A/N: Randomness ensues! I wrote this quickly, because I'm going to Ashley's in an hour…but I rather like it. It's high time I posted another of my spontaneous one-shots.

Disclaimer: all I own is a lack of insanity. And Captain Jack Sparrow's dirt. Haha.

The old beech tree by the lake bears scars. Scars of love. Decades upon decades of interlocking initials and pierced hearts are carved into its branches and trunk. Nearly thirty years ago, a messy-haired, bespectacled boy used his best friend's knife to gauge a certain redhead's name in one of the roots. It's still there:

James loves

Lily

Inside a misshapen heart. A little ways up, hidden in the crook of a branch, is a smaller, more recent carving:

R+H

FOREVER

This heart, too, is uneven – the work of a clumsy boy, bitter with love. And this heart is pierced.

There is a certain brown-eyed girl who rather likes to do her homework underneath the beech tree in good weather. She has studied the tree and its scars time and time again. A little less than a year ago, when the new carving appeared, she noticed it instantly. She wonders who made it, and wishes, rather than hopes, that it was a certain tall, red-haired boy. Little does she know, it was.

There is another, younger bespectacled boy, with an oddly-shaped scar, who found, when he searched, a pair of initials that captivated him:

G.W. and

H.P.

It's right below his parents', not concealed at all, as his best friend's is. Everyone knows it's them. Everyone will always now. After all, he is a legend. A legend who is proud to have left his mark on the place where he, like generations before him, has always thought of as home.

Another boy, with thick red hair and a sarcastic disposition visits the beech tree every now and then, to pay respect to previously carved initials. The same initials the brown-eyed girl likes to think about. One night, at sunset they meet there. It's an accident that they meet, although they both had the strange feeling that the other would be there. Or perhaps they willed it to happen.

The girl finds the carving again. She doesn't point it out, but somehow, her companion knows.

"I have to tell you something." He says shyly, the tips of his ears turning red.

"What?" She asks shyly, knowing already. Somehow they're on the same wavelength.

"I…um, I wrote that." He points to the pierced heart. She smiles.

"I thought you might have."

Without another word, he bends his head and kisses her.

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