Chapter 17
The bodies are spread wide across the ground, covered in white sheets. The Death-Eaters have retreated for the time being, but the loss has been heavy for their side.
Harry's eyes are fixed on the three bodies in particular, the loved ones that are weeping around them, touching their covered bodies gently and burying their faces into them. What has he become, that he is now so numb to death and such displays of grief?
He is exhausted from feeling and thinking. They all are.
The burials of the bodies take long hours.
Gathered around a fire to stave off the chill of winter, Harry tells Ron and Hermione what happened with Draco and Rodolphus. He could not begin to speak of the way he felt, at losing Draco for the nth time, so he didn't. They understand and they don't ask.
"He was saying all these words in Latin," Harry muses, "I think it's some kind of activation code."
"Do you think so?" Hermione says, "Do you remember them? They could be the key to getting him back."
Harry couldn't. He has tried and tried and tried. He was so out of it back then, however, that he barely caught anything. He tried to search for memory enhancing spells but they only work for things that you memorize after casting the spell.
There is nothing that can make you remember what you've forgotten so thoroughly, did not process at all. The only thing left is for Harry to pay attention if it should happen again, but Hermione makes a good point; it's unlikely Rodolphus would allow that to happen again considering how intelligent he seems to be, now that Harry would be looking out for it.
Hermione theorises that the reason why he left Harry alive was to see if Draco still mattered to him, for whatever plans they have in the future. Now that Rodolphus has received his answer, he wouldn't let it happen again. But that's also assuming that he doesn't need to keep activating whatever mind-manipulation he has inflicted on Draco in intervals.
The silence lulls after that.
"We'll have to fight him too, now," Ron says, quietly, looking down at his hands. "You understand that, don't you? If it's ever between you and him..."
Harry doesn't say anything. He stares into the fire. He is just so tired.
He doesn't know how he would.
He wouldn't know how to hurt Draco.
"People died," Harry starts to say, "because I..."
He can't stop seeing it in his mind's eye, the swift green flashes of light, barely a beat in between, the sound of their bodies dropping hard and unceremoniously to the floor.
The whistling.
The strange words.
"I didn't even see it coming."
"You didn't?" someone pipes up from a distance.
Harry looks over, and realises how close the person is, enough to be listening in on the conversation.
It's a seventh year Gryffindor. Harry remembers his first name to be Martin. He was dating Katie.
"Malfoy shows up all suited in a Death-Eater's fit and a mask, and you're telling me you didn't know that was going to happen? That it wasn't obvious from the start that he was going to give you a kicked little look and make you fuss all over him?"
"It wasn't like what you think." They did something to Draco. He is not himself.
"It wasn't?!"' Martin yells, looming over Harry, "How many more people are going to die because of you? And how many more people will you sacrifice because you're too weak for that Death-Eater scum-- "
"Can we all just calm down?" Ron says, standing up with a hand on his shoulder.
"This is war!" Martin screams, shoving Ron away, "This is war and you're letting your personal fucked up feelings about Malfoy cloud your judgement! She--" His voice falters, tremulous, "she died because you went chasing after him and she went after you - "
"I'm sorry," Hermione says, her eyes watering, "Martin, I'm sorry. I know she meant a lot to you...but the only person responsible for her death was the person who killed her. Not Harry. The sooner we stop blaming our own people, stop blaming Harry, the better chances we have to stay united and win this war."
Harry's mind is reeling through Martin's words.
He spoke what Harry already felt. Nothing more.
Harry blames himself for what happened. He fears this; the love he has for Draco.
While they are all arguing, Harry stands up and leaves quietly. He needs to be alone. He needs --
He stands by the barricade, the night sky full of stars. He hits it, trying to loosen the vice-like grip. It doesn't work.
He grips his hair tightly, bent over, trying to breathe. It hurts to think of Draco so much that he thinks he might die from it.
What will he do when he has to face Draco? What will he do if it will be between saving Draco and another innocent person?
He doesn't know.
He doesn't know.
The greater good, or him.
The world, or the love of his life.
