Until the Day I Die

by Sousakuka-sama

HarryDraco songfic to Story of the Year's 'Until the Day I Die'. Warnings: Angst, main character death, mentions of mpreg.

"Until the Day I Die"

Set pre-HBP

Until the day I die
I'll spill my heart for you, for you
Until the day I die
I'll spill my heart for you

It was late one hot, sticky evening at the end of our seventh year that I approached you and asked for a truce. I offered my hand, like I'd done so many years ago, and this time - you took it. I hadn't even begun to explain how I'd turned from my father and become a spy for the Order; I merely asked for a ceasefire in our seven-year rivalry...and you agreed. Almost happily. It made me wonder...

Of course, you could never know why I turned. Seven years I watched you; five and a half with contempt. Then, partway through sixth year, my angry glances become slightly less angry, and my scathing comments became fewer and less biting. I stopped hating you, then, and before long I almost found myself respecting you, even liking you. By the summer before seventh year, I had to admit to myself I fancied you - a bit.

Then we came back, seventh year; our last year. You'd grown, your shoulders broadened; you had a tan and you'd finally lost those loathsome glasses. You looked - well. I wasn't the only one who noticed. The Weaslette practically passed out when you walked by, and girls and boys of all Houses and Years could be seen eyeing you appreciatively in the halls. It was irritating; on top of the fact it was obvious you were never going to return those leering, lustful glances - your head was always down and you always brooded; you had no time for love or sex or anything else that most seventeen-year-olds do - I couldn't help but be angry over the fact that, oh, now they noticed you. Now that you were tall and handsome and the Daily Prophet was writing favorably of you again (not, I admitted, that I had ever been a big help there). None of them had had a change of heart, say, some six or so months previously.

It irked. And I hated myself; for liking you. For being jealous. For wanting to tousle your already messy hair, for wanting to run my finger over your infamous scar. It was ridiculous, and sentimental, and it would get one of us killed if I wasn't careful.

Of course, I wasn't careful.

As years go by
I race the clock with you

It took me ages to finally admit beyond liking you: after your accident on your Firebolt II that September, where everyone honestly thought you were going to die, I - I realized that what I felt went beyond any form of crush; I didn't just fancy you.

I loved you.

And because I loved you, I hated you and myself all the more.

However, I am a Malfoy, and we strive to be productive. Pining for you from the distance, trying to keep up the appearances of hating you, taking that stupid Mark and worshipping this psycho who was after your blood - well, these were all very counterproductive. So I left my family, joined this Order, asked for a truce between us.

All for you.

And you'll never, ever know.

After we graduated, you roomed with Weasley, and I stayed at Grimmauld Place; I was quite poor, now that I had left my family, and it would be some time before I could afford a place of my own. You dropped by, and it was surprising (or was it?) how easily we got on. The Weasel and Granger hated it, of course; your friends and I spent a great many Order meetings sneering across the room at each other.

I stopped following Voldemort and my father for several reasons, most to do with you. But one opinion that came solely from a growth of maturity was that, while I may disagree with the idea of Muggle-borns getting a magical education, I see no reason to try and carry out genocide because of it. With this in mind, I tried viewing Granger in a different, let's-not-kill-the-Mudblood perspective, and saw what I'd always known, but hated to admit: that she was smart, and quick, and witty, and very much like myself, really. And she was already an integral part of the magical world, anyway. So, I no longer hated her.

The Weasel, however, was an entirely different story. He was still impulsive and quick-tempered and whiny, and he was still one of the main reasons - the main reason, I think - you didn't want to be my friend; why you didn't take my hand when we were eleven. Had he not been there, perhaps you would have. Had he not been there, maybe things would be very different. I wouldn't have had to take the Mark, but remained with my family; or maybe I wouldn't have fallen for you so hard, so fast, so against my will.

Maybe I would have even fallen for you sooner. I'll never know, because of that stupid, whingy, freckled redhead.

A year after we left Hogwarts, there was news of Voldemort again; we started planning a very covert, very secretive mission for getting into his current hideaway. The main point of this mission, obviously, was to kill - or at the very least, wound - Voldemort, and our main man for the mission was, naturally, you.

When they all turned to look at you, their savior, their Boy-Who-Fucking-Lived, I hated them, hated them - even the Weasel and Granger looked to you like you were the only thing in the world to save them. Oh, sure, I knew the prophecy: everyone did by now. But even then, did they have to act like there was nobody else who could make a difference? Did they always have to put all the pressures and burdens on you? You wasn't even nineteen yet, for shit's sake.

