How the War Was Won

Let me take another moment to tell you that EACH CHAPTER OF THIS STORY STANDS ALONE. These chapters are each short stories in their own right, and can be enjoyed one at a time, each with no bearing on the other.


I am not a very reliable writer, for which I apologize, and leaving myself the option to throw down little drabbles like these keeps my guilt on the back burner.


That said, please enjoy.

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“Ah, here we have the … crux of this gathering.” What slipped between the Dark Lord’s lips then might have been a chuckle, but the sound made even Lucius shudder beneath the deep cowled hood of his robe.

At a flippant gesture of the master’s hand the great wooden doors of the crypt far beneath Malfoy Manor flung themselves open. Malfoy Senior had only a moment to be irritated with the casual shattering of a generations old warding before his breath was stolen by the sight before him.

Draco stood just outside the chamber in his Hogwarts uniform, student robes discarded, tie missing. His face was flushed, and though his expression betrayed nothing, his appearance spoke. The white blonde hair, newly cropped at the inception of his sixth year, was disarrayed. The buttons of his shirt disappeared beneath his jumper framing an unbroken line of pale skin, one of the silver fastens hung from a length of thread midway down his front, and drew even Lucius’ eye to the V of taut flesh and gold curls exposed at the hip of his son’s partially buttoned trousers.

“Draco.”

“Dragon?”

Voldemort’s eyes cut to Lucius, but he seemed pleased at his servant’s shock “Yes, Lucius. And a lovely vision indeed.” The horror roiling beneath his skull mask surged, and Lucius thought he might be ill. Not my son.

“No, Lucius.” The Dark Lord smiled indulgently. “Not tonight. Far better satisfactions have been offered to me.” The shock of all the assembled Death Eaters (and truly all of them, a dangerous gamble, and one whose significance Lucius had not missed at the summons twenty minutes earlier) was palpable, and all the masked figures present recoiled physically in the next moment.

Motion from Draco, who had stood as though petrified for long moments, drew his father’s eye. The boy drew his wand with viper efficiency and summoned before him, bound hand and foot and hovering mere inches from the flagstones, struggling wildly and with muffled protests from behind the Slytherin tie gagging him – Harry Potter, as disheveled as Draco himself.

“Draco. Come.” At the sound of the Dark Lord’s voice the young man moved forward, his captive suspended before him, almost near enough to touch. And then Potter was face to face with Lord Voldemort and suddenly still. “Release him.” Even as he spoke, the Dark Lord drew his wand, and extended a slim fingered hand beyond Potter to receive, from Draco’s own steady fingers, what Lucius recognized instantly as Potter’s wand. The Death Eaters stood still to a man, save for the trembling anxiety that wracked Lucius’ hands as Draco released his captive. Somehow Potter kept his feet. “No more games, boy.” Voldemort’s lips curved cruely. “All that remains to you is to plead for my mercy. Perhaps you can offer me more than your pathetic mudblood mother.”

Voldemort pulled the gag lovingly from Potter’s mouth then, and Lucius expected something – invectives, pleas, an attempt to flee, a cry for help. None came.

Instead Harry Potter did the one thing Lucius Malfoy could never have anticipated. He turned his back on the Dark Lord and fell to his knees before Draco, eyes wide.

Till the end of his days, Lucius would be haunted with that voice.


“Draco?” His son met the other boy’s eyes, emotionless. “Answer me, damn you! Say something!” The Boy-Who-Lived was crying now, voice hoarse, tears pouring down his cheeks. “Draco, please! I – I …”

And while Potter struggled to speak Voldemort recovered his composure. His hand settled at the back of Potter’s neck as the boy fell silent, his green eyes still fixed on Draco’s silver ones. Lucius knew intimately the sound that was to follow, the green branch snap of vertebrate, the rattling choke of exhalation.


Draco was moving, and Voldemort’s hand stilled on Potter’s nape.

Draco was kneeling and Lucius felt sure his heart would cease to beat.

Draco was cupping Potter’s face, speaking low and quick.

“I know. Know I know I know I know. I … I tried Harry. I did. And then …”

Draco was silent again.

Because Harry Potter had lunged forward and caught Draco’s lips in a kiss.

And Draco was kissing back.

Like he had never done anything but kiss Potter.

Like he had never done anything but love Potter.

And the crunch of Lord Voldemort snapping Potter’s neck echoed, irrevocably tied in Lucius’ mind with the knowledge of whose hands had begun undressing his son, whose hands had begun undressing Potter.

And the sound of his son’s heart shattering.

In the crush forward to take some violent revenge on the corpse lying before a Dark Lord whose head was thrown back in climactic rictus, Lucius lost sight of his son.

But it didn’t take much time to find him.

The body lay at the back of the crowd, slender and graceful down to the arc of blood still gushing weakly from his son’s severed arteries around the tip of his own wand. But the silver eyes were already dead.