flying, flying, falling, falling
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Draco Malfoy & Hermione Granger
Prompts: 326. dashed against a rock & 48. image & 20. pain
Word Count: 600
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Warning: Character death.
Notes: Written for 500themes & quill_it & fanfic50. Prompt tables are here & here & here.
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Twenty seconds, twenty minutes or twenty hours. Hermione was no longer sure which, and it was surely no solace to watch this scene unfold before her, inches moving like millimeters, seconds ticking by like hours. It was so impossibly fast that she saw everything through the lenses of shock - slow, deliberate movements where her heightened senses picked up everything.
Two wands raised, Draco’s defiant, but shaky, the product of three previous injuries. Hermione wanted nothing so much than to protect, heal, and protect, but he was entirely out of reach. The other, masked and dangerous and not a limp in sight, wand raised perfectly and stilly. Two beams, cast simultaneously, one blue and one red, meeting somewhere left of the middle, closer to Draco. Hermione’s heart dropped ever so slightly at the disadvantage, but there was no time to dwell, because life was still moving, moving.
The struggle continued, a little more left and a little more right, but Draco’s beam was flickering as the spell drained him of his precious energy. Energy needed to sustain his injured body, energy that he didn’t have to spare.
Then, right before her eyes, it was over. Faster than the flashing of a star, Draco’s beam disappeared where her eyes could no longer follow, into the depths of oblivion. The red beam, so angry and marked, struck Draco square in the chest, flinging his broken body a hundred feet in the air, away and away.
The breath left Hermione’s throat, stricken and stolen.
It was barely her voice that screamed no! into the chaotic air; she barely took notice of it as she struggled to her feet and towards where his battered body lay.
“Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t you dare die.” It was a command, the most meaningful command she had ever uttered in her lifetime, and it was a command that he couldn’t obey. In the briefest of moments, hovering between the reaches of life and death, Draco reached his arm out towards the woman cradling him and crying up a storm.
It was effort like he’d never known before. The simple command to lift, stroke and comfort her was an impossibility, it seemed. His hand was heavier than lead, laced with the taste of death itself. It reached no further than a foot in the air before his iron will caved, and gravity took its hold over his useless limb.
Hermione noticed the effort, and another sob wracked her already war-torn body. “No, no, no, you prat, you are not allowed to die.”
But like the last command, it was not one that Draco was able to follow, and it was all he could do it lift the bloodied curves of his mouth into a frigid smile, his clouded eyes drinking her image in. It was a pitiful image, of dirt and smeared dirt, dried and cracked blood and the bruises of a long journey and fight. But to his dying mind it was an image shrouded in light, hope and comfort of the days awaiting him, and with that thought, he let go of the final threads holding him close.
In her grief, Hermione didn’t even notice the beam of green headed her way. She collapsed in such a way that seemed almost poetic, with her hands still clutching his desperately, collapsed in a somehow graceful heap next to his body.
And that was how they found them after it was all over, holding, clinging on to each other, holding on to the one thing that would link them together in the next life.
Characters: Draco Malfoy & Hermione Granger
Prompts: 326. dashed against a rock & 48. image & 20. pain
Word Count: 600
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Warning: Character death.
Notes: Written for 500themes & quill_it & fanfic50. Prompt tables are here & here & here.
-
Twenty seconds, twenty minutes or twenty hours. Hermione was no longer sure which, and it was surely no solace to watch this scene unfold before her, inches moving like millimeters, seconds ticking by like hours. It was so impossibly fast that she saw everything through the lenses of shock - slow, deliberate movements where her heightened senses picked up everything.
Two wands raised, Draco’s defiant, but shaky, the product of three previous injuries. Hermione wanted nothing so much than to protect, heal, and protect, but he was entirely out of reach. The other, masked and dangerous and not a limp in sight, wand raised perfectly and stilly. Two beams, cast simultaneously, one blue and one red, meeting somewhere left of the middle, closer to Draco. Hermione’s heart dropped ever so slightly at the disadvantage, but there was no time to dwell, because life was still moving, moving.
The struggle continued, a little more left and a little more right, but Draco’s beam was flickering as the spell drained him of his precious energy. Energy needed to sustain his injured body, energy that he didn’t have to spare.
Then, right before her eyes, it was over. Faster than the flashing of a star, Draco’s beam disappeared where her eyes could no longer follow, into the depths of oblivion. The red beam, so angry and marked, struck Draco square in the chest, flinging his broken body a hundred feet in the air, away and away.
The breath left Hermione’s throat, stricken and stolen.
It was barely her voice that screamed no! into the chaotic air; she barely took notice of it as she struggled to her feet and towards where his battered body lay.
“Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t you dare die.” It was a command, the most meaningful command she had ever uttered in her lifetime, and it was a command that he couldn’t obey. In the briefest of moments, hovering between the reaches of life and death, Draco reached his arm out towards the woman cradling him and crying up a storm.
It was effort like he’d never known before. The simple command to lift, stroke and comfort her was an impossibility, it seemed. His hand was heavier than lead, laced with the taste of death itself. It reached no further than a foot in the air before his iron will caved, and gravity took its hold over his useless limb.
Hermione noticed the effort, and another sob wracked her already war-torn body. “No, no, no, you prat, you are not allowed to die.”
But like the last command, it was not one that Draco was able to follow, and it was all he could do it lift the bloodied curves of his mouth into a frigid smile, his clouded eyes drinking her image in. It was a pitiful image, of dirt and smeared dirt, dried and cracked blood and the bruises of a long journey and fight. But to his dying mind it was an image shrouded in light, hope and comfort of the days awaiting him, and with that thought, he let go of the final threads holding him close.
In her grief, Hermione didn’t even notice the beam of green headed her way. She collapsed in such a way that seemed almost poetic, with her hands still clutching his desperately, collapsed in a somehow graceful heap next to his body.
And that was how they found them after it was all over, holding, clinging on to each other, holding on to the one thing that would link them together in the next life.