And I knew you didn't like it, either, because one night, shortly before the mission, I basically told you how I didn't understand why everyone had to pressure you so. At first, you argued - you loved the people I was insulting, after all - but, eventually, you admitted in a small, weary voice, "It doesn't matter, but...no, I hate it. I wish...I just want to be normal. But I've never been normal; I never will be normal. They look to me for help, and I try, and...well. It doesn't matter anyway."

But it did matter, I could tell it mattered, and I promised myself, then and there, that I would do everything to lessen your burden, even if it was only by the tiniest bit. Nobody else could tell how much you hated your role in this war, but I could. And I could use this knowledge to help us...help you.

I was going to help you kill Voldemort, if it was the last thing I did.

But if you died right now
You know that I'd die too
I'd die too

Two years into the war, you were horribly injured; bones shattered, legs and arms lacerated, a great gash slicing across your face, cutting into the eyelid over one of your so-famous, remarkable green eyes. You Apparated outside of Grimmauld Place, collapsed, and there Mrs. Weasley found you hours later, barely breathing. She screamed for help, and I was the first who came; we carried you into my room, and because it was mine, I had the excuse to stay. Others came and went, healing and keeping vigil, but I was the one who was able to watch the whole time - listen to your labored breathing, see the shallow rise and fall of your chest. You looked so pale, weak, vulnerable, and I thought: What will I do if you die? I had built my entire life on you, now; I didn't know how to live without you anymore. Even before, when we were enemies, I wouldn't have known what to do if you died. For seven years at school you defined who I was, and you still did, now, when we were nearly twenty and I had known you almost a decade.

I can't lose you, Harry; these days I don't need air and food and water so much as I need your laugh, your smile, you bright green eyes and your subtle humor. Food and drink can only nourish the body, the organs, everything that makes you breathe, that makes your heart beat over and over and over again. But...the little things; the way you push back your hair, or brush your hand across your nose (old habit; you still aren't used to being without glasses), or the way you stick your hands in your pockets when you're anxious - these things...they're the things that make a man want to breathe, that make a man want his heart to beat over and over and over.

Don't you ever, ever die on me, Harry; because if you die, then so will I.

You remind me of the times
When I knew who I was (When I knew who I was)

Five years of war. Five years of losses, of bloody battles and more injuries and deaths amongst the Order, the wizarding world and Muggles than I cared to count. Five years of a slow, creeping, steady gain of power and victory for Voldemort's side.

We were losing. We were sodding losing. I had picked the losing side.

And, apparently, I was keeping rather poor company too. Still, I got on well with everyone now, save Weasley; we'll never like either other, he and I. But we tolerate each other now, I even saved his life once. He saved mine twice, a fact which he loves to bring up after maybe five minutes of being in the same vicinity of me.

You and I were doing splendidly. Our truce had long since melted into an easy camaraderie, a solid friendship - a sort of companionship I'd never had with anyone else before and, from what I observed, you shared with no one else, either.

I tried to fight the silly grin I got every time I felt the happy glow I got when I realized that you and I shared something unique.

But still the second hand will catch us
Like it always does.

It will not come as a shock, I am sure, that after nearly seven years of liking you - about five or six of actually loving you - that, after a desperate, furious, painful battle, one where we lost three Aurors - two of the young ones, and one of our "seasoned professionals" (poor Shacklebolt finally didn't make it back; he always managed to come through even the nastiest of skirmishes, but everyone slips up at least once...this time, Shacklebolt had) - that, pulling you aside from the blood and gore and wreckage, checking you over for injuries, you slipped an arm around my neck, pulled me close, and kissed me hard.

It was painful, this kiss: bloody and tasting of sweat. You bit my lip and I sucked hard on your tongue, grazing my teeth over it, knocking noses. You pressed your hands into my back hard enough to leave bruises, and I sucked on the base of your throat, marking you. Finally marking you. Finally, I could claim you as mine.

But then you froze, and ran, and I was alone again, and you still weren't mine.

I think back to those realizations of three years ago; when I recognized how much you defined who I was and what I am. You and I, even now, are still the antithesis of one another. What you do, I do differently, and vice versa. It made for a bitter, longstanding rivalry; it makes for an interesting companionship, and it makes it where I can love you desperately while you never love me back.

We'll make the same mistakes
I'll take the fall for you

You stuttered and apologized over the kiss, I waved you off, and for several months we were just friends again.

But then it was I who was wounded - I nearly lost an arm, and I could barely see or speak for a week thanks to some obscure Peruvian hex - and you were the one who stayed with me, and helped me do up my clothes and eat my food, because I was so utterly helpless for the better part of those seven days. You stayed with me, talked to me, helped me, and on the day when I was finally healthy and fully functional again - I took your face in my hands and kissed you, desperately, clinging to you like you were all there was in the world. And you are - in mine, anyway.

