Draco sees her on the floor, sprawled across the cobblestones, hands in a ghastly parody of an eagle in flight. He almost laughs at the sight of her, hair splayed across the floor, skirt hiked up above her knees (he tries not to look) and her dead-pale face plastered in sweat. He thinks about (loudly) muttering something about the awful decorum of mudbloods throughout history and starts to verbally chastise the unconscious girl.
Until he sees her wrists.
He sees her wrists, hacked, slashed and sliced methodically, as if committing suicide was some sort of art. His head reels a little and the world rolls behind his eyes as he staggers outside, holding onto the walls, the floor, anywhere. Draco, he has never seen anything like that. He thinks about the still-beating heart and the blood pulsating in her blood stream and he thinks about the broken flesh and the broken tissue and he can't take it. He feels a cold stream of sweat trickle down face and he throws up a little in his mouth.
You've heard about death and how poetic it is. The straight neat slash across your wrist. The smooth, blinding pain, flashing white against your eyelids. The red flowers trailing down your arm, crawling down the vine of a limb (that's blood—your blood). The sudden shortness of your breath (hitching, gasping, struggling: take your pick). The slow fluttering of your eyelashes as you close your eyes in an attempt at nobility.
Death? Poetic?
Those bastards lied.
He gathers his courage and his sense of dignity (however little) and scoops the girl up in his hands. He holds his breath, and he can't fully comprehend why he is doing this and why this particular girl seemed so small and helpless. Maybe it's because she's dying. His train of thought stops and he quickly glides across the castle, thankful for her breathing, for the first time in his life.
He tells himself that he is doing this for himself. To win back the credibility of his peers and his mentors. He tells himself this over and over as countless pairs of eyes stare at him curiously, suspiciously, as though he had something to do with the fact that his adversary is bleeding and dripping with life. They look at him like he caused it, like he wanted it to happen.
Draco wants to scream his innocence. He found her like this. He didn't kill her; he never had the intention to. Well, not never, he adds thoughtfully. More people come to watch him, frantic and awkward and guilty.
He walks a little faster.
He reaches the Infirmary, bursting into it as if he owned the place (he had always wanted to do that) and all he could say was, "Dying." Madame Pomfrey, she just rushes to him, with her eyebrows knit together, eyes wide as if saying that he could have been a good man. She takes her from him and he glares at her, not knowing if she comprehended that he was. He was a good man. Is. Is a good man. She brings her into the curtains, into a place where he cannot see.
Draco is torn between leaving (this was over and done with) and staying (what if she doesn't make it?). He chooses to stay. He tells himself that he needs to explain his side. Why he was carrying a half-corpse. Why it was Hermione Granger. Why the death (dying?) had his name written all over it. He is staying and he's doing it for himself. That's what he says anyway. He says it like a mantra and before he knows it, he is being interrogated by the Headmaster and the rest of the faculty. He says she found her like that, sprawled across the cobblestones, hands in a ghastly parody of an eagle in flight. They almost laugh at him and they keep him under lock and key.
The mudblood, she wakens, though, and in the morning, Draco was allowed to go back to his dormitory, back all sore and heart pounding. He is greeted by apologetic smiles from his teachers, heavy cheering from his enemies and sneers from his friends. He is the savior now. He is the reason why a mudblood has returned to the land of the living.
He does not know whether to laugh or to cry but he goes about his life, as if nothing had happened. His housemates, they whisper all around him. There goes the traitor. And his plan backfired. Because no matter how low he was prior to this incident, he is definitely deeper in it now.
Now all Draco does is duck behind the shadows. He can't be seen by his allies and he does not want to be seen by the others. Two weeks later, though, a persistent Hermione totters toward him, cheeks flushed, burning with hate. "Why?" is all she bellows. Draco looks at her, devoid of any emotion. He says coolly, almost deceptively, "It was just not your time." He smirks for good measure and to save face and he turns on his heel and stalks away, leaving an infuriated and confused Hermione in his wake.
Six months later, war breaks out. Voldemort rises and Draco fights on his side. He doesn't really want to but he's a coward and a Malfoy and that right there is not a very good mix to begin with. He sees her, shouting and lunging and dodging and he doesn't know why, but he smiles. From behind, Blaise Zabini shoves him to the front and he feels his heart pounding. He scouts the crowd until he sees her again. Their eyes lock together and he raises his wand and points to her chest. She echoes his actions, not looking away. They say the same exact words at the same precise moment, and the scene is almost poetic; it looks as if something glorious is about to happen.
But death is never poetic, because in the end, everybody dies anyway.
And that's what happens. That's how it ends.