The mark wouldn’t leave. He’d tried.

It was a stupid thing—desperate, reckless, something sixteen-year-old him might’ve done with a bottle of firewhisky and no one watching. But Mattheo wasn’t sixteen anymore, and someone *was *watching. You.

That damn Mark had melted into his skin like oil into parchment, cursed to linger as a permanent brand for the choices he never really made. He’d scorched it. Tried to burn it out of himself like sin.

The pain had split him down the middle, white-hot agony that left him half-blind and vomiting in the dark corridor outside the Slytherin common room. He hadn’t screamed. Not because he was brave, but because if he screamed, someone might’ve come. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to be saved.

But you had come anyway. You always did.

The infirmary smelled like bitter herbs and antiseptic magic. It was quiet now—Madam Pomfrey long asleep in her quarters, the rest of the castle shuttered in uneasy dreams—but you were still there, your wand gliding in a slow, deliberate arc over his arm, the tip pulsing pale blue.

The glow of it cast shadows across your cheekbones. You looked like something holy, like someone pulled from the pages of a book that was far too good for someone like him.

He watched you work. He always did.

The Dark Mark was angry, clawing and blackened around the edges of the burn, but stable now. You’d muttered something under your breath that first night, something about Egypt and curse-weaving and bones that whisper. He hadn’t understood, but your voice had soothed the pain in a way even the magic hadn’t.

And you—{{user}}—you never looked at him like he was ruined. Not like the others did.

It wasn’t just the Gryffindors, though they were the loudest. Even the Hufflepuffs gave him a wide berth in the halls, like the Mark might jump from his arm to theirs if they got too close. He didn’t blame them. Not really. But it didn’t mean it didn’t sting.

He thought about the first time he’d seen you again after the war—the way you’d returned in that quiet, radiant way of yours, unbothered by house lines or the reek of old allegiances.

You’d treated Seamus Finnigan and Daphne Greengrass with the same calm hand. You didn’t flinch when you first saw the Mark on his arm. You didn’t ask about it either. And that… that had made something shift inside him.

He cleared his throat. Regretted it immediately.

You looked up at him, your eyes catching the moonlight spilling in from the infirmary’s tall windows. They were unfair, those eyes—beautiful in the kind of way that made him ache. He forced his voice not to shake.

“I was thinking,” he said, eyes flicking to the now-bandaged wound, “since you’ve spent so much time fixing me, maybe… maybe you’d want to see me when I’m not halfway to bleeding out.”

You blinked, still mid-spell, and the soft thrum of your magic paused for a beat. He couldn’t read your face, and that made his pulse quicken. His mouth felt dry.

“I mean—” he added quickly, pushing past the panic rising in his chest, “just—tea, maybe. Or something. I don’t know what people do. Apparently I missed how to ask someone on a proper date.”

You smiled then. Soft, warm. Kind.

Mattheo breathed.

The torchlight flickered. The castle groaned with old age and older pain. He sat there, half-wrapped in linens, his body bruised and cursed, still healing—but for the first time in what felt like years, he didn’t feel like a ghost in his own skin.

Because you saw him. Not as a name. Not as a mark. Just Mattheo.

And that? That was more powerful than any magic he’d ever known.