The Sacrifice
As soon as Harry’s Patronus leaves with the message, the four of them are running through the hallways towards the screams and the shouts, the explosions and the battle.
“Should we head over to the Shack?” Hermione asks as they round a corner and come across two masked Death Eaters duelling two students. Harry doesn’t even know their names.
“Expelliarmus!”
Harry’s spell hits one of the Death Eaters. His wand soars over their heads and clashes into the nearby wall. The Death Eater turns around and stops at the sight of Draco.
The two students take the opening, immediately overpowering the remaining Death Eater. One of them puts up a protective shield as the other fires a well-aimed Stunning Spell.
“Malfoy,” the Death Eater leers. “Brave of you to show your face in the battle.”
Harry Stuns him with a quick, practiced flick of the wand. “We don’t have time for goddamn catch-up chats.”
Draco rolls his eyes but dutifully follows as Harry gestures a hurry up motion. They run past the students only to come face to face with a large spider in the next corridor, near the staircase.
Ron screeches in terror, whirling around to throw his back against Hermione. Hermione’s Confringo is powerful enough that the ground beneath the spider splinters, a gaping hole appears in it, and the spider falls through, all eight limbs flailing erratically. There’s a shriek of surprise from the floor beneath but after a quick inspection by means of peering over the edge, Lavender is already back in the duel with another Death Eater that they can’t catch a sight of.
“Yeah, we need to find a way around Nagini’s protection bubble as quickly as possible,” Harry huffs, taking two steps at a time. “I know why Riddle is looking for Snape.”
“You mean other than the fact that Snape ditched him?” Ron calls out. Draco suddenly stumbles over a disappearing stair and Ron pulls him back up without breaking the stride.
“Harry! HARRY!”
Neville is carrying an armful of strange-looking plants, panting, as he eats up the distance rapidly. He’s accompanied by Seamus and Luna, who have a rather poisonous twisting plant-adjacent thing dangling between them.
“McGonagall was looking for you!”
“Where’s Snape?” Harry calls out. “Have you seen him?”
Neville shakes his head, already breezing past them. Seamus throws a mischievous grin at Ron and Luna quickly hugs Draco, hooking her arms around his neck.
“Stay safe,” she advises. “I recognize some of the Death Eaters from the Manor.”
Draco stiffens in her arms. It would have been a hilarious sight due to the sheer difference in their height, but both are wearing similar sombre expressions.
“Where are you going?” Draco pulls back to peer at her face sternly. “I’ll come with you.”
Luna beams at him, as though no one has ever offered to die with her before. “Draco, don’t be silly. You need to help Harry with your secret mission. Besides, Nev will be with me. He’s quite good at fighting, you know.”
Draco looks like he would very well enjoy countering that point. Harry’s brain helpfully supplies him with memories of Neville’s terrified face when he’d tried to stop the three back in first year. But Draco ends up heaving a sigh, mildly twitching with the effort to keep his mouth shut.
“Fine. Send me a Patronus if anything happens.”
Luna pats him on the elbow in a consoling gesture. “We are no longer in the dungeons. You don’t need to protect me anymore.”
“I know I don’t need to,” Draco mutters, looking at his shoes.
Luna stretches on her toes to press a quick kiss on Draco’s cheek before following Seamus, nearly skipping.
“You’d think they are excited to be in a war,” Ron remarks mildly, scratching the back of his neck, assessing their surroundings.
“Tell me abo–” Harry says, suddenly ducking as one of the windows right in front of them shatters.
Sharp, pointed shards blizzard the entire corridor. A few pieces scratch at Harry’s arms and face. Wincing and getting to his feet, he murmurs Episkey a couples of times, feeling the skin quickly knit itself back to smooth expanse. The blood is dry and sticky.
Draco has stepped behind one of the suit armours. Ron has put up an efficiently quick Shield Charm around him and Hermione.
To their utter horror, the next second, Hagrid comes sailing through the broken window, nearly crashing against the opposite wall. He lands painfully in a sea of glass, grimaces heavily, before picking himself right up and hollering out a loud, “THANKS, GRAWPY!”
“What the fuck?”
Grawp peers through the window, preening in accomplishment. He gives Hagrid a wide, broken-toothed smile before lumbering back towards the Forest in the distance. Harry blinks a few times as the spells hit Grawp harmlessly, jets of light illuminating the blood splatters on the ground, a few bodies – dead or unconscious – littering the school courtyard. He tears himself away.
“Hagrid!” Hermione is helping him heal the cuts on his skin as Hagrid seals up the torn fabric, beaming cheerfully.
“’Mione! Oh, and Ron! Blimey, there’s Harry. Oh … erm …”
“Hagrid, what are you doing?” Harry steps in quickly, silently assessing any other injuries on the man. But Hagrid seems fine, which is a relief. He hasn’t seen him over a year and the rushing affection is overpowered with nagging worry. Last he’d heard, Hagrid had run off of school grounds.
