Title: It's All About Choice
Author: BryarR0se
Written at: 32. September, 2007 (abandoned, then picked back up 30. April, 2015)
Archived: Pairings: HP/DM, implied RW/HG
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama
Rating: R/M
Warnings: WIP, SLASH, Character Death (not the main protagonists), Addiction, OoTP/HBP/DH non compliance, PS/CoS/PoA spoilers
Time line: After Hogwarts
Length: Long, 20+ chapters
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or else I'd be rich in England, hobnobbing with the gorgeous Tom Felton. Repost/re-edit from my original lost profile.
A/N: Cookies to anyone who reviews?
Betas: None current

Prologue

Harry lay panting on the ground, a trickle of blood inching its way down his face.

War sucked. He had defeated Voldemort several hours ago, but the death had not broken the Death Eater moral as the Order had expected. Instead it had renewed them with an intense vigour. Most of the Death Eaters had gone mad, their attacks reaching not only Order members, but also their own numbers in a display of anarchy and chaos.

Harry was exhausted from the effort of bringing down not only the Dark Lord, but also several Death Eaters. It could be why he found himself lying on a field drenched in blood, the evil grin of Bellatrix Lestrange above him.

He didn't care anymore; what else did he have to loose? Ginny was dead, killed by a Death Eater only a few hours earlier. Hermione had been taken by the werewolves...there was no sign of her body; the only thing they found was a great amount of blood on the snow...enough to have bled out a person. Testing showed that it was hers. Ron had been in a coma for the last two months as a result of a failed mission. St. Mungos said he would never awaken. Sirius was captured by Death Eaters. For the last few weeks, they had been sending the Order parts of his body and pieces of skin via owl post.

He had nothing left. So it was no surprise that as Lestrange raised her wand to cast a curse, that Harry simply closed his eyes...gave up. He didn't even try to brandish his wand, not that it would have done any good, as it lay broken in half beside him.

What was a surprise, however, was that Harry found he was alive after seeing the flash of green behind his eyelids. He let out a cynical chuckle. The curse had failed to kill him again. Could nothing kill him? Even when he wished it to?

The realization that the curse had not been aimed at him came when he heard a thud beside him. He turned his head, and opened his eyes slowly to see the glassy, empty eyes of Lestrange staring back at him. It was quite unnerving.

Harry could hear panting from about five feet away, so he raised his head to see whom the noise came from. Without his glasses it took him quite a while to identify the young man who was bent over, breathing hard, trying to catch his breath. The only thing that gave him away, as Harry could not make out his face from the blur, was almost unnoticed from the grime and blood and waste that covered him. The man looked up, and Harry caught the smallest wisp of white blonde as Draco Malfoy shook his head violently to get the offending piece of hair out of his eyes.

"Why?" Harry croaked, his voice hoarse from shouting orders and alarms for hours previous.

Draco looked into his eyes for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, he simply turned his head to the horizon, where the sun was setting. "Didn't have much of a choice...did I?"

And with that, the blonde apparated away, leaving Harry alone in a blood painted field.

A/N: Intrigued yet? I sure hope so! This story will be filled with Prologues, Epilogues, and Interludes as well as Chapters. The Chapters should be a good length (8+ pages) but the others will be only about a page, so you should get varied lengths in the updates. I will TRY to be consistent about updating, but I am working full time, and in school for 24 credits, so there may be a lag. I will also try to post Chapters with the Interludes so you have a bit more than a page to read each week.

I do not know how long this story is going to be, but I assume (with the storyboard I have right now) it will be longer than 20 chapters (not including the interludes).

Enjoy the ride!