Title: Unseen Threads
Author: mintapotter
A/N: This chapter goes out to txcalbud, who's name I cannot very well pronounce out loud but whom I always love to see a review from! And to everyone, please enjoy this and drop me a line at the end.
Here we go...
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Chapter 26 - Anguish
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The game plan was so simple it hurt; offensive.
After that we had to fill in the blanks about the when, where, who and most importantly how. We already had a why; for all the dead and dying caused by Voldemort. The why was that he had to pay for everything he had done to us.
Everyone in the Order who was fighting beside me had been touched by a death somehow, no-one was immune to it. I had lost my parents and godfather just as the Weasley's had recently lost their Mother. People remembered a cousin, an aunt, their grandparents or best friends being killed in cold blood during the First War.
I however was in a fever and a killing mood. I had come to terms with the deaths of my past but I had just one, last person to save before all was said and done.
Draco.
Even thinking about him makes it hard to see because all I ever want to do is sit down and cry. If I hadn't interfered with his life than he probably wouldn't be dying right now. But if I hadn't pushed him out of the way all those weeks ago in Diagon Alley than we would have never had the chance to properly fall in love.
And if I hadn't been so wrapped up in myself for so long than maybe I could have visited him more often, or listened to what he was really saying better. I feel now like every second I spent alone since the point that we have been together was a second wasted.
I wish like nothing else that my life was simple and orderly and easy. I wish that we could fall in love and live together and have a normal, simple life. Nothing sounds better to my ears than blissful domesticity. It's all I can hope and dream and pray that maybe one day, we will have.
We can share a real life together.
But every minute that ticks by is another strike on my conscious, because Draco is very much so dying, and slowly but surely he will simply die and not come back. That's the part that hurts so much now, the part where after he dies I can't just bring him back from the dead.
So we are moving planning, putting things immediately into motion. Our people inside the Ministry are preparing from the inside out for a trap that Voldemort can't refuse to walk into, or escape. This will be the fight to end fights, the last battle. I want everything, if possible, to end.
And the only outcome that I could live with is Voldemort dying and Draco living. The end. Even if I don't make it, at least I will have died with some sort of purpose, which is more than I can say about the majority of my life.
Of course, I'd prefer to stick around long enough to spend just one more minute with him healthy and beaming that beautiful smile again but…
I won't ask for much. I just need this battle done and gone with by tonight, or else I won't have a reason to fight anymore.
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The Cruciatus has nothing over this.
That curse hurt, it felt as though your insides were being pulled out and your very bones were being ripped through your skin.
But that curse stopped, at some point. It always had an end in sight.
This, was forever worse.
Breathing, hurt, for fuck sakes. Looking at anything now caused a headache that made me nauseous, which would force me to either throw up food that wasn't there or not eat for another few hours. I am starving, and can't look at or smell or taste food without something going terribly wrong. Everything is sore, every tiny cut or scrape is still bleeding blood that won't clot. Every bruise only grows and becomes more tender to every tiny touch. There isn't a moment of relief, as sleep is now something that refuses to come for me.
I will give almost anything, anything, if someone could just make this stop. Please, anything.
I want to say the words out loud but the work makes my throat raw and bloody, and it isn't worth it to plead with the Healers. There's nothing that they can do…
Well, I know that they gave pain potions to the patients that were so far gone that it was more humane to let them die after a few minutes of peace. I won't take the potion though, not unless Harry comes back and there's no chance that I could live through this and have a normal life.
I'll only take it if the last few minutes are with Harry. No one will make me take it before then. No one.
Staying alive however was fast becoming a burden that didn't quite seem worth it.
And then, there was always Harry. He promised that he would come back with good news. He promised another visit, and that wasn't something said lightly.
He'll be back, I could count on nothing if not that. He would be back for me and this would all end.
Just one more breath in an out, one more second of waiting.
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"Ron, Hermione, come here. Please."
For all I knew, these were my last few peaceful minutes on earth, and if I could get through a goodbye with Draco I could sure as hell do it with Ron and Hermione. I pulled them into a quiet alcove where no-one else was currently hiding or discussing the plot over one more time. I need just a few spare moments to tell them everything I needed to, and this was all I was ever going to get, it seemed.
I never thought it would be quite this hard to get the words out though.
"I wanted to thank you guys for everything, since first year-"
"Harry, mate, don't do this. Not now." Ron's voice was for the first time quiet and the same tone of caring it had been all these past few years. It seemed that as the last few moments before the fight begun were progressing, his grudge against me had been lifted. I was thankful for that, for some reason. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from my chest and allowed me to breathe easier.
"I need to. I want to thank both of you for everything, for sticking by me and being here tonight. I want to say sorry for not telling you about things earlier, and I want to apologize about your Mum Ron."
Ron hung his head low for a moment, his face shadowed and impossible to read in the faintness of the Atrium at night. His head finally raised from its bowed position to look me in the eyes.
He doesn't blame me.
"Thank you Harry, but it wasn't your fault. It was whoever shot the curse in the first place and I can only hope that they'll show up here tonight."
I could only nod my agreement at that, choking on the other emotions running wild beneath the surface of my skull.
"And to both of you, I want to really say goodbye because living past tonight is not something that I expect to happen."
"Don't talk like that Harry." Hermione's voice was edged with warning, her thick haired pulled back severely from her face, making her seem twice as serious. "You can't go into a fight thinking that you'll lose or you'll never win it."
I laughed a little at this, maybe just to relieve the tension filling my lungs with lead. "I think that I'll win tonight Hermione, because I have to, for everyone. I just don't expect to live through it all."
She could only nod at this, both her and Ron paling at my frank talk about death. This shouldn't be any surprise to them, not now.
