A/N: Eek. This is like, almost unbearably short. But I hated the first version, because I was rushing through it to the point it ended up OOC, so I rewrote it and I just can't force this chapter anymore. So here it is. Hopefully the next chapter will be better. As always, please, please review! Tell me if I managed to steer clear of the OOC-ness!
I know that I'm not the most reliable updater in the world, but bear with me…if you can. If not…it's not like I can force you, really. And to my readers of RAF…I am so sorry to infinity, but I have some issues with the next chapter still…so you're still update-less. But please keep in mind it WILL be updated…I just don't know when. But at least it'll be better for it in the end, I hope. Besides, I'm on a Kingdom Hearts kick right now, and I'm going to have to move back to my college in a couple of weeks, so my mind is just not with Artemis right now.
And MegaKiraraLover? I would love it if you could beta for me. Just not this chapter, though, because I'm sick of it for right now. But can I take you up on your offer for chapter 3 (when it's written)?
Warnings: Um…there's probably some swearing down there, or some that will appear eventually. I swear frequently. Get used to it.
Pairings: Zemyx (Zexion/Demyx) and Draco/Astoria (eventually, so not here yet.)
Note: Notice the breakers? They're 'O's this time around. So that means it's time for Draco's perspective.
Disclaimer: Yeah…you would have to be high off cough syrup to believe that I own either Kingdom Hearts or Harry Potter. And if I did, you would be able to tell, because both Zexion and Sirius would still be alive (although Sirius has nothing to do with this fic, but hush). Title of the story taken from John Resnik's "I'm Still Here", and chapter title taken from Motion City Soundtrack's "Point of Extinction"…in case you didn't know.
Chapter 2: The Point of Extinction
"I'm so tired. I've had enough. If there's one thing I've learned, you'll always get burned, but you'll never give it up." –Motion City Soundtrack
oOo
It was over.
"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy…"
It was all finally over. As impossible as that seemed.
He was dead. The Dark Lord was dead.
And it felt like I was dead right along with him. My life didn't even seem real anymore, like it was all one huge nightmare. I might as well have gone into a coma for the past two years, and now at the end of it, there was only one of two ways I could go. I could die…or I could wake up. I didn't know which one frightened me more. Even now, at the end of all things that I knew, I didn't want to die. That was just the deepest part of human nature, the will to live, the fear of death. And yet…I was so tired. So, so tired. Death was the easiest of my options, which were, as they always seemed to be now, picking the lesser of the two evils. Death, the final end, or living and having to pick up the pieces of the most colossal mess in all of history, in which case I would probably end up in prison? Decisions, decisions.
You couldn't say that I was…happy, exactly. Relieved would be a better way to describe it. All I could distinguish out of a whirlwind of emotions was the relief that it was all over. I didn't know if I was happy or sad, triumphant or furious. I was just relieved. I didn't care anymore. I had gone to bed the past two years wishing to never wake up again. But right now, I just wanted to stay in this moment forever, where everyone was still too busy celebrating the fact that they were still alive and reuniting with family members and loved ones, people crying and screaming and squishing until the whole lot of us were one big mess of people. I felt a little lost, standing there and watching all the people around me hugging each other and not letting go, forming a misshapen sort of group hug. I was glad that they weren't noticing me, but still…I wished that I could join in. I wished that I could forget the pain and the suffering and the mess and everything to come just for a few moments.
But there was no place for a Death Eater here. However reluctant a one he may have been.
I turned around to leave, even though I didn't know where else I could go. It was pointless to try to outrun the Aurors, for what then? Would I spend the rest of my life as a criminal on the run? No, and I wasn't willing to waste the effort, especially as right now I had absolutely nothing left to give. I was drained, even more than I had been in sixth year, trying to pull off an impossible task. My heart was too tired to even give a customary twinge of guilt at the thought of Dumbledore, as it had every other time I had thought of him.
But then a flash of something caught the corner of my eyes as a newcomer struggled through the melee, directly at me. A distinctly familiar something. It was hair. White-blonde hair.
My mother.
"Draco!"
I turned back around and for a minute I couldn't help but stare at her as she pushed her way toward me. In that moment, she looked so different from anything I had known her as. Her hair was not swept up into a neat coiffure, nor hanging down in a smooth, silky curtain of purest white silver. Now it was dirty and tangled, falling all over her face and in her eyes and she wasn't even trying to push it away. Her nails were not perfectly manicured, but short with ragged, bloody edges, and her hands were no longer clean and soft-looking, but just as dirty as the rest of her. At this moment, all dignity was forgotten as she roughly shoved people out of her way, using physical force for the first time in my life to clear the path ahead of her. All Slytherin subtlety had been thrown out the window as she fought like some brash, stupid Gryffindor to my side.
