Chapter 1
It was 8th year at Hogwarts. The fifth of September. Or maybe later. Draco couldn’t remember very easily later. He hadn’t talked to either of his parents in quite a long time. It all sort of blurred together. Maybe it hadn’t been so long. He didn’t know. He hadn’t… trusted either of them. In what /felt/ like a very long time.
“I can’t do it easily,” the man sipping some sort of cheap muggle beverage to his left said. Steam rose out of the small opening at the top of it where he cupped it with both hands. His leg was bounced erratically as he spoke. He stared out ahead of them from where they both sat, blending fairly well on a park bench in muggle London. Dressed in muggle clothes. Muggle shoes. As two muggle men pretending to be discussing muggle business on a short lunch break. All would appear to be relatively normal, unless one chose to be perturbed by the choice of all black in the younger man’s clothing. “Did you hear me?”
Draco nodded in response.
“I need you to understand. This sort of thing—“ the man’s voice rose. He stopped. Recollected himself. “It isn’t done very often. Or it wasn’t. Not before the war and—well—not successfully.”
“Just… tell me.” Draco was a calm, smooth undisturbed surface of a pond to the man’s nervousness. His elbows rested on his knees, most of his weight leaning unbothered onto them. He already knew it was bad news going in, he’d read up enough to know. He just needed it to finally be over. He just needed a yes or a no.
“I can’t do it easily, or cheaply. Or… or without leaving a size-able piece missing.”
“Ahhh…” Draco exhaled, laughed. His face fell into his hands. He dragged his hands down his face. Pushed them back up again. Pressed his eyes back into the sockets of his skull with the heels of his palms. By the time he was finished, his hair was a mess and his eyes were red with something unshed, but he was ready to sit up and face the man. “Is that all? Is that—-is that really all?”
The man’s face turned into something sour. “That’s never ‘all’ with scar tissue, young man. You’ll feel it tugging at you the rest of your life.”
Draco knew, had a hunch from the get go, that this man wanted to hurt him. And that was fine. He wanted to be hurt.
“I have plenty of scars I’ve taken for other people’s issues, mister… why not just this once I take one for mine?”
It’s not as though it would help him hide, not really. The dark mark would probably find ways of making itself known no matter how many pounds of flesh he lifted off his forearm. He could probably saw the whole thing off and it’d stitch itself into his heart. A finger forever pointing at a choice he’d made when he was young and stupid and trying to survive.
When he was young and stupid and believed his family’s lies.
“Do you see that man, there Draco…? God, I wish I could help him… don’t you?”
“Why can’t we?”
“That’s not our place, is it?”
He did miss his mother sometimes. If he could manage to separate her into two different versions of herself. Chop off the bookends of her sentiments in his heart. The woman who raised him, and loved him. The woman who taught him that agreed with his father, that some people were inherently better than others just by the contents of their blood.
He wondered what she’d think of him now. Spilling his own blood to rid himself of that second version of her. To rid himself of his father’s proudest legacy.
“So. When are we doing this?”
The man had taken a drink of his muggle beverage and Draco’s words had startled him. He made a noise and held out a finger, eyes wide.
“I think I’d like you to think about it first. Sleep on it. It’s not a goddamn ear piercing.”
Draco chuckled, darkly. No, it was far worse than that in fact.
“No, don’t make me wait. I want this thing off of me. I’ll pay you double.”
Draco stood up from the bench and began walking, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket.
“But I… sir—-oh, fuck me—-“