**Credit once again to Hydromiss for the inspiration for Voldy's Snape-bashing evil monologue**
When the attack finally came, it took everyone by surprise. Even Mad Eye Moody, who'd taken to jumping out from behind tapestries with a shout of "Constant Vigilance!" until McGonagall told him to stop terrifying first-years, was caught unawares.
It was Thursday night, a few weeks into term, and the Great Hall was eerily silent. Tempers had been short all week, as students, teachers, and Order members alike were exhausted from too many days of nervous anticipation.
When the double-doors at the front of the Great Hall snicked open, halfway through dinner, no one bothered to look up. There were so many people in the castle, now, even the Marauder's Map occasionally lost track of a few.
And if those few were Harry and Draco, more often than not, well, they were the ones with the map, anyway, so it hardly mattered.
Harry POV
Harry and Draco, headed late to the Great Hall after slipping out that afternoon for some much-needed alone time, nearly ran into the pack of Death Eaters that milled around the entrance to the Great Hall.
They hurried back around the corner and turned to stare at one another, wide-eyed, all thoughts of dinner forgotten. Each boy reached into his back pocket and activated the coin that lay there.
"Well," Draco said breathlessly, "guess this is it."
Harry leaned in, pulling his lover in for a fierce kiss. "Be careful!" he whispered, pulling away to head for the imminent battle.
Draco tugged him back. "You, too," he whispered, breath hot against Harry's lips.
Harry laced his fingers through Draco's. "Together, then?"
Draco nodded. "Together."
And, together, they turned and waded into the mass of Death Eaters, who were just now spilling through the doors and into the Great Hall. The hexes and curses were flying thick and fast, and the two boys took no time in adding their own to the mix.
The Death Eaters seemed surprised to meet with such resistance. Harry smiled grimly, fingering the heated metal in his pocket and hoping he'd bought them some time by activating the coins Hermione had charmed to allow the D.A. members to alert one another to danger. He didn't know that Hermione had given another set to Draco, for those students involved in the secret Plan B. Together, they'd managed to alert most of the school just as the Death Eaters poured into the Great Hall, giving their friends an extra few seconds to react and ruining Voldemort's carefully planned surprise.
Harry waded through the battle, keeping one eye on Draco as he picked off Death Eaters with swiftly cast hexes. Then he saw the first flash of familiar green light, and switched without thinking about it from hexes designed to maim and incapacitate, to curses designed to kill. A quick glance at Draco showed him doing the same.
The Great Hall was a churning, writhing mass of bodies, now, lit by flares of red and yellow and purple, with occasional bursts of sickly green. The bodies on the floor began to pile up, making it difficult to keep his footing.
Harry pushed on, searching frantically for Voldemort. He needed to end this, as quickly as possible, to keep as many of his friends as he could from dropping before the Death Eaters' wands.
He saw them fall, friends and classmates, but he couldn't take the time to check to see if they were still alive. All he could do was continue blindly firing curses, all the while keeping up a constant chant in his head, as if by repeating it enough times, he could will it to come true.
Not Draco. Not Draco. Not Draco. Not Draco. Not Draco…
A hush swept through the Great Hall, and Harry looked up at the dais where the Professors' table was, to see McGonagall forced to her knees, Voldemort's wand pressed cruelly against her throat.
"Call off your brats, Minerva," he hissed, "if you want to see another sunrise as headmistress."
"Hogwarts… is more… than its… headmistress," she choked out, glaring up at him. "I would… have expected you… to know that… Tom."
"Yes, well," he kicked her in the side, a casual movement, but Harry could hear her bones cracking under Voldemort's boot halfway across the Hall.
Snape growled and lunged for Voldemort, but Voldemort flicked his wand and sent Snape skidding across the floor.
"Well, well, Severus." Voldemort shook his head, aiming another vicious kick at McGonagall's ribs. "I'd heard that you'd betrayed me for this hag, but I must confess that I didn't expect the rumors to be true! My, my. Setting your sights a bit lower, are you, now that your precious Lily's been gone these last years? What is it, ten years, now?"
Snape's voice was impassive. "Fifteen, actually."
"Fifteen years." Voldemort shook his head in mock pity. "Fifteen years to live with the knowledge that you killed your precious Lily. That you are the one responsible for her death that night. And then, to be forced to teach her son, the famous Boy-Who-Lived… Oh, how that must have rankled. Tell me, Severus, did you enjoy hurting the boy, during your failed Occlumency lessons?"
Snape started, and Voldemort must have seen it, for his voice, when he continued, was even more mocking. "Oh, yes, I know about those. Did it never occur to you to wonder, Severus, that there might be a reason young Mister Potter was so decidedly hopeless at Occlumency?"
Snape looked like he might be sick, and Harry wasn't sure if that was because of the things Voldemort was saying, or because of the way Voldemort was systematically breaking his and McGonagall's bones as he talked.
"Did you know," Voldemort said, "how much he hates you, Severus? How much pain you caused him, spearing into his mind, again and again, insisting he raise his shields to keep you out? He couldn't, you see. It wasn't his fault – the first thing I did, when I realized what I could do, with that Horcrux, was to make raising those shields so painful it was worse than letting your callous attacks in." He snorted. "I got so annoyed with you, by the end. I'd be sleeping peacefully, or entertaining myself with a few muggles, and then suddenly, all I would see was you. Your sneer. Your lip, curled in disgust. Your ruthless persistence, even when you knew how much you hurt him."
"You see, Severus," continued Voldemort cheerfully, as he popped the bones in McGonagall's left hand, one by one, "I find that I quite despise you, now. I even considered allowing your lessons to succeed, if only to get your ugly face out of my head. But, you see, I couldn't do that. For, if you had succeeded at teaching Mister Potter to ward his mind, I would have had a much more difficult time keeping tabs on that pesky Order of yours. And I would have had to either spend the time and effort on placing spies within your ranks, or simply guessed at your plans. Since neither of those options was particularly appealing, I needed my link with Mister Potter's mind."
He grinned, a cold, mirthless grin. "It was simple, really, once I figured out how to activate my link with him. The link your dear Lily put in place, when she gave her life to save her son's. Of course, she had no way of knowing that that act would cause me to inadvertently make Harry Potter my last Horcrux, nor that it would link his mind inextricably to mine."
The Great Hall was suddenly filled with gasps of surprise and horror, as Order members and Death Eaters alike learned of the unexpected way the Chosen One was linked to the Dark Lord.
Harry closed his eyes, fervently wishing he'd gone to McGonagall about his scar from the beginning. Like Draco had wanted. It could have saved so many lives…
Harry's eyes snapped open when Voldemort called his name.
"Harry," Voldemort repeated.
Harry looked up, green eyes meeting cold black ones. "Yeah?"
"You don't have to die here, you know." Voldemort smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You and I could do great things, Harry. You don't need these pathetic fools."
Harry closed his eyes again. "I'm sorry, Mum," he whispered. "I'm sorry your sacrifice didn't change anything. I'm sorry I couldn't be the hero they all need me to be."
He opened his eyes, looked back into Voldemort's, saw the spark of excitement in them, and took a vicious pleasure in squashing it, in getting in one last parting shot. "No," he said, slowly, "no, I don't think we could."
He sought out Draco again, intending to mouth "I'm sorry," or maybe even "I love you," which he'd never said, not properly, anyway.
Instead, he saw Lucius Malfoy pointing his wand at his son's back, familiar green light gathering on its tip.
Harry's vague plans of thwarting Voldemort fled his mind, and he threw himself in front of Draco, straight into a lightning bolt of lurid green.
He died with Draco's name on his lips.