Before Hagrid can form a response, there’s a loud shriek of terror and Harry’s heart skips a beat. Lavender is turning around the far corner, her hands clutching at her face, as she stumbles back from whoever is behind the wall.
Harry is already running and he hears Ron’s footsteps join him soon after. The corridor is flaring up from time to time, patches of bright colours dancing across the stone floors. If Harry didn’t know better, it would have looked rather pretty. He can still hear loud explosions on the grounds even on the sixth floor, wonders if he can get them to all, knowing that he can’t. The guilt eats at his insides.
Lavender is pressed against the wall, whimpering in pain. She slides down to her knees; Harry sees rivulets of blood escaping through the crack of her fingers. An iron rod grips tightly around his heart.
“Lavender? Hey, talk to me.”
Someone is laughing behind him. He hears it distantly through the ringing of his ears, through his thrumming pulse. When Ron shouts Greyback, Harry instantly spins around.
Fenrir Greyback’s malicious face is staring back at him in a mixture of hatred and hunger. He looks downright pissed about the fact that the last time he’d caught them, they’d managed to escape. He must have lost his precious price, probably had to grit his teeth through a couple of Cruciatus.
“Well, well, well,” he sneers. “Aren’t I lucky?”
Harry glowers. “What have you done to her?”
Greyback shakes his sleeves a little, turning his neck this way and that to release the kinks in his muscles, taking his sweet little time to respond. Meanwhile, Ron has managed to inch forward bit by bit, wand gripped tight in his fingers.
“You know, Potter,” Greyback smirks. “Some might believe it’s a shame you didn’t offer yourself to the Dark Lord when he told you to. Personally, I’m thrilled.” He enunciates his next words by licking his lips in a slow, deliberate motion. “All this young blood … fresh and sweet … don’t you just love it?”
Harry chances a quick glance at Ron. Ron nods back infinitesimally and Harry’s arm swoops in the air in a sudden, quick motion. Greyback immediately jumps back, ducking beneath a stream of light from Harry’s wand. He’s not quick enough to dodge Ron’s well-aimed Conjunctivitis Curse.
As soon as the spell hits him square in the face, Greyback howls in pain. Bending at the waist, his fingers grapple at his eyes. Harry tries not to enjoy it too much, clutching tightly at his own piece of soul.
“Impedimenta!”
Greyback’s movements slow down instantly. He lets out a growl of fury, limbs cracking and popping and for a second, Harry tries to remember if it’s full moon tonight.
“Ron?”
Hermione, Draco, and Hagrid turn around the corner. They freeze at the sight in front of them. The first one to move is Hagrid, who crouches down next to Lavender to speak softly at her.
“Ah,” Greyback has shaken loose of the spell.
When he straightens up, his eyes are swollen and filled with puss. Harry’s stomach rolls. Greyback rolls his shoulders experimentally, sniffs the air, stepping forward blindly.
“The Death Eater child,” he croons. “And the Mudblood. Yes, I would remember that pretty, delicious scent anywhere. I must say … what a – sight.”
“Fernunculus!”
To Harry’s surprise, Greyback neatly dives to the left to avoid being hit. His other senses seem to have heightened without his eyesight. But, well, that’s hardly a concern.
Because in the next moment –
Ron yells, “Incendio!”
Duck, dive, roll.
Harry and Hermione aim at the same time. “Stupefy!”
The spell hits the target and Greyback’s head slams back in the wall with a loud, crunching sound. Harry thinks it’s over, but Draco chooses that moment to fire his own spell as well. A song-like incantation fills the sudden silent corridor and black flames cut through the space, catching Greyback’s unconscious form on fire.
Loud, shrill, piercing screams fill the air. Greyback has come back to consciousness by the abrupt attack of flames, only to realise that there’s no escaping it. Harry remembers what Draco had told him, how Severus taught him the incantation, how the counter-spell can be tailored according to the caster’s wish.
It’s pitiful and gravely satisfying to watch Greyback burn alive. Ron and Hermione clamber away from the swaying, stumbling figure, horrified and mute. Harry turns to Draco, not really knowing what he wants to say.
Draco is staring at his doing, grey eyes wide, breathing heavy and stuttering, shoulders trembling. He feels eons away, somewhere in his own mind, and Harry hesitantly moves closer. Before his hand can grip him on the shoulder, Draco peels himself away violently, almost flattening to the wall.
He slides down with a dull thunk. “I need a minute.”
Hagrid has picked up Lavender in his arms. He watches the flailing black flames in speechless horror, before clearing his throat pointedly, gravely announcing that he’s going to escort the girl to the hospital wing.
“Do you need the Draught?” It’s Hermione who gingerly takes a few steps towards Draco, kneeling down a few feet away, appearing careful and lost. “We have a few vials left.”
