Chapter 16
Months later, in the midst of battle, the Death-Eaters all in their black cloaks and skull masks and gloved hands gripping wands swarm around, shouting curses.
Between them, the thing diverging them in two directions, is him.
He is raising his wand to the sky, striking green sparks against the twilight, all coming together to glow a serpent through skull. Morsmordre.
It has been months since the Malfoy Manor.
Even with the mask, he recognises the bright, white-blond hair, the slender wrist beneath the glove.
It's clear what he is after. Harry can read his goals in the way he is so hyper-focused on Harry, making a focused beeline for his target.
He manages to reach Harry in good time, throwing hex after hex to every defense spell Harry dodges them with, a twist and a fling of his arm in a fighting stance, stumbling back with every attack.
Harry builds up a spell that hurls him back a few steps, off his guard, and then turns and runs, to lead him somewhere deserted and private.
The footsteps behind him follow, slowing, as Harry whirls around with his wand out. Draco's wand is already there, pointed at Harry.
"Draco."
He cocks his head, as if surprised. Did he not think that Harry would recognise him? That he would know him anywhere?
Draco throws a curse, and Harry dodges, casting it aside with a protego. He does not hurl offensive spells back, merely sticking to defense. It goes on for what seem like hours but can only be minutes. Draco has an edge over him, much more precise and having a variety of curses in his inventory, but he is still unrefined in places and Harry's instincts are far better and quicker.
Something strange begins to happen after a time; it's as if something in Draco is weakening, making him grow uncertain. The hexes are slowing, dwindling, his breaths heavy in the vast space where battles, screams and flashes of light and the blast of spells and the rubble of architectures coming down, are in the distance, and Harry cannot understand what is truly happening but he takes the chance.
"Expelliarmus!" The spell strikes him with a near violence that Harry did not mean, fueled by the chaos of his own emotions. It whips Draco's torso to a sideways twist, an arch of his upper back, the clunk of his mask and wand flung swiftly off into the corner.
They are both heaving from the combat, their chests jouncing and their breaths loud pants. He turns into a straightened posture, and his shoulders line up and the curtain of his longer hair falls away, revealing his face, and there he is... there he is...
He is still
beautiful as ever.
But he is so lost.
His gaze is clear, not misted over as his will lay in somebody else's hands the way Dean described it, but it is hazy and as if trying to return from somewhere afar. He is awakening. He stares at Harry, confused and terrified, of his own lack of knowledge above all. Both his hands raise up tremulously, blinking rapid and hard, and Harry realises only then that his wand is still pointed at Draco.
Harry shakes his head and lets the wand fall at his side, raising up his own hands to show him he is non-threatening. "It's okay." He begins to step closer to him, slowly. "It's okay. I won't hurt you."
Draco's eyes are going red-rimmed. They keep darting like he doesn't know how he ended up here. His breaths are shaky, fast. He flinches violently at the blasts and screams.
"They did something to you," Harry whispers. "Do you remember what happened?"
He finally reaches him, as Draco's eyes are darting everywhere at every sound, flinching, panicked. "I don't... I don't know what's happening to me..."
"That's okay," Harry says, thickly, and he is closing the rest of the little distance in several steps, taking his face in his hands, "That's okay. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it all out." He then laughs, watery, half-crying, swallowing and stroking his face feather-light, "You're here. Oh God, you're here, it's you—"
"Harry," Draco whispers, looking at him with a terrible sort of desperation and terror. Something pleaful.
Harry presses his forehead to his, his nose to his, his eyes closing shut as he is overcome by the billow of relief. "It'll be okay. I'll take care of you now."
"Step away from him," someone says.
Harry goes cold, Draco stilling against him as well. Harry whips around instantly and grips Draco behind him, shielding him with his body.
But, to Harry's relief, it's just people from the Light Side. There are three of them, holding out their wands: Katie, Ben and Marcus.
"Lower your wands," Harry orders.
"Sorry, I know you call the shots, but we can't do that," Marcus says. He nods at Draco. "He's a Death-Eater, and we think you're too close to this right now."
