I had no idea where I was going as I wove between deformed hallways and fallen structures. Clouds of dusts permeated the air and clung to my blood and tears. I was trying desperately to weave back around to the battle, listening to the agonized sounds of screaming and blasting, knowing that the original pathway I'd come from had been blocked by mine and Draco's fight.
"Madeleine!" I heard a familiar female voice calling. I turned to see Hermione and Ron pelting down steep stairs to the left of me that spanned easily three stories high. "Follow us, we destroyed all the horcrux's. Harry is on his way to defeat Voldemort." Her voice came out jumbled from the effort of skipping multiple stairs at a time.
They ran across the ground floor in front of me and I followed them out into the outdoor covered walkways around the castle.
"Madeleine. You got Harry past Malfoy, thanks," Ron looked at me with appreciation as we ran, and I couldn't believe it had taken me until the day of the battle to earn any of his gratitude.
Above in the sky, slow balls of magical fire were flying outwards from the castle like reverse-meteors in the black sky. The castle was in ruins. Large chunks of it were giving way and sliding into the Black Lake at the base of the courtyard. Benign magical creatures had emerged from the dark forest in shock of the magnificent altercation, many of them attempting to assist in whatever way they could.
As we ran, the chaos ahead calmed abruptly. An eerie quiet appeared out of nowhere. We eventually reached what was left of the arched walkways surrounding the courtyard, slithering between people who were somehow frozen on the spot. Dread and fear were prevalent in the air.
Finally, once we'd shoved through the crowd it became obvious why. Harry was halfway across the courtyard, dead in the center with his wand pointed at Voldemort, who in return had Draco grasped by his shoulder. His long talons were sinking into the boy's skin right through his clothing and blood was running down his black robes.
The remaining Death Eaters pooled behind Voldemort snickering, save of course for the Malfoy's. Narcissa was practically screaming, her hands shaking before her face, her sobs reverberating gruesomely off of the damaged structures in the vicinity. Lucius was standing farther ahead than any of the Death Eaters with a beggary look I'd never seen on his face. He had his ringed hand outstretched as though it would make any difference to his case. Voldemort had his back to him, holding his white wand directly at Draco's heart. Bellatrix stood beside the dark lord, her wand pointed assuredly at Harry to hold him back.
A watery, slithery voice wafted into the minds of everyone present. Several individuals clapped their hands to their ears in a meagerly attempt to block it out.
Come outtttt, you who have betrayed me so unwisely. Pay... your... priceeeee.
I pushed through the final rows of brave Order members and soldiers with hard shoves and into the edge of the crowd. I made my way to stand beside Harry.
I could already feel my hair lifting off of my head as though I was underwater. The Veela powers were building rapidly at my finger tips at the sight of Draco being threatened. I could feel the heat moving down through my palms and fingertips, recharging with magical energy I thought surely was exhausted. My eyes were transfixed on the boy who meant everything to me, he whom I had fought for.
Voldemort's hair-raising smile practically cut his face in half, revealing unnaturally pointed teeth as he laughed vigorously at me. The horrible red glow of the dark lord's eyes disappeared momentarily as they slid to evaluate Draco in the grasp of his disfigured claws. He looked extremely weakened all of a sudden, like a limp doll barely able to stand.
He lifted his bright blue eyes to me as I stepped out, darning a look that suggested he knew he was already dead. Voldemort shook Draco's body with an obnoxious laugh and the boy stumbled to remain on his feet, coughing blood onto the pavement before him.
"My lord," Lucius whimpered in the background, like a child who's ice cream had just fallen from it's cone. "Please, my lord, we have never betrayed you." He blinked rapidly with pleading eyes.
Bellatrix cackled in amusement, "Not you, silly! The girl!" She extended her arm towards me, twisting her wand around. A foul grin had smeared across her gaunt face despite her relative's lives being at stake. I highly doubted that me being the cause of Draco's death was any more comforting to Lucius than it being his own fault.
Unparalleled rage built in me as I held my gaze with Draco, concentrating on saving him. He shook his head with heavy eyes as if to suggest I stand down, accepting his fate. Harry noticed the interaction and straightened his arm even more as if that were possible, "Let him go, Tom. You know this fight is between you and I."
The voice returned in our skulls for one final message, Veryyyyy wellllll.
He removed his grasp from Draco's shoulder long enough to weave it through the back of his long hair, ripping his neck backwards roughly. Draco winced and panted from the harrowing pain it would no doubt produce.
Where his wand was pointed into Draco's chest, the dark lord shouted the killing curse with steady conviction, a disgusting grin ebbed across his features and his red, beady eyes watched my face for my reaction.
The green light shot from his wand's tip, then briefly outwards with a startling shattering noise. The elder wand was miraculously thrown from his hand alongside the awful - and highly unusual - cracking sound that ensued. A large orbital blast of green and blue light shot from the center of Draco's chest and his body spun and collapsed into a pile at the dark lord's feet.
Narcissa's scream was unrivalled by the various other cries from Order members at the shocking display of her son's murder. She dropped to her knees in high pitched agony, her fingers shaking violently in front of her face. Lucius' expression crumbled with equal disbelief like an imploding pop can, and he staggered on his feet like he was tripping drunkenly in slow motion.
