Intermission: Light of Ruin
Thank you so, so much for all the overwhelming response on the earlier chapters! I don't think I could have gone through this alone.
Once again, a title from “Hymn to Proserpine” (they’ll let up soon, I swear), describing the wave of the world: “In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;/ With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:/ With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;/ And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:”
Intermission: Light of Ruin
Draco’s knuckles bled from where he’d dashed them against the wall over and over again. His mind didn’t feel much better: scraped raw by the sheer effort to comprehend what was happening, and the certainty that he knew nearly nothing and, at the same time, that he knew enough to mourn.
He’s gone to sacrifice himself. All the work that we put into making him human, all of the man I loved, given up for his brother-
It would have been easy to hate Connor then, even given all he’d suffered, but it was easier to hate the fact that Harry still felt this way, inclined to die.
And then Peter and Snape cried out simultaneously, and sagged to their knees. Draco opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, even as he drew his wand with one hand. His body seemed to think Voldemort had come to stand outside the wall and that they would have no choice but to fight him.
It was lucky he had one free hand, so that he could fling his arm across his eyes when the light started.
It was a golden-white, piercing, stern kind of radiance. It opened in streaks and gaps through the Dark Marks on both men’s arms, and chewed through the flesh. Draco could smell hair singeing. When he did force himself to look straight ahead and see through to the source, he saw the light scraping the Dark Marks as black scraps like burned paper off to either side, and stretching itself outward in a molten birth.
Then it vanished, or migrated from Peter’s and Snape’s arms to the wall. They knelt there, and Draco stood, in silence, staring, trying to grasp the fact that Voldemort was gone. He had to be, or else what would have happened to the Dark Marks?
Then a golden claw hooked over the top of the stone wall and dragged it down.
Draco gasped as light like a thousand Lumos charms struck his eyes for a moment, but then it faded, and he stood in a dark tunnel flaring with afterimages. He heard Snape and Peter follow him hesitantly out of the alcove, over the tumbled stone, so surprised that fear had been left behind them.
I don’t know what happened, Draco thought. But I need to find out.
“I’ll take this tunnel,” he said quietly, indicating the one in front of them. “You explore other ways.”
Though Peter, and especially Professor Snape, probably would have argued against letting him out of their sight under any ordinary circumstances, these were not ordinary circumstances. Or perhaps they were simply as anxious to find Harry as he was. They nodded, and turned towards a massive, arched tunnel that led to the south.
Draco bent and followed the faint traces of Harry’s footprints in the dust. He ignored the fact that there was a set coming back the other way, with odd, faint marks beside it like the pawprints of a dog. He could not allow himself to hope until he saw what lay in the room at the end of the tunnel.
*
Draco was thus the one to find Connor’s body.
He saw black hair around the corner, and stopped suddenly. It was only by drawing on the coldness of his father’s voice-Malfoys are not cowards-and his mother’s-Never allow fear to cripple you, Draco, for it means you are not being true to yourself-together could he go forward.
And then he saw Connor lying in the dirt with blood splayed down his face, and the strength went out of his legs. He dropped to his knees, and looked for a long time. He looked at the empty potions vials next to his brother-in-law, and that blood, and the set of footprints that led out of the room.
And the faint tingle of magical power in the air, power that he knew well.
Draco closed his eyes. “You prevented Harry from sacrificing himself,” he said. “I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.” He hesitated for a long moment, then whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Well, he hadn’t known what would be appropriate to say to his brother-in-law until he saw him again, after all.
A muffled footfall sounded behind him. Draco glanced over his shoulder, wondering if he would see Harry standing there.
The gryphon of the Light, feathers all aglow with the same white-golden radiance that had illuminated the Dark Marks, bowed its eagle’s beak towards him and watched him with brilliant eyes.
The Light pulled the wall down, Draco thought, paralyzed, staring back, though it was like staring into the sun. Peter said that only a Light wizard on the outside of the wall could remove it-or the Light itself. I suppose now we know which one it was. But what in the world is it doing here?
