Running, the Asylum

Harry is bleeding and breathless, on his back on a rocky slope. The sky is clear and blue and Harry thinks with a gasp and a surge of adrenaline that maybe he's the one that made it that colour. Maybe he's the one who put that fluffy white cloud there, on the right.

He knows he's the one who put the smoke on the horizon, put the tang of blood and ozone in the air. With a careless wave of his wand he vanishes both, and feels a little bit like a god.

"You there," he says, to the lone figure moving in his range of vision. He doesn't get up. "What are you doing?"

The figure looks up, moves closer, studies Harry curiously. It takes a moment for recognition to hit; another for Harry to point his wand.

"Counting the dead," Draco says coldly. He is unscorched. He is unruffled. He is unmarked.

"Coward," says Harry. "I could kill you, you know. Right now, I could kill you, and you couldn't stop me."

"I know," says Draco. "I watched you kill everyone. You could kill anyone you wanted to, Harry, and now everybody knows it. Does that feel good?"

"Better than you'll ever know, coward," snarls Harry. "You ran away. You ran away from all this, Draco. You ran away from everything. And now you come crawling back, when it's all over."

"It seems clear to me," says Draco, "that I was not needed here. You have everything under control, don't you?"

"I killed your Dark Lord!"

"You killed everyone."

Harry pushes himself up onto his elbows, under the blue, blue sky. There is no one else left standing. Voldemort is gone. His Death Eaters are gone. Everyone... is gone.

"So what are you going to do now?" Draco asks him. "Run?"

Harry opens his mouth and says nothing, because the end has come and there is no now, there is just what's past, what he had to do and what he's done.

Draco bends over and presses his thumb to the gaping wound on Harry's forehead, where his scar pulled away from his flesh. He kisses the wound as Harry cries out, then presses his bloodied lips to Harry's and silences him.

"You have no idea," he says when he rises again. "You have no idea what happens now. You don't know what it will be like, Potter."

"I'm no coward," he spits, and wonders where there even is that he can run. "I don't need to go anywhere! I've done nothing wrong."

"You don't even know what right and wrong are, Potter," says Draco, and he's moving away again, back down the slope, bloodied red lips and all.

"None of this matters, I can bring them all back!" Harry shouts after him. "I can do anything!"

He pauses for just a moment, not so far away. "Which one of us did that fool Dumbledore really save, I wonder?" Draco asks him, before disappearing back among the dead.

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[ by CJ Marlowe ]   [ home ]   [ disclaimer ]

23dec05