#saeva

“She said she’d noticed the bruises,” he heard himself say from far away. In the hear-now of his memory he heard the screams as the wooden beams cracked overhead. “She said she noticed the fucking bruises. The way you noticed the bruises, Tom.” His eyes blurred and burned -- from tears, from smoke -- and he felt the soft touch of the tears being pushed away by a thumb. Tom’s blurry face, tender and concerned. No, wrathful and victorious. The Dursleys silent. Harry’s own words quiet in the bathroom, “She said you were a monster.” “Love, I am a monster.” “Tom, when you noticed the bruises you made damn well sure they stopped happening.” And that was it, the sobs grabbed at him, ugly, broken things as his lover rocked him. He hadn’t asked Tom to do it. He would have said no if Tom asked him. And Hermione was right -- Tom was a monster. But of all of them it hadn’t been his friends -- his family of choice -- or the should-be uncles chosen by his father or the adults entrusted over and over with his care who’d protected him. It’d been the monster.