Rating: PG for this part...
Disclaimer: No profit is being made out of this and no copyright infringement intended.
Category: Drama, Romance
Notes: I'm reminding everyone that this is, first and foremost, a love story. This is for Donna Cruz.
SALVATION: CHAPTER ELEVEN
I love him.
It hit me like a ton of bricks and a pail full of ice-cold water. But then it's something I had always known. When he expressed his trust during seventh year in spite of the dissuasion of his friends because of my connections with Voldemort, I had already known it because it was he who brought me back my life by trusting me when no one would. It was he who showed me the other side of life, that I could be someone people never trusted me to be, that I could be capable of caring for another human being, that I could be different from my father and could be saved from the filth of my name. It was Harry. It was Harry who gave me a new reason to live and a new path to take. By offering his hand in friendship after seven long years of overt animosity, he never really knew how much it had changed me, how much it had completed me.
Long ago, has it been that long? Harry would look at me with those encouraging green eyes, so trusting, so innocent, and I would know that I had made the right choice. I miss the fire in those eyes because it had fizzled out in the eyes of the man, shackled to the cell wall. It has been a long time. So long that I had somehow forgotten how his eyes used to look like.
I long to see them burning again. They may not burn for me, but I long to see them burn anyway to remember the first time it had dawned on me that I was in love with him.
It is still Harry who makes life bearable. It is Harry who makes each cursed day a blessing. I wish I had told him what I feel. I shake my head, erasing a burgeoning hope that Harry will actually appreciate what I feel. He loved Cho. In the kind of way Harry will never love me. It was painful how I kept it, burning my throat. But what was I hoping for? What can I expect from a person fighting the life-threatening tortures three times a day, almost to the point of death, when I tell him that I'm in love with him? It's not like Harry will shiver in delight and start planning a vacation for two in the Bahamas.
But the realization actually gives me more reason to do everything I can to save Harry from Voldemort and sure death. I had wanted to protect him then, and I want to protect him now. I would risk everything for the one I love. I will give up everything for Harry just like I know, I believe, he will give up everything for the one he loves. It is not me—but I don't give a shit. I don't need him to love me back to keep my heart beating. It will beat, and beat—probably until the very last—for Harry whether or not his heart would find the reason to beat for me.
There is no time to waste. Voldemort might get the killing urge any moment when he starts feeling cornered with the capture of Nott, Avery and Rookwood, and Harry should be saved before Voldemort gets ideas.
I swipe a low-hanging tree branch and squint through the thick trees of the forest. The ground is hard and slippery, and traversing through it is made more difficult by the darkness shrouding the area. By day, the forest is nowhere near as scary and dangerous as the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts especially since this is what we have to get through every time we Apparate to another magical settlement to destroy and Disapparate back to the castle, which has served as our hideout since the Riddle house, where the Death Eaters used to stay, had been attacked at the start of the war. But the moonless night cradles the forest and makes it three times scarier than the one at Hogwarts.
I trip on a protruding tree stump and almost fall on my face with a yelp, but I recover myself quickly. No one should get wind of my rendezvous tonight. No one should get suspicious of my business in the heart of this forest, because if my calculations are correct, Resistance fighters are in the area, fishing for the castle where Harry is kept as disclosed by the captured Death Eaters. If my hunch is right, Hermione and the rest of the gang are in the heart of the dark forest, breaking through very dangerous Wards and Concealment curses set by the dark wizards as inconspicuously as possible to maximize the element of surprise, to get to Harry. Something pricks on the crook between my lower arm and my forearm, behind my elbow and I wince. Voldemort is getting worried and is particularly vindictive tonight. And it would also mean that Harry is being tortured again to disclose the whereabouts of Dumbledore. He would be able to stall long enough to make this rendezvous undetected.
A far-off owl hoots and I look up, keeping my eyes and ears open for any signal that I was being watched. The treetops are so thick that not even a solitary twinkling star can be seen. The ground is uncomfortably uneven and scattered with twigs and rocks that crunch against my feet that might give my night-time stroll away. I stop to listen for footsteps or any audible sign of someone retracing my path, but there is nothing but the hum of the secretive woods. Misty gray breaks through the thick covering trees and I freeze, expecting a whole horde of Death Eaters demanding for an explanation for an unauthorized scour of the woods but it is just fog and the tiniest hints of star slivers that escape the tangle of wild foliage.
They have to be here. Nott, Avery and Rookwood would have betrayed our location to the Resistance fighters by now. A lone bat breaks into flight somewhere from my left and I hold out my wand in alarm. The trees are getting thicker and it would be harder for me to return to the castle with almost zero visibility and without any distinguishing landmarks to guide me back in the inky blackness of the evening. Come on, Hermione; where are you guys?
