It's time you pick your battle and I promise you this is mine

Small steps

As Harry was sure of, Ron came around until Easter Break. The boys in the Gryffindor dorm were all currently finishing packing their bags, so they could go down to eat before taking the train home, when Ron approached his best friend.
"Harry?", he asked cautiously, causing Harry to turn around with a wide smile.
"What's up?"
"Before we go home, I wanted to say sorry for avoiding you", he looked down at his feet, "I was not aware I was doing it until Hermione pointed it out and, as always, she's right, I might have done that unconsciously. I know you won't replace me with Malfoy but you talking about being friends with him felt like a small betrayal."
"He's not the same as he was before the war, you can see that", Harry reminded him, "and as I said, I don't expect you to be friends with me. Just be okay with me trying to befriend him. And you'll always be my best mate. No one will change that."
"Yeah, I get that now. But it's hard for me to understand that after everything he put us through", Ron hesitated, "but I guess you can connect to him in a way that I can't. In a way that you haven't talked to me or Hermione."
Harry looked at Ron like a deer caught in headlights. After a moment he said slowly: "I didn't wanna burden you with it and I just ran into Draco accidentally while he was suffering similarly and ... it just developed naturally from then on."
"Yeah", Ron replied ruefully, "I get that now. I guess Hermione and I have also let you alone with it quite a bit. And oh man, is she gonna be mad that I had that conversation without you but I know she is just as sorry as I am that we got caught up in our relationship and did not realize that you were doing poorly... so poorly that you turned to Malfoy of all people." Harry snorted at that last comment. After a moment of hesitance, Ron added, "It's PTSD, right? Hermione's parents had mentioned it as something a lot of muggle war survivors have and Hermione and she asked her parents to look it up a little more now."
Harry was stunned. "Umm... I don't know. I don't know what it. It's just", he sighed, "I suddenly start to panic and I remember some of the dead people, people who's death was my fault. And as much as I know it wasn't me who killed them and try to concentrate on literally anything else, my brain just continues supplying the memories, the pictures of Colin, of Fred, of ...", his voice broke as the first tear rolled down his cheek, "... Remus. And I can't get them out of my head. I try, I try so hard, and I try to tell myself that it is not my fault, that Voldemort killed them, that Bellatrix did, that the death eaters did, but I can't fight my own brain. And I spiral downwards until I don't even know what started it all."
Ron nods. "And Malfoy gets that?"
Harry shrugged. "In his own way. Yes. I cannot tell you how exactly, I can't ..."
"Betray his trust?", Ron supplied.
"Yeaah", Harry grinned apologetically.
"Dude, this is so weird", Ron laughed, then going solemn, "but if he helped you when none of us could, I won't hold that against him. It's fine with me. And... I mean, I got around to liking Luna, I might even like Malfoy one day. That day is not today tho."
Harry wrapped his best friend in a hug before they stepped out of their dorm to follow Dean, Seamus and Neville to the Great Hall.

