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“I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself,” Potter said, looking down at her hand without taking it.
“And isn’t Draco a boy’s name?” the little Weasel had added.
Draco hadn’t known how to answer. No one had ever questioned her name before. That wasn’t how the world worked. Her world had been neat and orderly until that moment. There was her mother, who arranged high society according to her exclusive soirées. There was her father, who spun the wizarding world to his whim in his capable hand. And there was Draco, beloved only child to the purest of the sacred twenty-eight families.
“Have you…no understanding…” she breathed, almost too shocked to speak, “…of how the world works?”
Harry Potter would spend the next eight years demonstrating just how much he did not understand.
Her first year at Hogwarts had been a long battle over her name. Draco was adamant that hers was a girl's name, just like Cleo, Margo, Juno, Calypso, Rio... and anyway, a constellation for the noble house of Black, a myth for the grand house of Malfoy satisfied tradition. No matter what that stupid weasel and mudblood and scarhead said.
Why not Lyra? her classmates asked. Or Draga? Or any number of other names that might fit. In fact, it wasn’t until detention in the dark forest when Potter finally called her by her proper name, trying to pull her away from the—monster? thing? scuttling mass of shadow and fangs?—when Draco froze, her voice caught in her throat. She had turned, pressed against him as he held her, unable to watch as it crawled closer…
…and then she was in the hospital wing, waking up from her faint.
She didn’t know how Potter had saved her. She couldn’t bring herself to say thank you. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her father.
But at least he started using her proper name.
Her second year, she learned to fly. Her father showered her with gifts—fine robes, a brilliant broom, and a wonderful diary.
Hello, diary, she wrote first. I’m Draco Malfoy, and I’m in Slytherin, and I’m in second year.
Hello, dear, it responded. She had smiled in startled delight.
Diary devoured her every word and thought.
That year she was so tired that she ended up in the hospital wing again, and she drifted in and out of her classes so that it was a wonder that she passed anything.
“You really don’t remember?” Potter demanded.
Draco had practiced her sneer in the mirror and found that it always spoiled her looks. Instead she had perfected a flat stare that didn’t put her face out and let her eyes look naturally large and disdainful, as if she was surprised anyone would try to talk to her. Diary had encouraged her practice.
“Remember what, Potter?” she said. “I don’t have all day.”
“You threatened that muggleborns would be next,” Potter said, and she was surprised by the anger in his voice. “And everyone thinks I’m the stupid Heir of Slytherin because of you.”
She blinked. She had a hazy memory of standing at the wall, of saying…something. But like the rest of the year, it was cloudy at best. These days of being wide awake and wholly herself were harder and harder to grasp.
“Only an idiot would think you’re the heir of Slytherin,” she said sharply.
He looked so confused.
“You…don’t think I’m the one doing this?” he asked. “Feels like everyone else does.”
“Anyone who pays any attention would know you don’t care about your own blood,” she said. “Too soft-hearted for your own good.”
She wasn’t sure why she said the last bit. Feeling the room tilt a bit, she put her hand on the wall and let it guide her away from Potter. Bed. She would go lie down again. Diary said the sleep helped.
By the end of term, she was in a near-permanent daze and went home two months early. That year, Scarhead managed something or other that got Gryffindor the house cup again. She only found out later as she slept through most of summer, recovering what the healer had called her magical energy.
Only when she woke up did she discover that her father had lost Dobby. To Potter.
Her father looked so disappointed in her for even bringing it up. She didn’t have the courage to ask how it had happened.
Her third year, she was wounded by that awful beast—the hippogriff, although one may be forgiven for thinking it was the mudblood. She had dreams of both of their heads being struck off, horrible nightmares so detailed with blood and bone that she would have thought it would be what her boggart looked like coming out of the cabinet.
But no—she’d been confronted with her father emerging from the shadowy void, so tall, so imposing with his cane and cold eyes, looking as if he was about to burn her name off the tapestry. How was she supposed to cast riddikulus at that? Mock her father or fail the lesson? She had pretended to faint instead, and her parents had formally complained. The year was going badly enough that she’d found Diary in her suitcase and started writing again.
