dennis' half-completed gallery while the photographer dabbles about with the light and his camera. He whistles and asks after Lavender's photograph.

Dennis sneaks a photograph while Charlie leans up against the wall, lens focused on his muscled, burned, freckled, tattooed arm against the red brick of the wall.

He asks for Lavender's name, to owl her. Dennis gives it to him, not really believing any man, even this rough, confident Weasley, has enough nerve to owl a complete stranger for a date.

Dennis does their wedding photographs a year later. All the silly, traditional ones with dresses and bridal parties and what not, but they come in earlier for another set.

Charlie's obviously given his bride ideas. Lavender drapes herself across Charlie's chest, and the ravaged skin on her back gleams silver and gold.