Descent
Disclaimer: No, Potter and friends do not belong to me and neither do the song lyrics.
Note: All lyrics in here come from “You’re All That I Have” by Snow Patrol.
Warnings: …Kind of dark…
Descent
Strain this chaos turn it into light,
I've gotta see you one last night,
Before the lions take their share,
Leave us in pieces, scattered everywhere
I
The walls of the room are an immaculate, blinding white, filled with the steady beeping of cold, metal machinery. There is the stench of dying, and of bodies slowly but surely withering away into nothing.
Harry sits on a stiff wooden chair beside the bed, and holds Draco’s limp and pale hand, watching, as his vision blurs and Draco’s stark face blends perfectly into the white of the bed sheets.
II
Hermione’s eyes are tired and her face is ashen gray. There is a sort of hopelessness in her smudged lipstick, her uncombed hair that falls, curling, around her sloping shoulders.
“He’s not going to wake up, Harry,” She says, her voice oceans away.
Harry does not move, does not turn around, just watches as Draco
Breathes in
Breathes out
“Draco needs his rest,” Harry says.
“It’s alright to feel, Harry,” she tells him. “It’s alright to cry if you need to. But please, just don’t push me away like this. Don’t push your friends away.”
Harry is silent, and Hermione tries again, desperately.
“Harry, I know you want to stay here with him, but you haven’t taken eaten or taken a shower for days. Please, Harry, go home. You can come back tomorrow-“
“What if he wakes up today?” Breathes in, breathes out. “I have to be here.”
“Please, Harry-“
“Draco needs his rest.” Harry repeats, and looks away, concentrates only on Draco’s face, until the shuddering sobs behind him subside, and the door to the room closes with a click.
III
They send Ginny next, perhaps in the misguided notion that a sixth-year romance can make Harry change his mind and give up.
“It’s a nice day today, isn’t it Harry?” Ginny says cheerfully. “Let’s open some windows, let some sunshine in-“
“Don’t. Draco hates getting sunburns.”
Ginny’s smile falters, slips away from her face. She pulls a chair up beside Harry and sits down with trembling knees.
“Harry, I’m here for you. I want to help you. I know how it feels to have someone close to you die-“
“Dead?” Harry asks hollowly. “Ginny, he’s not dead.”
“He’ll never wake up. He’ll never move, he’ll never talk. Harry, you’re in denial. I know the two of you…had something…but it doesn’t mean that you can’t move on.” Ginny glances at the bed uncomfortably.
“It’s not permanent. He’ll wake up one day.”
“Harry,” Ginny says, voice strained, frustrated.
“I want to be alone with him. Please leave.”
“If that’s what you want, Harry, I’ll leave. But I never knew you to be so selfish.”
The click of the door again. Harry doesn’t think he cares anymore.
IV
Harry sits for hours holding Draco’s hand, until he can’t be sure whether or not Draco’s hand is actually warm, or if it’s just from being held in Harry’s hand for too long.
He thinks for hours about what he should do, he thinks for hours of Draco.
Finally, Harry gets up slowly, never letting go of Draco’s hand.
Leans in and whispers into the curve of an ear.
“They’ve all been telling me that you’ll never wake up, Draco. But they don’t understand. None of them understand. I’m going to go out for a little bit today, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. There’s something I have to do, but I’ll be back.”
A kiss to the cheek, the door closes.
V
Harry returns holding volumes and volumes of texts, taken from Draco’s library. The machine next to the bed is still beeping steadily, and Harry brushes strands of fine hair from Draco’s forehead before he sits down on the chair and opens the first dust-stained book.
VI
The books are filled with descriptions of Dark magic and blood, and after the first few chapters, Harry feels sick to the stomach, but he keeps on reading-he has to, he has to. Slowly, he grows accustomed to the inky diagrams of bodies bisected, of paragraphs explaining how to remove hearts, livers, and kidneys.
By the seventh volume, he finds what he’s been looking for. For a moment, Harry remembers what the words righteousness and right mean but one look at the still body on the bed removes any doubt from Harry’s mind at what he has to do.
Strain this chaos turn it into light,
I've gotta see you one last night,
Before the lions take their share,
Leave us in pieces, scattered everywhere
The things we do for love.
VII
The night air is heavy and thick.
It is not the first man Harry has murdered. The body lays small and diminutive on the ground, in a puddle of red, and Harry’s hand does not shake.
Harry has murdered countless men during the War with a swish of his wand, and in a way this is no different, he tells himself. The man was a criminal; he was supposed to die anyway. Harry just did it before the others could.
The still-beating heart is damp and dripping from Harry’s hand as Harry murmurs the dark incantation, watches as a blood red haze surrounds the pumping organ. There is a quiver of misgiving, a quiver of fear that remains nestled in Harry’s mind, but Harry remembers laughing gray eyes and soft fingers threaded through his own. He brushes the fear and doubt away, wraps the organ up in thick cloth and leaves the body for the crows.
Eleven left to go.
VIII
If Harry became a master of killing during the War, then he has surely become the God of Death now. Seven men dead and seven beating hearts.