"He needs help," Harry says. "He means no harm. Please lower your wands."
"Harry, I know he's your friend but something feels wrong here," Katie says. "I don't think we should be trusting him so easily."
"Lower your wands," Harry repeats, more firmly. "Now. Take his wand away if you have to, but we're taking him with us when this battle is over. No one will do anything to hurt him, do I make myself clear?"
Katie sighs, but she looks at the others, and they nod. She begins to move towards where the wand and mask lay. But none of their wands move from Draco just yet.
But right as she takes the step.
Right as she takes the step, she falls, in a flash of green light, and the seconds after will be the part that Harry will regret forever: the seconds after when he is stood there, stunned with horror, not breathing at all as green flashes again after barely a split-second, in accordance with Marcus dropping to the ground too with a sickening crack of bone, and then Lavender.
It's the seconds after where he will stand there and just stare at the bodies for what seems like ages, all the world around him zoned out but for sudden sight of the three corpses of his people.
The first thing that Harry hears is the whistling of a tune amidst footsteps, unhurried and heavy with surety, as if there is no need to rush. Somewhere, a part of the castle crumbles in an explosion. The whistling does not stop even then.
When Harry finally manages to tear his gaze away from the bodies and looks up, still half in his icy, stunned horror, somebody is there far in the distance, only now revealed by the fallen bodies. He is playing with his wand, throwing it up in the air, catching it in hand, over and over.
And when he is close enough, it points forward.
With every step he takes closer towards Harry:
"Novo."
"Inanis."
"Octo."
Harry grips his wand tighter in a trembling hand, holding Draco behind him harder, and he does not understand. He throws a curse. Rodolphus Lestrange fends it off, easy and unconcerned.
"Familia."
"Saturo."
"Vomica."
His voice never falters no matter how many curses and hexes Harry throws at him, just keeps casting them away to the side like they're nothing. He is still half out of his mind, his heart slamming against the inside of his chest and roaring up to his ears—
"Tres."
"Obtineo."
"Mosmoris."
and he is waiting for the curse to strike, the flash of light, but nothing is happening and he is strung so tight with tension and terror and lingering shock that he can hardly process anything, and the only thing that makes sense, the only thing he knows to do right now—
"Septem."
Is.
"Nostrum."
Not.
"Umquam."
Let.
"Decem."
Go.
And then silence drops, but for the wind blowing dust, or maybe it is Harry who hears nothing else. There is a shift in the air, an unsettling dip. Rodolphus tilts his head.
"Pick up your wand, Draco."
And then, only then, does Harry realise just who Rodolphus's eyes have been on all along.
From behind him, "Yes, Uncle."
Harry turns to look at Draco, his mind slow and blank at connecting it all together. No fear or confusion is there now. There is nothing. Draco's face is smooth, cold. A soldier ready to take orders.
But he turns his head and looks Harry in the eye, and they are not misted over with the Imperius Curse. It is not that he is an empty shell without will. He is just a whole other person entirely.
The world goes slow, time sluggish, and Harry feels it all in agonising, vivid detail: the way he snags out of his grip when he moves past him for his wand, the brush of his shoulder against his, the emptiness of Harry's own hands, full with him only a second ago, prepared to take him back to wherever home was these days.
Draco reaches down to pick his wand up.
"Good boy," Rodolphus says, once Draco straightens with it. His wand is still pointed at Harry. "Now retreat."
With that one order, Draco puts his mask back on. He flicks his wand, and flies away in a black, shadowy mist, disappearing right from Harry's eyes.
Standing there staring at Rodolphus' eyes, that same hollow smile from their childhoods and a cocked head, Harry finally realises what it is that has always terrified him so much about this man.
His eyes.
They are as if they are looking right into his mind and soul.
"You will not face death at my hand," Rodolphus tells him, the wind carrying his voice in the distance across. There's shots of fire blowing up behind him, the rumbling thunder of war.
He steps back and turns, throwing his wand up in the air and catching it again, as if the battleground around him is but a playground.
"See you later," Rodolphus says, with all the certainty that he knows how he will, how exactly they will meet again.