Final Battle
Summary: Final battle
Draco Malfoy was not a fighter. He wanted no part in the war that raged around him. He had truly never wanted a part in it. He may have boasted about his family's name and believed in pure blood ideals that now seemed irrelevant but he never wanted this. He never wanted to see his classmates tortured. To see people killed. He never wanted the Mark that was forever burned into his arm.
After watching the destruction and hate and fear that had taken over the place that was once his home for a full year, he never wanted to step foot in the Manor again. After seeing what had happened to her there, he would gladly see the building torn down. The war and the hate had ruined so many things and so many lives.
Finding himself at Hogwarts, a place he had once called home, had once found friends, had once felt safe, holding a Death Eater mask in one hand and a borrowed wand in the other felt like someone else's life. He spared a moment to think that maybe it really was a dream, a nightmare. He would wake up in the Slytherin dorms with a bare forearm and his biggest problem would be his next potions essay or the fact that Pansy would not take a hint and leave him be.
A curse crashing into a nearby wall scattered the castle's stones and startled him out of his stupor. This was real. He looked down at the silver mask in his hand. The mask that his father had shoved at him when he told him to "make his family proud" and "bring glory to the Dark Lord". The man who's beliefs and failures led to forced markings and impossible tasks was telling him about pride and glory. Like those things mattered anymore. He hated it. He hated all of it. He dropped the mask to the ground, muttered incendio, and watched it burn.
Footsteps gave him just enough warning to turn and see a masked Death Eater turning the corner, headed towards him. Without hesitating he flung a stunning spell and followed quickly by a binding spell and sent his once-comrade to the ground. Moments later, Neville Longbottom, consummate Gryffindor, rounded the same corner, wand raised. He hated to admit it but the boy who Draco had spent years making fun of looked every bit the hero in that moment. Where had the boy who lost his Remembrall gone? The war had taken everyone's innocence. He watched Longbottom take in the scene in front of him. He took in the burning mask, the bound man on the ground, and looked at Draco with such piercing intensity he wanted to uncharacteristically fidget. Then the Gryffindor lowered his wand, nodded at him once, and kept running. Draco let out the breath he'd been holding and considered what to do next.
His ankle burned. A violent tug pulled him in Longbottom's direction. He looked down to see his string, red and vibrant against the castle's stone floor and all the breath left his lungs. Now he knew what it meant. He had not known what had happened to her after the Manor. He had sat in his room after the Dark Lord's punishment after their escape and waited, hoping to see a flicker of the string. Hoping to see a sign she was still alive. He wished he had done something, anything else to help her. But he never saw even a flicker of red. All of the times he had hated it, ignored it, wished it away, he never thought he would be so desperate to see it.
He took off running. He let it pull him faster through the corridors and down the steps. He felt it's urgency. He sprinted past duels between students and Death Eaters, professors and all manner of magical creatures. He tried sending a spell or two of his own when he had the presence of mind to help. But mostly, he just ran.
When he saw her, she was facing down Bellatrix alone. She had blood on the side of her face and was favoring one of her arms. Her clothes were torn and she looked thin and pale. But she was alive. She was alive and she was fighting. She was fighting the woman who tortured her on her own.
And she was tiring. Her eyes were still full of fire and magic sparked through her hair but she was draining fast. He could see the fatigue weighing on her. Her spells were slowing and her steps beginning to falter.
Later, he was never sure that he had made the decision consciously. He wondered if his string had made the choice for him and pulled him to her. When he saw her wand fly out of her hand and heard Bellatrix's gleeful cackle, he lunged toward her.
The crucio hit him as he hit her. His body shook under the pain of it. He had felt Bella's crucios countless times before but this was different. Meaner. Wilder. He felt the hate that she had directed toward Hermione in every second that he was under the curse.
The curse was still running through him as he barely registered Hermione's hand slipping his wand from his own. He was trying to catch his breath, their bodies tangled on the ground. The absence of Bella's manic laughter and the thud of her body hitting the floor and the breaking of the curse let him take in the witch still under him.
Her eyes were a rich hazel he had never taken the chance to really look at before. They were staring at him with such intensity. They were glassy, filled with unshed tears as she held him while the last of his convulsions stopped. "Thank you." Her words were barely a whisper but he felt them in every part of his body. He could not speak. He could only watch her as she tucked his wand back into his hand, found her own and with one look back at him, ran back into the fray.
It would take years for him to fully learn the details on how the battle ended and the Dark Lord fell. Everything was chaos. He spent his own final moments of the battle fighting his father. His stunning spells were doing little against Lucius' killing curses. It was Arthur Weasley who had taken in the scene, stepped to Draco's side, and helped him bring down the man who raised him. He had looked at Draco after, his father lifeless on the ground, and without saying a word, laid his hand on Draco's shoulder and let him cry.
Not five minutes later, he was being arrested by Aurors. Condemned for the Mark he never wanted and the role he had unwillingly played in the Dark Lord's regime. He passed his mother, standing over the body of her husband with an unreadable expression. He looked around the Great Hall searching. The string was tight against his ankle, he knew at least that she was alive. He tried to follow the red string still covering the floor but did not see her again as they led him out of the Hall and off the grounds.
So many things changed in the instant that Draco Malfoy blocked her from Bellatrix's curse. She had never killed anyone before. That changed. She had never looked at Draco Malfoy with anything close to affection. That changed. In the time since she'd seen him at the Manor, she had thought of him often. She thought of who he had been in her life. He was the bully from her childhood. He was a bigoted prat. He was a Marked Death Eater. She had not let herself think of him as her soulmate. That too changed.
He was the first thing she looked for after everything ended. She followed her string through the Hall and out onto the grounds but she did not see him before it vanished.