You dream of your enemies cut down before you and you call it a nightmare? Afraid of a little bone and mudblood splashing your expensive shoes?
That comment was the first time Draco understood what blood superiority would ultimately mean. Worse was how there really was a killer lurking on campus—Sirius Black, come back to finish what he’d started by killing Potter.
“Wouldn’t you want revenge?” she’d asked, looking at Potter across the potions table. “Enough to try to catch him?”
“…yeah, I guess,” Potter said, although he sounded like he was trying to play it cool.
“What are you on about?” Ronald demanded.
She didn’t even look at him. She was trying to see into Potter’s eyes, looking for the emotion that Diary had tried to explain to her.
“If someone killed my parents,” she said, “I think I’d want to hunt them down myself.”
She didn’t mean it. Someone who could kill her parents would be terrifying. She’d run if it came down to it. But Potter seemed the type to fight, at least enough that she thought he might—
As Potter looked up at her, barely moving at all, she took an involuntary step back. She clutched her Diary like a shield in front of her. Yes, that was the look. Bone and blood came from looks like that. She flinched back, not wanting to see that look, and she missed how Potter watched her go, startled at his own feeling.
In fourth year, she was swamped to tears with OWL preparatory work. Almost as distracting as Scarhead in the tournament. More relentless than her father's disappointment was Diary’s sarcasm. Why do you doubt he put his name in the goblet—do you think about your classes half as much? You talk about him so much, do you wish you’d been at the bottom of the lake for him instead? Diary told her to keep her mouth shut more often than not now, to stay silent about her family’s loyalties, that her childish boasting was to blame for the raid on their house, that she was a spoiled little monster, that she was clearly born lucky since she couldn’t have become a Malfoy on her own merits. Its criticism became so relentless that she determined to drop it in the Slytherin fireplace, holding it half into the flames.
A minute passed. The book did not burn.
Ah, came the ghostly words floating on the page. You would become a failure like your father?
Draco brought the book closer, wincing as it burned her fingertips.
A failure? she wrote.
Never came into the true power of his pure blood, Diary said. I could show you. You do have some brains about you.
Draco was so busy learning magic from Diary that, by the time the Yule Ball arrived, she almost didn’t accept Theo’s invitation. But she did, in an elegantly simple white gown with a soft cape rather than a robe, and she didn’t need the spelled hair conditioners and face creams that the mudblood clearly used.
And she caught Potter’s look. The little hero couldn’t keep his eyes off of her all night. No one could. She had caught everyone’s gaze as she danced. She was intoxicated with her own power so that she was surprised by her daring as she came up to Potter, seated dejected by Weasley.
“Not dancing?” she said, a little breathless from the last waltz.
“Don’t like dancing,” Potter muttered and looked away from her.
“Clearly your dates are rubbish,” she said, and she put her hand out. “Come on, then, I expect you to keep up.”
“…what?”
To her delight, he had raised his hand to ward her off. Her fingers closed tight as if he were a snitch, and she brought him up so quickly that she guided his other arm to her waist.
“One, two, three, Potter,” she said with a triumphant smile, leading him into the dance.
Now everyone was watching. Now the room spun in crystal clarity as the music soared around them, and somehow Potter kept up and didn’t argue and even laughed once, helplessly, as the dance came to an end.
She felt his hand tighten on her waist, just enough to hold her securely against him. Her smile faded, then came back, uncertain of his intentions as she met his look.
“Another?” he asked, and somehow it didn’t sound like teasing.
Was he making fun of her? No, his eyes were too honest. There was nothing cruel there. Nothing but honest enjoyment for the next dance.
The music swelled once more, and this time he was the one leading her around the room. And the next. Her feet should have felt sore in her new shoes. Instead she commanded the floor. The entire room was sparkling.
For just that night, she felt like a princess. When the ball was over and she had returned to her dorm, she said as much to Diary.
A spoiled princess who wallows in the adoration of peasants. A little ferret that needs their praise since you earn none of your own. Trading on your looks like a trap rather than your own skill—are my lessons useless to you?
