Nonsense
June 1981
Narcissa gasped when she first saw it: the tiniest little mark on Draco's knee.
Had he been another six months older, she would have wondered if he'd fallen himself. As it was, the boy was barely walking on his own. No, she knew a soul scar when she saw one. As lovely as it was to see it, she vanished the mark away—and every one that followed—because children were clumsy and she wouldn't have her precious boy covered head to toe in marks, blemishing his perfect skin.
"Who do you think she is?" Narcissa asked Lucius one night in bed. Draco was squished between them because Narcissa's earliest recollections of her childhood were of house-elves tending to her, and she wanted Draco's first memories to be of her and Lucius.
Lucius grunted sleepily, exhausted from a meeting with the Dark Lord earlier that day that had not gone well for the other Death Eaters, particularly Severus, who hadn't looked well in over a year. When his wife nudged him in the ribs with a slender—but bony—finger, he groaned and rolled over. "How do you know it's a girl?" he asked her. "You know very well that a soulmate doesn't always mean romantic, no matter what some people like to claim. Besides, Draco could likely grow to have a preference for—"
She smiled softly at him, her eyes sparkling with excitement and possibility. "I just know. I know, Lucius, and I can't wait to find out who she is."
He chuckled, adjusting the Draco between them so that he could wrap one arm around Narcissa's shoulders and tug her against his chest without crushing the boy. "You're already planning a wedding, aren't you, my love?"
Narcissa pinched his arm reproachfully for his teasing but said nothing else.
June 1986
"Hurry!" Draco yelled as his mother and the house-elves fussed around his bed. "Get rid of it!"
Narcissa quietly scolded Lucius for buying their son a broom so soon. He'd been a natural flyer, of course, but even the best Quidditch players in the world crashed from time to time. Thankfully, he'd suffered nothing more than a fractured wrist and a cut across his left cheek that dug awkwardly into his nose thanks to landing in a wood pile out by the stables.
"Does Young Master Draco needs more Pain Potion?" Dobby asked timidly, looking at the boy as though he were nervous about whether or not to let him stay in pain versus accidentally overdosing him.
Draco rolled his eyes and sneered, a look he'd picked up from his father that Narcissa was none too pleased about. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Of course it doesn't hurt anymore, but I want this thing on my face gone!"
"If I were ever questioned as to who your father is, Draco, I would show anyone this memory," Narcissa said, pressing her wand gently against his face to remove the painful looking blemish. "You're growing up to be quite vain, you know," she playfully teased her son, mussing his hair.
Draco huffed and ran his small fingers through his pale blond locks, pushing it back the other way. "I don't care about that. Father says that every flyer has marks to prove how long he's been on a broom. But . . ." he hesitated.
Narcissa raised a slender brow. "But?" she prompted him.
He sighed. "What if she sees it? I don't know where she is and . . . It could be embarrassing for her if people are looking and she's got an ugly scar on her face all of a sudden. It would be my fault." He frowned, looking down at his hands. "I wouldn't want people to . . . to make fun of her."
Smiling proudly, Narcissa pressed her lips to his forehead until he groaned and begged her to stop.
May 1992
Draco hated having a soulmate.
He'd been taught from a very early age that soulmates were sacred. That a man was to treat his soulmate with the utmost respect at all times; the way his father treated his mother had been his shining example. Every injury, every mark, every accidental line on his body was magicked away as quickly as possible to prevent her any unnecessary embarrassment. Draco had known the spells before he even stepped foot on the Hogwarts Express. He'd even asked to be shown extra charms by Professor Snape, who had rolled his eyes dramatically before agreeing.
Draco went out of his way to make sure that his soulmate—whoever she was—never had to explain to a single person why she might have a mark on her face that looked like the aftermath of a Stinging Hex, or a scar on her knees from when he fell in the Forbidden Forest during detention. Draco was very adamant about keeping her as blemish free and perfect as utterly possible.
She, however, was not doing the same.
"Did you fall asleep in the fireplace, Draco?" Pansy had asked him, giggling under her breath.
"Shut up," he said with a scowl. "It's ink, and it's not even mine. Where's my wand? I had it right here!"
"Blaise took it when you weren't looking," Theo said. "What do you mean it's not yours?"
Draco rubbed his ink-stained fingers against his trousers angrily as though the action could charm it all away. "It's my . . . bloody soul scars! Whoever she is, she's purposely tormenting me!"
He didn't notice when Theo and Daphne shared a look, mostly because Pansy had burst into hysterical laughter. "And it won't just disappear?" she asked through her giggles. "I thought that ink messages faded away after a moment or two. Minutes at the most? You're only supposed to need to charm away the scars."