And my tired, indifferent heart suddenly came to painful life, as if someone had wrapped a cord around it and was squeezing it tight. A strange warmth flooded through me as, embarrassingly enough, tears sprang into my eyes. I didn't shed any, but even if I had I wouldn't have cared in that moment, because suddenly the only thing going through my mind was that it was my mother, and she was alive, we were alive, we were okay, and I was so very happy to see her.
She was crying, I saw as she got closer. I was still frozen in place as the foreign emotions swamped me, and she was crying as I had never seen her cry before. These were tears of joy and unutterable relief and awe at this undeserved miracle. Then her arms were around me, painfully tight, but I didn't care, it was so wonderful, and even under the dust and blood she still smelt faintly of her perfume, and to me this blended smell was of safety and peace.
"Draco, oh my darling, my Draco, thank God, thank God you're all right, my baby—" She was chanting over and over again, crushing me to her, her lips moving as reverently as if she were giving voice to the holiest of prayers.
Over her shoulder my eyes came upon an even more surprising sight. My father had been behind my mother, but his steps were tentative, timid in comparison to my mother's. Like my sleekly sophisticated mother, gone completely was my haughty, proud, powerful father that even Azkaban had not wholly taken away. But he was gone now, and in his place was a small and weak, overburdened man who had crumpled under the weight, with traces of a lingering, terrible fear in his eyes. His eyes met mine and we stared at each other, neither of knowing what to say, so completely out of our depths here.
But there was some greater force at work here that was too great for us to stand against, and as if drawn in by some magnetic pull he was next to us and his arms were around both me and my mother, and since this was the end of everything we were all crying, all of us, tears running down our cheeks and mingling as we pressed as close and tightly together as we could, like all the other families around us were doing.
Family.
For the first time, we were really, truly, a family, just like everyone else. In this moment, in this second, every single one of the hearts in the Great Hall seemed to beat in tandem. We were all equal. We were all survivors.
We were all okay.
oOo
Hours passed, at once slow and sickeningly fast. Once reassured that closest family and friends were there and accounted for, some had spread out, mingling with everyone else, basking in this kinship we shared in the immediate wake of the battle. Blearily, I saw that Potter was performing his duty as the 'savior', shuffling through the crowds, clasping hands everywhere he turned. When I summoned up the energy to care, that was going to be unbearable. Most had dropped to sit on the closest available surfaces, not caring at all for House separation or even if it was the floor. Children leaned on parents, mothers stroked their hands through hair, fathers with full arms wrapped tight. Everything was settling down. Initial jubilation and adrenaline had worn off, and now everyone was drooping and swaying, but forcing their eyes open for just a little while longer. Right now, everything was fine and simple and real. But when we closed our eyes, we would wake up to the real nightmare. And I for one knew that I wanted to prolong that.
I was sitting with my parents at the Hufflepuff table, of all places. Hardly anyone sitting was talking really, us included. We all just sat in comfortable, companionable silence, unwilling to disturb the moment, this strange tranquil peace we had fallen into. It was almost as if we were borrowing from somebody's else's dream, some rosy person who wasn't a Death Eater like us. But for the first time, I knew that I wasn't going to be alone in my nightmares of blood and stomach-churning violence and guilt. Everyone in this hall would be having the same dreams as me. Now I wouldn't be the only one who dreamed of falling, broken bodies, of being filled with helpless fear because you knew that you couldn't do anything to stop it.
Everything has an end, and this was no different. Little by little, people began trickling out of the hall, either making their way home or, in quite a few students' cases, heading for their House dormitories. Authority figures who couldn't afford to sleep yet, even though they probably so desperately wanted to, started moving here and there, beginning to snip the frays off the larger ball of yarn. Hints of order began to ripple through the room. It was starting.
We stayed where we were. No use in running, and they had to speak to us sooner or later.
It was McGonagall who finally came to us. Gone were the stern lines, pursed lips and flashing eyes. She looked just like everyone else that I'd seen and what I felt like on the inside. Tired. She probably wished that everything would just be over too. Wished that she didn't have to start picking up the pieces already. There were so many. But she was doing it anyway. Because she was strong and brave and a Gryffindor, and that's what Gryffindors did. Me, though…I'm not any of those things. Especially not right now.
I still didn't know if I wanted to even try to pick all those pieces up.