She spent the rest of the night of the Yule Ball in quiet tears as she studied until dawn. Until Diary let her stop.
She spent the rest of the year wiping her eyes as she studied and learned what Diary had to teach. Her scores rose. The shadows under her eyes darkened. She watched Potter pal around with the weasel and the mudblood, always replaying the dance in her head, but there was never a proper time to talk. He was so busy with the tournament.
Then Potter reappeared at the end of the tournament, holding a dead Cedric Diggory. Saying that Voldemort had returned.
Potter had looked so lost, all alone in the crowd.
At the memorial feast, she had hoped to ask him what had happened. She even managed to catch his look from across the great hall. In his eyes was the same look—angry and cold—as he remembered how to want revenge.
The look had been aimed at her. At what she represented.
The look scared off any hope of talking to him. She put her blank stare back on. Diary was pleased to hear it.
In fifth year, Diary almost never left her hand. It hated Umbridge—a petty bureaucrat whose power came from a worthless institution, and you’re merely her assistant. Diary became cruel—you require a title before you can command eleven year olds? your authority to take house points is more powerful to you than your ability to cast spells—but Diary was also invaluable.
Diary taught her about power. Don’t watch Potter. Watch who follows Potter. Yes, Potter seemed able to move invisibly from place to place, but his friends were painfully obvious and easy to keep track of. She was the one to catch the Weasley twins and see them expelled—or they would have been if they hadn’t run off.
She was the one who discovered the come and go room. She watched Potter’s little group smashed up on the rocks of Umbridge’s ambition, and she avoided Potter’s look as Umbridge marched them away.
Then everything came apart. Umbridge vanished. Dumbledore returned.
Father was arrested.
If her mother had sent a letter to warn Draco, it hadn’t arrived before the news did in the Prophet. She found out that her father was a Death Eater and a dark wizard and a captive as everyone else did.
Father could do anything. Father was who she aspired to be like. But Father had been arrested. Father had failed.
At the train station, she waited with her Diary in hand, looking at no one. Everyone looked at her. She heard the whispers.
Diary had been quite clear in its disdain for her father. Diary also said that Draco might still be salvageable. As her world shifted unsteadily beneath her feet, she clung to Diary and held it close to her chest.
Someone was standing beside her on the platform. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. The air didn’t feel charged like that unless it was him.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
“Funny,” Potter said without any emotion. “I’m still walking around.”
“Don’t talk to me,” she said. “After what you did to my father—”
“He’s not dead,” Potter said with a bitterness that told her others were. “He deserved it.”
“You’re dead,” she repeated, still not facing him. She clutched Diary a little tighter. When the train arrived, she walked on, head held high, alone, knowing who waited for her at home. “You’re all dead.”
In the summer before sixth year, Draco stepped off the train and into a carriage that brought her to the manor, with just enough time to accept a hug from her mother before the new reality set in. She was presented to the dark lord, who sat at her father’s chair at the head of the dining table. How strange that a dark lord wore no shoes. The dark lord had stroked her cheek, smiling at her lowered eyes, the tremor in her breath, and commanded her to continue keeping his book safe.
Draco apologized to Diary for ever thinking of burning it. She knew who was in it now. She didn’t know how, but she knew what it was.
Kill Dumbledore. Draco hadn’t reacted at hearing the command. None of the Death Eaters tried to argue for her, not even her mother. To pay for her father’s failure, she would do the impossible and bring the dark lord’s forces into Hogwarts. She would lead the very assault.
Diary thought her idea about the vanishing cabinets was a rare stroke of intelligence, and it taught her the spells to repair both pieces. She listed everything in Borgin and Burkes and it gleefully suggested what pieces to buy. She even mentioned what the Weasley twins’ joke shop had in stock, and the Diary enjoyed the thought of them finding out later how they had helped to bring about Dumbledore’s end.
As before in second year, the days began to grow hazy. She sometimes woke up at her desk and a day had gone by. Then three days. A week. She knew better than to argue. Diary wanted to do some things himself.
