The Lion and the Serpent

When Draco opened his eyes, he was lying on the ground, near the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower of Hogwarts.



Great, just fucking great, he thought despairingly. Instead of being killed, he was somehow Apparated to the school grounds. Thanks a lot, Granger...



He lifted himself off the ground and stared around numbly. The darkness around Hogwarts was thick and heavy. It was as if Harry's sacrifice had been in vain. Draco stumbled forward, and pushed the heavy doors to open. They opened instantly, and Draco walked in. The hallways were barely illuminated, and narrower than he had remembered them, and he found himself wondering how that was possible. The heavy doors slammed shut, locking behind him on their own, and Draco turned around, startled. He was trapped.



It finally dawned on him that this wasn't Hogwarts after all. He had reached that place between life and death that Harry had warned him about, and his mind allowed him to perceive it as his school. He wondered what it looked like to Harry.



“Harry?” he called out desperately. Silence answered him. Slowly and cautiously, he walked through the hallways that grew darker and darker the farther he moved. When he reached the section of the Tower that contained Harry's quarters, the darkness was absolute. Not even a glimmer of light entered the hallway.



Inch by inch, Draco moved forward cautiously, feeling with his hands. What seemed like an eternity later, his hands felt a door and he pushed it. The room was pitch black. Not seeing anything, Draco moved forward cautiously, his hands stretched forth, until he finally touched something. It felt like a human being, a person in a sitting position. A person, sitting motionlessly on a chair.



“Harry?” Draco asked cautiously.



Silence once more.



Draco's hands reached out to touch again. The short hair, the tense shoulders, the scarred back – that was him. He was breathing. He was alive.



“Harry,” Draco babbled happily, deliriously. “Harry..I came for you.”



There was no movement, or sound. It was as if Draco didn't exist to him.



“Can you hear me?” Draco asked, quiet alarm building in his voice.



Nothing.



Draco's hands caressed the warm, familiar body in front of him. He touched Harry's chest, his neck, his shoulders, each touch eliciting absolutely no reaction. He raised his hands to Harry's face, stroking his lips, his cheeks, trailing his fingers upwards. And then Draco screamed, on top of his lungs, bitterly, wildly, like a wounded animal, when his touch had encountered the unimaginable terror: Harry's face had no eyes.



Draco's anguished cry had evoked no response from the person in front of him. Still, he was ashamed of his outburst.



“Sorry,” he said pitifully, when he finally calmed himself. “I didn't mean to scare you.”



The disfigured person next to him did not move.



“I love you,” Draco said weakly. “Will you come with me? Harry?”



When no answer came, Draco took one of those idle hands in his, and tugged gently, urging Harry to get up. The limp hand slipped out of Draco's as if it was an inanimate object.



“I don't know if you can hear me,” Draco continued. “I don't know if what I am saying is making any difference. But I think you can still remember what light is like. It hasn't been that long.”



No answer came, but this time Draco didn't expect one.



“I know I'm not the one to talk about light,” Draco said softly. “I keep thinking about it, you know... keep thinking about what I did.. I keep thinking about Ron. About why he died. I didn't really know him. Used to tell myself, he died because he was reckless... arrogant... stupid... but really, I think he died because he believed in me.”



Draco paused for a bit, and then continued awkwardly:



“Don't get me wrong - he didn't like me. We couldn't stand each other. But he still believed that I wasn't so callous or indifferent that I would just let him grab poison and die. He didn't believe what I said, but he believed me to be better than I was.... and I think - that's what Light is like...and I think you can remember that...”



Draco's voice faltered, as he ran out of words to say. So he just stood there, staring blindly into the darkness.



Suddenly, he sensed a movement in the air. Harry's hand reached out and touched him, and then Harry's fingers clasped around his wrist.



“Harry!” Draco whispered, almost ready to cry from relief. “Let's go, and get out of here already.”



Together, they moved towards the door, and found it bolted shut. Draco slammed against it with his entire body, only to realize that it hadn't budged. Then a sudden realization hit him.



“Harry,” he whispered. “You have to give Hermione a sign of some sort. Let her know that you remember.. let her know that it's you, and not Voldemort... so she can revive you. Please?”