And then he was glad that he hadn’t asked the question aloud, because the answer was obvious.
His face flaming, he moved aside and allowed the Light access to Connor’s body.
The enormous creature flattened as it crept past him, until the moment when it stood above Connor. Then its eyes softened, in a way that Draco didn’t understand-how could an eagle look compassionate?-and it bent its head to rub its beak against him. The white wings rose, and wrapped around the corpse. Draco bowed his head. He knew the Light was probably gathering Connor, to take him home, and he felt uneasy and uncomfortable and awed being so close to the force Connor had been Declared to.
Something crossed his face, a burning shadow. He looked up, and saw one claw hovering above him.
The claw descended.
The nails scraped through Draco like light, and, for one moment, he understood. He shared the morals of a Light wizard. He understood what would make someone Declare to the Light.
One could limit oneself voluntarily, so that other people could have freedom and pleasure and beautiful things. They deserved to have them, too, didn’t they? And one could lay down one’s life so that other people could live. And one could dance between free will on the one side and order on the other, and make it one’s life work to reconcile them in a pattern of both joy and beauty.
Draco emerged from that strange experience shaking his head, as the morals left him like water from a sieve. He shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself. He was glad the Light had not forced him to change his mind. He did not want to think differently. He was Dark, Declared, and that was all there was to it.
But he knew the Light had given him a gift nonetheless. For a moment, he had comprehended why Connor had done this.
And, more lastingly, he now understood Harry in a way he doubted he would have achieved otherwise.
He sat back as the gryphon rose on its hind legs, the lion’s paws, and spread its wings. Its claws clutched something shining and indistinct, perhaps vaguely human-shaped, close to its breast. Its cry rang out, the eagle’s scream breaking into the lion’s roar halfway through, the sound of mingled pain and triumph.
Then it blasted straight up through the roof of the burrow, and dirt shook down and covered Draco. But when he looked up through the hole thus left, he saw the stars.
Connor, he noticed when he looked back at him, had a smile on his face.
*
Snape and Peter met him in the middle of the tunnel near the collapsed stone wall, dazed enlightenment on their faces.
“Voldemort is dead,” Snape said simply. Peter looked too overwhelmed to talk.
Draco nodded. He’d worked out the story now, finally remembering the silver color of the Switching Potion. He held up the vial that had contained it, and Snape at once narrowed his eyes and snatched it away.
“Connor’s dead back there,” Draco said. Peter closed his eyes, and Draco winced, wishing he’d found some gentler way to break it. But, well, Snape had had to know that it wasn’t Harry. “Harry intended to switch the Horcrux into himself, I think, and perhaps he even managed it. But Connor took it back, and then-then he died. I think he drank a healing potion to do so.”
“So where is Harry?” Snape asked.
Draco shook his head. “I don’t know. But he probably fled after-after he inherited Voldemort’s power and saw his brother die.” He shuddered to imagine what Harry’s mind might look like now, and then turned and made his way to the steps out of the burrow.
As if something in the earth itself had kept them from feeling it, now Draco could sense the enormous power bleeding from the north and west. It pulsed like a heart torn from the body. He shuddered again.
“He’s in Northumbria,” he said absently.
“How in the world do you know?” Snape demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Draco. “But I’m sure.” He hesitated, wondering if he could approach Harry in this mood, and then straightened his shoulders. “We’ll have to go to him,” he said. “But carefully. We don’t want to trigger a wizard that powerful into lashing out.”
Snape nodded, and then no one really seemed to know what to say, so they stood silently there. The stars blazed overhead with more clarity than Draco remembered them ever having.
The Dark Lord is gone.
In the distance, an eagle cried.
And Draco saw Connor’s bloody face and smiling mouth in his mind again, and thought, as he would never do again, Farewell, brother.