And then she woke up gasping on her back, her bare feet cold on a cold damp floor, pain blossoming up from her waist to her throat. Her hands blindly fumbled along the wide slash that slit her open, great gouts of hot blood flowing over her fingers.
Her gaze fell to one side, finding Potter standing over her, wand in one hand, his other pressed to his scar. Her own wand lay on the floor.
She had the ridiculous thought that Diary had lost his touch for dueling and abandoned her to deal with the aftermath.
“Potter,” she whispered, blood flecking her lips. “…I…?”
Staring at her in shock, Potter raised his wand. The sound in the room faded to a high pitched whine so she didn’t hear what he cast. His spells did nothing. He didn’t know how to fix this. She was going to die on a bathroom floor—
She faded out. When a jab of white hot pain stabbed through her gut, she opened her eyes and found Snape over her. Her relief vanished as the cure proved worse than the injury, burning as the great wound closed. Fading out again was a relief, and she was not surprised when she woke in her dorm, in her bed.
For the rest of the year, her mind was her own. Diary was a coward. Diary didn’t want to risk feeling even the hint of pain again.
Worthless chit. You will see this through unless you want your parents’ bloodied heads left on your pillow at night. Unless you want their bodies delivered in pieces on the school lawn. Little would-be princess couldn’t stomach a little blood and bone in her dreams, you want your nose rubbed in their corpses? Finish your job!
For all its threats, Diary didn’t try to take over again until the very end, when she was walking up the stairs of the Astronomy tower. The haze and the sense of losing herself was a welcome escape from the nightmare she'd helped create.
She woke up in a bed not her own. The manor’s master bedroom, redone in shades of gray. The windows were barred.
She wore a simple white robe with a sash at her waist and nothing else.
She wasn’t surprised that the door was locked, that she didn’t have her wand, that there were flower petals scattered on the bed.
As her reward, the dark lord arranged for her father to escape Azkaban.
In his apology to her—whispered to her through the door and only when Voldemort was not in the manor—her father admitted that he had known that the dark lord would want a wife of the most pure blood. That her coming marriage was their family’s only hope as the dark lord took control of the wizarding society. Voldemort would destroy the ministry, mudbloods, blood traitors, wizards, muggles, everything. Everyone would burn.
At least, this way, Draco would survive.
Draco understood and didn’t argue. She cried into her pillows and thanked God that the dark lord intended to wait until she was of age.
Once again, she felt like a princess, locked within a tower, knowing rescue would not come.
What did come, as winter turned to spring, was a sparrow at the window, small enough to fit through the bars, sitting on the sill for a moment. It tilted its head and regarded her too steadily. A long moment passed as it looked around the room, watching as she sat upright, drying her eyes.
“Well?” she said in a low voice. “I refuse to believe you’re a bird.”
The bird darted past her to the door, settling on the floor and listening.
“There’s only Crabbe and Goyle,” she said. “They usually fall asleep by now.”
The bird’s shape expanded, not in the smooth transition of an animagus but the sudden pop of a charm, and then Potter was standing in front of her, wand already raised. He looked for her wand and saw nothing, and saw how all she had here was the bed and the pillows. It was obvious why she was here wearing little more than a robe. He lowered his wand and watched her for a moment.
“Kind of ironic,” he said quietly, “your bodyguards turned into your jailers.”
“If I leave, they die.” She half-shrugged. “So I'm here.”
“You want me to believe that’s why you’re still here?” He motioned at the room. “Miss Malfoy gives a damn about anyone around her?”
“Oh, spare me,” she said. “There’s no running from him. What would I do, join you in your little rebellion?”
“…yes.”
She would have laughed, but his eyes were serious. Her gaze lowered…and then she did laugh, flippantly behind her sleeve.
“‘Here, all my little wizards,’” she said, pretending to be him talking to his friends. “‘Look, the Malfoy brat who killed Dumbledore, she’s here to join our side for goodness and virtue. Yes, everyone she knows is dead, but—’”
“That won't happen,” he said.
