The Noble Crown
"Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them. "
- George R.R. Martin
Prologue
May 1998
His hands were coated in blood. Whether or not the dark rustic fluid rose from the gashes in his own flesh or was a sickening mixture of his enemy's, he did not know. Death hung in the air; rotting and eroding the already crumbling castle walls. It suffocated him-the stench of fallen comrades made his nose wrinkle in disgust and his stomach lurch with disappointment. He rose to his feet, wiping what he could of the sticky red excess on his black trousers. He gripped the slimy handle of his wand harder, sighing slightly in relief that he had managed to survive this long. But the worst aspect of relief is that despair tends to sneak up on its victim and choke it, smothering it to the point of abysmal doom that only naturally leads to a most inglorious death.
And so it was that the young and terrified boy's peace was short-lived; if only for a fraction of a second. His mind began to throw itself into motion once more, and he carried his heavy legs over to lean against a jagged chunk of a boulder that had barely survived the Curse directed towards the nameless Wizard who now lay crumpled against the rock's rough surface-the man's flesh was ripped open and hanging by a few threads to reveal his rotting insides. Oddly enough, Draco was reminded of a doll-ripped at the seams as its stuffing spilled out onto the dirty cobblestone path. There were many who had fallen this way-many whom the disconcerted boy had grown to feel less and less pity for as the minutes dragged into hours. The hours felt like years-aging him significantly as each minute on the clock stretched out into forever.
Strands of his white blonde hair were plastered to his grimy and damp face, coated with the charcoal rubble that was a result of several nearby spells gone awry. He searched the battlefield frantically, his panic-stricken grey eyes straining to locate a familiar face among the chaos.
Giants stomped violently amongst the garbage of what remained, cracking the Earth he stood on and sending particles of dirt scattering through the air. Death Eaters donned their Marks triumphantly on their left forearms, the inky stains branding them as the Society of the Wicked. Those considered brave and valiant pursued their enemies first; they were the first to go. Cavernous Acromantulas crawled about the rubble with surprising speed for creatures so large, destroying anything and everything in their path. The side of good and evil had blended-like someone had smudged black paint across a white canvas, purity intertwining with a darker force. Each tried to douse the other.
And the blood. Oh Merlin, the blood. The grounds were drenched in blood; it covered everything with its promise of rotting corpses and defeat. Red handprints streaked the once grey pavement of the ground they stood on as now-deceased captors had lunged in a desperate effort to escape, clawing into the Earth. But it was futile-they were all going to die. And those who lived would be better off dead.
"Draco!" an authoritative voice near him hissed, and the young Malfoy Heir pried his eyes from the devastating scene before him and cleared his mind of such morbid thoughts to settle on a similar set of steely grey eyes that bored into his. The man illustrated the toll of pride and many grievous mistakes; each one carved into his diminishing features. He was a mirror image of everything Draco was expected to be, and this fact was more unsettling now than it had ever been.
The boy's cracked and dirt-covered lips parted slightly, and he had planned to respond to this summoning when another shout of his name across the dense battlefield floated to his ringing ears like a harmonized whisper, temporarily diverting his attention from the cold and unforgiving eyes which refused to remove from his own.
"Draco!" came the shrill and desperate pleading of a young woman. His head snapped around, his eyes fixating on a petite brunette warding off Fenrir Greyback-who was hungrily licking his blood-tinted lips-with the aiming of her wand. He noted that her bushy hair was matted against her head and thick with the crusty remains of her dried wounds and shivered involuntarily. He felt a twinge of nostalgia and grief prickle his fingertips, and recalled a time when the young Witch had spoken his name with much less of a foreboding sense of doom that everyone around him now felt.
His mind struggled against the two drastically differentiating echoes of his name, and fearing he had stalled too long, sprung his wobbly legs into action.
He knew what he had to do.
a/N: So, I'm changing things around a bit. I started this story in late 2011 (yeah, it's...2013 now), but after getting distracted with life, other stories, role playing, yadda yadda you name it, I sort of brushed this story off to the side. I'm a bit disappointed, truth be told-it's not like me to abandon any of my fanfics. With that being said, I've decided to take it up again! I'm going to be going through the few chapters I have up and tweaking a few things-fixing grammar, changing the title, and such. I'm so sorry to those who were interested in the story-hopefully I'll be able to capture your interest again!