He never really thought it would end this way. True, the odds weren't stacked in their favor, and he knew what Voldemort was capable of. His own parents had trembled in fear at the Dark Lord's feet before he finished them, like so many of the others that they had once attacked without mercy over blood-something an older, wiser, and infinitely sadder Draco realized meant nothing.
Now in the castle, dodging falling bits of ceiling and feeling his sweat shift his mask uncomfortably, Draco realized that he, Harry, Dumbledore, everyone who had stood against Voldemort this night had been fools. Noble fools, fools with stout hearts and pure souls, but fools nonetheless.
The Boy Who Lived was dead. Draco hadn't seen it himself, but when he had been knocked off his feet by a brilliant, violent green light that shook the foundations of the castle itself, he knew it was over. Voldemort's magically amplified shrieks of triumph had unfurled a deep, dark despair such as Draco had never known within him. He had never liked Harry, though he had never truly known him as more than a pompous school rival, but in the short months that he had switched sides his new-found humility had allowed Draco to realize just what the pale, green-eyed wizard had meant to the Wizarding world. They had learned that the fight could go on without Dumbledore, without Snape, Moody or the countless others who had met their brutal ends. But without Harry, it was finished.
Draco blasted the foulest and most evil curses he could muster with as much speed and accuracy as he was able; in the confusion of the battle, the Death Eaters could not see that the some of the spells thinning their ranks was from one of their own. Despite the loss of Harry, his supporters still fought, though their faces were etched with a new and horrible understanding.
When Draco had approached Dumbledore, begging him for help, the old wizard had not left him wanting. Draco's "death" was quickly planned and carried out by Moody so he would not be missed by his master, and then he was quickly and quietly whisked to a safe house under the wary but not unkind eyes of Nymphadora Tonks and Lupin. And until this night, he had waited. It was decided that he would wear his Death Eater robes and mask in the hopes that he could do more damage, while wearing a charm Flitwick had created around his neck that would allow those he fought with to see his face as if it wasn't covered. It was a hastily put together and dangerous plan, but Draco was so far down in Voldemort's ranks that he would be neither missed nor suspected of foul play. And after the death of Dumbledore, no one had the time to spare to patch up the holes.
So he fought now on the losing side, doing his best to inflict as much destruction as he could. He didn't know if it mattered now, but there was always the desperate home that somehow, someway, someone would be able to do something. Anything. Draco had seen enough after Harry fell to know that each of the friends he left behind would be fighting, quite literally, to the death. Poor Weasley, in a final shining act that would have no one left to remember it as heroic, had launched himself at Voldemort with a howl of inhuman despair. He was cut down without second thought or mercy by Bellatrix, but not before taking one of the Dark Lord's eyes with him. And so it went with each of them in turn. With each corner he rounded, Draco was faced with more bodies, more flashes of green and final groans of death. There was that little boy with the camera that had always followed Potter around, slumped in a sitting position against the wall as if he had fallen asleep waiting for Ancient Ruins to start. There was Arthur Weasley and his oldest son collapsed in a tangle of limbs, and down the hallway the beautiful French veela, hit by a curse that had boiled her blood. One after the other Draco ran past in half a frenzy, leaving his own wake of destruction behind. He skidded to a halt when he saw Angelina Johnson, wandless and screaming, trying to fight off a Death Eater that had her pinned to the floor in a half blown-up classroom. Taking aim, Draco fired a curse that would cause the heart to split in half. He was off and running again before the body hit the floor. Being a Death Eater had not left him without a certain skill set.
Draco allowed himself to slow down and catch his breath against a wall that was surprisingly unscathed. He was deep in the bowels of the castle, where he knew the Death Eaters had found a way in. He hoped to find a few wandering around on their own; the fighting had been going on for hours and it was getting harder and harder to for Draco to duel. Ripping his mask off and letting it fall to the floor with a hollow clang, Draco wiped his face with a grimy and dusty sleeve of his robes. It was eerily quiet down here, where the explosions were muffled and the floor was splattered with blood. Draco continued on quietly, his wand at the ready. After a minute he was considering going back and rejoining the fray, thinking that the dungeons had been abandoned when he slid and lost his footing in a small puddle of blood. Cursing softly, he was struggling back to his feet when he froze, looking down at the blood that coated his left hand and forearm, then down at the ground. There was no body there, but the blood was warm; the coolness of the stone would have turned any blood spilled more than minutes ago ice cold, as the charms that had kept them heated for students were broken.