Her laughter faded. Her smile dwindled back to her usual blank stare. She didn’t believe it. But he did, and she couldn’t argue with the belief in his eyes.
“Well, I do give a damn,” she muttered. “So why are you here? Not to rescue me, of course.”
Potter swallowed once, clearly warring with himself. Whatever secret he had, it might have been too dangerous to tell Voldemort’s bride.
“I know how to kill him,” he said.
She scoffed. “They killed him before.”
“No, for real,” Potter said. “He created horcruxes, cutting his soul into pieces—they’re scattered all around England. I know it sounds weird, but—“
“Oh, how he puts a bit of himself in something?” she said.
He blinked. “You know? Then your book really is one?”
“Didn’t know it had a name,” she said. She shook her head. “It won’t burn.”
He reached into his robe and drew out not a wand but a white curved blade—no, a fang.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“It destroys them,” he said. “I’ve already destroyed four. There’s three left.”
She looked at the claw, then up at his face. Now that he stood closer, she could see what the battle was costing him. Worn, with half-circles under his eyes, the lines of his cheeks a little more prominent. There was dirt worked into the creases of his hands. She could believe he had been waging a war on the outside of her walls.
“Do you have any little friends?” she asked. “Are you alone out there?”
“...not many,” he said. He faced her squarely. “I could do with one more.”
Her ran her hand over her face, her fingers through her hair.
“He’ll torture me if he finds out,” she said. “He’ll kill us.”
Potter didn’t argue. He simply waited.
Swallowing once, she reached under the pile of pillows and found the edge of Diary. She drew it out, holding it in her lap.
“Will he feel when it dies?” she whispered.
Potter shook his head. “He hasn’t so far.”
She still didn’t hand it over, and he didn’t force her, although he could have taken it easily. It held her fate and the fate of everyone she knew or loved. She lowered her eyes, unable to look at him directly. Everyone she loved, in one way or another.
She offered it up without a word. Potter cast a silencing charm on the room, then put the diary on the floor, opening the cover. Words floated up onto the page.
Oh, the pretty fool needs something? Help with her hair? Makeup? Arranging her pure little arse for her master’s pleasure?
“What a disgusting little…” Potter whispered, lifting the fang.
She had thought he’d use a magic sigil or wave the fang like a wand. Instead he brought it down with all his strength, stabbing so fiercely that a scream wailed from the book. Ink bubbled out in a fount. The pages turned black at their center as the words faded from sight.
Drawing up on the bed in fright, Draco pressed her hands over her mouth, listening intently for footsteps, for shouts, for any sign that they’d been heard. Potter didn’t notice as he diligently cleaned up the ink and lifted the stain from the carpet. He ended the silencing charm just to be thorough, so there’d be no lingering sign of his magic if anyone paranoid enough checked the room.
He looked up at her, smiling as her trembling began to fade.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s done.”
“Oh, it is nothing like done,” she whispered, falling on her knees beside him.
She undid the white sash around her robe, pushing him enough to take the book back. Once, twice, she wrapped the sash around the middle of the book, tying it closed with a bow fancy enough to grace a ball gown.
“What’re you—?” he started.
“In case he wants to see it,” she whispered. “So maybe he won’t look too close. Is that it? It’s dead?”
“Yeah, that one,” he said. “We need the crown, and…and we know there’s…oh. Um.”
His face reddened and he looked away from her.
“Your robe,” he said, standing and turning. “It’s, um. It’s open.”
She looked at him, allowing herself the briefest moment to enjoy his embarrassment. Then she laughed under her breath and drew her robe closed, holding it shut in one hand.
“Good God, some hero you’ve turned out to be,” she said. “All he has to do to win is flash his robe open at you.”
“…I don’t think it’d have the same effect,” Potter said, taking her hand and helping her stand. “I mean it, you know. You can come with me.”
“I…” she said.
He gazed down at her, and she felt a little jolt at how she had to look up at him. But that look was full of pity, and she twisted inside herself for him to look at her like that.
“My parents,” she said. “My friends. I can’t…”
He exhaled. That was something he could understand.
