The End That Wasn’t
The silence was the first thing Draco noticed when they returned to the Manor.
Not the silence he grew up with — the curated hush of house-elves gliding over polished floors, the hush Lucius demanded when the Prophet arrived, when guests lingered in the drawing room and appearances had to be maintained. This silence was heavier. Clotted. The kind that settles after a storm that should have wiped you off the map, but didn’t.
Draco stood just inside the entrance hall, shoes still scuffed with the dirt of the Great Hall floor. The sleeves of his robes hung stiff with dried blood — not his. He couldn’t even remember whose. Maybe Crabbe’s. Maybe someone else who hadn’t made it out.
The peacocks were still out front. Their feathers dragged through the mud, soaked and streaked with filth, as if even they had been abandoned to rot. The air in the Manor stank of magic turned sour — the afterbirth of too many spells cast in fear, in fury, in vain.
Narcissa’s hand landed briefly on his shoulder. The gesture was so foreign it felt like a misfire, like her hand had meant to land somewhere else and missed. They had all touched each other too much today — dragging, pulling, pleading — and now, even the gentlest touch felt obscene.
“Go upstairs, darling,” she said quietly, her voice thin and delicate as a frayed ribbon. “Clean up.”
He went. Not because he wanted to, but because he didn’t know how to stay.
Upstairs, his bedroom door stood slightly ajar, half-stripped by house-elves after the last raid weeks ago. The bed was made, but wrong — the corners not as sharp, the pillows slightly off-center, like even the linens knew they didn’t belong to him anymore.
The mirror above the dresser caught him. His reflection stood there like a stranger: paler, thinner, more wreckage than person. His hands shook as he unfastened the buttons of his robe. When the fabric hit the floor, the scars across his chest caught the light — faint pink still, like the skin couldn’t decide whether to forget or remember.
He traced them absently, fingers following the paths Harry Potter had carved into him. Seven years of rivalry, boiled down to a single splitting spell — a bright red line dividing before and after.
He should hate him for that.
He should hate him for a lot of things.
Instead, Draco sat down on the edge of his bed and felt nothing at all.
Outside, the peacocks screamed into the night.
---
The silence was the first thing Harry noticed after Voldemort fell.
There was noise, technically — footsteps, crying, the ragged edge of cheering — but none of it got in. Everything felt underwater. The kind of silence left behind after a spell strong enough to split the air, leaving a vacuum in its wake.
Harry stood in the center of it, his face sticky with sweat and blood, body vibrating with adrenaline that had nowhere left to go. The Elder Wand hung loose in his hand, useless now. As useless as every prophecy, headline, and whispered name that had ever brought him here.
Ron and Hermione were talking to him. He could see their mouths moving, but none of the words reached him. They were smiling — relieved — but Harry couldn’t rise to match it. There was nothing left in him to float back to the surface.
Across the hall, the Malfoys stood at the very edge of the crowd. Narcissa’s arm hooked through Lucius’s, as if she was the only thing keeping him upright. Draco stood slightly apart, colorless, looking at nothing.
They didn’t belong here.
But neither did Harry.
His feet carried him out before anyone could stop him, through the ruined doorway, down the stone steps. The air outside was cleaner, colder, sharp with early morning frost. He didn’t mean to keep walking, but his body had momentum, and momentum felt easier than stillness.
He walked until the castle was at his back, past the smoldering treeline where the Forbidden Forest had caught fire. Hagrid’s hut stood intact somehow — a crooked silhouette against the paling sky. Harry stopped there, hands hanging limp at his sides, staring at the horizon until the sun began to rise — pale and indifferent.
Somewhere, in a pocket he didn’t remember filling, his fingers found a cigarette. Seamus, probably. Harry didn’t smoke, not really, but it felt like something to do. Something that belonged to someone else.
The first drag burned, but that was fine.
Everything burned.
---
Draco stood at his bedroom window, watching the sky turn the exact shade of bruised purple that always comes after a Cruciatus fades. His fingers rested on the glass, ghosting over the outline of his own reflection. His chest ached, though he wasn’t sure from what — bruised ribs, hexes, or just the sheer act of breathing through it all.
Across the countryside, the horizon stretched itself thin, turning gold at the edges, like a promise or a lie.
He wondered if Potter was watching the same sky.
The thought should have embarrassed him. Should have made him turn away. Instead, he stood there until the light washed everything clean, until the bruises on his skin blended into the pale morning.
He wanted it to be over.
Harry exhaled smoke into the sunrise and thought the same thing.
Both wrong.