The fingers squeezed his wrist even tighter. Breathlessly and fearfully, Draco tried the door again, and again. Furiously, he kept pushing against it, until finally, it opened, and the two of them slipped out into the hallway.



They ran together. The darkness around them seemed to be thickening, as if it was reluctant to let go of them. Draco could have sworn that he heard a serpent hiss – and that he had seen a shadow of Nagini in the corner of his eye. But he didn't care. Harry's hand was still clutching his wrist, as they both ran in complete darkness.



Eventually, there was a glimmer of – not light, but grey. Their surroundings became dimly visible: the narrow hallways, the moving portraits, the disfigured shadows all around them, and finally, the heavy doors. Together, Draco and Harry burst through those heavy doors, into freedom.



Last thing Draco remembered was falling into oblivion, Harry's hand still clasped around his wrist firmly.



When Draco regained consciousness, he found himself on the ground. Slowly, hopefully, he tired lifting himself, and sitting up. He failed.



Quietly, he turned .his head to the side and saw Harry, still face down on the ground. His breathing was still shallow and quiet, but the breaths came a bit more frequently now. Hermione was there too, lying on the ground next to Harry, her arm placed against his now bleeding back. And there was someone else's arm on Harry's back too – a smaller one. Draco couldn't tell whose – his vision was blurred. He could see that blood trickled down from Harry's back, falling on the ground, tainting the withered grass.



“What happened?” Draco whispered softly.



Hermione laughed quietly. “With all my book smarts, I'm an idiot, you know,” she said. “Almost forgot what you said. About the rate of release growing exponentially... that means that more than half of the poison was going to be absorbed in the last few minutes.... thank heavens for that.”



“So - did you do it?” Draco asked quietly “How did you neutralize it? Or, did you find a way to remove it?”



“I didn't,” Hermione murmured, not lifting her bleeding arm, disfigured and burned by the poison, off Harry's back. “It couldn't be removed, or neutralized. It could only be shared.” Draco stared at her, marveling at the simple solution to the impossible problem: to apply her own body against the poison, and absorb half of what was still remaining. One LD, one lethal dose, was enough to kill one person. Distributed between two, or three, the dose was still harmful, but not lethal.



“If you can't beat them, join them,” a weak voice said next to her. Draco knew then who the second arm belonged to.



“Cali,” Draco whispered in wonder. “You... helped... but.. why...” He hadn't expected that, but he was grateful for it.



Calixa sighed resentfully. “It seemed important to you,” she said reluctantly, as if admitting a weakness. “And I figured you knew what you were doing... well, at least Miss Granger did. She does seem to be ... less stupid than the rest of you.”



“But how did you know to come...” Draco wondered, still feeling confused.



“My Dark Mark had vanished,” Calixa said. “When I saw that, I got Kaige and Rockford back to Hogwarts, and went looking for you.”



“Mine disappeared too... and that was my sign, by the way,” Hermione said softly. “Voldemort would never release control of his followers willingly. Only Harry would. The real Harry.”



“Now, the question is, who can actually move?” Calixa mused. “Miss Granger and I are half-paralyzed from the effects of the poison... Mr. Potter seems to be ...um....happy just the way he is... Draco?”



Draco tired moving again. This time he was able to sit up, slowly, and painfully. His head was ringing.



“How long was I out?” he asked Hermione.



“Seven minutes, give or take,” she said.



“I was dead for seven minutes?” he whispered, shocked at how alive he felt. Weak, frail, battered – but alive.



“I used spells to oxygenate your brain and keep your heart beating,” Hermione said. “Kept your body alive, until...”



“No more questions!” Calixa protested. “Draco, get the Phoenix Rod from my pocket and get us to the school infirmary already.”



Laughing quietly, and still slightly wincing against the pain, Draco crawled through the grass towards Calixa, and reached into her pocket, taking out the Phoenix Rod.



He lifted the three of them in his arms awkwardly, in order to Apparate them to the infirmary.



His friends gathered in his embrace, Draco grinned blissfully, deliriously, finally allowing himself to believe that the end of their misadventures was in sight, and that everything was going to work out, after all.



--- to be continued ------------------