Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter at ALL. I am just borrowing the characters.

A/N: Hey guys. Yeah, it's depressing. I am not usually like this all. If you guys knew me, you would know how un-me this story really is. But sometimes the characters have control over you.

I think what was so disconcerting was her tears. I had expected yelling, I had expected sobs. I hadn't expected this.

She sat there, so disheveled and disconnected from everything around her. Her long brown hair was matted and dirty; her face was streaked with tears. They kept on coming, silently falling down her cheeks.

Though you couldn't hear it, it was there. The battle that was so apparent behind her eyes. I could try and comfort her, hell, I would like to; but I don't think she'd feel it.

I looked at my own hands, once so manicured and pale, now bloody. The red was intensified against the painful white of my fingers. What had I become?

I thought I could do it; the side of Dark would never win, I have seen enough to know that. But this, like her tears, I never expected enough.

The final battle came so suddenly, I didn't have a chance to re-think, to fall back asleep. It wasn't fair; I had had such a horrible awakening. All I wanted now was my bed again. I could close my eyes and never think again. Not this.

Harry was here too. He wasn't crying. He couldn't. I don't think he was Potter anymore. Just a shell of what he was. It wasn't supposed to be like this at all. For years, I had imagined being on the other side when the fight came… facing the three to the end.

But Weasley wasn't there. Betrayed, killed in his bed, murdered by his own, whatever you want to call it, it, too, was not what I had expected.

That was the night the life went from Harry's eyes. He still had her, but it just wasn't the same. I don't think they had ever envisioned a future without all three of them together; it was like a cold slap in the face.

And when I saw the pain in their eyes, reflecting the pain of my own; it was then when I knew. I couldn't do it.

I just couldn't.

She turned and looked at me. Her head tilted, examining me. I felt nervous, I felt self-conscious. My hair, usually so well kept, gelled back was strewn haphazardly across my forehead, my skin, once flawless, crusting with dirt and blood. All those years I had called others Mudbloods. And now, I was covered in it. I didn't even know if it was my own.

"You knew all along, didn't you?"

I hated this. I don't think she'd ever believe me.

"No, I told you. I could never see this coming."

Her eyebrows knitted. Oh no.

"On the day of his funeral." Although she said it quietly, I could feel the hate behind it.

"On the day of his funeral." The tears dripped stronger now.

I matched her eyes. I could the thoughts spinning in her head. She hated herself, I saw. She was so clever… she knew from the beginning, that on the day of Ron's funeral, it would be the perfect time for an attack. She just hadn't wanted to say anything. Who would?

How can you see an attacker if you are blinded by tears?

That was the day we lost so many. When was it, days ago? Weeks? We couldn't keep track. Of the hundred or so there, it was only we three kept alive and taken.

The cold steel of the walls; our cage seemed so small, so lethal from here. Although, I don't think any of us would mind it now.

This felt like the perfect time to give up. To just let go. I looked at Harry's arms. I could see more scars, not as triumphant as the lightning bolt on his fore head. These scars were proof- he'd tried to give up.

I guess when it comes to it, nobody's ever ready for the bigger problems in life. Nobody's ever ready for the final hit, the slice of a whip in the back.

Nobody is, not even golden-boy Potter.

You know, I think I might be ready for what lies on the other side. I think you only accept it when your roots disappear. I don't mean bearings or family, I mean that tie you have with everyone. You might be at the bottom, but in the end, you are still human. Well, I don't know anymore.

I just don't know.

I had my humanity taken from me a while ago, and you know what?

I don't want it back.

I smiled at her and she stopped crying.

"Nothing's keeping me here, Draco, and everything is calling me there."

"I know."

We both looked at what they had left us- three smoking green bottles. One of which currently resided in her hands.

I didn't know what it was, but the look on her face told me that this was it.

It was the end.

Suicide, my father had told me, was not honourable to a scion of the Malfoy line. It was a cowardly way out.

Is it really suicide when you have nothing left in you alive?

I'd see her at the gates.

She promised me. I'd see her again.

I took a bottle. Harry still wasn't looking at us.

"To us." I said, raising my bottle.

"To us." She echoed. "See you on the other side."

What happened next, well, it was the one thing I had expected.