Title: Old Scars and Future Hearts

AN: Here we are, the final chapter of Old Scars and Future Hearts. This is longer than most other chapters. It took me a year and a few days but it is officially finished and I could not have done it without your support. I did not expect to get any attention for this fic and I was fine with that because I just wanted to take this idea from start to finish. So, I am amazed and truly grateful that so many have favourited / followed / reviewed. It truly means a lot. I'm also amazed that I managed to finish it. It didn't at all turn out how I thought it would but I'm so happy. For those of who you aren't happy that I didn't focus on the pairings that I mentioned in the beginning, I may write a sequel. But I need to finish my other multi-chapter stories first. Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling, thanks so much for following me on this journey. It really means a lot. A special thanks to you Penny for being so supportive, kind and for spreading the word about the fic! I wouldn't have finished this story if it wasn't for your encouragement. You're a nugget of gold, a real-life book character and I'm honoured to call you my friend.

Word Count: 4, 364

Chapter twenty: Future Hearts

James told me something today. It was so clever and yet so complicated to understand. He told me that a lot can change in a year. At first, I laughed at him because it was obvious that he was right. I told him that he wasn't a genius for stating something obvious. But then he told me to actually think about it and what that meant for the people I love or for myself. Spontaneously, I thought about our friendship. If someone would have told me a year ago that I would find not one best friend but three then I wouldn't believe them. But here I am.

Harry knew that a lot could change in a year. It had happened more than he could count. More often than not, the changes had happened so much faster than that. One moment in time had taken his parents away from him. That change hadn't taken more than a few seconds. The same amount of time had changed his life for the better when he found out that the man who was meant to take care of him was innocent of the crime that he had been found guilty for and could after that take care of him for real. There were a lot of moments he thought about which had changed his world and turned it upside down. But the moment that he couldn't stop thinking about was the moment when he found out that Hermione Granger didn't think of him as only a friend.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Hermione looked away from Draco to face him. He was leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest and when their eyes met he couldn't help but tilt his head to the side. There was a slight blush on her cheeks and then she looked away but she was still aware of the fact that he was looking at her. Harry could feel his heart beat a little bit quicker. There was something about her smile. He wondered if he had just noticed that or if he had always known. He also couldn't help but wonder if he had always felt differently about her than others or if he had realised after a year of not seeing her as often as he used to? He didn't know the answers to those questions. But then again, maybe it didn't matter what the answers were. All he knew was that something had changed between them at some point during the year that had gone by and Harry was happy about that change whenever or however it had occurred.

"Why are you looking at each other like that?" Ron asked and forced Harry to tear his attention away from Hermione. Their redheaded best friend looked utterly confused while the blond teenager on Harry's right side merely shook his head while amusement flickered across his face.

Hermione shrugged. "We're not looking at each other differently. But now that you're paying attention to something other than your food, what did you say about Dumbledore and looking weird this morning?"

It was surprisingly easy to get Ron to think about something else. When their headmaster was mentioned he nodded as if being reminded and wasted no time to change the subject. "I was wondering if you know why he looked so weird this morning?"

"Was that it?" Draco asked with a slightly snarky tone in his voice and Harry bumped his shoulder. The fact that he had abandoned his parents and realised that they had been wrong about everything they thought him didn't mean that he all of the sudden liked Ron.

No, Draco still thought that the redheaded teenager had very little manners to go with his lack of braincells, charm and overall ability to be funny. Even if he no longer insulted the boy out loud, or even by muttering quietly to himself, Draco still thought about what he could have said if it wasn't for Harry.

"Yes," Harry said and broke the tension which had slowly built up between the two still semi-rivals. "Well, us, Sirius and Penny. Mostly Sirius and Penny."

"Mostly Penny…" Draco added with a smile on his face.

Harry shrugged. "I'd say mostly you."

Dumbledore's office had surely seen its fair share of awkward scenes and weird combinations of people over the years. But Harry was willing to bet money that the tension had never been quite this thick before. The saying, that one could cut through the tension with a knife wasn't strong enough to describe the feeling of discomfort and straight hostility which seemed to fill the entire room without much effort.

"Miss. Singh, would you like to have a seat?"

Harry, Draco and Sirius all sat down in front of Dumbledore's desk but Penny had opted for standing even if there was an empty chair for her next to Sirius. She squinted her eyes at the headmaster as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. There was no denying the hostility which radiated from her entire body towards the person she clearly felt was responsible for everything that had gone wrong the past few years. Harry could, out of the corner of his eye, see Sirius smiling since he was doing a bad attempt at hiding his smile behind his hand.

"I'm fine where I am, thank you," Penny replied as she took a step forward and put one hand on each of Sirius shoulders. "This meeting shouldn't take long."

