An Infatuation With Brilliance
Chapter Two: The Malfoys' Deaths
By Sunflowers of Blue
Disclaimer: I wish I had the money to buy an éclair. I am eating peanut butter straight from the container and drinking apple cider for dessert so obviously I do not make money off of the Harry Potter franchise.
Thank you to all who gave me advice about the change of story lines. Once again, sorry it had to happen but the writer's block from reading book seven is here to stay, so on with the story. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with it. You are amazing!
Sorry for the super short almost interlude chapter. I just didn't like how it fit with the rest of the chapter I'd written. Good news is, the other part should be up soon!
RE-CAP: And before Hermione could scream, before Draco could block the spell, the retched words than had cost so many lives fell from the lips of the deranged man before them.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" he cried, looking the part of the murderer he was so many times over. His cry was nearly drowned by the piteous scream that came from Hermione. In a flash of green light, both Malfoy men crumpled.
Lucius fell where he stood, a slightly surprised but never the less deranged look on his now badly scarred and bloody face. Hermione almost threw up looking at him. Draco Malfoy lay still in Hermione's arms, where he'd collapsed in that dreaded flash of green light. He'd saved her life, just as she'd helped to save his earlier.
No, she thought. Not as I saved his. I only helped spare his. That was practically child's play back in the Room of Requirement. It was like a big scary real circus. The fire, the- she choked and remembered, Crabbe is dead. That wasn't child's play, but it wasn't like this.
Draco Malfoy had defended her to his death, staring down his own father, for her. For her. For her. Hermione moaned. Her moan became a scream, strangled in her throat bursting to be heard but too choked to amount to much. Her white and wet hands clutched at his pale shoulders and pulled his body close to her. In the rain, under his weight she slipped side-ways off the rock pulling Draco with her. She lay pressed against the dead boy, screaming and crying until she thought her lungs would burst from the effort. She couldn't move, except to toss her head from side to side in agony.
She was sick with anguish. She grasped his cold skin, holding his body close to hers, sobbing uncontrollably, shaking against his still heart. She looked up, catching her breath and stared straight into his open and glassy eyes. She screamed again, choking and retching on the ground inches from his knees. She screamed until her throat wouldn't let her scream anymore. When she could no longer scream she moaned. She crawled up next to him, and lay her head on his chest, her face turned towards his neck which had rivers of rain water pouring down the pale skin.
How long she lay there she didn't know. When she'd regained the use of her voice, she gave a quite moan into his neck. She never heard the thunder roar, or saw the flash of lightning directly above them. In her small and exhausted moan she brushed her lips against his Adam's apple and lay quite still as if all the energy in her body had gone out.
Just as she felt her eyes close and her breath slow almost into nothingness, she felt his Adam's apple against her mouth, move slightly. He swallowed. She gasped and looked into his face. He blinked and looked at her.
"I'm going crazy," she whispered to him.
"N-no," Draco stammered back to her. Draco was alive, was Lucius alive?! Startled by this thought she jumped up, nearly throwing herself at the older man's wrist. There was no pulse, no heartbeat, no breath. He was dead. Almost afraid, as if he was going to curse her even in death, which he probably is, she thought, wherever hell is, she reached forward and closed his eyes.
She crawled back to Draco who sat up brushing the hair out of his face. Water ran down his cheeks and onto his neck and around his Adam's apple, which Hermione now studied a little modestly. She reached out a hand and touched his neck, feeling him swallow against her palm. His cheeks flushed at her touch and she looked away embarrassed. Suddenly, he threw his arms around her, pulling her close.
"We're alive!" was all he said, but she turned her own pink cheeks up to the sky praising the heavens for the miracle. She was laughing and crying as she hugged him back. If anyone had seen them, they would have thought it quite a bizarre scene: a boy and girl hugging, crying and laughing almost maniacally with the dead body of the boy's father only a few yards away. But the only witness to the previous scene had turned away from the portrait he was borrowing and strode back towards the Headmaster's Office musing to himself about the strangeness of the world and sweet tarts.
Well, I hope you didn't mind the severe shortness too, too much! Pretty please, please review!
3 SB