“You said there’s more.” She swept her hair back and took a breath, facing him steadily. “What are they?”
“Two more,” Potter said. “We only know about a ring, though. His family's ring.”
A ring.
Her eyes shut.
No wonder the dark lord had made such strange comments about the coming wedding.
“Give me the fang,” she said softly.
“…you know where the ring is?” he asked.
“I know where it will be,” she said.
“Where?”
“On my hand. During the wedding.”
The week passed by like an eternity. Voldemort burst in once, demanding to see the diary, and she acted puzzled as she drew the book from under her pillows, wrapped in its silk sash. The pristine cover and the reverent way she held it set him at ease so that he only touched the sash, assuaged at how she clearly took care of it. He scolded her anyway to keep it by her at all times, that they were moving the wedding date forward, then locked the door once again, audibly stomping down the stairs.
She threw up from nerves when he was gone.
On the day of the wedding, her mother helped her dress. It was the first time Draco had seen her mother in months—Narcissa looked twenty years older—but it was a relief to see her and hold her. Despite knowing she would likely be dead in a few hours, or perhaps because of it, Draco felt almost reassured in having her hair done up with gems with a veil that glittered as it went over her face.
Her mother found the fang hidden in the bouquet.
Their eyes met for just a moment. Narcissa looked stricken with unshed tears. Did her mother know what it was? Yes—her mother was careful not to touch the tip as she took a white rose from her own updo and covered the fang under its petals. Narcissa handed back the bouquet, arranging it in Draco’s hands so that the flowers better hid the fang’s white curve. She didn’t ask what her daughter’s plan was.
“Did you get the book?” Bellatrix snapped as she unlocked the door and entered. “The master doesn’t want it left behind.”
“Yes, can you carry it?” Narcissa called over her shoulder. “Her hands are full now.”
Bellatrix took the diary like a holy artifact, running her fingers along the edges of the cover, the silk. Of everyone here, Bellatrix frightened Draco only a little less than the dark lord.
Her aunt caught her eye. For a moment, neither looked away.
Then Draco flinched and lowered her gaze.
“That’s a good girl,” her aunt said, petting Draco’s hair. “You make a wonderful handmaid for our lord. Shall we? It’s time.”
Narcissa’s hand tightened on Draco’s shoulder. She said nothing.
Behind her mother and her aunt, Draco followed, her face concealed, the only sign of her fear the way the veil trembled with her breath.
They swept down the broad staircase, flanked on either side by rows of Death Eaters, their masks polished to gleaming, in black velvet robes that would have been formal if they weren’t so ominous. She knew most of the people beneath the masks, all of them as afraid of their master as she was. She had the feeling of nothing so much as children playing at being monsters.
Her aunt and mother touched her shoulders as they apparated. It had to be both of them. Her aunt might have dropped her somewhere over the ocean. Her mother might have taken her to the wilderness to run.
When they arrived, Draco stared in disbelief. The Great Hall of Hogwarts. The tables had been removed so that numerous Death Eaters and other wizards could stand in neat rows, and there were so many candles that the room glowed. Emerald banners fringed in silver hung from the ceiling. Her gaze was naturally drawn to the ceiling where she spotted several little birds holding as still as possible along the rafters. No, not several. Dozens, at least, little brown sparrows that blended with the wood.
A processional played from somewhere. As if they had practiced, Narcissa and Bellatrix took a step back and gave her a very light nudge to walk.
Draco tightened her grip on her bouquet, holding it close. Somehow, step by step, she forced herself to walk toward the real monster, the dark lord, refusing to look directly at his flat serpentine features. There was her father—she recognized how he stood—standing in the front ranks. There was Snape standing across from Voldemort.
Without a priest, the dark lord officiated at his own ceremony. He put his arm around her shoulders and he turned her to face the assembled crowd.
“My most loyal of servants,” he began, “you are privileged to witness the culmination of the purest of breeding.”
She lost track of the speech. She was only here to stand and receive a ring, after all. Instead she was grateful for the veil as she watched the birds, their eyes glimmering in the candlelight. She would have thought they were statues except for how they occasionally couldn’t help twitching a wing.