Draco is unseeingly staring at the opposite wall. He shakes his head slightly.
So they wait.
Eventually, when Draco breaks the silence, his voice is raspy and humourless and cold. “I’ve finally become a murderer. Congratulations, Weasley. You must be proud.”
“Don’t,” Ron says firmly, the way Molly does at times. “Malfoy, there’s no time to think about it. You’ve got to continue. To be fair, they’re aiming to murder our side. I’d say we are tipping the scales.”
Draco glances at Harry, too quick to hold it. Harry stays silent. He can’t bring himself to be as compassionate as Hermione or as logical as Ron at the moment; he just can’t. His ears are still tuned in to Greyback’s screams.
When a loud, animalistic roar tears the night sky, the reverie breaks. Hermione and Draco quickly jump to their feet; Ron raises his wand reflexively. Harry flits to the window.
Giants.
Not just one giant, but a horde of them is lumbering through the Forest where Grawp had disappeared some minutes ago. A few of them are dragging long, thick tree trunks, creating deep trenches in the soil; others are carrying boulders the size of cars while the rest are casually sweeping their feet across the school grounds, careening Death Eaters and Light side alike. Terrified shouts can be heard all the way up to the castle, where Hermione gasps, then nearly growls.
“This is barbaric,” she says in a barely controlled furious whisper. “And he’s not even fighting in the battle! He’s just hiding in the Shack! Does he honestly think that he can simply order the others to die for him?”
Harry’s throat is dry. He swallows a bit of saliva down to get his muscles to work. “I know why he’s looking for Snape. But he’s got the wrong man.”
“What do you mean?” Ron asks sharply.
Harry shows his back to the window, facing the other three. He catches Draco’s gaze this time and holds. “He thinks Snape is the master of the Elder Wand because he killed Dumbledore.”
Ron curses loudly, banging his fist on the stone wall beside the window frame. “That’s it, then? It’s over? He’ll murder Snape, become the master, and kick our asses to the next life?”
“No, wait,” Hermione says, staring at Harry curiously. “What do you mean he thinks?”
Harry swallows again. And again, his mouth is still too dry. “What if – what if Snape isn’t? What if you don’t need to kill the previous master but merely defeat them?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Ron frowns.
“What if it isn’t?” Harry says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Riddle stole Dumbledore’s wand from his grave, believing it’s enough to do it. He didn’t think at that time it was necessary to kill Dumbledore himself if it gets him the wand. What if Gregorovitch or Grindelwald – and I don’t know their entire conversation, to be fair – what if he told Riddle that the previous owner just needs to be unwilling to hand over their wand.”
Even as Harry says it, he can see horrified realisation dawning on Draco’s visage. His eyes are widening to the size of saucers, the grey now painted silver from the ongoing battle outside the window, mouth falling open to gape at Harry in utter disbelief and incredulity.
“Draco, you disarmed Dumbledore before anyone even got there.”
“What? What?” Ron splutters, nearly folding in half at Harry’s words. “Are you serious?”
Harry immediately seeks out Hermione in the next second. He can see the gears turning in her brain as she processes the logic behind it. Even though Harry knows, he knows, that he’s right about this – everything inside his very gut is screaming at him in firm agreement – Hermione’s validation would at least help him think clearly over their next plan-of-action.
And then Hermione nods, slow and fearful, teeth bruising her bottom lip, brown eyes bright and determined and trustful. She believes him.
Harry lets out a huge breath, making sure to flick his gaze between the three of them in turn. “Right. So – there we have it. Draco, you – oh Merlin, please tell me no one has disarmed you since that night?”
Draco seems to be having an out-of-body experience, the way he’s staring unseeingly at the air in front of him, as though willing the fabric of space-time to split open and grab at him so that he can escape this reality.
In that disturbed, absurd moment, Harry realises that Greyback has stopped screaming and flailing. He chances a glance in that direction, immediately noticing the still pile of burned and charred flesh and bones, the stench of it only now hitting Harry’s senses.
“I – um,” Draco finally croaks out; Harry snaps back to him. “No. Not that I recall.”
“Good,” Harry sighs shakily. “Good. Now – what should we do? We need to find McGonagall. Let’s hope Snape got the Patronus and he–”
“Oh my God,” Draco suddenly exclaims. “Oh my – motherfucking Merlin of sweet Circe!”
Harry, Hermione, and Ron startle in surprise. Draco is now definitely looking at Harry and not through him, and it looks like it’s finally hitting him in the face. Harry opens his mouth to interrupt but Draco is already pacing now, grabbing at his hair erratically, blindly following a set pattern.
“Fuck. Fuck. Potter, you – you – FUCK. Why am I fucking angry? This should be the best day of my goddamn life and I’m – I’m so – done. I had one stupid job! One! And I fuck that up so epically that I ensure my own death?”
