Oh so very short and fluffy.

I don't own Harry Potter.

Scars

Severus ran gentle fingers along the body of the woman who lay sleeping beside him in his bed. The pale skin of her back seemed to glow in the moonlight from the window.

"What are you doing?" she asked sleepily as his fingers brushed the raised letters carved into her forearm. He knew the scar made her uncomfortable, uncomfortable enough that she never went out in public without casting a glamour charm over the skin there first. He would murder Bellatrix if she was still alive – Azkaban and all other consequences be damned.

His fingers traced each letter carefully.

"Severus…" Her voice held a tinge of a warning. "You know how I feel about them."

Severus knew exactly how Hermione Granger felt about her scars. He had seen the guarded look in her amber eyes the first time he had seen her without her glamours up. He knew they made her feel dirty and broken, and he wished that he could keep her nightmares from coming back to her when she looked in the mirror and saw the scar tissue marring her perfect skin.

"I think they're beautiful," he replied easily, and when he felt her disbelief in the tension of her shoulders, he reassured, "Really. You see them as ugly and imperfect. You wish to hide them and pretend they aren't there, and I agree with you only in the sense that I wish you never had to experience the pain that caused them. But they do not make me find you any less attractive, nor will they ever make me love you any less. Your scars are a part of you, and I love you all the more for having them."

She leaned back into the warmth of his body, and his fingers – which had paused in their gentle movements – began tracing patterns on her skin again.

"Like this one." He traced the faded 'Mudblood' on her skin. "It reminds me that you were brave enough to stand up to one of the most wretched, evil women that ever disgraced this planet. Even when it would have been easiest to just give in, you never did." He would have kissed the scar, but he couldn't quite reach it in his current position, so he settled for her neck instead.

His hands trailed across her stomach until they found her hip. "And this one." His fingertips played along the edges of the long scar that ran across torso, following the angry pink line until it ended at her shoulder. "This one reminds me that you are loyal enough to run into battle for the people you love, even if you have little chance of winning. I know I already mentioned how brave you are, but Merlin. I respect your courage so much, Hermione, and I only wish that I had the compassion that comes with yours." It was easy enough to press a kiss to the back of the same shoulder that the scar touched.

He found her hand this time, running his thumb over the four little scars on her right wrist. "This one is my favorite, because it's so mundane." His thumb brushed over the scars once more, and he paused. "What is this from?"

Hermione giggled, lifting her arm so that they could look at the scars on the back of her hand and wrist. "Muggle surgery."

Severus seemed to be torn between painful curiosity and shocked horror. "You let a muggle cut open your precious skin?"

"It was over the summer a few years ago. I was away from Hogwarts, and my mother had signed me up for some awful basketball camp in a last-ditch effort to keep me from withering away with only books for company all summer. As if I didn't already know that sports disagree with me, I tore a ligament, and my only option was to have a muggle doctor operate on it while I was home," she explained quickly. Then, finding herself curious as well, she asked, "Why is this one your favorite?"

He grinned sheepishly. "It reminds me of Leo Major, if only you added marks here, here, and here." She barely felt the touch of his fingertip against the back of her hand. "But now it is truly my favorite, for in the middle of a war, you still managed to injure yourself in the most foolish of ways." She looked as if she were about to protest, so he continued, "And in the midst of all of your scars caused by dark magic and true evil, you have one caused by some dunderheaded muggle's scalpel."

Her giggled morphed into a full laugh, shaking her body and the bed. "You see my surgery scars as a constellation," she managed to choke out, and her laugh was so contagious that even Severus smiled against her shoulder. "Of all possible things to be upset about, you're disturbed that I had muggle surgery."

"Disturbed, no. Startled, maybe. Amused, definitely," he replied, still holding her hand.

She turned to face him, and he watched, mesmerized, as the moonlight threw shadows across the soft features of her face. "I love you." She leaned up to kiss him. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For reminding me that my scars don't define me."

He smiled. "Perhaps not, but I happen to like them. Nearly as much as I love you."

Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.

Criminal Minds