Finally, after about half a minute passed where he didn't respond at all, Harry snapped out of his indecision, sat up in the bed and regarded the Delacours. "It will probably come as no surprise to either of you ladies that no one has ever seen what I'm about to show you. I shower alone and I wear long sleeved clothing even to this day because I will not be pitied... In the last five weeks, they've improved in appearance due to my body's rapid transformation. They're silver and smooth now rather than red, angry and bumpy. Nonetheless, they're still... dramatic... ugly."
Taking a long and shuddering breath, Harry slowly rose to his feet and then walked into the center of the room.
Appoline and Fleur pulled Adrien onto the couch, where they wrapped their arms around his torso seeking comfort. As Adrien began to understand what he was about to see, his face turned pale in concern.
Fleur looked especially affected by what Harry was about to reveal. She was sitting up, leaning forward and staring at the boy as if he might try to run.
As Adrien stared at his eldest daughter, she suddenly turned back towards him and begged for patience with her eyes. Adrien began to understand that his daughter was about to do what she thought was necessary, and she didn't really care what it would look like. Adrien slowly nodded his head. He could kind of guess what she had in mind.
In the center of the room, Harry continued to look away from Fleur, Appoline and Adrien. While he was well-aware that it was irrational, he was terrified of their reaction to his current appearance. Logically speaking, Harry knew that the Delacours weren't going to be unnecessarily judgmental about his appearance. Not even Fleur at her bitchiest had anywhere near that level of cruelty in her. Knowing that didn't seem to make what he was about to do any easier…
At exactly the same time, Harry knew that Fleur was right. He couldn't continue living the way he was. He needed to truly put the past behind him.
Fine... He was going to show them.
Despite his tenuous resolve, Harry didn't want to see their faces when he started the reveal, because he knew he'd chicken out if he did. Wrapping his fingers around the hemline of his large, messy sweater, he took one last calming breath and got to work. Slowly at first, but then all at once in a determined movement, Harry ripped off his sweater. Next he did the same with his jogging pants.
When he was done, Harry stared at the far wall in nothing but a pair of dark blue boxers.
Sure enough, Harry heard three separate heavy and startled gasps. He suddenly found that he was freezing in the warm air of the living room, and he might even be shivering a bit. Not much, but a bit. Time seemed to slow down because Harry was too much of a damned coward to turn around. He didn't want to know...
Several moments of painful quiet followed, as Harry stood there frozen in the middle of the room. Then, with no warning whatsoever, there was a hand gently pressing into the skin of Harry's lower back. It was a small, cool, and smooth hand, and it slowly trailed the whorls and splotches covering his back. Nothing had been said yet, but Harry found the tension in his body easing as he focused on that hand...
The hand started low and slowly rose, finding all the different points of interest as it crawled up Harry's back. When it encountered particularly large pockets of silvery skin, the hand always dwelt there, slowly, gently tracing them… and Harry shivered for more than one reason... Historically, his scars had always been sore, but nowadays they were just sensitive to the touch.
When the hand trailed up towards his shoulder, Harry could sense that he was about to be turned around… As he predicted, the hand started pushing gently on the back of his right shoulder, and he turned as he was led, but with his eyes averted left and down.
Starting low again, the hand started rubbing against Harry's lower stomach. His well developed abdominal muscles were actually something he took pride in nowadays, but the view was ruined by what covered them. Same as before, whorls and lines of silvery scars dominated the landscape. The hand trailed up the length of his stomach, following the scars but noting the muscle. It was more of a whole hand rubbing him now taking in more of his skin. It rose slowly, following whatever lines or definition took its notice.
Harry was definitely trembling now. There would be no denials later, because this was blatantly obvious.
The hand rose to just under Harry's chest, where it rubbed across his sternum and then paused atop his collar-bone. Then the hand rubbed downwards towards his left pectoral muscle, where it stopped over the single most disgusting thing that had ever been done to his body.
The hand slowly traced the letters, beginning with the F, a finger moved over slightly to an R, it rubbed over an inch to an E, It swept down and back up to an A, and finally slid over and found the K.
The soft hand was resting over Harry's heart atop his chest where lies the burn scar of the word FREAK, immortalized in silvery skin. Fleur Delacour, the most beautiful woman in the whole damned world, was exploring every last inch of his deepest, darkest, most secret shame…
....
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