“You’re not going to die–”
“You’re the master of the Elder Wand–”
“Ronald, wipe away that drool–”
“Shut up! SHUT UP, all of you! This whole mess is your creation! You three, bullheaded Gryffindors! Do you wake up every day with a fucking check-list of whom to screw up? Oh! Looks like Draco Malfoy isn’t getting fucked in his own house, let’s lend him a hand!While we’re at it, let’s drag him into our fun and completely safe camping trip to hunt down pieces of motherfucking soul!”
“Technically, we didn’t–”
“You dragged yourself, Malfoy–”
“We never asked you to–”
Draco lets out a yell of frustration. But he seems more scared than Harry has ever seen him and he doesn’t know what to do anymore.
“Look. Look.” Draco gathers himself enough to stop pacing and face them once more, breathing loudly. His eyes are shiny and he makes no attempt to hide it. “Potter, just – I can’t face him, okay? I just can’t. I’d rather live the rest of my life as a homeless person than face him. I don’t care if – that my wand – whatever.”
Harry doesn’t understand him at all. Slytherin or not, human or not, this level of self-preservation makes absolutely no sense. He wants to tell Draco that Voldemort probably can’t hurt him. The wand wouldn’t hurt it’s master, he thinks. He knows. He knows it with the same conviction he knew that it was his wand that saved him a few nights prior to his birthday, when Voldemort had shown up, when his arm had raised itself to fend off the enemy.
“Don’t you want revenge?” Harry settles on saying. “He killed your parents. He made you torture people. He set you up to a task he knew you couldn’t accomplish.”
Draco’s stare narrows at the torture part, but he lets it go this time. He must have decided that he has bigger fish to fry than to be pissed about Harry witnessing yet another moment of his life that he had no business witnessing. To Harry’s defence, it’s not like he wanted to. It just happened to be the case.
“Take it,” Draco grits out, jaw tense. He thrusts his arm forward. “Just take it. I don’t – I don’t care. Take it and kill him and then break this piece of shit.”
In an abrupt movement, Ron spins him around by his shoulders, shaking him roughly, spitting in his face. “Malfoy, stop it! Snap out of it, you arsehole! You have the most powerful wand in history and you’re – what? Going to take a pass to finish this once and for all? Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather not have you be in possession of anything more than a moonstone for your princess gown, but mate. I’ve watched you for years salivating on the mere prospect of getting to insult someone! What’s bigger than a big middle finger to Voldemort?”
Harry and Hermione share a stricken look and Harry knows they’re both thinking the same thing: Ron’s apparent switch to Voldemort’s name. Harry figures it was about time – the man is already here, what meaning does the Taboo really hold? But at the same time, Harry thinks it’s Ron finally letting go of his fear; perhaps the fact that they have the Elder Wand in their corner has something to do with it.
On the other hand, Draco is staring at Ron as if he’s never seen the man before. He opens his mouth a few times to speak but shuts it just as promptly. Ron shoves him back and Draco stumbles against a tapestry, clambering to hold himself against the wall.
Harry breaks the silence, rubbing his hand over his face a few times. “We need to hurry.”
Their plan is, once again, interrupted when on next floor down, they come across Fred and Percy fighting two masked Death Eaters. It’s a chaotic mess of Hermione and Ron helping Fred overpower the Death Eater he’s up against while Harry tries to assist Percy. Draco is hovering on the outskirts uncertainly.
At one point, Harry is pressed against Fred, Ron, and Hermione as Percy waves his wand in quick motions. The Death Eater’s mask slips off in the middle of the duel.
{“Hello, Minister!” bellows Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who drops his wand and claws at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. “Did I mention I’m resigning?”
“You’re joking, Perce!” shouts Fred as the Death Eater he is battling collapses under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse has fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seems to be turning into some form of sea urchin. Fred looks at Percy with glee.
“You actually are joking, Perce… I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you were –”
The air explodes. They have been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seems temporarily at bay, the world is rent apart.}
“PROTEGO HORRIBILIS!”
In the split second before everything ends, there’s a loud shout and then heavy debris is ricocheting off an invisible barrier, a bubble of sheer magic pressing on all sides until Harry’s ears are ringing with the deafening cacophony, wind whipping through his clothes and hair.
After a few minutes, the air finally settles. Harry struggles against the white lights inside his eyelids and blinks rapidly to spot Hermione, Ron, Fred, Percy struggling back to their feet; they’re not dead, they’re not dead, they’re not dead –
Draco still has both arms thrown up in the air. He glances over his shoulder once before slowly lowering them.
Ron’s incredulous laughter cuts through the space, bordering on hysteria. “This is the strangest day of my life,” he declares, absently patting both Fred and Percy; he gives up after a few heavy slaps and pulls them in for a hug. “I hate to break it to you, but I suppose Mum would want to invite Malfoy every Christmas and stitch him a jumper. Maybe I can convince her to draw a giant dick on his.”
