𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄

Part 1

Title: The Empty House
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Summary: AU, Harry is separated from his friends during the war and stumbles into an empty cabin that happens to belong to the Malfoy family.

When it's clear that they'll be overwhelmed, Harry gives the order to retreat. Some people are able to Apparate away, but Harry is bleeding so heavily that he's afraid he'll kill himself if he tries. Running isn't easy, but he's fast, and in the midst of the chaos he somehow manages to escape. There are screams, and he tries not to assign them to people: Hermione? Ron? Or was it Neville who made that sound like he was choking on his own blood? He keeps running, holding his side, his own blood flooding over his fingers. He isn't even sure what sort of curse hit him, something that was designed to strike like a knife if it bounced off or didn't take full effect. He thinks, in one wild moment, that he can feel one of his organs pressing against his palm, and he topples to the forest floor to vomit. When he's worked up the nerve to investigate, he looks down to see that what he was feeling was only the ripped edge of his sweater.

He sits in place, trying to catch his breath. Everything aches, especially his chest, even more than the wound at his side. The forest is quiet but not silent, hooting and twittering softly as the last of the sun disappears. It will be very cold soon.

Harry lets his legs fall out in front of him and his head loll back against the tree he's leaning against. It makes no sense that he was able to escape. Perhaps he should have stayed behind to die with the others. But no, they can't be dead. They Apparated, they got away, too. Still, he shouldn't have run. He shouldn't ever trust his instincts; they've misled him so many times.

He's failed. He feels it all through his body, in the thinning flow of his blood, which has blackened the leaf-strewn floor of the forest around him. He'll die here, alone, and hasn't he always known that he would? He tips his head back to look up at the swaying canopy of the trees. The sky is a dull, purplish color, smoky, as if it's been marred by the burning of a nearby town. It's possible that this is the case. Voldemort and his Death Eater army are winning. Harry is a poor excuse for a general, or whatever it is he's supposed to be. They should have kept him caged, wrapped up and guarded until the time came for him to be presented to Voldemort and fate took over. He shuts his eyes and tries to envision killing the man -- monster -- who has ruined his life. He's never really been able to imagine it, least of all now.

Something makes him stand, some memory of the people who have trusted their lives to him, now and before. He groans tremendously, struggling to pull himself up against the trunk of the tree, the bark scraping against his raw fingers. For a moment he thinks he'll black out, and then he does, and he's face first in the leaves.

Part of him is waiting for the blackness at the edges of his vision to take him, to free him of this fruitless uphill battle to even stand, but the release never comes. He gets to his feet, huffing every breath and barely able to see in front of him as the sun disappears, his glasses smudged and dirty. He takes up his wand and mumbles a spell to clean them, but this only causes them to slide off, and the quest to recover his glasses and replace them on his face feels as if it takes several days, though it must not, because the sky is still so black.

The air gets icy as he stumbles through the forest, crashing into trees in a way that begins to seem almost comical. He would laugh at himself if his jaw didn't ache so terribly, from one of his crashes to the ground, probably. His stomach is whining and hurting very sharply; he'd been stranded in the forest with his friends for weeks after the Death Eaters planted their trap, enticing them with orchestrated rumors of a Horcrux in the area. They ate what they could find or kill, and Harry had withheld from partaking in plenty of makeshift meals for the sake of Ginny and Dean, who were weak with some type of sickness that even Hermione couldn't discern, and who needed the energy more than he did. Harry begins dreaming madly of waffles and hot buttered rolls, the great Welcoming Feast spread out before him at the table at Hogwarts. He does manage a laugh at the thought of Hogwarts. That world, the one that saved him, is gone, and maybe the wizarding world didn't really save him after all. It only showed him a new way to turn out hopeless and lost, alone.