"I want to tell you that in the event that I die, I need you two to tell Draco that I'm sorry I couldn't bring him better news myself. I need to make sure that at least he'll live-"
"Why must you bring him up Harry?" Ron's venomous voice was the last straw in our tenuous accord for peace.
"Listen, Ron. Do you love Hermione?"
He nodded curtly, taking only a tiny glance over at Hermione.
"Would you want me to tell her that you loved her if you died here tonight? Would you like me to offer her some kind of solace about you?"
"Yes, but-"
"Well Draco and I are exactly the same thing and if you can't accept that than just leave now, because I can't take it! I love him and he is dying right now, and that is the single, most important reason that I am so fine with simply dying here tonight! Because of all things on this earth, to me he is worth dying for! Now do you understand that?"
A silence so thick that I felt like I was drowning in it swallowed the both of them, before Ron shook his head slowly.
"I can't understand why Draco Malfoy has to be your choice, but I can accept it. I don't like it and maybe I never will but can at least understand that he means something to you and if he means something to you than…if you don't make it, we'll be there for him. For anything, no matter what happens. I promise, Harry." He whispered the last part so quietly I almost missed it, but it was there and he meant it. All I could do was murmur 'Thank you' to the both of them and hug them one last time, before standing back and preparing myself for one last stand.
"This is it guys, and I'm happy that it's you two standing at my back. Let's do this."
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Never in my life had my mind been so closely smashed into my base instincts.
Duck. Dodge. Attack.
Their was no spare moment for thinking, just muscle reflexes and basic movement.
Keep moving. Breathe, in, out.
Simple. Obscenely simple.
I have to be the first one to fire a spell every time or I die. Simple.
Flashes of red hair were always at the corner of my vision, but I could never turn to see which Weasley was attacking or being attacked each time. I heard a small scream that sounded hauntingly like Hermione, but I could do nothing but bite back the urge to find our where it came from. I didn't have the time to do that, I could check on everyone once this was done.
Oh, fuck. Scream.
Something burning was searing through the shirt on my back, burning and blistering the skin beneath. I turned and stared into the deeply hooded of eyes of one person I had always wanted to kill.
Bellatrix.
"Oh, Potter, baby, does that sting? Maybe your little blond baby can come and heal that up for you, if the rumors are true." The burning forced a scream from me, but I bit back the next one that tore up through my throat. I could smell my own flesh burning, and the acridness of it almost made me vomit, but I only just barely held it in. She smiled her foulest smile at my scream, and that wasn't allowed.
"That is, little Malfoy would heal you up were he in any condition to do so. The brat's already dead-"
"Avada Kedavra."
My words were forced from somewhere deep inside me, the same place that all screams come from. It was a place of pain and rage and sorrow and anger and bubbling fury all at once.
It was my love for Draco. No one would talk down to Draco, no one. Not my friends, not the people who were my only family, and defiantly not my enemies. Bella's lifeless, limp body should be a stark reminder of what would happen when you started talking badly about Draco in front of me anymore.
And then in a ragged breath I drew in, a realized a few things. The burning spell had stopped the moment that Bellatrix had had the lights knocked from behind her eyes, but it still hurt intolerably. And she had said something, something I wouldn't believe-
The brat's already dead-
"She didn't mean it. It isn't true. It can't be." I could hear myself mumbling the words and turning just for the briefest moment away from the battle raging behind me. I needed just a moment, just a second to get a hold of myself.
"It is not true. Keep fighting, keep going. Draco is alive. He will only stay that way if you keep moving."
And so I did. I turned and scanned the Atrium, if only to get a bearing of where I was again. I could see fights both big and small being fought all around, only half of them including people I recognized. Some people were dead, littering the ground; I didn't allow myself to glance at the floor. I couldn't even really tell who was winning against whom.
I dodged out of the way of some blood red curse just in time, and fired a full body bind in the general direction of whomever had cast it at me. Some boy, not quite much older than me tumbled towards the floor when my curse connected, the blackness of the Dark Mark on his skin burning my eyes with its ugliness.
He would be dealt with later, in trials and punishments to be doled out by the government. He was no longer a threat or any major problem.
And then there was a ghostly snatch of white blond hair off to the edge of my vision, just a little behind me and to the left. It could only mean one thing; Lucius Malfoy had arrived.
And anger isn't the word for it. Rage is the only term which quite covers my endearment of Lucius had done to me, and Draco, over the years.
If I could kill Bellatix with one curse that I couldn't have fired last year, Lucius was in for it. There was no amount of pain and suffering that he could endure that would be too much, and I would only be so happy to be the one cursing him to tears.
I turned so acutely on my heel that he would never have time to react to the curse blossoming on my lips.
"Cruci-"
"Harry?" His small voice asked it like a question, as though he wasn't sure if I was the one he was really looking at.
I stumbled while walking and fell to the floor, my hands scraped from the grit of the floor, but the feeling woke me up. My words stopped. My heart stopped. Everything in the world came to a grinding, crashing halt in that one, single, moment. Those tones were no one else's but the person whom I was fighting for.
Draco?
Draco was here, not his Father. Draco was out of bed, Draco was all right, Draco was here to fight and-
Draco's eyes were missing the glinting grey of shined metal, or forged steel.
Draco's eyes were white.
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A/N: HAHAHAHA! How's THAT for a cliffy! (oh, I feel so deliciously evil right now...) And here's my THANK YOU to those of you who did:
MimiTaylor, brionyjae, Julia, Raping Time, Mystiqal Neko, txcalbud, & sparkley-tangerine!
Please keep reviewing, and I'll see you next time.
Mintapotter