The cold night envelops the exposed skin on my collar and I shiver, not because of the cold but because of fear of what I left behind to try to find Harry's salvation in darkness. Harry is probably being tortured right now, and I can't do anything else but scour the dark forest for any sign of allies. The harsh beating of my heart causes small beads of sweat to form on my forehead. What if I find Harry dead when I come back? What is there left to save? What will happen to me? What will I do?
A sparrow squawks and I look up from the black, rock-strewn earth to search for it. It sounds like a person screaming in pain.
I will die if anything happens to Harry. If I don't die with the grief, I'd definitely kill myself. Because in this ocean of suffering, Harry is my only salvation and without him, there is nothing left to fight for. To live each wretched day for. Just the thought of losing Harry without doing anything takes the breath out of me, choking me. No…Harry will not die. He will avenge all whose lives had been lost to Voldemort's cause. And the first step to guarantee that survival is being undertaken, under the upturned noses of the Death Eaters.
If my father finds out, he'll curse the living daylights out of me, but that ceases to matter anymore. I am already dead, anyway. And so is my mother. We have been killed long ago and raised from the dead to follow a monster in his spread of evil. Our graves have been dug long ago. And it's definitely better this way—I don't have to be afraid anymore—than be afraid for the life I had long since lost
A twig snaps not very far behind me, and I freeze for the second time, holding my wand out. Someone is following me. I close my eyes and pray that it is not one of the Death Eaters. I may have to kill the bastard and that'll take a lot of covering up for the death and Harry might be put in even more danger. Please, don't let it be a Death Eater. Please.
There is a soft rustle of leaves and shrubbery, and a fox emerges behind a gnarled tree trunk that had fallen on the steeper path beside the one I just walked through. Its eyes are translucent yellow in the dead darkness of the forest, watching and waiting. The fox raises its head and bays, sending tremors through my arms pimpled with goose bumps. I close my mouth and start breathing through my nose, my eyes still tightly shut, waiting for the fox to pass. I don't want to use magic to kill it because it will be detected, for sure. The whole castle and the grounds are stuffed full of surveillance charms. Voldemort trusts his own followers less than he trusts his enemies.
Harry's cell is the only unprotected area in the whole castle and its grounds due to the frequent use of magic to torture him, which is why it is only there that I can get away with healing little of Harry every time he is tortured. It is to our advantage that while Voldemort doesn't trust his followers in most aspects, he trusts his minions sent from hell in spreading discord and causing pain on another human being. But in these woods and in the huge, abandoned castle, we are all prisoners, but trapped in a different way. In a more perilous way. That even the master that's being served is an enemy, standing between you and continued subsistence.
I lean close to a tree trunk, to escape the eyes of the fox. My heel scrapes through the slippery moss at the base of the tree in effort to blend myself with the trunk, almost lodging my back in the crevasse of the wood, fervently praying for the fox to miss my presence there. I slip a little and take a sharp intake of breath—huge mistake. The fox's eyes narrow into slits; it looks around for his prey for the night and growls menacingly.
Shit.
I am going to have to fight it.
I slowly emerge from the protective shadow of the tree and raise my wand. I don't want to do this, you stupid animal. But you cross the wrong person tonight.
"Refra—"
"Malfoy?" Hermione emerges from the shrubbery where the fox had come from, looking disoriented, badly scratched but flabbergasted at the sight of me in the forest. "Ernie, wait." The fox's mad growls stop. She walks closer to where I am, eyes narrowed to see with the little light from her wand. The fox had gone and in its place is a wizard, whose eyes are narrowed and translucent brown in the darkness, glowing menacingly like the fox's.
"What are you doing here?" The wizard, who is clearly an Animagus, holds out a hand to seize Hermione's wrists before she is close enough to me. "Granger, he's the traitor. We should just kill him," he says, in a growl like the fox that, for a while, I believed, was going to eat me.
"N—no, Ernie," she begins, her face exhausted and clearly distressed. She then turns to me, "You—you sent that letter, didn't you Draco?"
I look at her, scrutinizing her mousy brown hair, displaying a wild array of leaves and small twigs. I narrow my eyes. It might be a trap. Two Death Eaters going fishing, trying to catch me off guard into confessing that it was I, who had been helping Harry all along. It is dangerous—six months in one's worst idea of hell taught me to be vigilant and to trust little. "What were the nicknames I used to call you at school?"
It's lame. "What?" Hermione is even more shocked at what she thought she heard me say.