And you, for a glorious instant, kissed me back; arms sliding around my waist, pressing me close, close, closer - as if you were trying to mould us together, to lock us in an eternal, fierce, endless embrace.

But then I stopped kissing, just to get my breath back, and you stumbled away, saying over and over again how sorry you were.

Yet again, you fled; so much for Gryffindor courage. This time, though, I was going to chase after you.

I hope you need this now
'Cause I know I still do.

Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
I'll spill my heart for you
Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
I'll spill my heart for you

I wouldn't let up. I knew, now, that you were not completely immune to the attraction that always lay between us. I knew that, while I may never have your love, I could at least have your passion, and I was content enough with that.

I can be relentless and brutally honest when I want, and when I finally broke down and admitted how I felt, how I needed, how I wanted - well. I was surprised, because at long last, you took me in your arms, and kissed me gently, and said you felt much the same way. And then you kissed me again, and I realized how you were not mine, how you were never mine, and how you were never be mine.

I realized, then, I always was and always would be yours.

Should I bite my tongue
Until blood soaks my shirt?

Our relationship was painful: the war left no room for gentleness, and a great many times we met on the battlefield for a few bruising kisses before going off to fight for our cause. And at Grimmauld Place, our lovemaking was fast and furious, desperate; we always feared for the other, and we coupled with the frenzied haste that comes from troubled wartime. Each parting hurt, and each meeting was bittersweet. And each time we met and left, it became harder and harder to hold back. Oh, I admitted to fancying you, wanting you, and needing you in my life, but I'd never made the grand declarations of love that had been singing you praises in my head for so many years. I planned on never telling you; but, as the year after the commencement of our relationship dragged on, I came closer and closer to blurting it all.

And not just that I loved you, either. No, I came close to telling you everything: how I left my family for you, how I became an Order spy for you, how I turned my world upside down for you.

All those things I swore to never, ever tell you.

We'll never fall apart
So tell me why this hurts so much

You were wounded again, nearly two years into our relationship. I was beside myself; nobody could take me away from you, and I stayed by you for hours and hours, even though you were unconscious the whole time. And while you lay there, pale, ashen-faced, hovering between life and death yet again - well. I told you some things. This time they weren't "I fancy you, Harry; I've wanted you for a long time and I...well, to be frank, I need you, you pillock". They were much deeper, they hurt me more to say, because I'd kept them so close for so long that they'd become a part of me, and sharing them was like ripping away a piece of flesh...like tearing out a chunk of my heart. But, for all that it hurt, the piece of my heart I gave you was yours anyway; it was time I finally gave it to you, even if you couldn't hear it.

And you couldn't, could you?

My hands are at your throat
And I think I hate you

You were still out of it, two months later, and I was desperate. I was like death warmed over myself by now; I barely ate. I barely slept. I walked around like a zombie, half-crazed with worry. My nerves were constantly splayed to the world, razed and over-sensitive. I snapped and yelled at everybody, slammed doors, kicked over chairs and slid down walls sobbing, utterly falling apart. We were losing you, losing you to some stupid half-arsed curse and nobody knew how to fix it...

I remember hating you for making me love you; that feeling had left me, after a time. Now I hated you again, not only for making me love you so, but for playing with me - finally becoming mine, only to draw away, hiding under an unconscious, pale mask, a step away from death every moment. And I hated you for it. Why couldn't you just wake up? Just wake up, kiss me, and let me finally tell you I loved you to your face? Why couldn't you just wake up?

But still we'll say, "Remember when?"
Just like we always do, just like we always do

You did wake up, six months to the day, and nobody knew why. You just, one day, lightly brushed your hand through my hair, smiled, and I fell out of my chair in shock. You laughed, until you saw my gaunt face, the smudges under my eyes, my lank hair - and the smile slipped off, and worry filled your eyes. You had no clue how long you'd been out of it, after all. You probably thought it had been six hours, rather than about four thousand two hundred (I had a lot of time to worry) hours.

But you were awake, and could begin healing again. And I could finally tell you I loved you, and - for a time, we were actually...happy. The war still dragged on, and Voldemort still lived; but you were fine, and I was fine, and we could face anything when we were together.

Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
I'll spill my heart for you
Until the day I die (Until the day I die)

Another stupid, stupid covert mission against Voldemort. Another bloody battle. I couldn't walk on my left leg for three weeks, and I still have an ugly, twisting, ropy scar there, that hurts like hell in cold weather, and makes me limp. It's nasty and painful, but it was all I had, and it was the worst injury I received in the whole bloody (and I mean that both in the literal and curseword form) war.

