I Fight Like I Will Fall (and maybe I will)
Elara has prepared herself to face her father since she's learned of his name.
There were thousands of scenarios, nestled deep into her mind, fragments of wants and bitterness that Elara, at her weakest, could not help but conjure.
Most of the time, he's on his knees before her, crimson on his cheeks and her name on his lips with a plea for mercy he never deigned to give to his own wife and child.
Other times, she surprises him in the dark and he does not realize she is his child before Death comes and claims him too.
She has prepared herself a thousand time and more for this event, yet, now that it has come, she is floundering as if the ground beneath her feet has caved in and she's drowning.
He's been happy.
That is the first thing she notices.
Indignation and bitterness makes her jaw clench. The laugh lines - that make his regal features softer than the murderer he is - look ill-placed on him, a cruel joke for her eyes only because how can he be so happy when he took everything from her?
How can he be so happy when the ruins of her life rest at his feet?
"Aha," the older man exclaims, a grin so unfamiliar that it steals her very breath etched on his face as he tugs her closer, an arm around her neck. Elara tenses at that, at having such a vulnerable spot exposed, in her father's grip.
Elara knows well how frail and delicate necks can be, and Sirius Black, with his callous hands and track record, should not be anywhere hers.
"You're the rookie who sucker punched Harry!" the Head of the Task Force exclaims, whistling as if impressed. He then turns her to better face him, to get a good look at the small slip of a girl that has gotten a hand on Harry Potter.
Silver meets dark brown, a stranger meets his wayward daughter, and he does not react. Only laughs once more, ruffles her hair as he pats her back with a well-done.
Like giving a treat to a stray dog, her father expects the orphan of his files to lap up the praise and Elara does, because she had once been raised longing for her father, longing for the man who was to return to them, glorious and promising a perfect world.
"It's not that big of a deal," Harry mutters, arms crossed. Elara would have thought him mad if there wasn't an amused glint to his eyes and a teasing pout on his lips.
It's odd.
Elara has always imagined the Order members as faceless, careless soldiers. Traitors who traded their hearts for filth, abandoning their duty to avenge their fallen kin, more interested in power than getting back what they are rightfully owned.
Instead, she finds in the other side someone that echoes Blaise's temper, a girl with Daphne's wittiness and a boy with her brother's ruthlessness, though she will never admit it to him lest her brother starts another war.
However, none of those thoughts linger on Elara's burrowed face, angelic with dark chocolate for hair and warm eyes, so different from the features that Sirius Black holds hostage. Instead, she tilts her head, throwing a teasing smirk at Potter. "How's the nose? Not too sore?"
Potter nods, giving her a thumbs-up to highlight his pristine condition. His face is neither bruised nor bloody and she can only attribute it to the Order's healing abilities. Another thing that Elara, quite frankly, holds against those traitors who have the monopoly on all healing ressources yet will never bring themselves to truly kill their opponents. Instead, Elara has learned to live along the whimpers of the dead, so injured and shattered under the Order's assaults that ending their life is a mercy most beg for. There's only some pain one can go through, after all.
Elara nods seriously, pretending to think. "And the ego?"
Someone laughs at that. He's a redhead, with blue eyes and freckles almost everywhere on his lean face. His clothes too are secondhand, though well taken cared of.
A Weasley, surely.
Another traitor.
"His ego could be worse," the newcomer adds, responds to her and Elara's smile is no pure falsehood for the redhead's good cheer at Potter's expense makes her think of bickering in the empty rooms of their Manor, splendor thick yet derived of any warmth. The traitor then extends a hand to her. "Ron Weasley," he presents himself.
Ah, she was right.
"Sera White."
"Interesting name," Potter quips from his spot. "Wanna make it better?"
Elara glances at him from underneath her lashes, a coy smile playing at her lips. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Weasley repeatedly making a cutting gesture to his throat while shaking his head.
"Hmm? Be my guest."
Potter grins. It catches her by surprise, how brilliant and wide it is, and her breath catches itself in her throat.
Cute, she cannot help but think, brown eyes fixed on the handsome grin that makes his eyes crinkle, and a dimple appears.
"If we add Potter to it."
There's a pause. Her smile stays fixed on her lips, frozen in sheer disbelief.
(no one has ever dared to tease her with such recklessness, too busy they are either whispering about her family or cowering in face of her Lord's eyes that she wears like a shield and a promise.
