Battlefields Part 1
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Category: drama
Notes: Takes place during the war. Thanks to Roses and Lola for beta help and encouragement.
Feedback: Yes please, that would be very nice.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. These characters belong to JK Rowling. I'm just playing.
Summary: War changes you.
On the battlefield there wasn't room for sympathy. You pointed your wand, shouted a curse and moved on to the next one.
It was quiet now. The only sounds to be heard were the moans of the wounded and the cries of the dying. He didn't want to be here, but he was looking for somebody specific. He knew she'd fallen someplace close by, because he remembered distinctly seeing her plummet to the ground from so high up there was no way she'd survived, but he had to know for sure. He had to find her.
Everything was blood and dirt, and a raindrop splattered on his cheek. Draco looked up to the ominous, black clouds. He hadn't even realized how dark it had become.
He stepped over a hand buried in the soil as a few more drops splashed down. His cloak had survived the fifteen-hour broom ride and air battle, though it had been singed on one end when a stray curse had shot past him, barely missing his torso.
He didn't even bother lifting his hood as the few droplets turned into a sudden downpour. In seconds his long blond hair was plastered to his forehead and cheeks. Then he heard it. The pitiful sound was coming from just a few hundred feet ahead. As he got closer, he wondered how he'd missed the cries before. They seemed so loud.
Draco saw her hair first then her head. But the cries were not from her. They were from a Death Eater. Body and limbs a tangled mess, there was no way whoever was under all that blood was getting up again. Draco did the only thing he could do; he bent near the crumpled body and watched as life ebbed from the dark eyes. He'd become fascinated with watching death take others. His gray eyes fixed on the other man's eyes, and that was when he realized whose eyes he was staring into.
"Draco..." A pale bloodstained hand reached out. Horror-struck, Draco fell away in an attempt to avoid his touch. The ground had already turned to mud and Draco's hands squelched in the sucking mire. It was soft here and scorched from battle. He scrambled to get away from his father's grasp. The ring on Lucius' finger glinted though there was no sun.
"It's over." Draco wanted to shout but all he could manage was a strangled cry. Accusing eyes glared at him.
"It will never be over," Lucius Malfoy uttered on his dying breath.
Draco tore his eyes away. It wasn't his father anymore. That was nothing but a corpse. He crawled across the sodden earth to the tangle of hair and the dark, twisted robes. She lay flat on her back and as he approached her, the look of terror in her eyes as she spotted him sent waves of pleasure coursing through him.
"Granger," he whispered. She could not move. How he'd longed for this moment and how he'd wished that one day it would come to this.
He held his wand at the ready. Her eyes were wild, but she could not move a muscle. Draco pointed the wand at her chest and smirked.
"Finite Incantatem," he muttered.
Granger sat bolt upright, screams torn from her throat. He was too weary now to stop her. Others would hear but Draco did not care. He just wanted this whole mess to end. He wanted a hot bath and a warm soft bed. The shouts were irritating.
Draco pulled Granger in close to his chest and covered her mouth with his free hand. That seemed to snap her out of it and Granger yanked his hand from her mouth. She gulped deep breaths and nodded as though to say she understood.
It truly was over when they looked up into the sky and the darkness was no longer from storm clouds but hundreds of wizards.
With her head resting on his chest and her hair tangled around his hand, they waited silently for the others.
The wizards and witches landed all around them, shouting curses with no intent. Granger clutched him close. Her hair smelled of ashes and dirt.
"Drop your wand, Malfoy," a familiar voice shouted. Draco threw his wand to the ground instantly, staring up as the crowd of dark figures parted and Harry Potter stepped forward, face smudged with soot and robes smeared with blood. The murmurs died down to hushed voices.
"I surrender," Draco cried out to be sure he was heard. He could feel Granger trying to turn her head to look up at him. Her hands clawed wildly at his cloak.
"Then you admit to your crimes," a voice in the crowd shouted. Others joined the first voice until they drowned out anything Draco would have said.
Potter raised his hands up to silence them.
"He's to be taken into custody and put to trial," he yelled.
"NO!" Granger spoke out for the first time since Draco had found her.
Potter ignored her outcry and motioned for the two wizards that flanked him to seize their captive. One of them was Ron Weasley and the other Neville Longbottom. They descended on Draco and others pulled Granger away, almost tossing her aside as she fought to stay by Draco's side.
"You're making a big mistake," she cried out as they dragged her away. Draco stared up at his two captors but did not fight when they pulled him roughly to his feet.
"There's a cell in Azkaban with your name on it, Malfoy," Potter growled when they dragged Draco past him. Their eyes locked and Draco said nothing. Beyond them all he could see that a few wizards had clustered around the body of his father. One of them was plucking the ring from his dead finger. Draco looked toward the direction they had dragged Granger. He turned back to find Potter holding Draco's wand up, the wand that had chosen Draco so long ago in another time when things had been so much simpler.
Potter held it up, smirked, and snapped it in half as if it were dried kindling.
"Take him away," he said coldly.