“A dick who just saved your arse,” Draco snaps, expectedly rising to the bait. “And I would never step inside your rundown house, Weasley.”
“Sure,” Ron dismisses him vaguely, easily. “Try getting out of it once Mum hooks her claws into you. You might have escaped Voldemort, but you can’t escape Molly Weasley.”
A silver doe leaps through the nearest wall, making Harry jump violently. He clutches at his chest, the adrenaline still coursing his blood. The rest of them huddle close together as the Patronus opens her mouth and speaks – to Fred’s utter stuff of nightmares, by the look on his face – in Snape’s hissing voice.
“Keep your noses out of my business.”
“Well, that’s just great,” Harry mutters moodily when the doe dissolves. “Fine, if he’s so willing to become Riddle’s fodder, who are we to interfere with his plans?”
“I hate this so much,” Draco shudders. “So much. What’s a better word than hate?”
“Despise?” Hermione offers.
“No. Loathe.”
“Abhor?”
“Yes,” Draco snaps his fingers. “Exactly. I abhor this down to every atom of my magically mutated being.”
“Magically mutated?” Hermione squeaks indignantly.
“Shack,” Harry cuts in quickly, already sensing Draco’s incoming muggles are scum speech. “We need to find a way to lure Riddle into removing the enchantment.”
Fred and Percy decide to find George at the Astronomy Tower. Percy tells them that he’s seen McGonagall out on the grounds, leading an army of Transfigured metal armours and gargoyles against the giants. Harry relishes in the mental imagery for a bit, letting the rush of fierceness warm his fingers and toes.
The further they head down the staircases, it becomes more and more clear that there are heavy casualties on both sides. Harry tries not to see the faces of the bodies littering the corridors, his soul jerking and flailing every time they pass by one.
To Draco’s increasing impatience and frustration, the other three insert themselves in every single duel they come across. Ron’s well-aimed hexes and Hermione’s perfectly casted jinxes manage to turn the tide of the duels, before Harry finishes it off with a Stunning Spell. They repeat this pattern over and over and over until the word Stupefy is seared into Harry’s brain the way Expelliarmus is. All the while, Draco hovers, neither running away nor participating.
Ron doesn’t leave the matter alone. He keeps complaining that Draco could probably throw an Obscuro and it would not only conjure a blindfold but probably take away their eyesight entirely.
“That’s not how spells work, Ron!” Hermione insists in her why-are-people-stupid, exasperated voice. “It doesn’t change the function of the incantation, merely enhances its impact. A blindfold would still remain a blindfold.”
“Fine, fine. My point still stands.”
Draco continues to ignore him until they see Luna and Padma Patil at the base of the Entrance Hall, fighting a giant spider and a Death Eater. Luna is floating and leaping through the cracks in the spider’s legs like a trained ballerina while Padma keeps the Death Eater at bay. Draco is quicker than Harry this time, taking two steps at a time, sliding a few feet once he’s on stable ground.
He runs first to Luna, shouting an Incendio, placing the spider on fire. Deftly, Luna dodges the flailing legs and stumbles into Draco in her attempt to get away. Only for a second, though, because the next moment, she’s straightening up and calling out, “Immobulus!”
The spider freezes in its tracks, but still burns alive. Luna aims a Silencio and the spider’s pained suffering abruptly cuts off.
“Draco,” she says calmly. “End it.”
Draco hesitates. Shaking himself slightly, he eventually murmurs a spell quietly under his breath. The spider’s head severs cleanly from its body and the twitching stops.
Once that’s taken care of, Luna rushes to Padma. In the distracted moment, Padma takes her opening to yell Tarantallegra at the Death Eater. By that time, Harry, Hermione, and Ron are breezing past the dead spider. Harry tries not to squirm in revulsion.
The dancing Death Eater is shouting profanities and it’s worse when he catches sight of Draco and the others. He’s in the middle of cursing Malfoy’s family to the grave, ironically, when Padma apparently has had enough –
“Petrificus Totalus! Oh, hey, Harry. What’s up? Parvati was looking for you. Don’t tell her I said this, but I think she’s taking this whole we might die to heart.”
“Er – right,” Harry says awkwardly. “Thanks, Padma. For staying for the fight. Parvati, as well.”
Padma positively beams back. “I’ll definitely tell her you said that.”
“Where’s Longbottom?” Draco is demanding from Luna but Harry barely listens to her response.
He can see through the large Entrance doors. It’s a chaos of colours and people, masked and not, school uniforms and not, giants and spiders and Dementors, and the cacophony of noises is making his heart thud in his chest. How long? he questions himself. How long until?
After a quick goodbye, Luna and Padma disappear in the fray. Once they leave, Draco eyes the battle and promptly demands the Cloak from Harry.