Potter is the first.
She doesn't know how to feel about it)
"Harry-"
"Potter-"
Elara and Ron turn to each other in their mutual and synchronized response.
Harry, she supposes she should start calling him that too at one point, chuckles almost sheepishly, a hand rubbing the back of his neck, at their answer.
"Too much?" he asks. He almost looks like a kicked puppy, ears downcasted and though his hair is a mess with a mind of its own, Elara somehow longs to ruffle those ebony locks, if only to see him perk up and smile.
But she does not because before she is Sera White, she is her father's abandonned daughter, the sacrifice while Potter is the worshipped.
it would feel like a disservice to her lady mother who died because she dared to love someone who could never truly love her.
it would feel a betrayal to the cause she has pledged to.
(it would feel too real)
Instead, Elara nods while Ron, seemingly used to Harry's antics, cannot help but bite back.
"Not shit Sherlock."
"Fucking" *swat* "dumbass." *swat*
"For Merlin's sake, Ron!" Harry yells, shoving his best mate to the side before the redhead can hit him once more on the head. Despite having grown together and eaten pretty much the same bland meals between missions, his friend has shot up in the last year, surpassing even Harry by at least half a head, which the other boy gleefully takes advantage of. "Stop hitting me!"
"No," Ron snorts another laugh, swatting Harry on the head once more for good measure. "Not till you regain a semblance of intelligence."
"That's rich coming from you," Harry retorts, ruffling his hair into a semblance of a stylish mess as he checks himself quickly with a window's reflection. "Isn't Hermione pissed at you again?"
"Yeah," Ron deflates at that, pursing his lips at the thought of his girlfriend's anger for his and Harry quotes, 'emotional stupidity that not even a baby could hope to replicate.' "But at least I didn't chase her away with corny jokes the second time I met her".
Harry pouts. "I didn't chase her away."
"No," Ron concedes. Which is odd, and Harry braces himself for his friend's shooting his parade down with a smile. "You just weirded her out."
Harry rubs the back of his neck. "At least," he starts. "At least she's not gonna forget me now." His voice perks up, hopeful and dazed, the first love of a boy turned man by the hands of their ruthless enemy.
"Because forgetting the boy whose nose you broke is that much easier," a voice remarks with a chuckle.
Harry glances back, catches sight of a warm smile and brown eyes and beams. "White!" He exclaims.
"Potter," Sera White greets. She joins Harry and Ron, slipping into their dynamic as if there had always been a spot waiting for her, a spot carved at Harry's side, just waiting for her smile.
"Weasley."
Harry turns glaring eyes at his best friend who raises his hands defensively, a cheeky grin on his lips that makes him look that much more like the demon twins.
Sera laughs.
It's bright.
But shy.
Yet Harry still laughs, still joins her and he thinks that he could get used to this.
could get used to the illusion, not that he knew of it.
Elara is Viper, one of her lord's best commanders, and she has grown up with the weight of her people's lives on her shoulders, has grown up knowing people will die at her command.
It is a fact she has learned to make peace with, one that her Lord reminds her is necessary.
"But should we not try and save those who are loyal to us?" Elara asks as she sits on her Lord's desk.
Her Lord looks up from his papers, crimson eyes wrinkling. "You can try," he says softly, his tongue curling around the harsher sounds like a snake constricting around its prey. "And lose everything."
"But what if I don't lose everything?"
The air becomes colder. Long, almost skeletal-like fingers grasp her cheeks into a tight, unforgiving grip as they tilt Elara's chin up till she sees nothing else but her Lord. "Are you willing to risk it, dear?" his voice is soft, the blade hidden beneath velvet. "Are you willing to sacrifice our dream for a single person?"
Elara knows the answer. It's a logical one, cold and sharp-edged.
But Mother has always said that a Black is most powerful when she has something to lose, when she loves and is loved, and it is a lonely thing to sacrifice anyone and everyone for a dream.
"Elara."
Bruises bloom beneath his touch.
It isn't anything new, and like always, Elara folds beneath her Lord's demanding hands, slumps till only his grip is holding her head upward as she closes her eyes.
"No," she breathes and she feels as though she has just dug a grave.
Now, the question is: who is the grave for?
So yes, Elara as Viper has always known that she could not save everyone though she might try.
But at least- at least she had fought for everyone she had lost.
They had died knowing their captain bled to bring them back.