But you...you moron. You took on Voldemort yourself, like always, alone. You idiot. You utter idiot; did you forget? Did you forget you weren't just the stupid wizarding world's savior? Did you forget all the people who loved you, and who worried about you, and who had just suffered an excruciatingly painful six months waiting for you to wake up?

I'll spill my heart for you
Yeah I'd spill my heart!
Yeah I'd spill my heart, for you!

So, you and Voldemort dueled, and you got a blasting hex right in the eyes.

You stupid, stubborn git, you went and blinded yourself.

And suddenly my injured leg seemed so utterly inconsequential.

My hands are at your throat
And I think I hate you
We made the same mistakes

Maybe I should've been sympathetic. Instead, I was furious. I raged at you, and berated you, and demanded if you were dropped on your head as a child, because the only other option was uncaring stupidity. It didn't help any that, while I raged, though your brows drew together, your beautiful - gorgeous, glorious, bright...(I always loved them so) - eyes stared blankly ahead.

Mistakes like friends do,

My hands are at your throat
and I think I hate you
We made the same mistakes.

It just made me rage all the more.

I only shut up when you quietly informed me that you didn't think we should be together anymore.

Until the day I die
I'll spill my heart for you, for you

The last battle of the war took place more than a decade after it started. You never took back what you said to me that day, no matter how much I apologized, and in hindsight I realize you probably thought you were protecting me. It took us six months to get back to an uneasy peace between us - before, all our conversations ended up in arguments - and another year had to pass before we were somewhere at the point we'd been when I first suggested the truce.

You were a fast enough learner, and two years after being blinded you moved and acted as if you'd always been that way. Even when people would stutteringly, accidentally, stupidly refer to your lack of sight you wouldn't bat an eyelash. I was the only one who ever managed not to mention it. Maybe it was due to the fact I'd harangued you about it so much that first day that made it easier to avoid conversing about it afterwards. In any case, I was the only one.

Losing your eyesight, obviously, led to quite a few complications in the whole you-killing-Voldemort deal. I, however, secretly believed you could do it: I still held to my promise I'd help you kill the bastard. Yet another reason I'd been angry about you going up against him alone the last time. I still also believed that, despite the fact we were no longer lovers, that together we could do anything. So I would help you kill Voldemort - even without your eyesight, yes.

Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
I'll spill my heart for you, for you

The last battle actually took place on your birthday. Since everyone in the wizarding world knew when your birthday was, I have to wonder if Voldemort didn't stage it then because of the supreme irony. In any case, halfway through your twenty-eighth birthday there was a full-scale battle going on on the outskirts of Muggle Surrey, not too far - so it's said - from Little Whinging. Yet another irony.

There was no hope of keeping the Muggles out of it, but by this point, no one cared. The entire battle had the feeling of the end written all over it, and we gratefully threw ourselves into the fighting with carelessness, thinking either we'd all die and it wouldn't matter, or it would be the end of Voldemort, and we'd be far too happy to see it finally end to give a shit if the Muggles knew. They all had to find out about the wizarding world eventually, anyway.

I stuck to your side the whole time. You fought admirably, almost as good as you did when you'd been able to see. Of course, I stayed quite a few curses and attackers, but you couldn't tell, and you would have gotten them anyway. I just happened to make it easier.

I knew you'd felt Voldemort was near when you suddenly slipped away from the fighting. I was hard-put to keep up with you, but I managed to skulk along and even find a good hiding place to watch the show (until an opportune moment arose to crash the party, of course).

Voldemort was his normal melodramatic, mocking self; he took particular pleasure in maliciously belittling you for your lack of sight. You, as always, replied in turn with sarcastic, almost bored remarks, easily dodging hexes and jinxes and seeming to enjoy how angry this made the old psycho.

But then the swaggering and insult-swapping was over, and you were dueling in earnest. I waited, hesitating until I saw a chance to step in, and then - I did, throwing a Killing Curse in Voldemort's direction for good measure and coming to stand by your side, barely sparing you a casual hello, and not even looking at Voldemort.

Voldemort looked nonplussed. You looked lethal.

"Draco, you arse!" you shouted, ever original in your repartee. "Go away! You'll get yourself killed!" You sounded desperate, worried; it gave me a lovely warm glow that made it easy for me to smirk at the Dark Lord.

"No, I won't, Harry," I assured you. "We'll kill him."

"Draco!" you snapped, and I merely smiled and began the easy business of antagonizing Lord Voldemort.