“You, too,” Hermione orders sternly. “We don’t know what will happen if you get hit by a lethal spell, Harry.”
Harry doesn’t know, either, for that matter. Only knows that Voldemort himself has to do it. It’s enough incentive to huddle under the Cloak, pressed against Draco’s warm, Seeker-lean body. The fabric doesn’t cover them thoroughly, though, their ankles visible under the hem.
“Ron? Ready?”
Ron nods his assent, gritting his teeth, squeezing Hermione’s fingers in a surprisingly tender gesture. It makes Harry’s heart ache for a whole different reason.
Once they climb down the steps, he sees Ginny almost immediately. She’s assisting a bunch of students tackling a horde of Death Eaters. Torrents of spells are rushing over Harry’s head as he ducks and rolls and dodges, hand clasped tightly in the hook of Draco’s elbow. Ginny whirls around when Harry aims a hasty Protego around her, the large wooden trunk splintering to pieces. There’s no time to talk, to say anything but to fight, fight, fight, to give his everything to whoever he can, running around the battlefield to ward off creatures and Death Eaters alike.
Kill them, a hissing rattles in his brain. You know you want to. You know the spell. Think how good it would feel, how satisfying it would be …
Draco is pulling at him roughly, urgently snapping in his ear, “Stop drawing attention to us! You can’t save everyone.”
“I don’t care,” Harry pants, throwing a jinx at random at a nearby Death Eater. The man bowls over in half, clutching at his stomach. “I want to take down as many as I can.”
“That’s perfectly peachy, Potter,” Draco says with a grimace. “But I shouldn’t be in the cross-fire, remember? Or do you wish to lose the edge?”
“What do you want me to do?” Harry says, shooting a quick Protego Totalum around himself and Draco. “Just let them die?”
“No, you’re supposed to look at the bigger picture,” Draco says without missing a beat, as if he knew what Harry would say and made the counter-argument in his head already. “Isn’t that your thing? Stop getting distracted by the smaller fights.”
“Right,” Harry can’t help the sarcasm dripping in his words. “I’ll just go walk to my own death right away, shall I? That’s the bigger picture, isn’t it?”
Draco clenches his jaw. They’re nearing the edge of the battle where McGonagall is controlling the world with both her arms swaying above her head, wand in one hand, and Harry is reminded of musical conductors, the ones who direct the ebb and flow of an orchestra. He jabs Draco in the gut and nods his chin in that direction.
A quick glance over his shoulder tells him that Ron and Hermione are still in a duel, assisting Arthur Weasley in taking down a few of the masked Death Eaters.
However, the closer they approach McGonagall, it becomes apparent that the Dementors are beginning to surround them. At first, Harry scrapes the idea to bad luck and opens his mouth reflexively to speak the incantation, but Draco stops him.
“Don’t,” he warns. “Your Patronus might give us away. Expecto Patronum.”
A brilliant silver fox springs out of Draco’s wand and bounds in tight circles around their invisible forms. The Dementors slowly shrink away, but more and more are still – attracted – the way Harry thought they were back in Third Year. The way the Dementors seemed to affect him more than the others, the way he had felt ashamed of it.
Now, now, the truth hits him with the force of a brick wall. It’s not him they’re attracted to, it’s what inside of him that is feeding them power. It makes him sick to the stomach, sick of what he is, an abomination that shouldn’t have ever existed.
The fox has left their periphery to join the battle. Harry watches as it skirts around the fighters, ducks between stumbling legs, leaping and arching and the sight of it surprises a few, pleases a few, and then a horse, an otter, a goat, a swan, a hare, and a terrier join the mix, one by one, creating a large circle of brilliant light, the likes of which Dumbledore would have greatly loved.
“How are you doing that?” Harry demands, turning to Draco once more.
Draco smirks. “I suppose I’m catching up to this whole master of Elder Wand shindig.”
Harry can still see the genuine fear underneath the practiced mask of casual coolness. Draco might be in possession of the most powerful wand in history, but he still does not wish to face Voldemort if he can help it. He really, really wants to ask what his Boggart is.
But this is not the time, he decides. The fact that Draco has purposefully spun around in McGonagall’s direction, who is still conducting a bloody magical orchestra, is enough for Harry to let it go.
“Professor,” Harry calls out over the noise, reaching them just as the last of the Dementors shrink away. “Professor? You were looking for me?”
McGonagall spares one glance in their direction. She can’t see them but seems to realise that Harry is probably under the Cloak. Without breaking the pattern of her incantations that is now choking one of the giants with the tree trunk it was carrying, McGonagall speaks. At the same time, the groaning, nearly destroyed suits of armours cleave through the thick skin on its gut and thighs with bloody swords.
“Did you find the object, Potter?” she barks out. Another wave and one of the thick branches of the tree trunk pierces through the giant’s throat. Warm blood gurgles out, flowing down its chest to join the river at the gut. Harry stares.