McGonagall didn't hesitate to take several steps forward and began casting mercilessly with an expression of sheer determination and horror. She drove the dark lord back many paces and Harry dove to avoid Bellatrix' shots, catching hold of the elder wand which had rolled towards him on the stone pavement in the bizarre accident.
Time seemed to freeze as I breathed slower and deeper with each breath. The venom in my veins broke through a barrier I didn't even know was within me. My eyes blackened murderously as the Veela flames engulfed me in a tall pillar, tears spilling from my eyes at the sight of Draco's dead body before me. I shook with a cancerous fury that burst out of every single cell in my body, my eyes burning into the army of Death Eaters now slowly retreating into themselves at the vision of my snarling face.
An orbit of obsidian fire swirled from my hands as I raised them and blasted outwards, churning from around my being and then gradually in a larger circumference. It resembled a planet of destruction which swept up debris as it moved and incinerated my surroundings. What was left of my heart pinched and died away, and all that remained was the anger and hatred, and the evil pumping through my veins.
The sphere of thick flames scorched it's way outwards, shifting more rapidly by the moment. There was no time for a single soul to react. The freeze on time released itself and the flames consumed every single inch of the courtyard and extended far out into the open air around the castle like an atom bomb had been targeted on the property. Only those who were unworthy of my allegiance would suffer the wrath of the inferno.
A wicked sneer crept across my face as I watched Bellatrix catch fire first, her long ringlets of hair fizzled straight to her head and her face melted away disturbingly slowly. She finally disappeared into a pile of black ashes, suffering a miserably slow death.
From the moment my fulmination had begun, Harry bravely chose to trust me and pelted across the rubble. He ran in confidence as the flames caught up to him from behind and shifted straight through him. With the elder wand pointed at Voldemort's neck he collided into the dark lord and twisted his fingers into his robes. The momentum could not be stopped and they disappeared over the edge of the bridge altogether, barreling towards the river below. The dark lord caught fire as they went, and their entwined forms shot down in an arrow of flames and struggle.
Trolls, hags and all manners of villainous creatures were charred and vanished into dust in the stormy wind, alongside almost every Death Eater there, except the few sinister individuals who had been wise enough to start running and not look back just in time.
Those who had fought bravely for the castle and for England's freedom cowered in the unexpected and heinous hellfire which had instantaneously swallowed them whole, only to emerge completely unscathed.
My magic gave way, spent and maxed out. The flames dropped.
I tripped forward, stumbling towards Draco's body where his parents were both sniveling next to him in fetal positions on their knees. My fingers reached weakly out towards him as my heartbeat fought to remain consistent.
An insidious pain was blossoming in my chest and I clutched at my clothing. I went down by the knees with blurry, teary vision. I reached for the only thing that could possibly save me from the underworld I was being sucked into; my love for him.
The Veela power would now demand it's heavy price for how hard I had pushed the magic in tandem with the poisonous dark mark.
I lost my will to remain upright and rolled onto my back only feet from him, panting pathetically and arching my back. My hand trembled towards his still body but he lay too far away.
I eventually watched, falling into a paralyzed state, as the skull in the clouds dissipated into thin air. Tendrils of sunlight dared to poke holes in the evil symbol and shine down onto the wreckage that represented all that was left of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, now hardly recognizable and nearly levelled to the ground.
For a moment, it appeared as though heaven itself was breaking through the image of the dark lord above. The moist air and the warmth of the sun caused mist to creep off of the hard, drenched surfaces around those who had survived the war and remained in the forlorn environment.
My eyes simply refused to brighten again, and my body stiffened unnaturally. The world had become so dark, so empty and hollow. A distinct sense that nothing would ever be joyous or meaningful ever again monopolized my thoughts. My eyesight faded away, and I felt myself being tugged downwards through my body and mind, like a dream where one trips and sits bolt right up, only the opposite. The two holes where I normally interpreted the world through floated above me suddenly, mockingly. I cried out silently as I was dragged away from my eyes and into some sort of hypnotizing, internal void that was expanding out of nowhere.
My soul floated dangerously low into a spiritual abyss where I struggled to free myself. Long waves of white hair snaked in silken waves towards the light I had just sunken away from, and my arms hung out loosely at my sides. It was like I had fallen backwards into a world of spilled ink. Hundreds of black, filthy, inhumanely long arms and hands were tangling themselves in my clothing, yanking on my hair, and tugging at my face to drift me lower...deeper... I choked on the evil, drowned in it even, but it seemed to last an eternity.
"Come back to us Madeleine, don't let it win!" I heard Hermione shouting from miles and miles away, her desperate voice echoed in and out of time. She was choking on tears profanely and her words garbled as she continued trying to pry me.
I had forgotten how long I had been lost there. Everything was darkness. Darkness was my only reality and I was one with it. There was no logic to the fabric of my existence, no time or space - only the sea of evil that I was chained to the bottom of like a forgotten pirates chest.
The sounds of panicked voices around my rigid body in the real world slithered gracefully out earshot. I had given up the impossible battle, and the evil was now peaceful. I lay at the bottom of a netherworld filled with obsidian, writhing beings, shackled there by my poisoned magic. As it had so been predicted, so it was.
An odd grumbling of despondent piano keys being punched at random warbled around me; each note groaned out in a warped and perverse tone. Yet somehow I had heard the melody before. Somewhere...in a previous life...that had once been filled with hope and dreams.