There was a challenging tone in the last sentence but if Dumbledore heard it then he decided not to take the bait. He looked at Harry instead. His fingers were intervened and his head slightly tilted forward so that his eyes were no longer hidden behind his glasses. Draco looked as amused as Sirius but without making any effort what so ever to hide his feelings. That was partially the reason why Harry struggled to do the same. No one could describe the situation as fun but it could be described as strange. Both teenage boys were sure that Dumbledore had never been told that something was going to happen instead of being asked. Because that is what had happened. Sirius hadn't asked if Harry and Draco could live with him; Sirius had told Dumbledore that they were going to live with him. That had brought on the silence which neither of the two teenagers had wanted to break. And when Dumbledore eventually broke it, he did so to ask Penny if she wanted to sit down. The short dialogue had made the situation weirder. Harry was on the verge of asking if the old man had heard what Sirius said when he opened his mouth.

"I'm not sure that this is a good idea." He spoke with the same calmness as ever.

Harry could feel the anger burning inside of him, not uncontrollable like a wildfire but a burning never the less. He rolled his eyes.

"That doesn't matter, Professor, that doesn't matter one bit," Sirius sounded as calm, if not calmer than Dumbledore, but they didn't sound the same. "When Harry was born his parents decided that he would go into my care if anything happened to them. Thanks to some unfortunate events I have been unable to take care of him before but that problem has been solved now."

Harry saw movement out of the corner of his eye and when he turned around he looked into the fierce face of Penny. She looked at Dumbledore as if she was asking him to contradict Sirius, to argue against him letting Harry move in with him. Just like Harry could see when the wheels were turning around in Hermione's head, he could see that Penny had some well-chosen words on the tip of her tongue which she couldn't wait to attack Dumbledore with. But she didn't and wouldn't unless he gave her a reason to. Harry had learned quickly that she was fierce but she wasn't argumentative for nothing.

"Mr. Black, I'm sure that you want what's best for Mr. Potter so surely you can see that the best thing for him would be to let him go back to the Dursleys."

Everyone expected Harry to respond but he wasn't the one who laughed out loud. It was Draco. The blond teenager held his hands over his stomach as he looked between Dumbledore and Harry and were, for a moment, only able to wheeze out random words. Only Harry could tell that he was overdoing it and that he didn't find the comments funny what so ever.

"That's funny Dumbledore," he said after having laughed for a few minutes. He pretended to remove tears from the corners of his eyes. "Obviously, you've never met the Dursleys before. I can't say that I've met a lot of muggles but they have got to be the worst muggles in the country. If nothing else, amongst the worst people ever."

"And you would know that how, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Because I went there once last summer," Draco responded without any emotions in his face. "And let me tell you, they treated Harry about as well as my parents treat me. You probably didn't know and you probably didn't care but that means not very good. So, you better think very hard and long about what you say next old man because it's going to require some seriously good arguments for me to even consider going back to my parents or for me to let you send Harry back to those horrible creatures."

Harry had never seen Dumbledore looked shocked and he wasn't sure that the old man knew how to make the facial expression to match the emotions that went on inside his body. But he assumed that the expression on his face at that moment was the closest he could get to being shocked. Sirius looked as if he was ready to walk over and pat Draco on the back but somehow managed to keep himself from doing so. Penny had a smile on her face which went away when Dumbledore looked at her. The headmaster looked as if he realised that there was no battle for him to fight. He couldn't smooth things over and he couldn't convince anyone to do what he wanted. Because they weren't fighting him, they were merely informing him about what was going to happen once the two teenagers left school and there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening.

"I guess that there is nothing more to be said." Dumbledore eventually said as he looked between the four people.

Penny scoffed. "A lot can me said, professor. I have a lot to say about the way that you have been acting for the past years but if I were to talk about everything that you have done wrong then we'd be here all night and quite frankly I don't wish to stay in this office that long. But what I can say is that you have hurt these people so much. You have hurt children, teenagers, adults and you keep hurting them today because of your horrible decisions. I can't stop you from making bad decisions but I can stop you from affecting these people in this room any further and I will do anything to protect them from you. That means that if you even think about doing anything to them I will stop you. Is that understood?"

Harry and Draco shared a glance as they waited for Dumbledore to rise and say something to show how much he disliked what Penny had just said. But the old man didn't say anything and it was hard to say why. But no one felt like questioning it.

"Thank you for seeing us, professor." Sirius said as he got up from his chair. "We'll be going now."

Draco and Harry remained seated in their chairs. Harry mostly because of the fact that Dumbledore was looking at him in a way which made the raven-haired teenager wonder if he was going to say something. He could tell, judging by the way Draco didn't take his eyes from the headmaster that the blond young man thought the very same thing.

"Do you have anything you wish to add, Harry?"