When would they attack? What were they waiting for?
She had the terrible realization that they were waiting for her signal. For her to destroy the ring.
She hadn’t been so frightened until now. Everything rested on her? Her eyes were impossibly wide behind her veil. Her breaths came in shallow gasps.
“And now…to seal our union.”
His cold hand took her wrist. Without resisting, she let him lift her hand, holding her fingers wide enough that he easily slipped on a heavy, wide ring. A man’s ring, she thought.
“From my own bloodline…a symbol of the continuity of pure magic as we destroy muggle vermin and blood traitors alike...”
He released her hand, still speaking. She grasped the bouquet with her ring hand, found the fang with her other, and pressed the flat of the ring into the sharp tip.
A scream tore through the hall so loud that her ears hurt, and blood flowed out of the ring like a fountain. Spilling hot over her hands, it startled everyone back as it splashed on the stone floor.
A thousand things happened at once. A blur of people leaped down from the ceiling with battlecries of “Dumbledore’s army!”
Someone’s arms came around her and pulled her from the dark lord’s hand, casting her to one side. She didn’t fall—someone caught her—her father, she recognized his hold, and she was swung up into his arms, carried from the Great Hall as the battle turned hot—
—until a scarlet hex caught him in the back, and he collapsed to his knees, spilling her onto the floor.
“Blood traitor!” Bellatrix screamed. “Both of you, worthless blood traitors!”
Another crucio tore through her father. His wand dropped beside Draco’s hand, and she swept it up to aim at her aunt.
Draco’s crucio was not as dark as her aunt’s—it made Bellatrix double over more in surprise than true pain. The effort of casting such a heavy spell made Draco’s head spin. She couldn’t cast another one of those and stay conscious. Instead she summoned one of the banners from the ceiling, holding it between Bellatrix and her father and herself.
The banner went up in a blaze of bright red light. Draco summoned another banner, then another, wondering why no one in the raging fight would do her the courtesy of getting her aunt’s attention.
A flash of silver and orange sent shockwaves through the hall as the walls shuddered. Then another flash, and the outer wall exploded outward in a cascade of stones. Half the rafters tumbled down and the candles dropped. Nothing but the moon and bright spells lit the hall.
Finally someone stumbled against Bellatrix so that she turned, snarling at whoever she now aimed her hex at. Draco scanned the battle as well as she could. Where was the dark lord? Had he run?
No—he was there with a shield up around his snake, but there were so many wizards and witches fighting around him that even his spell couldn’t withstand so many spells. The shield shimmered and broke, and Nagini surged out, fangs bared.
Her father groaned and lay still. She looked at him in horror, realizing that she was now alone in the middle of a war. She got to one knee, crouching beside him, wrenching back her veil. The Great Hall was almost empty as the fighting had spread in all directions from the hall to the rest of the school, out the front, out through the broken wall. Where was her mother? Where was Pott—
There—directly facing the dark lord in the center of the hall, Potter stood surrounded by the dropped bodies of Death Eaters. Were they dead? She doubted it, stupid soft-hearted hero he was. But soft or not, Potter managed a step closer to Voldemort, deflecting each dark spell.
Voldemort took a step back.
Hope surged in her heart. Yes, Potter could do this—he was the hero of the story, he won every battle, he was advancing—
A sickly green spell struck Potter in the back. Without a sound, he dropped.
Shocked into silence, Draco was barely aware of herself as she ran toward him, sliding and kneeling on the floor with him. She cupped his face, looking into his eyes.
Potter stared distantly at nothing.
No.
Draco couldn’t breathe.
Not possible.
He wasn’t supposed to die.
“Potter,” she whispered, bending close. “Harry? You can’t…you can’t be…”
But he was. There was no breath, no sound. She knew what a killing curse looked like. Bellatrix? It had to have been. No one else would have dared. And where was her aunt now?
Draco followed the sound of a rising wail of pain. Bellatrix leaned over Voldemort much in the same way, calling him master, begging him to open his eyes.
