Natsu Dragneel and the Goblet of Fire

The Scar

Natsu lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.

He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other hand reaching out in the darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. He put them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window.

Natsu ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his black eyes puzzled under his spiky pink hair. He examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal, but it was still stinging.

Natsu tried 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... He concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember... The dim picture of a darkened room came to him... There had been a snake on a hearth rug... a small man called Serena, nicknamed Wormtail... and a cold, high voice... the voice of Lord Acnologia.

Natsu felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought...

He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Acnologia had looked like, but it was impossible... All Natsu knew was that at the moment when Acnologia's chair had swung around, and he, Natsu, 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; Natsu had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. Natsu 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... Acnologia and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Natsu could not remember the name... and they had been plotting to kill someone else... him!

Natsu 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 was 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 spell books.

Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his blue exceed, Happy, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; Natsu had been reading it before he fell asleep last night. 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 one another.

Natsu walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched on 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 Natsu'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 Natsu could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.

And yet... and yet... Natsu went restlessly back to the bed and sat down on it, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn't the pain that bothered him; Natsu was no stranger to pain and injury.