He actually turned his attention from you to me for a few moments. I found myself enjoying playing the hero for a bit - it's rather a turn-on, really, fighting Voldemort (is that why you were always so eager to do it? - now there's a thought). But eventually, he grew bored and decided to try and kill me.

Oh, yes, that worked well. God, the arrogant prick. I easily ducked and dodged a multitude of Avada Kedavra's, all the while hearing you tell me what an idiot I was and shout at me to leave. Finally, Voldemort turned his wand away from me and aimed it at you.

Of course, I had to knock you out of the way. I hissed at you that I wasn't leaving, that I would never leave, that I loved you too much, you stupid sodding hero, and if you thought I was leaving you you had another thing coming. You lay under me, panting, and the problem from fighting Voldemort earlier intensified. You finally nodded, and shoved me off, then, but not before you smiled at me, just a little, and for the first time in two years, kissed me. Just a little kiss - quite chaste, really - but to me it was the most wonderful kiss ever, even better then our first, heated kisses. It was a kiss with hope and promise.

So we stood up together, ready to face Voldemort. Ready to kill Voldemort. Because together, we could do anything.

Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
I'll spill my heart for you

Oh, yes, we could do anything. We could kill Voldemort.

But we couldn't save you.

He didn't even get you with the Killing Curse. He got you with something slower, deadlier.

He cut you, just once, and I didn't know the blade was poisoned. We didn't know, not when we killed him. We didn't know, not when we attended all those funerals for our fallen. We didn't know, when we went to Ron and Hermione's wedding, or attended the christening of Bill and Fleur's firstborn. We didn't know, when you apologized, and asked if we could give the whole relationship thing another try. We didn't know, when you told me you loved me for the first time.

We didn't know, when I asked you to marry me, saying now that the war was over we could finally settle down and start living. We didn't know, when we exchanged vows and I swore, with solemn, fierce intensity that I would love you not only "till death do us part", but beyond that. We didn't know, when I drank some of Snape's conception potion. We didn't know, when our first - and only - child was born. We didn't know, even those first few months when you were a bit slower, a bit weaker; we figured it was some passing illness, like the flu. Or just perhaps lack of sleep; Leoninus had quite a pair of lungs on him.

We only knew when we finally ended up dragging you between St. Mungo's and Snape and old Madame Pomfrey and even conversed with McGonagall and Dumbledore's ghosts. Most of the conclusions were the same, and the pity and the horror and the tragedy of it was the same everywhere.

You were dying, by a slow, five-year poison, and there was no cure, no solution, nothing.

You were dying, and you would take me with you, only I couldn't go, because we'd built up too much of a life already.

I still don't know what's the most tragic of it all, really.

That Fleur and Bill's daughter had only just gotten to know their godfather? That Leoninus never got to know his father? That you never even saw Ron and Hermione's twins being born?

Was it the fact that you would never be put up on the war memorials? That you didn't go out like the hero you were, but by a slow-acting poison that only a handful of people ever believed was real when I said it was from Voldemort's blade? Most people thought you did yourself in, or some other crap. Was that the biggest tragedy?

Was it that as you slowly faded away, you saw, more and more, how happy and content our life could have been? Surrounded by our remaining friends, with a son, together? Was it the knowledge of all those wasted years between us?

What was the greatest tragedy of it all?

Was it that I never did tell you why I left the Dark Side?

Until the day I die (Until the day I die)
Until the day I die!

I'll always, always remember waking up to find you cold, your blank eyes not just blank anymore - glassy. Your skin a ghastly, grey shade, your usually soft and pliant skin stiff and unforgiving under my desperate, clutching fingers. I'll always remember that, and the massive funeral, and Leoninus' tears and toddler babbling, crying for a "Dadda" that would never return. I'll always remember the endless tears, and how I myself could never shed one. I'll always remember how I loved you and, for all that I took every opportunity to tell you, particularly those last months, you would never truly understand how much I loved you, and how now I would never get the chance to try and show you, and...I'll always remember.

I'll always remember, the little things that make you want to breathe and get up in the morning. I'll always remember how though my body still pumps blood and breathes, I'm not really living. I'll always remember that, when he was older, Leoninus admitted that he knew I loved him, but I was always cold, distant. I'll always remember your soft ebony hair, your infamous scar...the way you shoved your hands in your pockets when you got nervous.

I'll always remember how you didn't want to kill Voldemort, but how you always went up against him anyway. I'll always remember that blank gaze in those green eyes I loved so much. I'll always remember those same brilliant eyes, glassy and lifeless.

I'll always remember, until the day I die.

Finis.