***
Martin's words prove to be true over the course of the next several months.
Each time Harry sees Draco in battle, he finds himself weakening and focused on trying to find a way to save him.
Each time, the price for an attempt to save him is the life, or lives, of another. Because he refuses to hurt or maim Draco in any meaningful way, and gets too distracted trying to seize the opportunity to save him.
Eventually there is no longer any room for forgiveness. It cannot go on. People try not to blame him but he can see it. They do. Even Ron and Hermione seem tense and upset with him, for good reason.
He stands over the bodies of the four people that Draco killed.
He is swift now, with a Killing Curse; strikes as easily as breathing. So is Harry, it seems. The initial guilt of killing in war has faded. It is but a necessity. But he is certainly not as quick as Draco. Rodolphus is a deadly man, and his mentorship shows. Draco is even being assigned to lead small units of an army. He is making a name for himself; spread in stories and whispers among Death-Eaters and the Order and the light side alike.
But the only person that could have stopped the deaths that occurred at Draco's hand in any way was Harry, simply on the principle that Draco has never, not once, tried to use the Killing Curse on him. He has tried to injure and maim whenever they faced up against each other, but has not tried to kill Harry.
Harry does not know why. Maybe Voldemort wants him alive, so he can give him a painful death. Maybe there is another unknown purpose.
Unacknowledged, under the shame and survivor's guilt, is the sick hope that Draco is in there somewhere, and he did not really want to kill Harry.
(Unlikely, of course. Harry has seen the progression of Draco's eyes, cold and empty, his mannerisms programmed like that of a soldier's at first. Now, all Harry sees in his eyes for himself is hatred. Draco hates him with his entire heart now, and the worst part is that Harry has had enough time to think of all the reasons why, even without the mind manipulation).
The greatest refute to that sick hope is that Draco is not the only one that has ensured not to cast the Killing Curse at Harry. There is a pattern, and the conclusion reached is that all Death-Eaters have been ordered to not kill Harry. No one, not even those in the Order, could figure out why, except for Voldemort's sadistic tendencies as a possibility.
This is the last time, Harry thinks to the corpses covered in white sheets, I swear it.
He runs alone to a deserted spot. The stars are clear in the night sky.
He remembers it all; Draco laughing, kissing.
How does he let go?
But he will have to now.
He will just have to.
Harry takes a breath, shuddering and heavy. He points his wand to his temple.
"Obliviate."
The memories fade from his mind.
And he could not remember what he had come here to do.
***
"Capture Harry Potter. Bring him alive to me."
"Yes, my Lord."
Draco is on one knee before Voldemort, a wrist hung on the upturned one. His head is bowed.
"I'm told you've been trained well enough to be able to accomplish this task."
"That's true, my Lord."
"Good. I'm pleased."
Draco stands to his feet. Rodolphus steps down from the left-hand side of Voldemort, following his nephew out the door.
"I expect you will make me proud, Draco," Rodolphus says, walking alongside him in the corridors.
"Of course, uncle."
***
The night is clear and cold, forming a chilly frost on the windows.
Draco thinks about Potter.
It's all he has been able to think about, in fact, over these months.
Namely, how much he wants him dead.
Three years ago, the night Draco was too floo over to Privet Drive -- and the floo never opened. There were consequences for that. There were things that happened that night that he can never forget.
Things that happened because Potter failed him. Left him and his mother there to die.
He spreads his fingers apart, flexing them against the tremors. He hadn't gotten to take his potions today, so busy he was. The Dark Lord has as good as conquered Britain. The only thing that threatens that power now is Harry Potter.
Every awful thing that happened to him - it always come back to Potter somehow.
His father, however, was all but murdered by him in cold blooded vengeance.
There is nothing left for Draco in this world anymore. Nothing, except for his uncle and the Dark Lord, the Death-Eaters. This is the only place left in the world for him, where he belongs.
You're the only one that's allowed to take anything from me.
He curls his fingers into his palm loosely, at the unbidden memory, that old and pathetically sentimental phrase.
Harry Potter, Draco thinks, took everything from me.