There was a lot of things that he could add to the things that had already been said. Harry could tell Dumbledore more about what it had been like living with the Dursleys and he could have told him about the relief which took over his entire body when he was told by Sirius that he wouldn't have to go back there. But there was no reason for him to say those words. He didn't have to tell the old man about the scars, both physical and physiological, that living with the Dursleys had resulted in. Harry couldn't help but wonder if Dumbledore knew or if telling him would make the headmaster feel bad about what he had done. Harry doubted it. One the one hand he wanted to give the old man the benefit of a doubt but on the other hand he found it hard that the all-knowing man who sat in front of him had no idea about what was going on inside the four walls of Private Drive. So, Harry tilted his head to the side and shrugged.

"Just that I'm excited to see my new home, sir."

Ron nodded while letting out a deep breath. "Yeah, that explains it. I'm pretty sure that not getting his will through is a new experience for Dumbledore."

Harry couldn't argue with that fact. Penny had confirmed his and Draco's suspicious when her and Sirius had said that they were going to get everything settled. It was interesting to think about what that meant in practice. Because among other things, that meant that they would be going to see the Dursleys. Harry partially wanted to be there for that meeting just like Draco had partially wanted to be there when they went to see his parents. He couldn't imagine what Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy would do when Penny and Sirius made themselves known in the Malfoy manor. He was usually not the person to let his imagination run freely but it was hard not to considering everything that could happen.

"Maybe that was a good thing," Hermione said with a shrug. "I think that most new experiences are."

Harry could hear Draco scoff as Hermione looked over at him with a small smile playing on her face. Ron was the only one who appeared to be completely unaware of the signs. Or maybe he saw them but didn't think that they meant anything. Harry was unsure of what to think. Ron was a lot of things and occasionally that meant that he wasn't the most observant person in the entire world.

"Either way," Draco said and efficiently earned their attention. "It was a good day."

Harry could only agree. But his reason for thinking that it was a good idea wasn't entirely the same as Draco's. The biggest reason, of course, was that he could finally leave the Dursleys and live with someone who actually cared about his well-being. The other reason made him subconsciously smile and there was nothing he could do to stop himself.

Harry sat alone in the couch in the Common Room, fidgeting with his fingers, on the day before it was time to go home. Normally, he would be feeling rubbish at the thought of going back to the Dursleys. Because he knew that he would be forced to deal with months of endless hostility and insults. No one could think badly of him for not looking forward to that. But for the first time, Harry didn't feel worried. Because he wasn't going home to the Dursleys. He was going somewhere else and even if he didn't know exactly where that was, Harry felt a certain calm and relief spread through his body.

"Are you still here?"

Hermione stood at the top of the stairs with one hand resting on the railing. In that moment, it was obvious that she looked at him differently than she did Ron and Harry almost wanted to hit himself for not having realised it before.

"Yeah," he said with his body slightly twisted so that he could see her walking down the stairs. "I wanted to talk to you before we went down for dinner."

Hermione hummed. "About what?"

Harry had faced one of the darkest wizards to have walked the earth. He had faced more dementors than he could count and every summer he spent with three people, whom were supposed to be his family, that hated him actively. Neither of those things made him nervous. He disliked all of them but none of them made his heart beat faster the way it did in that very moment when Hermione sat down in front of him on the couch. He had every word on the tip of his tongue, now all he had to do was say them to her.

"I like you," Harry, like every other teenager, had watched movies. Every declaration between people that they felt more towards someone than friendship was done with comparisons that his thirteen-year-old brain could not come up with; they all expressed feelings that his thirteen-year-old heart had never experienced before. So, Harry, being a thirteen-year-old boy couldn't say what he had seen so many others say. All he could tell Hermione was the very thing that he had been avoiding telling her the entire year and that was the truth. And the truth was that he liked Hermione. "I don't like you as I like Ron and Draco. They're my best friends. I like you in a different way and that may not be what you want me to say but I don't know what else to tell you."

Due to having been Hermione's best friend for three years, Harry believed that he had seen every one of her smiles; he believed that he had heard every laughter or sound that she could make. But he had never seen the smile that erupted on her face before. There was a certain spark in her brown eyes which Harry couldn't describe and the smile looked more genuine and heartfelt than any other smile he had ever seen. Everything about Hermione Granger, in that moment, was indescribable as was the feelings that ran through his body at the realisation that he had only ever seen her look like that at him. Harry couldn't help but feel special.

"That's perfect," Hermione replied as she leaned forward and rested her hands against each of his shoulder. She gently leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for telling me the truth, Harry."

"Speaking of good days," Hermione said and pointed at Draco. For some reason, those two had gotten along easier than Draco did with Ron. When Harry asked the blond teenager about it he merely rolled his eyes and said that she could hold an intelligent conversation and didn't eat as if she had never seen food before in her life. "Snape did not have a good day today."