It might not seem much in the greater scheme of things, perhaps, but Elara thinks it worse to die believing no one will come. To die knowing that you are among the numbers, a faceless corpse among thousands.
Now, well, she cannot do anything as the Police Task storms into Goyle's Manor, guns drawn and shouting orders for the Death Eaters to freeze lest they get shot.
Tracey, who had been lounging in the leather couch, freezes, a hand holding through the pages of the contract she was reading.
what is she doing there?
Her subordinate looks scared, terrified, but there is a knowing gleam to her eyes as she gazes at Elara, recognizing her even through the disguise.
Kin recognizing kin.
Once, the very sight of Elara would have been enough to soothe away Tracey's furrowed brow, the clench of her jaw. Now, it does little, because Elara is Sera before she is Viper.
The brown-haired girl is duty bound to her cover, and their Lord's mission and will, comes before everything else.
Tracey seems to understand, the two of them holding the bonds of a fraying war close to the heart, their shared lessons of loyalty akin a kin's relationship.
But for all of their bond, for all of those years spent training and breaking together to be remolded by their Lord's hands, it does cannot change the cold reality.
Elara will not move to save Tracey.
And Tracey will not begrudge Elara for it.
It might sound cruel, and somewhere, Elara is sure that her beloved mother's ghost weeps at the cruelty the world has given birth to since her death, since the utter failure of a husband turned his back to a perfect world.
But it is the Death Eater's way.
The only way that matters.
but something aches in her chest, aches and protests and she thinks it has her childhood voice, all softness and naivety.
"Drop the papers," Weasley says through his mask. His voice is rougher there, cold and clinical as he aims his gun straight at Tracey's head.
A part of Elara flinches at that, wants to remind the redhead of the mercy the Order seems to take such pride in, yet she cannot, should not.
But Tracey is blood, the blood of the covenant thicker than the one that connects Elara with her lord father, and so, she steps a tad closer.
Elara should not move.
Tracey should accept her death.
But yet-
she doesn't want it.
Hasn't her lord said Elara was blessed?
What use is this blessing if she cannot save her own?
"Please."
Elara's whisper echoes. Potter and Weasley freeze at it, take the time to glance at her, glance at her trembling form because Tracey is hers, has been in her inner circle since they were babes toddling after their teachers, and it would be a senseless loss.
Something like heartbreak twinkles in Tracey's brown eyes.
But before Elara can act, before she can even start to shift to point her gun to the redhead instead, Tracey moves.
Their eyes meet.
Tracey smiles.
she always has been one of the weakest among them
too gentle, too scared of what it meant to give everything to the cause
Maybe it is because Tracey Davis has learned at Elara's feet - and in the same way their Lord has taught Elara cruelty, Elara has taught the older girl reverence and utter loyalty. Maybe that is why the small girl smiles in face of death.
It isn't a courtly smile, or a vicious one that you would find in a battlefield.
No, it's a gentle one, one that speaks of acceptance.
Of love.
"Whoever is kissed by Death -," Tracey Davis starts and Elara takes a step forward, hand slowly reaching, slowing reaching and grasping and begging. But Tracey gives her the smallest head shake, unnoticed by everyone else, and Elara cannot deny her friend. "-can never be killed."
From the corner of her eyes, Elara sees Potter reaching for her, as though he could protect her.
And Tracey explodes.
"Damnit!" Harry snarls as he slams the locker's door closed, hair plastered on his forehead and brain matter on his cheek. "Fuck!"
His team remains silent.
It isn't enough for Harry.
"Why did no one notice she had a fucking bomb?!" he yells. He then turns to Seamus, finger pointed and lips curled. "That's your fucking talent!!"
Seamus sighs.
Before, when they were younger and saw a game to be played instead of a war, the younger guy would have yelled back, he would have shoved Harry a bit and it would take one of the Prefects to break up the fight.
But they are older now, more jaded and the war has all taken something from them, taken their childhood innocence till there is nothing left, and so, Seamus only lowers Harry's pointed finger.
"I make bombs, Prongs," he says. "I don't dismantle them."
Perhaps he is right.
But Tracey Davis, a first-grader teacher and one they had never expected to see in Goyle's manor for she was always sweet, always running after the children she looked after in that ditzy way of hers, is dead, has exploded and brought down with her all prisoners and burned beyond any hope of repair the documents the Order could have used.
"Well, you should have known better," Harry snaps.