Face turning red—as red as his complexion would allow—Draco stood up and held his hands out to Theo, silently demanding assistance from his friend. He glared at Pansy while he waited. "It's supposed to fade away. Unless she's using cursed ink! Why can't she just keep her hands clean? How hard would that be?!"
Theo smirked. "She might be using Everlasting Ink."
September 1993
"He's faking it."
Hermione looked up at Harry as he tried to console Hagrid.
"Madam Pomfrey can mend anything. She regrew half my bones last year. Trust Malfoy to milk it for all it's worth," he insisted angrily.
She nodded, having to agree with her friend. Leave it to Malfoy to insult a creature he thought below him and end up injured for it. She'd seen the blood, of course, and knew he hadn't been faking as Harry so adamantly complained, but the Slytherin was using his injury as though it were a golden ticket opting him out of class work, not to mention the mass of attention he was practically sunbathing in.
Hermione couldn't help but wonder if she was being a bit unkind about it as well. She often injured herself, sometimes not even noticing it until days later, when there would be a bruise on her hip from accidentally walking into a table while reading a book. Merlin, even just that afternoon, she'd found a long scratch on her arm with no idea as to where it had come from. It had faded since then, thank goodness.
"School gov'nors have bin told, o' course," Hagrid sobbed and sniffled, taking another drink from his tankard. "They reckon I started too big. Shoulda left hippogriffs fer later . . . done flobberworms or summat. Jus' thought it'd make a good firs' lesson. 'S all my fault."
Enraged, Hermione shouted, "It's all Malfoy's fault, Hagrid!"
June 1996
Draco didn't tell a soul about the deep purple scar bisecting his sternum that appeared overnight. He woke early that morning, eager to make up for the day before when Potter and his merry band of misfits and Mudbloods attacked the Inquisitorial Squad and then fled Hogwarts. Draco had stepped into the shower and gasped when he looked down and saw the ugly blemish on his skin.
Charms, patience, and the passing of time hadn't helped it do more than fade slightly.
Dark Magic.
His soulmate had been cursed.
He didn't have time to think about that now, though; certain that he'd never see the girl with ink-stained fingers that he'd been secretly imagining his entire life. No, now he was more concerned with his own life and when, exactly, it would end.
Soon, he suspected.
"Are you ready?" his mother asked from the doorway, the dark circles beneath her eyes were still there. He figured she would have charmed them away. Their presence either meant that she hadn't bothered, or that his father was having a rougher go of it in Azkaban than either of them had anticipated.
"I'll take care of you," he promised her. "I'll make the Dark Lord happy with us again, Mother."
Hermione sat at the kitchen table late that night. Her parents had insisted she rest, following Madam Pomfrey's instructions on taking care of herself once she'd been allowed to leave Hogwarts with her friends. Dolohov had done a number on her, that much was certain, but she couldn't bring herself to tell her parents what exactly had happened. She hated lying, but they couldn't understand. They couldn't understand that she'd gone with her friends to fight Death Eaters, to save Harry's godfather—lot of good that did—and ended up almost dying.
She'd almost died.
It was a sobering thought.
She made up an illness that she told her parents about to explain the many potions she still had to take over the next several weeks and promised that it wasn't contagious. The pain was gone after the first night spent in her own room at home, but the nightmares and stress kept her from sleeping peacefully.
Smiling sadly into her cup of hot chocolate, she wondered—hoped—that someone was around to make one for Harry. Lost in her thoughts about how to help her friend through his grief, she didn't notice the black mark on her arm until it began fading away.
But she did see it.
"No!" she screamed, her mug falling to the floor in the process as she jumped from her chair, eyes wide looking down at the mark—a Dark Mark!—there on her forearm. She scratched at it, but nothing happened. She ran to the sink and began scrubbing, wondering if someone had hit her with some sort of delayed hex. Nothing happened. Tears welled in her eyes, and she felt a panic attack pushing toward the edge of her consciousness when the light in the kitchen flicked on.
"Hermione!"
She turned to see her father, cricket bat in hand, looking around for intruders, while her mother rushed to her side. "What happened?"
Unable to form the words to answer her mother, Hermione looked back down at her arm. It was gone. She sobbed on an exhale and rubbed the skin, relieved to see only scratch marks there. "I'm fine," she whispered shakily. "I fell asleep at the table and had a nightmare."
Twenty minutes later, she filled the bathtub with scalding water and slipped inside, desperate to relax. She couldn't though. Crying, Hermione stared in horror as, one by one, blemishes appeared all over her body. A thick burn on her thigh, a deep cut over her knee, little marks that moved back and forth over her legs and arms and torso like welts from a whip! They faded entirely within the hour, but she couldn't say that it was all just a nightmare.