Draco couldn't help but smile at the thought. It didn't take much to ruin Snape's days but that didn't make it any less rewarding.

James always says that a lot can happen in a year This isn't the first time that I have written this but I needed to write about it again. I have learned that, and so many other things, during my time at Hogwarts so far. It's a very comforting thought to have considering what we're facing. Right now, the world is not a beautiful place. Well, it's not only a beautiful place. There are people out in the world who wants to hurt others for being different from them and the idea that a lot can change is a truly optimistic one. Because that means that in a year, this battle could be over and the world could be a nice place again. I seriously doubt it but it's not totally impossible. After all, a lot can change in a year.

Draco thought about that very passage from the diary during the train ride back to London. A smile graced his face as he partially leaned his back against the window to get a better view of the compartment. He hadn't cut his blond hair in a year and his blond locks reached to his shoulders where they gracefully hung without getting in the way of his eyes or his mouth. He had gained weight since starting school and didn't look as scrawny as he had in the beginning of the year. Snape had looked at him as if he had grown an extra head when he came into the Great Hall wearing a leather jacket, torn up jeans and a pair of black combat boots to breakfast. He had been in a conversation with McGonagall, probably about Harry as the teen in question sat by the table with one teacher on each side. When Snape had seen Draco, he stopped talking and his mouth fell open as if he hadn't seen the leather jacket before. He probably hadn't either. A lot could be said about Snape, one of those things were that the man wasn't very observant on what went on amongst the Slytherin-students.

"Mr. Malfoy, what…" Draco shared a smile, and winked at Harry, before focusing on his teacher who looked as if he was struggling to come up with the next word in the sentence. "… do you think you're doing?"

"Eating breakfast, Professor." Draco replied easily, as if he had never been asked a more stupid question before, and with one of his eyebrows slightly raised and the ghost of an amused smile on his face.

Snape took his time before answering. Draco was used to waiting for his teacher to find the words. He knew that it wasn't because Snape was stupid, it was merely the way he spoke, but every time the teacher spoke Draco couldn't help but think that it took a very long time for him to find the right words for whatever he wanted to say. "Are you aware of the fact that this is the wrong table?"

The blond teenager thought about playing surprised about where he had ended up but decided against it. He wasn't in the mood for making fun of his teacher even if Sirius had set an amusing example the night before. "I wasn't aware that it was against to rule to sit at another table."

"It's not, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall replied before Snape had even managed to form the words in his head. Her voice sounded almost giddy and Draco couldn't help but think that it was because of the fact that someone from Slytherin wanted to sit with the Gryffindor's instead of with the rest of his house. She glanced at Snape with that just barely hidden smugness which only came out when Gryffindor won a quidditch game against Slytherin. "Let the poor boy eat his breakfast."

Draco didn't know what was going to happen in the moment that followed. He knew that it was illegal to hit students but a part of him almost suspected that Snape was going to hit him anyway. There was a flash of badly suppressed anger in his eyes which reminded the blond teenager of his father. But unlike Snape, Lucius would have said something or done something. Snape didn't. He only scoffed at the scene that had unfolded, as if he was struggling to come to terms with what had actually happened, and then he turned around with his cloak dramatically sweeping behind him. McGonagall winked at Draco who sat down next to the empty spot next to Harry. His raven-coloured hair was messy, as per always, and there was an amused smile on his face.

"You look better." Harry commented while pushing his glasses closer to his emerald eyes.

Draco shrugged as he reached for an egg and some bread. "I always look good, Potter. But thank you."

He saw Hermione Granger, sitting on the opposite side of the two, with a calm yet confused smile on her face. Her curly brown hair, a completely different type of curls than his own, was pushed back in a loose braid to keep it out of her face. She hadn't managed to get all of it to stick and strands had gotten loose. Draco wouldn't claim that he knew her very well but he did notice that there was something different about the way she smiled this morning.

"I am never going to get used to the two of you being friends." She said while shaking her head.

Harry looked at her while reaching for his third piece of toast. He was going to take two but looked as if he remembered something and opted for only one more. "You will definitely get used to it and so will the rest of the school. They have no other choice."

The group of teenagers laughed with each other instead of laughing at someone and Harry nudged Draco and spoke in a tone so that only Draco could hear him. "Pretty good start on the summer holiday, right?"

"A shocking one," Draco replied with a smile. "But yeah, pretty damn good."

If anyone would have told Draco when he found that diary that he would find himself sitting in the same compartment on the train as Harry, Ron and Hermione then he would have laughed in their faces. Harry would have told the person in question that he had never heard anything as ridiculous before. And who could blame them? After two years of fighting each other they had both left scars on the other, scars that other people and they included never thought would be able to heal. But by chance, or maybe it was destiny, life had given them the chance in the form of a diary to heal the old scars and mend their hearts for the future.

The end