He has never been good at being soft, has never been good in accepting any kind of failure. Perhaps that comes with the territory of being his parents' legacy before he is Harry Potter, perhaps it is because Sirius calls him James sometimes, sometimes talks to him as if he were his daughter and not the son the older man adopted.
The Last Potter has learned to wrap his hurts into thorns and has learned to run after his father's ghost.
It isn't fair.
But few things in life are.
"Maybe I would have known better if fucking Sera White wasn't a bleeding heart-"
"Don't."
Seamus freezes, his mouth left gaping at his leader. Yet, the order only leashes his tongue for so long before his anger takes a hold of him too, snarling in Harry's face.
"Oh, is this what it's about Harry?!" he taunts. "Not that we lost our hostages. Not that we lost Goyle Manor. But cause of Sera White?"
Harry shakes his head. "She has nothing to do with it."
But Seamus is undeterred.
He's always been quick to anger when the blame falls on his shoulder, rightly or not.
"Says her knight in shining armor," he mocks. The soot on his cheeks make him look gaunt. "Did you like it, Potter? To have a pretty girl crying in your arms and you acting like the hero you always like to pretend to be?"
"Harry doesn't like to play the hero."
Seamus does not even turn from his glaring process, staring down at Harry's gaze with a stubborn snarl. "I did not ask you, Weasley."
"And I did not ask for your shit, yet here we are."
"My shit?!"
Harry cannot help but flinch at Seamus's laugh, more of a cackle really, bitterness thick and something almost hateful to it. And the last heir to the Potter legacy knows that Seamus has yet to forgive him for Dean's death, for choosing the possibility of killing Viper over the life of a comrade.
But Viper is Voldemort's heir and as such, she has to die.
Has to and it has to be Harry to kill her for this dance of theirs to end, for this masquerade of good vs evil to finally draw a close, for the curtains to close and Harry can forget her shadow standing before his mentor's bloodied and maimed body, can forget the rattle in Dumbledore's breath as he exhales his last, not seeing his student crying at his side, but seeing the ghosts of those he will join.
"That's rich coming from you, Weasley! You were the one who was supposed to shoot any abnormality!"
Ron shakes his head, his arms crossed on his chest. His jaw, tight. "We cannot start senselessly killing," he insists. "Davis could have been an innocent."
Seamus sneers. "No one is innocent. You should have killed her. This failure is on you."
Ron flinches at that, the sixth son always chasing after his siblings' shadow, and Harry cannot stand it.
"We are not them," the Chosen One interferes, spitting the word them with poisonous disdain. "We cannot become them. We are not monsters. We need to show mercy."
that is what Dumbledore believed.
That is what his own father died for.
"And what has mercy ever done for us, huh?" Tears gleam in Seamus's dark eyes, gleam and glisten down his cheek too, and there is something agonized to his voice, agonized and everything rotten in this world. "What has mercy done for Dean?!?"
Seamus's voice echoes in the room.
The name echoes onto the walls and shatters upon impact.
They all fall silent as the ghost of Dean stands among them, the shade haunting them alongside their childish dreams of a fair world, all of them dead and shattered at their feet.
"You must think I am weak."
Harry falters at that, at the bitterness that seeps into Sera White's voice like bloodstream. The girl isn't looking at him, curled into herself as she is, though a sole brown eye peaks through her curtain of hair.
"I don't."
She snorts. Somehow, she still manages to make it seem regal, and Harry has to stop himself from mooning because he does not think that the other operative is one who easily shares her mischief as she does with him.
The Ice Queen people among the order have already started to call her.
The Ice Queen to his King, Ron would whisper with a sly grin, especially when Harry flushes pink at the mere title.
(The last people called King and Queen among the Order have been his parents, Lily and James Potter, and their love story is something that he longs for, has wished for since he was a child and realized he will never be loved as simply Harry. )
"It's never a weakness to be kind," he adds, letting himself fall next to her, so close that perhaps, with a tad more effort, their shoulders would press themselves together. Her warmth is soothing, and he feels the stress of holding the world onto his shoulders slowly slip away. "There's so few people who still are after what the Death Eaters did."
"What did they do?"
It's odd that Sera doesn't know of the Death Eaters, of the destruction that dogged their steps like a nipping hound.
Yet, it's a good thing.
It means someone protected her.
Seen the child she had been and decided to keep the world at bay instead, saw soft, delicate hands and promised to never have them drenched in crimson.
