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“I really do love you.” He reaches out to trace the spikes of the lightning bolt scar, and Harry’s hands find his way to Draco’s stomach, to the silver lines he had slashed across them an eternity ago. “Really, really.”

Harry wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He wants to hold onto all of Draco’s sharp edges and broken pieces and old scars until he can drain the ache away, but he can’t, so he settles with I love you instead, over and over and over, hoping that it finally makes him believe it.

“Good,” is what Draco responds with, choking it out through his laughing and his tears. “Good.”

Chapter 43

Draco

There’s a moment where he almost turns around.

It’s only a moment, he justifies later, when Luna mentions it (and how did she even know, she was back in the Burrow and he was just on the edge of the garden) and Ginny fixes him with a glare, but it’s long enough for him to stand and watch the others call to each other, fall into lines that had been drawn before Draco had even wanted a place to stand between them, and the mark on his arm seems to burn, reminding him of how he does not belong, how they cannot want him, how he will only taint this, taint them, but then Harry turns to catch sight of him and Ron is raising an arm up in greeting and Hermione is racing across the grass, clipboard in hand, until she barrels into his chest.

“We did it!” The whole place looks wonderful. It’s draped in silver and gold and the lightest blue, colors that he would not have picked but Hermione had somehow made work, just as Luna promised them that they would. Despite Ginny’s reluctance, she had agreed to have it at the Burrow at Fleur’s insistence. Look at her. How could anyone compare our vedding to yours, vhen you are marrying a voman like zat? Luckily, everyone in the room had taken it as a compliment and Ginny had agreed without any further issue. “I didn’t think we were going to, but we did! And it’s all on schedule!”

Ron came up behind her, Harry trailing at his heels, smiling softly. They’d been soft with each other all morning, mostly because of the words that Draco had blurted out last night, even though he had not planned to. Even though he had planned to say it over a candlelight dinner that he already arranged for next week, but Harry probably liked it better the accidental way.

“Ah, schedules. The bane of my existence.” Ron grinned and held out a heaping plate of cookies towards Draco, who took one and wondered where he could possibly had gotten them, because they weren’t on the menu. Maybe Hermione had extended another purse and stuck a buffet in there, just for emergencies. “Thought we were done with them at Hogwarts.”

“Don’t be daft, Ron,” Hermione said, her voice sharper than normal, but when he tugs at the train of her dress she swats at him good naturedly, and Draco is reminded of how rare it is to see a love like that, one without any cracks, one that comes as easy to them as breathing. He wants that. He thinks that he might have it, given time, if he and Harry let this thing between them grow. “There are always schedules.”

“And this one, Ms. Granger, says that if you don’t go now you’re going to get run over by the brides. And then eaten by the bride’s mother.” George appears between them, melting out of the corn. He had told Draco that he would be hiding on the outskirts of the party for as long as he could help it, but Draco hadn’t realized that he meant quite that far out.

Not, of course, that he blamed him. It would be hard, to have to walk around with people who only knew you as part of a package deal. George had told him once how he couldn’t stand it, how their every move just reminds him of how incomplete he is, with their eyes automatically sliding to his right in search of someone that would not be there and constantly waiting for a punchline to a joke he cannot find the energy to make on his own. And that doesn’t even take into account the missing ear.

“You good mate?” Ron and Hermione have moved on, and Harry is anxiously waiting a few steps away, but Draco hangs back. George seems just about at his breaking point. Draco can tell, when he takes the time to look—it’s a crease around the eyes, a tightening in the shoulders.

George forces a smile, which seems fake, but it seems to knock the breath back into him, a reminder that if he cannot do this for himself, he would at least have to do it for Ginny. “All good, brother,” and he throws an arm around Draco’s shoulder without seeming to realize or care what he had said, leaving Draco to wonder if he should be flattered or worried.

He decides to go with both.

Harry

The wedding is beautiful, just like he knew it would be. Honestly, Harry expected it to all be perfect just from the combined will power emanating from both Ginny and her mother, not to mention Draco and Hermione waiting anxiously in the wings to assist in any way they could.

(Not, of course, that it was entirely perfect. The baker made cupcakes instead of the five tiered cake they had ordered. The hem of Luna’s dress was stained with dirt from where she had wandered off a bit while Dean’s back was turned. And Hagrid sat in the wrong row again, breaking all the chairs, but that was to be expected.)