Draco's gaze followed the broken path of blood down the short corridor, here it looked as if the wounded stumbled and dragged himself a few feet before regaining footing, a few feet beyond were the unmoving forms of a Death Eater and a student, and the trail continued before sharply swerving into a classroom. Draco held his breath and stopped outside the doorway, steeling himself. Holding his wand at the ready, he stepped inside.
In a small, shining puddle of blood lay the crumpled body of Hermione Granger. There were three dead Death Eaters laying in a line that lead back to the far wall of the classroom, where something was in a heap flush against it. Draco conjured a blue flame and flicked it across the room, advancing slowly. He let out a small gasp of surprise when he realized what the heap was-the severed torso of a masked Death Eater. Draco pressed a fistful of his robes over his nose and leaned closer. The face-down woman was cut cleanly across the line where her ribcage ended, her arms stretched before her as if to break her fall. There was no sign of her lower half.
A low moan caused Draco's blood to freeze as he whipped around, a curse fired through the empty doorway where it exploded in a turgid cloud. Heart hammering, Draco crept forward, before there was another moan. Looking down, Draco saw Hermione's eyelids flutter weakly. He dropped to his knees.
"Granger!" Draco's fingers sought out the weak pulse at her throat.
He swore, only half aware of what he was saying as he tore open the front of her robes, looking for the source of the blood he only now realized was still slowly trickling.
"What did they do to you?" Draco asked despairingly as he peeled back the soaked fabric, clenching his jaw at the series of vicious gashes that patterned her torso. Pointing his wand with a shaking hand, he muttered a few words. The bleeding didn't stop, and his heart sank. Against this dark magic, there was no counter-curse. Hermione, poor, bushy-haired, buck-toothed, and as he had allowed himself to see in the past months, kind, forgiving, and razor-sharp intelligent Hermione.
"Draco," his name pushed through her lips slowly, and he looked into her face for the first time. Her bushy hair was a messy halo, matted with blood on the side with a nasty bruise and a shallow cut. How many times had he tortured her about the hair he was now carefully brushing out of her face?
"Yeah, Hermione," was the only thing he could think to say. "I'm here. I'm going to try to help you, but I don't know what to-" his words died as her smaller hand, weak and clumsy with blood loss, tried to grasp his. He swallowed and looked into her eyes. Usually so bright and attentive, they were now dim and tired, a few tears spilling out the sides and leaving tracks in the dust and blood. Taking her hand in his, he asked quietly, "Was this where they were getting in?"
"Yes," her voice was so soft, so tired.
Nodding, he smiled sadly. "You closed it on one of them. That's powerful magic." A slight pressure in his hand. "And you managed to kill a few to top it off-always had to go above and beyond, Granger." His voice broke on the last syllable. Here, on the floor or the dungeon was a girl who should have done so much more. Yes, he resented her when they were schoolmates. At first he hated her for her birth and the company she kept. As he grew older and felt the first waves of doubt, he switched to despising her eagerness and her know-it-all ways, jealous of her ability, her power, her mind. He lashed out at her even harder when, on the arm of Victor Krum, she shone radiantly, with anger and something much more confusing welling up within him. She was an anomaly, an inexplicable blemish on his father's theory of Muggle-born inferiority. How could it be that someone with dirty blood could outperform the descendants of the purest lines of Slytherin, let alone those in Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Hufflepuff? She was the crack in the Pureblood foundation he had stood on, built by generations of his family and peers, planting the seed in his mind that perhaps, maybe, there was something not quite right...
And now, when all was said and done, it had come to this-lying in a cold dungeon as everything they both knew and had come to love was razed to the ground.
"I'm sorry." Again, the pressure in his hand as tears poured down his face. "I'm so sorry, Hermione." A stronger pressure, one that got his attention. Her bloodless, cracked lips were moving, and Draco leaned closer.
"I'm glad," she shuddered with the effort, "...you...found," unable to continue, she closed her eyes, and seemed to gather herself. Draco watched as she moved as if to prop herself into a sitting position and understood, doing his best to be gentle. Above them the ceiling shook, and a few books were jarred from their resting places on the shelves.
Draco carefully held Hermione for the first and last time, her head lolling against his shoulder and her arms hanging uselessly at her sides. In his arms was the future of what could have been, if the world were different. A Muggle-born witch who should have been a leader, an innovator, an educator, blazing paths of reform and creating what lesser minds couldn't have dreamed, drained dry of the blood that had made her different, unclean in the eyes of a madman. As he pressed his cheek to her forehead, he felt her chest rise once, twice, three times more. And then, Hermione Granger, witch, Muggle-born, friend of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, breathed her last.
Far above the classroom where a boy held a girl, a castle burned.