✓ weasley and the wolf boy ☞ fred weasley

8: aftermath

SCENE EIGHT
AFTERMATH

    Arlo awoke in the Hospital Wing with a stinging pain everywhere. Immediately, he leaned over to the bucket beside his bed and emptied the contents of his stomach into it.

    "Yum." Said Jem sarcastically. Arlo turned to see her holding a piece of toast covered with a generous layer of purple jam. Her eyes sat on his face with an odd expression, which Arlo picked up on immediately.

    "What is it?" Arlo was almost too scared to ask, praying that what he had guessed was not true. The stinging pain. Not finishing the Wolfsbane potion. The big, blank holes in his memory.

    Jem wordlessly handed him her mirror compact.

    The scar was red, angry raised skin. It reached from the top of his right cheekbone to the right corner of his mouth for all the world to see. Arlo reached up to touch it when he caught a glimpse of the long marks on his hands and arms.

    "No," he choked out, voice rising to a hysterical tone. "No, no, no."

    Jem reached forward and hugged him tightly as he started to cry, heart-wrenching sobs that shook his body.

    When Arlo was dismissed, it was dark. In his hands he held the note Madame Pomfrey had written him, excusing him for being out past curfew. Jem had brought him his favourite blue knitted jumper, which he had wrapped himself in for comfort, the sleeves hanging over his scarred hands, hiding them from the view of others, but also from the view of himself.

    Arlo's eyes widened as he heard a crash from a small corridor that lead outside. He clutched his wand tightly, pointing it out in front of him, trying to ignore how much it quivered. He prayed it was only Peeves.

    "Arlo?"

    He saw with fright that it was Fred. The Weasley boy had knocked a suit of armour over- with his wand out. Arlo guessed that he was trying to enchant it, for some sort of prank. Fred was the last person Arlo wanted to see at this point.

    "Where were you yesterday?" Fred asked softly. "Jem wouldn't tell me. I was worried."

    Arlo had gotten Jem to take over for the tutoring session, although, Jem was not a very patient person, and Fred's transfiguration seemed to require a great deal of that specific virtue.

    "Sick," Arlo said, perhaps too quickly as he avoided the other boy's gaze. "I was sick."

    "Arlo-" As Fred stepped forward, Arlo stumbled back into a patch of moonlight, face illuminated. He flinched away from the glow, covering his face again with the shadows.

    "I'll see you later." He said, swallowing hard as he rushed past Fred, praying that the ginger-haired boy hadn't seen the scar.

    Unfortunately, Fred had.