"Answer me!" I have to be sure.
"Long-molared Mudblood, Buck-toothed know-it-all, smart aleck Mudblood bitch—among many other, more colorful and more degrading names, which one were you waiting to hear?"
I smile. It is Hermione. "Harry's in danger," I welcome her.
She casts her eyes down and tries to pry twigs out of her unruly hair. "We're being stalled. We can't get anywhere near the castle. There's a curse of a dark nature stopping us from getting ten meters closer to the castle. We just lost an Auror this afternoon who attempted to get through the barrier; his flesh dematerialized, and we were left with his skeleton. It's stopping us from getting through. We're not sure how long it will take us to counter it," she briefs me.
"Thank you," I mouth. And it is such a relief to find them here, working feverishly to get to Harry. "Thank you for believing in me."
"Ron screamed himself hoarse trying to discourage me from taking your word for it that Harry has been captured. And he almost had me convinced that we would get absolutely nothing if we believe you. But Harry's encrypted message changed everything. I told him to make a code that only I can break if he's in distress and in need of our help, and sure enough the code was there. Do you know what he said in the encryption?"
I drop down on a protruding root, breathing deeply, thankful that it's almost over. "What?"
"That you are his hope. You never would have betrayed us if your mother wasn't being held hostage in your home. We got to work then, enlisting the help of as many people as we could to storm the castle and rescue Harry…and you. We sent envoys to Malfoy Manor to issue a simultaneous attack to rescue your mother upon Harry's request," she exclaims. And I want to start crying in relief. It might all be over tomorrow.
"We don't have much time. Voldemort is getting agitated over the capture of Nott, Avery and Rookwood. Harry is being tortured right now, as we speak. And Voldemort will kill him without a shadow of a doubt. Voldemort must already know you're on the move. We can't waste any more time. Harry will probably be dead before daybreak." It's not a bluff. If Voldemort feels cornered enough at the betrayal of his three Death Eaters, he will kill the knight standing in his way to checkmate—that knight would be Harry.
"He knows the prophecy and will not hesitate to snuff the life out of Harry, and with the way they have tortured Harry already, he'd probably beg for Voldemort to kill him. The castle has to be stormed by daybreak. Or else…" I trail, refusing to finish the statement and declare the worst-case scenario. That all the Resistance will be able to save is Harry's remnants wrapped in cheesecloth.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," she mutters. She turns to the wizard who is still silently standing behind her, listening to every word that has come out of our mouths and asks, "how long will it be before they get around the barrier?"
"At this rate, three days at the quickest."
"We don't have three days!" I hiss, ready to tear my hair out in frustration. Harry's saving grace is within thirty meters of the castle, hindered and helpless, sitting like ducks while Harry is being dismembered, disemboweled and mutilated to the seventy-sixth dimension of infernal hell. This is not happening! I can feel the cold fingers of deep-seated fear squeezing my faintly beating heart.
"Harry would be dead by then. There has to be something we can do to speed things up," Hermione mumbles, shelling out huge efforts to control the blossoming panic in her own system. "How many wizards are working on it?"
"Seven," the Animagus replies, starting to sound a bit agitated himself.
"We have to double the number. And increase the efforts."
"Hermione—" She looks at me, unshed tears in her eyes, eyes that already mirror what can happen if Harry is not freed in time. "Harry is dying in there. And he can't die. He just can't!"
She starts mumbling under her breath. I can almost hear her brain firing one possible solution after another. "Sundown, tomorrow. I will exhaust everything I know just to counter it. I will work on it without food and sleep if I have to, but for your part, you have to keep Harry alive until then," Hermione swears. "Keep Harry alive and I will have you both out of there, and your mother, too by sundown tomorrow. Do I have your word, Draco?"
I look at her determined but mildly panicked brown eyes and nod. You don't have to tell me twice, Hermione.
I turn my gaze to the unseen inky black sky, hoping to get a glimpse of a solitary star, and cough tensely, "I have to be going back now or else they'll notice my absence. I will do everything I can to keep Harry alive until tomorrow then. We will be praying for you."
I turn to go back through the way I came when Hermione calls me again, "Draco!" I stop in my tracks, expecting for her to demand more guarantee from me. "Thank you… for giving Harry back his hope."
"He never lost it, Hermione."
"Well—he once thought he had. But he found it again."
Somehow, I know what she is talking about. "Do take care of him," she mouths, a sob threatening to escape from her lips.
"I will do more than that. I will lay down my life for him." There is no greater love than for a person to lay down his life for the one he loves. "At sundown tomorrow, it'll all be over."
-emeraldine-
