Save The Date (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter Forty Eight (XVI)

XVI

"HARRY NO!" Draco screamed with everything he had, but it was no use. Harry gave him a final, heart-breaking look, then dropped down into the nothingness that would lead him to the abyss of the fourth level.

He howled in anguish, lashing out at the skeletons still foolhardy enough to keep attacking him, but he had to get to that manhole and go after him, he didn't care what it took. He couldn't be lost, not after everything Draco had been through to find him.

"Bones!" he yelled, and he realised he was crying in fear. "Bones what do I do?" The warriors were doing a good job of slowing down the HSP, forcing them to submit to them after a great deal of persuasion, and finally Draco was able to break through and race to the portal. He knelt beside it, and wiped his eyes as he waited for Bones to catch up with him. "Harry, what have you done?" he whispered miserably to himself.

He understood that Harry might have had trouble remembering the real world, after all, Draco had also struggled and Bones had found him first thing that morning. But for Harry to reject him so totally, with such a look of betrayal on his face, Draco wasn't sure he'd ever experienced anguish quite like it before.

He had spent the past two years petrified that every day could be his last, that every letter or embrace from his mother could be the final one if Voldemort decided he was done with them. Even his father, who had got them into the whole mess in the first place, didn't deserve to die, and yet all around them, witches and wizards with far superior characters were being slain, and until the Battle of Hogwarts it had seemed utterly hopeless.

But they had made it through, and Draco had vowed to turn his life around, to never let himself be controlled or manipulated again, to pursue his own happiness and not simply that which would honour the Malfoy name. And that happiness, he had realised, had manifested itself in the astonishing form of Harry Potter.

He said true love had compelled him to search for him, even though he hadn't even known his name until they had met in the square. He couldn't remember his real life, but he thought he was in love with Draco?

That couldn't really be it, could it? Draco didn't deserve that, not after everything he had done. For Harry to turn around and confess he loved him back....that would be a miracle.

He was crouched on the ground next to the circular void, staring hopelessly into the blackness. The crowd was heaving around him, but they all instinctively knew to give the portal a wide birth, even as they shouted and pushed the remaining HSP back. The warriors flew overhead on their winged horses, restoring order under the watchful eye of their apparent leader, a broad woman with golden hair and a large horn slung over her back.

"What did you do?"

Draco turned just as he got shoved onto his arse by the irate looking Chinese girl that had been with Harry. "I tried to stop him!" he shot back, scrabbling to his knees as she dropped down to look into the portal, her hands fisted in her long black hair. "Why didn't you tell him about the fourth level?"

"It never came up!" she yelled at him, tears splashing down her face. "Why would he do this, why didn't he know? If you hadn't played your stupid game with him, none of this would have happened in the first place!"

Draco automatically reached for his wand, then cursed once again at its absence. "I know you don't understand," he growled, taking a moment to thrash out with his rapier and dismember another skeleton that had managed to get too close. It seemed some of the women had formed a protective circle around them and the portal, which Draco was grateful for, but wasn't entirely sure why they were helping. He decided to just take any good fortune he could muster at this point. "But Harry and I only came to this world last night, when we were pulled through the Halloween and Christmas portals near our school." Whatever else happened, if he made it back home he decided he was going to have serious words with McGonagall about the kind of things that should be cordoned off in those blasted woods.