Sera's father must have been kind.
(Sirius too tried to be, whenever he could, but his godfather stopped being soft the day he lost his wife and daughter, turned cold and hard and even for James Potter's son, it could not convince him to stop his efforts to destroy the organization that took his star away.
Harry used to hate that Elara. The babe that was born so beloved even years later, Sirius is haunted by her ghost. A girl lucky enough not to end as another casualty of their fight for it is better to be a corpse than someone who has no choice to live for others.
A Potter's life is never his own.
Prongs's life never could be Harry's yet it is and now, he has to deal with the burden that comes with, the scars and hatred, and expectations)
"You mean except destroy everything that is good?" he teases her gently, but his joke steals neither smile nor laugh from her. Instead, Sera White frowns as though she does not understand.
"They killed a lot of people." It's the understatement of the year, yet Harry finds himself unable to add more.
All he can think about is steel eyes glaring at him while Order members exhale their last breath.
As Dumbledore finally gets the rest the world had always denied him.
Viper.
(when Harry is at his worst, he likes to think that soon enough, this life of his as soldier- always fighting, always sacrificing something - will stop when Voldemort's heir is stopped.
The day Viper dies will be the day that Prongs dies.)
"Didn't the Order just kill?" Sera's question is innocent enough. Logical even, but Harry cannot help but bristle.
"It's more complicated than that."
A brown brow quirks. "Then uncomplicate it."
If only it was so easy. But it isn't, and Harry finds himself a coward, not wanting the light in Sera White's eyes to dim in front of the worst that humanity can offer.
He wants to protect her smile.
"It's war," Harry starts, shifting slightly closer and almost as if she had been waiting for it all along, Sera's head drops onto his shoulder, messy locks spawling onto his uniform and he cannot help but wonder how they would look on his pillow instead, if they will turn fully black in the dimness of his chambers for it seems that sometimes, Sera's hair turns darker at the most importune moments. "Kindness never survives in wars."
"That can't be right," she responds in a whisper as her breath fans on the crook of his neck. Harry shivers. It feels like a kiss. "After all, you're awfully kind,"
Most wouldn't call Harry kind.
Not anymore.
A leader cannot afford it. Cannot afford to soften his sharp edges.
Prongs cannot know kindness.
Yet when Sera White calls him kind -
Harry wants to believe it. Desperately.
3 years passes by.
The first one goes quickly, as though Harry has blinked and suddenly, there are already welcoming the new year.
The second one is slower in that regard, and death is busier than ever.
By the third year, the Order of the Phoenix has already lost seven squads by the end of it.
Harry grieves the way a general will grieve. He clenches his jaw as his subordinates glare at him, knows he wears the blame of a failed mission because he is Prongs, and he is supposed to be better than that.
Ron tries to understand, tries to stand by his side, but it is harder when it is his youngest sister who was killed in the latest mission. It was Ginny's wish to join the operations and to fight for a better world, and though her family could never refuse her, it does not mellow the resentment that swells in their gut as they watch Harry fumble yet again.
but Ron's nights become easier once they kill Marcus Flint and bring down the entire family down with the bastard, and somewhere, Harry feels yet another part of himself shatter, another sacrifice to the war that their parents could not finish and as such, was left to the children to pick up the pieces.
It isn't the first time that something goes wrong yet the last Potter still can't wrap his head around what has happened, how could everything could go so horribly wrong.
It should have been safe.
But the war has become bloodier as they grow older, and Harry needs to remember that only Voldemort's death will stop the ones of those he loves.
Speaking of which-
A door looms before him, the golden twelve placed onto the dark wood a stark contrast to it. Harry takes a small breath. Tucks his hurt aside, tucks the gnawing of his chest and feels his lips curve into a semblance of a smile.
He raises his hand.
It's not trembling which is a good thing.
But it is still red. it always is and the crimson never comes off no matter how often or hard he scrubs at his flesh, willing the stain away. But the stain doesn't go away, it lingers like a death sentence, a reminder that Harry is a soldier before he is a human.
Sera answers quickly, hazel eyes warm and sparkling as they welcome him. She's so swift with answering her door that Harry likes to believe she was waiting near its threshold, her need for him as great as his own need for her company.
"Hey you," she greets softly.
"Hey."