Not anymore.
July 1996
A soulmate.
She had a soulmate.
What utter nonsense!
Hermione threw the book on soulmates that she'd ordered from Tomes and Scrolls onto a pile where she kept the Divination texts she'd purchased during third year. A stupid book was still a book, after all, and she hated throwing things away.
May 1997
She and Ron had been close to kissing when Harry burst into the common room, soaking wet and covered in blood.
"Where've you—? Why are you soaking—? Is that blood?!"
"I need your book!" Harry panted. "Your Potions book. Quick, give it to me!"
"But what about the Half-Blood—"
"I'll explain later!"
He had. But not before Ron had seen the scar on Hermione's collarbone, peeking out from under her shirt.
"Is that from the Department of—?"
"What?" She looked down, following his gaze until her eyes widened at the sight of the mark.
She swallowed nervously and then ran up the stairs to the girls' dormitory, threw open the door and ignored Lavender, who was still angry with her since the breakup with Ron. She stared in the large communal mirror, picking at the buttons of her blouse until the deep gash was revealed.
When Harry explained everything an hour later, she forced herself not to vomit.
Draco Malfoy was her soulmate.
And Harry had almost killed him.
Had almost killed him—Draco Malfoy—her soulmate.
Her soulmate.
March 1998
Draco looked scared. Terrified even, as he was forced to stand there and stare at her, waiting for instructions. When they finally came, when he was ordered to the cellar below, he paused to stare into her eyes and froze for a long moment before speeding away.
It felt weird that, for as much pain as Granger was in, she looked like she wanted to comfort him.
"What else did you take, what else? ANSWER ME! CRUCIO!"
He dry heaved into the bin beside his bed, shocked that he'd been able to get to his room at all. Wandless, Draco was unable to properly lock his door. When his parents followed him up, he was unable to keep them out despite how much he desperately wanted to be alone as he cried shame into the expensive rug on the ground.
"It'll be all right," Narcissa whispered to him, stroking her fingers over his hunched back as he sobbed.
Lucius cleared his throat. "We'll . . . we'll have to find another way. Another way to appease the Dark Lord. After today . . . we need to do something. Otherwise, I fear—"
"I'm dead," Draco announced.
"Hush," Narcissa pleaded. "Don't say such things."
"I just stood there and did nothing. I did nothing . . . I'm not . . . I did NOTHING!" He turned and yelled, his eyes fixed on his father. For all the anger built up inside of him, Draco would still never turn his rage on his mother, not when he'd sold his soul to the very literal devil in order to keep her safe. "I am a dead man if the Dark Lord wins."
Lucius's eyes widened, and his jaw clenched, not in anger but fear as though the Dark Lord would appear behind him at any moment. "Draco, you can't know what the—"
He pulled back the sleeve of his robe that normally covered his Dark Mark.
Lucius froze.
Narcissa gasped, her eyes watering at the sight. Horrified, she clutched at her chest and whispered, "What have we done?"
There, marring the already ugly reminder that he was a slave to the whims of his Dark Master, was a nasty-looking, red and purple scar:
Mudblood.
August 1998
After the battle, after the trials, after the end of all that was hell, Draco approached her.
It had taken a fifth of firewhisky and an angry pep talk from Daphne—who'd twisted Pansy's arm to come with. The blonde had also brought along her boyfriend and soulmate: Harry fucking Potter, who stared at Daphne like she'd hung the bloody moon in the heavens just for him. Draco had scowled at his rival, tempted to tell the man that Daphne had once worn a Potter Stinks button of Draco's own creation back in fourth year. Daphne, however, was frightening when properly ticked off, so Draco kept silent while the pair waxed poetic about soulmates and forgiveness and forging ahead into a new and beautiful future.
He'd vomited.
But that was mostly because of the firewhisky.
"Granger."
"Malfoy."
He stared at her from across the table as she sat outside of Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour, and there was a split second where he didn't feel like he was a former Death Eater staring at a war heroine who'd been tortured in his own house; a woman who had been permanently marred with a slur that he'd first introduced her to.
Was there even a word that could say sorry enough?
"Have a seat," she said and pushed the chair opposite her out for him with her foot. "We should probably talk."
He sat down, unable to properly meet her gaze, and the two sat in silence for a long time.
She sighed, watching as he scratched at his left forearm. "Does yours hurt too?"
Wincing, he shook his head. He hurt, yes, but Draco imagined they were thinking of different kinds of pain.
