Draco Sinister

Chapter Fourteen- Blood of the Founders

Draco did not move as Slytherin took another step back, away from the spot where Harry lay on the floor, on his side, his head on his arm. He looked as if he were asleep. His glasses were still on. Draco thought that didn ́t look very comfortable, and would have knelt down and taken them off, except that he was hampered by the fact that he couldn ́t move. He stood where he was as the bloodstained sword dropped out of his loosening fingers and clattered on the clear adamantine floor. Draco didn ́t hear it. He was looking at Harry.

<He saw Harry when he was eleven years old, sitting astride his broomstick, reaching his hand out for the Remembrall, telling Draco to give it back, the clear light of dislike and defiance burning in the back of his green eyes>

Slytherin took a step forward over Harry where he lay on the floor, and came up to Draco. He took him by the arms and seemed to be saying something to him. Whatever it was, he was saying it very loudly. Draco looked at him without expression; at the center of the static motionless whirlpool he had fallen into, there was no room for any words. He heard no part of what was said to him, nor did he care. It didn ́t matter.

<He saw Harry on one side of a cage whose bars were made of light.

And Harry slashed his palm open with a knife that flared silver in the darkness, and held his bloody hand through the bars, his face white with pain and determination>

Slytherin shook him, hard, hands on his shoulders, and the next words he spoke broke in through the confusion flooding Draco's mind like pebbles striking through water. "Don ́t tell me you never wished he was dead," he said.

<He saw Harry standing at the edge of the quarry, half-transparent with the stars shining through the outline of his hair and face and hands and Harry took a step towards him. You wouldn ́t hurt me, he said>

"Ungrateful child," said the Snake Lord. Draco felt Slytherinś grip on his arms loosen as he stepped back and looked from his Heir, to Harry, and back again, and smiled a smile laced with poison.

"Wherever he is gone now," he said, indicating Harry with a jerk of the chin, his eyes on Draco, "remember that it was your hand that sent him there."

And having released his grasp, he turned his back on Draco and walked towards the wall. The dark opening appeared, and he vanished through it.

Now Draco did move. Not so much out of volition as out of the fact that his legs had given out. He hit the floor of the cell on his hands and knees, and crawled to kneel next to Harry. He reached to touch Harryś shoulder, to straighten the dark head, turning Harryś face towards him. As he did so he saw that his own hands were splashed with tiny flecks of blood and the blood came off on Harry where he touched him.

"Harry," he said. It was reflexive. Not quite having managed to accept it, he still assumed Harry was already dead. And yet it was impossible. Surely, if Harry was dead, he would feel it, surely that part of Harry he had carried inside him since the Polyjuice potion had linked them together would die, would sputter and be extinguished, and, having dwelled as two souls in one body for these past months, surely he would feel that amputation with the pain of a physical wound. Instead, all he felt was a pattern of this deadly numbness that seemed to go on and on and on without stopping.

Don ́t tell me you never wished he was dead.

He remembered standing on the Quidditch pitch, fifth year, and the crowds shrieking in the stands as Harry landed, the sunlight striking sparks off the Snitch in his upraised hand, and Harry smiling, looking towards Ron and Hermione in the stands, smug in his victory. He remembered Dex Flint saying "You ́re an exceptional Seeker, Malfoy, the best we could hope for, but Potter will always be just that little bit better than you." And he remembered loathing Harry for that, and maybe he had wanted him dead, and over such a stupid thing, such a stupid little thing as Quidditch.