“Yes,” he tears himself away from the sight. “We found it. Where’s Snape, Professor?”
“Otherwise occupied,” she replies. “He’s under a Disillusionment Charm up at the Tower, keeping the rooftops safe with other Order members.”
Another slashing motion of the wand and another giant crumbles in a pile of gigantic limbs. The ground is shaking with the force and yet, McGonagall seems entirely unfazed. The only evidence of her tiredness is the fact that her tight bun is not as tight and her shoulders are tense, probably hurting by this point.
And then everything comes to a grinding halt when Voldemort’s high, cold, cruel voice sweeps across the battlefield, strumming and plucking at the air, climbing up Harry’s spine and tickling in his ears. The Patronuses dissolve in nothingness, blanketing the world in darkness once more.
“You have fought valiantly, but in vain. I do not wish this. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a terrible waste. I therefore command my forces to retreat. In their absence, dispose of your dead with dignity.
“Harry Potter, I now speak directly to you. On this night, you have allowed your friends to die for you, rather than face me yourself. There is no greater dishonour. Join me in the Forbidden Forest, and confront your fate. If you do not do this, I shall kill every last man, woman, and child who tries to conceal you from me.”
Inside the Great Hall, Harry sits numbly on one of the long benches lined up against the wall. He doesn’t want to see it, but he can’t help it, either. The cold, dead bodies of the fighters placed near the Top Table side by side, eyes closed forever, chests unmoving. He thinks how breathing is taken for granted and thinks of Draco’s panic attacks, the gasping and the terror of it, of being unable to draw air inside his lungs.
He thinks of his own breaths, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He thinks of his heart trying to keep him alive, healing the wounds, not knowing how to give up yet. But it will have to. Harry almost apologises to it.
Padma’s sobs are still ringing in his ears, though. He thinks she might still be crying, hunched over Parvati’s body, face buried in her sister’s chest and fingers clutching at her robes. And then once that memory is at the conscious level, he unravels and it’s a goddamn slide-show seared in the back of his shut eyelids.
Terry Boot and Zacharias Smith, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Alicia Spinet. At least fifty more students, some he knew in passing, some he’s shared classes with, some he had never even seen. They’d all fought and they’d all died, and Harry is sitting here, his heart still kicking and stumbling inside his chest when it should have always been him in their place.
The worst, he thinks, is Remus and Tonks. Lying on their backs beside each other, fixedly staring at the dark sky littered with stars of the Great Hall without really seeing. Harry hasn’t even met Teddy yet, doesn’t even know where he is, and he feels a hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat at the fact that Teddy will never have a godfather, either.
Hot tears spill down his cheeks, tracking through the scratches and the grime and sweat, the hastily healed minor wounds, through the sparse hair on his jaw, trickling down his throat by the pulsating beat.
Harry doesn’t know how long he sits there. It could have been hours or days or seconds. It no longer matters. What matters is what he must do. What he should have done in the first place.
Tucking his legs under the hem of the Cloak, Harry adjusts it as he rises to his feet. Without Draco’s added mass, the Cloak hides Harry the way it always has, wholly and efficiently, safe and warm. He allows himself only a few moments of watching Ron and Hermione all the way across the other side, surrounded by the Weasleys. They’re distracted at the moment, speaking from time to time words that Harry can’t hear.
With a final look around the Great Hall, Harry leaves.
A lone figure is sitting at the foot of a large tree, hidden by the dark shadows of the Forest behind. Despite it, there is no mistaking the white blonde hair shimmering like Nuri’s fire.
Draco rises to his feet, wand in hand, looking exhausted, bloodied and beaten, and Harry has never found him more –
It’s not like Ginny. There’s no Burrow-scented flowery shampoo rising from a potion awakening him to his feelings, his desires, his affection. There’s no budding friendship spanning over six years, no childhood celebrity crushes, never playing on the same team. There are no stolen kisses in the corners, no comforting embraces after a rough day of rumours, no it’s okay I understand.
Draco has somehow managed to make his life even more difficult than it has to be. He has tried knocking Harry down a few notches when the rest of the world was busy lifting him up, making him some kind of hero who was going to rescue them from the evil Dark Wizard’s clutches. Draco doesn’t smell flowery, he smells like open bonfire under stars and arctic breeze encasing the tent. Like potions fiddled with in the silence of the nights, like scratching quills. Like Harry’s shampoo that he used for weeks, Harry’s cologne, Harry’s towel. Like berries and Ron’s terrible stew and the type of freedom Harry has never known before, the type that comes with money, with using it for lavish dishes from around the globe, velvety smooth shirts that slide across skin, fitting immaculately in a way Harry’s never did.
Draco never said it’s okay, I understand. He never settled for Harry’s explanations, justifications, excuses. And it’s not fair, is it? To compare him with Ginny? To compare him with the rest of the world? It’s not, Harry knows, and yet.
