He can feel it- a rush of the heady power of sacrifice running from the tips of his toes to the roots of his pale yellow hair. There's a brief moment when he's able to glance over his shoulder at bright green eyes before the world pulses and falls away in shards. It's almost like falling asleep.
They had been running. Ghastly green finger tips spread out to leech life and devour an unwilling soul. A shout. A cry. The sheer disbelief as the arrogant weasel boy became swarmed with dementors after becoming fed-up with hiding and drawing every one of the soul-sucking creatures to their location in a three-hundred meter radius with a scrappy terrier patronus.
In a world torn by soul-leeches and discordant magic, Hogwarts had been the first to fall. The end of the battle of Hogwarts filled with more sinister events than just celebrations.
Who knew that the house ghosts could be so vicious?
The first to change had been the Slytherin house ghost- bloody chains giving way to raspy breath and solid form with the layers of ghostly cloth wrapped around the spirit's form.
Ernie Macmillan was reported missing three days after the battle, soul-less body riddled with claw mark-a stinking, rotting, husk that died after severe dehydration. The team retrieving his body was delayed by a near feral Slytherin house ghost.
With the mass funerals held by the students for friends and family fallen in the battle of Hogwarts, Ernie had been passed off as a victim of a stray dementor. A weak effort to drive off any remaining dementors was made in the form of two patronuses to patrol the castle halls.
Had the victorious party been wise and not half mad with grief and giddy with the recent victory, hundreds, or rather thousands should have been sent that day
What could not be ignored were the mass of catatonic Ravenclaw students slumped on the ground in front of their dormitory. The remaining few students left within the house reported that the grey lady seemed to have more trouble passing through the castle walls, and more often than not, asked the house elves to leave great platters of rotting raw meat when she could vocalize instead of rasping with harsh breaths.
The third to turn had been Nearly-headless Nick. Standing over several dozen soul-less house elves and the deep cut marring the skin of his neck sealed over with a strange translucent fluid, it was hard to deny the superficial changes. His eyes seemed to be sealed over with a thin layer of skin, a dent appeared where his nose once was, and his mouth stretched from ear-to-ear in a large smile. He had hissed at the students when confronted, rasping in hollow breaths and spitting small flecks of glowing white fluid out onto the Hogwarts carpet.
Only when the Gryffindor house ghost had left, had anyone noticed the spots where the ghost's spittle landed were frozen solid, spidery cracks of ice lacing through the woven floor covering.
Paranoia quickly changed to panic, and the remaining muggleborns who could not reach their families because of the havoc caused to the Hogwarts express were corralled within the great hall, patronus charms running a constant surveillance over the entrance door and branching halls to the respective dormitories. It had been getting colder, the influence of the ghosts turning the late September air bitterly cold, and heating charms had only worked for so long.
They found the first corpse-a Slytherin third year curled up into a ball, features perfectly preserved by the inch-thick layer of ice covering the body. Several more were in the process of mummification, the cold dry wind of the Scottish highlands combining with the freezing dungeons to form small groups of children, cheeks hollowing as the moisture slowly drained from the lifeless bodies.
A barrage of heating and fire-inducing charms were cast, some flaring close enough to have the flying embers scorch holes into the dirtying robes that protected from the biting drafts within the castle. They had been safe for a while that way, not fully fed or fully rested, but less fearful of the shadows behind their eyelids. Until about a month before some idiot realized the depleting food sources once all of the house elves died off. They had gathered the diminishing supplies in a haphazard pile around them and had casted curses and hexes to those that had even tried to approach before a solid stunner nailed them in the back of the head.
Their unconscious body had been left just outside the great hall, the frantic cries of: "Expecto Patronum" muffled by the great door but heard by all during the night. Even the catatonic body had not quelled the great unrest caused by the idea that the supplies had been running dry.
With panic, came disorder.
With disorder, fewer patrols were run.
It had happened on one of the better days-the temperature made bearable by heating and cheering charms and a stray pot of stew under preservation charms laid out in the communal pot that had been arranged in the middle of the hall.
None of them were prepared for the absolute hoard of black cloaks streaming through the door ways of the great hall, shattering the glass windows from the outside inwards and spreading quickly like ink into water. They had dropped like flies that day-patroni shimmering brightly in sparse packs as it became increasingly harder to generate happy thoughts.
Harry himself had led the charge, beautiful bright stag cantering through the dark crowd, clearing a swathe of air that allowed them a single breath before the entity had been extinguished by the incoming rush of black.
They had lost all the students of lower years that day, tripping over the younger bodies in haste to escape the hell that Hogwarts had become.
Professor Flitwick had been trampled to death in the confusion, his patronus flickering out of existence as the owner perished.
had evacuated the remaining years out of the front gates of Hogwarts before ushering the last students out and closing the door, the last sight of her emerald green cloak crackling with ice before the doors boomed shut.
They had lost more than half of the survivors of the battle of Hogwarts that day.
Draco fancied himself and Harry lovers to some degree in their pale, dying world. Desperation for a more carnal reassurance of existence and the knowledge that the end was near
(dementors- ghosts introduced to more malevolent energy than usual)
The ritualistic circle pulses with power. A waltz tempo, Draco realizes with a faint bitter smile. The first he had played for Harry at his curiosity over a broken piano left at the wayside of a small pub with boarded-shut doors. The poor instrument had just enough keys and hammers still attached to play a simple waltz.
He still remembers the way Harry's breath had fanned hot over his neck to glimpse at the hypnotizing way his fingers danced, spider-like, over yellowed keys and black keys that had lost their luster to time and disuse. It had been a good day. Dementors feasting at a shelter in Essex and leaving London to burn in crackling silence. The occasional sign weakly buzzing to life and dying in a shower of sparks. Harry had smiled once that day-a small one with lips cracked and bloody from thirst, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and mumbled to Draco a name that faintly sounded like "Ginny".
It broke his heart a little bit. The cold feeling rising from the pit of his stomach still appears at the memory.
It's fuzzy. The feeling of pins and needles attacking his extremities is overtaken by an intense feeling of cold His vision pulses in time with his heartrate, each beat leaching a bit more of his field of vision into darkness
Draco closes his eyes
He breathes-
Once…and
Twice…...and
Night just...
.
.
.
.
falls
Ummmmmm So, Should I continue?
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(pst, also up for betas)