Harry's greeting is more of an exhale, the kind a man makes when he gets to breathe for the first time, and it makes Sera's brows furrow in concern. He should feel guilty, to see her become aware of the worst of the world, but she bears it so beautifully, all because she does not want him to bear the weight of it alone.
He doesn't quite dare enter her apartment, lingers by the door as though trying to convince himself he deserves the rest, deserves the feeling of being welcomed home by hazel eyes.
It's as though Sera reads his thoughts, notices the familiar self-loathing that comes with being both Harry and Prongs, the child trying to push its rock uphill again and again, and she gently tugs him into her house, her hands soft and gentle around his wrists.
"Did you bring the goods?" she asks quietly, tugging at his leather jacket till Harry's shoulders drop and the jacket slips from his frame.
The black leather of the garment is soft, flexible in a way that speaks of a lot of uses. It was Sirius's before it was Harry's and it should have been Elara's Black but the girl is dead and there is only Harry left, trying to fill shoes that will never fit him.
Yet, the last Potter clings to the jacket all the same, because it was a birthday gift and one of the rare moments Sirius had been his godfather and not his general, not his own father's best friend.
His lips curve into a smile. "Of course," he answers, lifting the takeout bag for good measure. This time, it's Chinese.
Sera claps her hands, steals the bag away, and sets it on her dining table before getting the cutlery.
"Make yourself at home," she yells from her kitchen.
It's their routine.
Harry will bring food, most often takeout, the cheap kind that Sera seems fond of. Sera will welcome him with a grin, with a call of "making himself at home".
Yet it steals a chuckle from him all the same.
Home.
What an odd concept.
And yet, as he watches Sera open with a happy hum her fried rice, he thinks this might be it.
Elara already knows she fucked up.
She took her plans and tore them apart with her own hands.
All because she is, as it turns out, her father's daughter.
It's not enough that she wore his face once; the stain goes deeper than that, it has already turned her bone marrow rotten and her veins a vehicle for something she wishes she could burn away.
Sirius Black had loved his Potter and his Order and Angeline Selwyn died for it.
Elara Black has fallen in love with a Potter, and Daphne Greengrass is now dead.
It is not as though she can mourn. After all, why would Sera White mourn a casualty of a successful mission? How could Sera White not be thrilled when it is her fucking information that took her childhood friend's life?!
The sight still haunts her nightmares, has taken a new form as the Greengrass girl, as her shade dogging Elara's footsteps, whispering, always whispering, like father like daughter.
Elara stumbles at the mere thought as though she had been hit, had been stabbed through the chest. I'm sorry, she thinks desperately as her nails dig into the soft flesh of her palms. They're devoid of any of Elara's callouses, soft and innocent and yet, they are the hands of a murderer all the same.
It's not the first time that Elara has killed someone.
But it is the first time she directly killed someone she loves.
Is that what he felt? the dark-haired girl wonders as she gnaws on her lips. Did he feel the pain I am feeling? Like father, like daughter, then, is he dying the same I am?
Her question remains unanswered for ghosts do not speak and her father has long since forgotten about his begotten spawn. Never truly his daughter, only flesh to disown and wash away as if she had been born a sin he had to atone for.
Steps echo in the hallway.
Soft, confident with the grace of a feline, of a predator knowing that few if any could harm him.
It's almost painfully ironic how the history book on the shelf is always repeating itself, how a Black falls and another follows, never content in being alone in their misery, they must drag the others too by the leash they all call blood.
Daphne's ghost tucks herself in the corner of the room. Willing for the man who brough her death before her.
Elara opens the door with baited breath. She wonders if it will be Prongs or Harry that will appear at her doorstep, if it is her lord's enemy or the boy she has fallen in love with. but truthfully, they are both the same, Harry and Prongs and if she has cherished Harry's smile since the first time she saw him, Elara Vespera Black had grown to admire Prongs's determination, the ruthlessness he could resort to if it meant he could call his mission a success.
(A police officer was dying and Prongs spared him no mind, no second glance as he gave chase, choosing Elara over his fallen comrade, and as much as Blaise likes to tell her it isn't healthy, isn't right, Elara thinks he chose me.
chose his duty over those he should love, and isn't it a dichotomy to smile at such choice?
It's hypocrisy at its finest, Elara isn't oblivious to it and yet-
Father chose his friends over his daughter.
Mother chose her heartbreak over her daughter
Her Lord would choose his dream over Elara.
Everyone would choose anything but Elara
But Harry Potter?
He chooses her. Always.)