Draco didn’t understand. How were both of them dead?
Seconds passed.
A minute.
Then Voldemort groaned.
His hand twitched, spread out and scraped along the floor, trying to push himself up.
“No, no no no,” Draco whispered, looking back down, shaking his body. “Harry, please, he’s not dead. He’s not dead, you have to wake up, you’re not dead, either, Harry, I don’t believe it, you’re not—“
She couldn’t have told how his eyes changed, but one second they were cold and empty, and the next they were warm and wide. He groaned, turning on one side toward her, raising his wand from his prone position.
“Using the Malfoy girl for a shield?” Voldemort snarled, pushing Bellatrix aside as he stood. “Still hiding behind other people.”
“…no more horcruxes, Tom,” Harry said, twisting the name like a knife. He managed to rise up on his elbows, get his feet under him, standing like he was drunk. “Want to hear a few secrets I just—?”
Whatever Harry was going to say was lost in Voldemort’s shriek, a killing curse that ended in a long syllable of rage. Harry’s spell rose to meet it, a simple expelliarmus more powerful than it had any right to be as it crashed toward the dark lord.
Lightning flashed through the room, forcing Bellatrix back, hands up, falling out of the hall into the fight outside. Draco lay prone, struggling under the immense pressure pushing her down.
“Nothing’s going to stop you dying now!” the dark lord screamed. “There’s no love for you to hide behind!”
Harry didn’t go down, but he groaned with the effort of matching the magic pouring out of Voldemort. There was a pulse of something like thunder and a flash of light as their wands locked. Their magic roared like a flood trapped in the air between them. Stray bolts of magic lashed Draco’s hands, across her back, leaving streaks of ash over pink welts.
Draco lifted her head. The dark lord’s robes flared back like enormous black wings, throwing a monstrous shadow on the wall as he screamed, as if his hate was enough to keep him standing.
Harry didn’t have the hate to match. Harry sank to one knee. He gripped his wand with both hands, struggling like he was holding a thousand pounds.
She scraped her hands and knees as she pushed herself up. The heat scorched for being so close. Blinking away the pain, she pressed against him and put her hand on his arm, steadying him as she took some of his weight. He was still cool to the touch, and his ragged breathing sounded for all the world like he’d clawed a long way back to the living.
His gaze met hers for just an instant. He looked so tired holding out against Voldemort alone.
Then he shifted slightly, throwing his arm around her, and despite how he sheltered her from the storm, somehow he also held his wand more securely, held his head high.
“You’re wrong, Tom,” Harry said.
If she hadn’t been so close, she wouldn’t have heard him. She had no idea what he meant.
But she could tell something had changed. He was winning. The power from his wand pushed forward, flowed in a cresting wave that overwhelmed Voldemort’s wand. She pressed herself against Harry’s shirt, wincing as she held his hands to steady his arm.
The magic surging around Harry and Draco had been brutal. What it became as it drove through Voldemort was nothing less than a force of nature.
Voldemort’s face and hands crumbled like spent coal, breaking off in powdery chunks that hit the ground and evaporated. He went still, folding in on himself, then crumpled to the floor in a heap.
The storm collapsed with him. Harry sat back on his knees, holding Draco close. Both of them breathed hard and stared at the dead thing in front of them. They were all alone. There was only the sound of the wind and distant voices somewhere on the Hogwarts grounds.
“Is he really gone?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. He turned slightly, studying her. His glasses had fallen off sometime between death and victory, and he had to squint a little even this close.
“You stayed,” he said, surprised.
A moment passed before she realized that was a question.
“I…you didn’t have anyone,” she said. “If you died…I mean, you did die. You were all alone.”
His smile reached his eyes. He brushed her hair back, thumb across her lips.
“Not alone,” he said.
On the last day of their seventh year, the Daily Prophet ran Colin Creevey’s photo, taken in the burned shell of the Great Hall, of Voldemort’s husk on the floor, of Harry standing with Draco drawn against him, their kiss framed by the edge of a broken window and the moon halfway in the sky.
Her mother used it for the wedding invitations.