Draco recovering after the war would include:
He has scars; stretched across his abdomen and marring his arm, singing the skin of his hands and disfiguring his back
The war doesn’t quite end when the Dark Lord’s body falls to the ash mottled ground of the Great Hall, no, not when he can hear the screams in his ears and still sees the bodies, the blood in his dreams
Wakes up with the sheets pooling around his waist and sweat sticky on his forehead. The mark on his arm hasn’t faded, it’s stark in the dark light of his room, the same mark that had hung in the sky after Dumbledore’s body toppled over the railing of the Astronomy tower
“It was just a dream,” she tells him, tucks her head beneath his chin and listens to the rapid thrum of his heartbeat beneath a Sectumsempra scarred chest. “It’s all over now.”
Only, that’s not quite true
He only attends two funerals, when it’s all said and done
Watches as they lower Crabbe’s charred body into the grave and watches as Goyle shakes, feels the guilt, the sorrow, lodged in his throat till he can’t manage to breathe
Hides until the red-headed crowd have left and the only thing that remains is Fred Weasley’s body in the ground
He cries, sometimes, sobs that shake his ribs, his spine, that make him wish he’d died when all the rest of them did as Y/N runs her fingers through his hair and holds him against her chest
He doesn’t forget the war
Doesn’t forget the screams that lingered like ghosts in the halls of the manor, or the bodies with glassy eyes and slack jaws that scattered his mother’s rose garden
But the mark on his arm fades, slowly
And the days begin to feel more manageable
The nightmares begin to cede
Till he can sleep and smile and laugh till his stomach aches and he can’t remember just why he’d been sad in the first place
His last name feels significantly less like an anchor around his neck and more of a cautionary tale, a lesson to be learned
And oh, how he has learned
Because he’d escaped the war by the skin of his teeth, had landed himself in muddy waters by touting his parent’s pureblood agenda and he knows better, now, understands just what the other side had been fighting for
“It’s all over now,” she tells him, on a better day, when there’s a ring on her finger and a smile on her mouth
He thinks that he might just believe her
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