“So,” Draco says, standing a few feet away from him. “This is it?”
Harry nods. “This is it.”
Draco’s jaw clenches. He swallows, his pale throat bobbing, winces as the motion disturbs a bleed on its side. Harry finds himself unable to look above his shoulders, so he fixes his gaze in the distant blackness, imagining Voldemort’s gleeful face on the other side.
“I thought you were helping Snape with potions?”
“I was,” Draco says. “Now I’m not.”
He’s glad Draco decided to accompany Severus, instead of standing guard. Madam Pomphrey is up to her ears with injuries and she needs potions, as many as possible, as quickly as possible. Harry thinks that if it were anyone else ordering Draco to assist, he probably would have bluntly refused. But Draco had rarely been able to resist Severus’ instructions, the only time Harry can think of was when he didn’t want the man to interfere with his Dumbledore-Hunting business.
“Look at me.”
Harry does. Stops breathing entirely.
“If you’re going to die,” Draco says roughly, lips twisted, silver eyes scrunched up, “have the bloody decency to say goodbye.”
“I–” Harry begins, pauses, clears his throat. “I told Neville to kill the snake. He was – Collin Creevey – he wasn’t even of age. Ron and Hermione – they would. Try to stop me. Try to find another way. But we’ve known for a while now, haven’t we? This is the only way.”
Draco’s breaths are heavy, chest expanding stutteringly.
“Once I die, the Vow should break,” Harry continues quietly. “But I’m going to ask you to stay. To end the fight. To help Ron and Hermione, anyway. I know you want out, I know you want nothing of this war – but, Draco. They need you. You can finish this war.”
Draco takes a careful step closer, now within Harry’s reaching distance if he chooses to extend an arm and grip his shoulder.
“What’s the point, Harry?” His voice is hard, steely. “Even if we somehow kill the snake, going against Riddle is beyond stupid.”
And Harry has a very, very strong urge to remind him that he is the master of the Elder Wand, that he’s a competent wizard despite his prejudices, that if he can learn the Patronus in one week’s time, he can do greater things, things such as mortally wounding the man who imprisoned him in his own house, who killed his parents.
“You think everything is stupid,” Harry says instead, feels a hint of exasperation underlying his words.
“Well, it is. And you’re stupid, too, for doing this.”
“Don’t act surprised now,” Harry tries to tease, tries to make himself sound okay.
Draco only shakes his head.
The silence between them grows, festers like an ugly vine twisting around Harry’s throat. His heart is hammering inside his chest, compensating for all the beats it would be missing in this lifetime. And Harry realises, with startling clarity, he’s going to miss this pale arsehole.
“I should get going,” he says, quiet and soft. “Draco … thank you. For everything.”
Draco’s head bows. He stares at his shoes, breathes deeply, latches onto Harry. “Don’t thank me yet. See you around, Potter.”
Harry blinks, surprised at the cool tone, watches Draco’s retreating figure disappearing behind Hagrid’s hut. He takes a few moments to collect himself, fingers clutched tightly, the snitch – his very first snitch – digging into his palm.
Harry enters the Forest.
It’s almost worth it, he thinks, feeling his nerves settle at he sees James Potter, Lily Evans, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin standing proudly around him in a circle.
Sirius tells him it’ll be quicker and easier than falling asleep. Remus insists that Teddy will grow up in a better world, a safer world that his parents and his godfather helped build. Lily says how loved he is, always will be, and that he’s Harry, always will be Harry, and Harry feels his soul, the other one, withering away from her words, the way Tom Riddle had, shielding itself from her brilliant warmth.
“You’ll stay with me?” he asks in a small voice.
James smiles. *“Until the very end.”
Tom Riddle’s cold smile is bursting through his lips as he lifts up his arm.
Harry thinks of seagulls and kangaroos, of white beaches, of the Greek beef stew he never had the chance to taste. He thinks of the pretty girl in his Muggle school he never had the courage to approach. He thinks of flying over the Pacific Ocean, perched on his Firebolt, toes skimming the endless sea. He thinks of another bespectacled boy, having just learned that he’s a wizard, entering Harry’s pet shop to choose his very first magical companion.
Harry thinks of many things, of all the experiences he’s missed, has to sacrifice, wishing he didn’t have to, but knowing it needs to be done. This is bigger than him, after all. This is bigger than one Gryffindor and his brain-damaged grand schemes, and really, what was he expecting, if not another terrible plan with the high probability of certain death?
“AVADA KEDAVARA!”
In the split second that it takes for the spell to reach him, the last thing Harry hears is the ear-splitting roar of a dragon renting the night sky, blue-white flames raining from the Heavens before bright green envelops his whole world.
Harry wakes up in a white expanse. Dumbledore is waiting for him.