The Forbidden Forest rose up around Harry in waves of shimmering darkness. Floating at the periphery of his senses was a prickling of genuine fear and dread, a sucking chill that told him dementors lurked among the trees. But Harry was completely numb, his heart a cold, dead thing trapped in his chest under layers of flesh. He couldn't even tell if his lungs were inflating, if his blood had frozen in his veins. For all he knew, he was already dead. The anger, the mourning scraped their talons against the edges of his skull, but he didn't let them in—he couldn't, not when it was taking every last sliver of his self-control to continue as a one-man funeral procession.
His connection with Voldemort tugged at his mind, guiding him through the forest, his feet creatures of their own free will. He emerged into a clearing, Death Eaters standing in clusters around the edge, a large fire built up and casting its bloody light on the tree trunks. He saw Hagrid tied up, his face contorted in fear when he noticed Harry. He began to yell to him, to plead, but Harry couldn't hear him—it was as if he'd already passed through the veil as Sirius had, where the agony of the living couldn't touch him.
He walked slowly to the middle of the clearing. Narcissa Malfoy stood by her sister, her black eyes wide in her face as she watched him approach, and Harry tore his gaze away when a quicksilver jolt of anguish stabbed through him at the familiar lines of her features. His eyes landed on Voldemort, whose back had been to him, and who turned, a grotesque grin spreading across his snakelike face when he beheld Harry before him.
"Harry Potter," he said in that same hiss that haunted Harry's dreams, that crept through his waking days like a curse he could not break. "The Boy Who Lived."
Harry held his stare, the fire wavering across his alien features, and he could not help but fall into the memory of an entirely different face illuminated by the light of a dying flame. His mind filled with moonbeam hair, with silver eyes like the pinpricks of distant stars, the irises edged in gold from the embers. His vision doubled, and he could see Voldemort standing before him, raising his wand, his mouth beginning to shape the words that would end Harry's life; but he saw, in a way that somehow felt more real, Draco leaning across a bed to tangle his fingers in his hair, to press his lips to his—
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By The Light Of A Dying Flame ~ Drarry Fanfic
ActionThey watched each other across the short stretch of grass, the Patronus washing them in warm light, the sky now a deep, dark navy. Malfoy seemed to be searching his face for something, his silver eyes sketching his features in slow, stuttering movem...
