queenofthyme:

“Potter, what is that?” Draco asks with urgency, his chest
constricting in pain as he catches a glimpse of something dark coiling up Harry’s
forearm.

Harry shoves his
sleeve down and jumps up to meet Draco, his wand clattering to the floor. “Nothing.
How did you find – “

“Show me.”

“I don’t – “

“Show me. Now.” Draco
demands. He can’t believe this is happening. As if it isn’t horrible enough
seeing it on his own arm every day.

Harry pulls up his
sleeve slowly to reveal it – The Dark Mark – etched into his flesh. Draco holds
back a gag.

“It’s not what you
think,” Harry says.

Draco’s eyes dart
between the mark and Harry’s face. “It’s – how did – why?”

“I wanted to practice removing
it,” Harry says slowly, his meaning clear. It only makes Draco angrier.

“So you gave yourself a
Dark Mark? You reckless idiot. What if you can’t remove it? Did you even think
about that before you – “ Draco stops himself. Of course he didn’t. He’s Harry
fucking Potter. Draco sighs and tries to calm himself. He’s not responsible for
Harry’s idiotic antics. “How did you even manage to replicate it?” He asks, his
voice measured.

Harry smiles weakly. “Well,
a fragment of Voldemort’s soul was inside me for most of my life and his magic
left a pretty big trace. I just… accessed it.”

Once again Draco holds
back a gag. The thought of Voldemort’s magic, so dark, so cruel, inside of
Harry Potter, the Gryffindor Saint, is too much. It’s horrifying.

Draco takes a breath
and asks Harry the question he already knows the answer to: “Why do you need to
know how to remove a Dark Mark?” He needs to hear the idiot say it.

Sure enough: “So I can
remove yours.”

Draco grits his teeth.
He’s furious that Harry has put himself in danger for him. Again. “You don’t
owe me anything, Potter.”

“I know,” Harry says. But
he doesn’t.

“You can’t just go
around saving people all the time!” Draco’s raised voice echoes throughout the
room.

“Why not?”

“Not everyone wants to be saved,” Draco points out. He
doesn’t want Harry risking anything for him. How could he ask that
of anyone, after all that he’s done?

“You don’t want the
mark removed?” Harry questions, his eyes falling down to Draco’s left arm.

Draco’s mark is
covered but he tugs on his sleeve regardless. “It reminds me of who I am.”

Harry frowns. “That’s exactly
why you need it removed. That’s not who you are, Draco.”

Draco blanches,
surprised at the use of his first name and Harry quickly corrects himself. “I
mean Malfoy.”

Draco lets his eyes
fall back down to Harry’s mark, taking in the harsh lines of the coiling snake
and skull, and the red raw skin beneath. He shudders. “Looks like you haven’t
had much success anyway,” he says as casually as he can manage. But inside, his
heart is tight. Because now Harry will have to live with the Dark Mark the rest
of his life. Just like Draco, he’ll be forced to carry the weight of the inescapable
dark magic within his skin, forced to feel it crawling through his veins,
through his every spell, with no relief and no hope of salvation.

“I’m getting close. Before
you came in, I could feel it moving.” Harry retrieves his wand from the floor
and points it at his Dark Mark, eyebrows tightening in concentration.

“Go on, then. No other
Wizard has been able to do it, but I’m sure even a Dark Mark will be no match
for the great Harry Pot – oh.” Draco’s knees buckle. “Oh.”

Against all logic,
Harry removes the Dark Mark as if it is nothing more than a muggle tattoo.
The head of the snake recoils into a rapidly shrinking skull until all that is
left is smooth, untainted skin.

Malfoy yanks up his
sleeve and holds out his arm to Harry. Despite all his protesting, he wants to
be saved. More than anything.

Harry’s hand wraps
under Draco’s arm holding it in place and he raises his wand. Draco screws up
his eyes in anticipation – he cannot bear to witness the removal in case it doesn’t
work properly. What if his Dark Mark is worse than Harry’s, having come from
Voldemort himself? What if – Oh.

Draco doesn’t need to
see it happen because he feels it. He feels the darkness extracted from his
body, feels strength returning to his limbs. And he feels light. Lighter than
he can ever remember. As if he might just float away. He opens his eyes and
stares down at his clear, unmarked skin.

There’s a sense of
twisted deja vu when Draco looks up from his arm. He remembers looking up into
Voldemort’s eyes after he was given the mark, and feeling colder than he’s ever
felt before. But now when he looks up into his saviour’s eyes, into Harry
Potter eyes, it’s warmth he feels, from the smooth skin on his forearm to the
centre of his heart.

He blinks back his
tears. “Thank you.” They’re the same words he was forced to say to Voldemort
but their meaning couldn’t be any more different this time. Voldemort had
stolen his life, and Harry Potter had just restored it.