As time passes, though, people start noticing, and the criminals begin hiding better, the jails locked and guarded.
The next heart comes from a prostitute wearing red heels and a ragged leather red dress. Her eyes, blue and glassy, stare up and what am I doing? Harry’s hand hesitates, quivers, for only a moment before plunging into the lukewarm body and reaching for the heart. Her blonde hair reminds Harry of Draco’s.
It’s all the same Harry says to himself, People die of hunger, people die of wars, she wasn’t happy doing what she did-how could she be? I saved her, I gave her salvation. I gave her salvation.
Salvation. For love, for Draco.
Four left. For love, for Draco.
IX
“I love you, I love you, I love you. That’s all that matters.” Draco said once to Harry.
Harry repeats it back now, whispers it in Draco’s ear when he wakes up after falling asleep on the chair, and sees red all over him; red dripping from him, before he realizes it was just a trick of the light.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I did it for him, I did it for him,” Harry chants to the faces that look back at him from the mirror. “I did it for him. For salvation.”
Salvation for who? Harry doesn’t know anymore.
X
Harry sleeps at home now, instead of at the hospital with his head resting at the end of Draco’s bed. It is easier this way, to keep the faces at bay, to keep the red away. It is almost over, he thinks.
One left.
Harry puts on smiles when Ginny, Hermione, Ron, or Lupin comes to visit. The smiles feel strange and unfamiliar on his face, so Harry practices his smiles in front of a mirror, rearranging his lips this way and that until he is comfortable with smiling.
They think he’s gotten over it, think he’s accepted that Draco will never wake up, never come back.
Sometimes, Hermione even calls him, sobbing about howinconsiderateRonis, and whydoeshedothat. Harry tells her what she wants to hear, comforts her-all the time thinking It’s almost over, It’s almost over.
It has to be.
XI
The last one, the last heart, comes from a girl both mute and deaf. Her eyes are blue-almost-gray, and from an angle, they look just like Draco’s.
She doesn’t make a sound when Harry kills her, oh she makes no sound.
Her blue-almost-gray eyes watch Harry, even as she is dead and cold, and it’s worst than any sound she could ever make.
The line between black and white has suddenly become so hard to separate.
But it’s over now, it’s over. Harry has them all-all twelve hearts, and that is enough.
XII
They don’t ask for his name when they see Harry approach the door to Draco’s room. They’ve seen Mr. Potter come everyday to see his dear friend Mr. Malfoy and why should it be different today?
It’s different today because Harry has the preserved hearts of twelve people hidden in a cloth sack in his pack, and today Draco is going to wake up and say Harry’s name.
When Harry opens the door to Draco’s room though, the first thing he sees is Hermione, Ron, and the doctor crowded around the metal machinery, the doctor’s hand around the plug that keeps Draco alive.
“What are you doing?” Harry is suddenly dizzy, numb with rage.
His hand is on his wand.
“Harry, we called you to tell you but you weren’t at home-“ says Ron with guilty eyes and a guilty voice.
“We thought it would be better for everyone-the doctor advised it. Harry, we tried to tell you-” Hermione whispers, but even as she talks, the doctor’s hand is still moving, still around the plug, and suddenly Harry snaps and it comes to him so naturally,
the wand drawn out and the words that have become so familiar in Harry’s mouth
the blackness that blurs his vision until everything is dark
his ears so used to the sound of screaming that he’s deaf, mute, and blind
and when his senses come back, he’s standing in a growing puddle of red, and somehow, the spell has been completed. Harry stares at the blank, bloodied faces of the late Ron, the late Hermione, the late Doctor Walden, feels the blood growing dried on his fingers, and suddenly he thinks he might crack, and break and oh what have I done but there is that voice again, soft and comforting in Harry’s ears:
Hermione wasn’t happy; do you remember how she always complained about Ron? And Ron, Ron wasn’t happy with his job, he wasn’t happy with anything. And Doctor Walden. Didn’t you hear the nurses? Doctor Walden got a divorce from his wife and he was so unhappy he was taking anti-depressant pills. Do you think any of them were happy? Salvation, Harry, it was salvation. We gave them salvation.
Yes, Harry thinks, Salvation. The words are sweet in his mind and even sweeter in his mouth.
And then, as if Harry has just woken from a dream, he hears it.
“Harry.” A soft murmur and Harry’s heart clenches, agonizingly.
Draco stands beside the bed on unsteady legs, his face still pale and his cheekbones protruding, but Harry has dreamed, oh dreamed, of this moment and Draco is beautiful, divine.
“Harry,” Draco says again, and then Harry forgets all about the dead bodies on the floor, and all he can see is Draco, Draco, Draco.
I love you, I love you, I love you, and that’s all that matters.
There is a fire consuming his heart as Harry smiles, a smile unpracticed and so real it hurts, and then Draco is in his arms, and oh, the things we do for love. The blood on Harry’s fingers is on Draco too now, but he doesn’t care, because Draco is whispering Harry fiercely into his ear over and over again, and in that moment, Draco has become his salvation.