Harry Potter One Shots

All The Toys Of The World

All rights belong to the author, themysterytramp

His scar is fading, you know. That's all I can see when I look at him. And it's funny, to be honest, it's so dreadfully, ironically, terrifically funny, because when it was there — when that lightning bolt was so vividly etched into his forehead — I never looked at it, because that was what everyone else looked at, you know? And what did he need me looking at it as well for? What good would it do him, or me, or anyone else, if I were to stare at it too? It was just a scar, after all. But now — now that it's barely there anymore — it's all I can ever see.

"Hey," she said, knocking twice on the door as she opened it. He looked up at her, smiled (or grimaced?) for just a moment, and looked back down at the enormous mess of books and papers spread out on the desk in front of him.

"Hey," he said, weakly.

"You should take a break, you know," she said. She was at his shoulder now, looking at the papers, frowning. "We were thinking about heading out to that pub down the road? You should come with us." She put a hand just below the back of his neck, a comforting gesture — he winced, at first, startled, but then leaned into her touch. She swallowed, and felt a knot beginning to form in her chest. "It'd do you good."

He's different in other ways, too, besides the scar, but they're harder to describe. It's like he's broken, maybe. Like he's a little wind-up toy who's lost his key — and some big blundering idiot of a kid stuck a knife in his back instead, and turned, turned, turned — wound him up so he's still moving, still breathing... but not like before.

"Yeah," he said, but he was reading something, his eyes darting back and forth across the piece of parchment. He wasn't really listening. He didn't really mean it.

"Yeah?" she said, sort of deflated.

"Yeah," he said again, just the same sort of not-really-listening response.

She sighed. "Yeah," she said, once more, and she took her hand from his neck, shook her head, and left him to his books.

After the war, he bought a big house, up on a hill not too far from the Burrow. He just went out and bought it, really — on a whim, the first thing he did. He said he wanted a place that was his, really his, and he moved in as soon as he could. He wanted Ron and Hermione to live there too, but Ron didn't want him to just give him a house, you know? So he said he couldn't move in till he got a real job and could pay rent. And Hermione was going back to Hogwarts, so she wasn't about to move in, either.

But we hated seeing him in that big empty house all alone, so we all went over there as often as we could. His fireplace was only connected to the one at the Burrow, separate from the rest of the Floo Network, so we could all visit him as often as we liked, and he didn't have to worry about the crazy ones, the ones that never left him alone when he went out.

He didn't really want to hang out with us, most of the time, though. He was different, like I told you. Everything was always business... and sorting things out. That's what he always said, he said he was sorting things out, that there were so many things left to sort out.

You could tell he hated it. You could tell that this was something he'd never wanted in a thousand years, something he'd never thought about during the war — that he'd always figured once it was all over, everything would be so simple. But all these things had started to crop up all over the place — inheritance he'd never heard about, vaults at Gringotts — and all these things people insisted he was entitled to, for ending the war, things he had no interest in but couldn't seem to escape from. You could see it when you looked at him — he looked so lost, so disillusioned.