The look on Mrs Weasley's face was pure confusion when Harry waved Draco goodbye while passing him on the platform. Narcissa was giving him a small smile as well but hid it rather well to anyone besides him.
"Let's go", Harry prompted his friends when they all got their luggage and both Ron's and Hermione's parents followed their adult kids outside.
It was weird not to have Hermione at the burrow but George and Percy did their best to make up for it although not consciously. George was a lot livelier than he had been before and he and Percy talked about the new products that they wanted to start selling in the twins' shop soon. Percy was still no Fred and could in no way compete with his brother as a partner, but it seemed like he had found or made his own place in his brothers' shop and focusing on the more technical stuff. Reading up on the charms George wanted to use on the products and thereby reducing the quantity of self-experiments they had to endure (judging by the look on Mrs Weasley's face, she appreciated that a lot, as Mr Weasley liked to phrase it "she's grateful for Percy keeping George out of mortal peril").
Bill and Fleur visited them shortly with Victoire but the rest of the time Ron, Ginny and Harry fell victim to their free time which now, after what they had endured during the last years, although relaxing, seemed boring. Soon the two boys looked at their school work with honest welcome and continued revising for their NEWTs. Ginny was less than happy about it and so started annoying her other brothers (or being annoyed by them, Harry couldn't quite differentiate).
Still, Harry found the time to visit Teddy and Andromeda once.
He had nearly expected Narcissa to be there and sure enough, both her and Draco were already present when he got there. He greeted them a lot friendlier than he had before (even though he had not been unfriendly in any kind beforehand) which put a startled but content smile on Andromeda's face.
Still, he was here to see Teddy, so he left the three of them to drink tea to concentrate on the toddler crawling on the floor.
"Oh, how big you have become", he exclaimed and earned a suspicious glare by the small creature. He should have known his godson would not recognize him, Harry scolded himself before sitting down on the floor to build a relationship with the boy again.
"We have such a nice weather today", Narcissa remarked after some time, "maybe the two of them could take Teddy into the garden. Don't you think the fresh air will do him quite well?"
"A very good idea", her sister agreed and so Draco and Harry found themselves in the small backyard of Andromeda's house with a small child between them.
"What do we do with him outside?", Harry asked, "The only thing we'll be able to agree to is Quidditch and I am very sure that Teddy is still too young for that."
Draco shrugged. "I'm getting him a toy broom for his birthday anyway."
Harry laughed which caused Draco to smirk: "Oh, come on. If I didn't buy it this year, you'd definitely bought it next year. With you as his godfather and me as his cousin, he's probably gonna grow up with so much Quidditch that he's gonna hate it by the time he reaches puberty."
Harry laughs again. "Good point. I do hope we'll make him love Quidditch instead."
"Well", Draco agreed, "that'd be the ideal."
They sat down to watch Teddy who started crawling through and uncoordinatedly plucking blades of grass off the ground while laughing.
Draco rolled his sleeves up before leaning back. Harry's gaze shifted to him for a few moments, his left forearm especially, until he forced himself to look back at the toddler.
"Is now a good time to ask about the tattoo?"
Draco glanced at where his mother and aunt were sitting. "How do you know about the tattoo?"
"You told me yourself that you tried covering it up."
"I never mentioned a tattoo though."
"There might be a rumour about it at school", Harry admitted while he shifted to position himself better as to look at Teddy and Draco at the same time, "the Slytherin's told somebody you covered your Dark Mark with a muggle tattoo and... well, you know Hogwarts, that means most of the school knows. But I was able to put two and two together."
Draco sighed, sitting up cross-legged and placing his left arm cautiously on his legs, the Dark Mark open to see. The whole inside of his arms was covered in different colours: green, pink, yellow. Purple petals surrounded by red leaves. Small daisies next to big tulips. Flowers seemingly exploding on his arm and in the centre of the still life the ever-moving snake of the Dark Mark.
Harry now understood what Draco meant by saying he tried to cover it up. The Dark Mark, although subtle, was still very much visible to a trained eye. Not much of the black lines itself but the movement still painted a perfect picture of the snake it once used to portray.
Draco gently stroked over the edges of the pink flowers. "They are right. It's a muggle tattoo." His eyes wandered to find Harry's. "I wanted to contrast it as much as possible. Some childish part of me believed that if I covered it up with something opposite to what it stands for, it might cancel out. I was wrong. But I thought a muggle tattoo would be fitting. Paired with flowers. Flowers bloom in the spring. Where life begins. I thought this was as much contrast to death eater I could get with it still being aesthetically pleasing." Harry nodded.
"The yellow ones", Draco slowly shoved his arm in the other boy's direction, "are daffodils. Narcissus." His cheeks coloured. "It might be a little cheesy but it's for my mother.
Harry's throat tightened. He could understand it. His mother's love had protected him for about sixteen years of his life. Lilies would have been his choice.
"And this", Draco put his finger on a green plant, "is called Draconia albicerata. They are for me. So I don't forget myself."
Harry felt like he had only been nodding to what Draco was saying and felt the need to reply something himself. He cleared his throat to make the lump go away. "Does the symbolism help you?"
Draco stared at his arm as if to decide what to answer before setting himself in a comfortable position again. "They certainly could not make it any worse."
Harry laughed and they silently watched Teddy for a few seconds.
"How are you?", Harry decided to speak up again.
Draco looked at him contemplatively. "Is this meant in a small talk way or in a general, all-encompassing way?"
Harry turned to return the look. "The latter."
"I think it will get better", Draco admitted, "definitely not his year, probably not next year, maybe not even the year after that, but I feel like I will get there. I already don't feel the need to cry every time I think about what I did and what I could have done differently. No, what I should have done differently. Still, three in four times I feel like crying but at least one in four times, I can cope. I feel like I am slowly starting to detach from the person I was to become the person I want to be. And it will take time but ... I think I'll manage that. Somehow."
"What about you?", he added.
"I talked to Ron about my panic attacks. Yeah, I know. But he brought it up himself. I think I'm getting better too. Now that I'm staying at the Weasley's and George is joking again and Mrs Weasley is no longer crying all the time, I'm feeling better. I guess when I see the people around me healing, I have less I feel guilty for. Fewer reminders of it, at least. That way it's easier to snap out of it. Which is still not easy but... small steps, I guess."
Draco nodded. "Small steps."