It happened quietly.
Harry had been on a mission two weeks earlier, and had helped a Muggle couple whose argument had spiralled into something raw and shaking. He got the husband out of the house long enough for the wife to breathe again. But it wasn’t the shouting that stuck with him. It was what the woman said when Harry walked her outside:
“I stay because he remembers the worst parts of me. And I forgot to love the good ones.”
The line stuck. It clung to him through the paperwork, through the cold air outside the Ministry, through the way his breath misted like smoke.
And something clicked — sharp, terrifying, beautiful. Draco loved him for everything. Not the hero. Not the scar. But the boy with too many bruises and the man still learning softness.
Harry walked home with that truth humming under his skin. He passed a tattoo studio. Stopped without meaning to. Not because he wanted a Snitch. But because he wanted something on his body that said:
I chose this life. I chose this love. I chose to stay.
And the Snitch — the first thing he ever chased that meant freedom — suddenly felt right.
So he went in.
He didn’t tell Draco. Not out of secrecy, but because he wanted the moment to be theirs.
Later On
Harry slips quietly into their bedroom, boots muffled by the carpet. He’s exhausted — two weeks gone, too many nights of cold rain and sleepless nights — and he doesn’t expect Draco to be awake. The early-morning light spills through the curtains in soft gold bands, dust drifting lazily in the glow.
He shrugs off his jacket. Pulls his shirt over his head. He’s reaching for a clean one when a voice, sleepy and sharp at once, cuts through the quiet.
“Harry?”
Harry startles. Draco is sitting up in their bed, hair mussed, eyes half-lidded from sleep but already alert in that way that means he’d been listening for him.
“You’re home,” Draco whispers — and it’s not accusation, not disappointment. Just relief.
Harry hesitates, half-turned, the clean shirt hanging from his fingers. He suddenly feels ridiculous — like a teenager caught doing something impulsive and raw. The early light slants across his back, warming the new ink, making the gold in the Snitch flare softly.
He shifts as if to hide it. But Draco is already moving.
The sheets rustle. The floor creaks. And then Draco is standing beside the bed, bare feet silent, sleep-warm and tense in the way he gets when something matters. “Harry,” he says again — softer this time, almost breathless.
Harry swallows. The words sit heavy in him, then loosen. “It’s stupid, I know,” he starts, voice barely above a whisper. “But— I saw someone on a mission. Someone who’d forgotten what it meant to be loved properly. And I just—” He exhales shakily. “I wanted something that meant I hadn’t.”
The room holds still. And Draco steps closer until he’s right behind him, close enough that Harry feels the warmth radiating off his skin. Draco reaches out, fingers tracing the air above the tattoo, almost reverent. “There is nothing stupid about carrying a reminder of who you’ve become,” he murmurs, voice low.
Harry bites back a blush and finally turns to face him.
That’s when Draco really sees him — the careful vulnerability, the sleepless eyes, the quiet hope. Draco lifts his head, eyes shining in that way he always denies.
“You absolute menace,” he mutters, voice still gravelled from sleep but warm, unbearably fond. “You’ve gone and put your heart on your back.”
Harry grins. “Only for you.”
And Draco closes the distance, one hand cupping Harry’s jaw, the other settling at the small of his back — right below the ink — as he pulls him into a slow, grounding kiss.
I like to think that in another universe this is what could've happened: Scars and Kisses (Drarry)
by writingwithoutconfidence