The Thunder in My Heart

Healing Old Scars

The following night, Draco lay in bed for a long time contemplating the conversation he'd had with Harry in the Quidditch changing rooms.

When Harry had said they needed to talk, his heart had sunk. He assumed the worst; that it was going to be the moment when Harry told him they couldn't possibly ever have a relationship because Draco had been a Death-eater or something along those lines. Or maybe because Harry had got back together with the Weaslette or another factor equally as devasting.

Instead, Harry had said he wanted to talk about their past, about the war, and the build up to it, he wanted nothing hanging between them.

What had shocked Draco the most was that Harry had twisted towards him so he sat facing him on the bench and then asked Draco to take off his jumper to show him the scars he'd left across Draco's chest that awful day in the sixth year. Tentatively, Draco obliged and peeled his jumper over his head, conscious of his nakedness, despite having seen Harry in much less clothing just moments before.

Harry looked heartbroken when he saw the long silver scars that ran across Draco's pale torso, the longest running from his shoulder to his hipbone.

'I'm so sorry,' Harry'd mumbled and he'd had reached out uncertainly, his hand hovering millimetres away from Draco's skin, so Draco had nodded slightly to grant permission. 'I came to the hospital wing afterwards, to see you. I was so scared that I'd killed you. I didn't know what the spell would do. Snape saw me. He ignored me and when I begged to know; the look he gave me was scarier than anything I've ever faced. He just told me to go away. It was so cold. It was the worst. I was mortified. I still am.'

Draco could still feel the ghost of Harry's fingertips softly dragging across his chest along the line of the longest scar. It still sent shivers shooting down his spine and made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation. He'd had to shut his eyes at the time, not because of the scars, he was not ashamed of them or even angry at Harry, no, he'd had to shut his eyes because he felt overwhelmed by the touch of the man sitting opposite him, studying him intently, touching him so softly, so intimately.

He realised, now, that perhaps he should have told Harry how he felt about his scars, but maybe that could be a conversation for another time, there was much to talk about now the floodgates had been opened by Harry. He wondered if it would devastate things between them or make their friendship stronger. He assumed that Harry was trying for the latter, that Harry didn't want the past casting a long shadow across their future.

Harry had taken hold of Draco's left hand, his other resting over the tattoo that covered the scars of the Dark Mark. He told Draco that when he'd traced his fingers over the delicate tattoo of his grandfather's roses on the Hogwarts' Express he could feel the lines of the Mark beneath the new ink. Draco had grimaced but Harry assured him that it didn't disgust him: rather, it told him a story, a sad and painful yet beautiful story of how far they had both come despite this being Draco's personal story. He could imagine his story intertwined with those raised lines, the story of an evil man who had damaged so many of the lives he'd touched, but a man who'd been overcome and, as such, had unwittingly intertwined the lives of many. Dumbledore had always promoted the idea of old magic lore tied up in familial love but Harry thought it was more than that, that love was a simplification even by Dumbledore's standards. And, despite being so underestimated by Voldemort, Harry thought that Voldemort had also underestimated hatred and fear. Not in the extent that he could use it, but to the degree that it could cause unrest within his own ranks, that people would become unhappy to his subjugation. That it could bring people together, all the more stronger for their fighting against it. That's what Harry read in Draco's story when he felt the ridges of the Dark Mark, he felt rejection of a way of life that ultimately manifested itself through the actions of Draco and his mother saving his life. The ridges told him a story of their lives being brought together with the promise of a far more positive future.