lovely to look at. 'If you're trying to get me angry,' he said, 'it won't work.'
Lucius didn't reply. He was staring at the blade and its design of roses.
'This is my son's sword?' he asked. 'It is unfamiliar to me.'
'Sirius gave it to him,' Ron said.
'But it was I who taught him to use it,' Lucius said. 'Years of training, from the time he was a boy.'
'And it shows,' Ron said calmly. 'He's very skilled with a blade.'
Lucius bared his teeth. 'Are you mocking me, Diviner?'
'Diviner.' Ron slid a finger up the edge of the blade, felt his skin part against the sharpness, winced at the slight, satisfying pain. 'Do you want me to tell you your future, Malfoy?'
Lucius laughed. 'If you wish to predict my death — '
'Oh, no,' Ron said. 'Not your death. Not yours.'
'Draco — ' Lucius began.
'No,' Ron said, 'not his either, or at least, not his alone. He is not all that you care about, not all you lost when you allowed the Dark Lord to kill what made you human. There is your family. Your honor. The name of Malfoy. You cannot clear your conscience in a day, Lucius Malfoy, nor is there redemption to be found where there is no willingness to earn it.
What the Dark Lord took from you may have been returned to you, but it came at the end of a lifetime of evils for which there will be retribution.
Make no mistake; it will find you, Lucius. Black shadows are gathering around you. I can see them even now.'
Lucius did not move, only his red-rimmed eyes flickered over Ron's face.
'That hardly sounds like a prophecy.'
'I'm not done,' Ron said. 'Listen. I will tell you the rest of it.'
He told him, and watched the changing colors in Lucius' face as he spoke.
With words, he painted a picture of the remainder of Lucius' life, and it was a long life and full of horrors, and they were not only horrors that were visited on Lucius and all that he loved, but the horrors Lucius would visit on others in his twisted desperation. He spoke of blood and death, and the Malfoy named blackened irreparably, and the Mansion brought to earth in a pile of rubble, and the treasures of a thousand years scattered and destroyed. He spoke of vengeance, and he spoke of humiliation and he spoke of shame. And as he spoke he saw that Lucius believed every word that he said, and Ron knew that the serpent in the tower had been right and that he possessed other powers than the power to see the future.
He stopped speaking only when he knew that he need speak no more, than he had done what he had set out to do. Lucius gazed at him like a man staring up out of a pit. He said, 'Is there no escape from this?'
'There is one way out,' Ron said. 'But it is not for cowards.'
'Anything,' Lucius said.
Ron held Terminus Est out to Lucius, blade gleaming in the faint light, and as if in a dream, Lucius took it.
'My son's sword?'
'Yes,' Ron said, 'And if you only do one good thing in the whole of your miserable, evil, misspent life, let this be it.'
He turned and walked out of the room without another glance at the old man who held his son's sword in trembling hands. Ron shut the door behind him, and leaned against the wall beside it, steeling himself. And yet no sound came from inside the room — no gasp or cry, not even the sound of the sword falling; but in a few moments' time, a thin trickle of blood ran out from under the door, and Ron knew that it was done.
Harry was not coming. Hermione had realized this, and the despair was like chalk dust in her throat.
He winced them, and his hand tightened painfully on hers. 'I am not sure I agree with the poets about all that 'Death, where is thy sting?' business,' he said hoarsely. 'It seems to me that it stings more than enough.'
'Are you in pain?' Hermione asked, leaning closer, feeling the rhythm of the pulse in his wrist beat and fade. This is the last time, she thought wildly, the last time I'll watch his lashes flutter down like that when he talks, and the quirk at the side of his lips, the wry curve of his mouth, that turn of his head, that laugh just under his voice. I must remember these things that I can tell them to Harry, if he does not come in time. Harry, she thought despairingly, Harry, please come, please come quickly!
'Like being torn in half,' Draco said. 'Not a breach, but an expansion — ' he broke off, and coughed more blood. 'It tastes of poison,' he said wonderingly, and looked up at Hermione almost as if he could see her.
There was a light in his eyes, but it seemed reflected rather than as if it came from within. 'One soul in two bodies,' he said. 'That's what she said.'
'I don't understand,' Hermione said softly. He coughed again, and put his hand to his mouth; when he took it away, it was silvery-red with blood.
She caught at his fingers, the blood slippery against her skin. 'Just rest,' she began, then turned her head — was that a sound? — yes, it was — the rhythmic tattoo of running footsteps. She heard their echo increasing, drawing closer and closer. 'It's Harry,' she whispered. 'It must be,' and she squeezed Draco's hand, hard, her heart contracting in anticipation.
His fingers did not return the pressure. She looked down at him. His eyes were closed, the lashes lying still against his cheekbones, untroubled by expelled breath. She released her grip on his hand, and it slid silently out of her grip, falling to rest against his chest, fingertips to collarbone, as if he were asleep.
'Oh,' Hermione said. There was nothing inside her chest now but a great emptiness. 'Oh, Draco.'
Harry was lost. The fortress was a maze of twisting corridors, like the guts of some giant snake. Each one looked the same, gray walls and gray floor.
He ran, the sword of Gryffindor clutched in his hand, careening around corners, the pounding of his own heart as loud in his ears as the rhythmic strike of his boots against the floor, and as he ran the howling in his head grew louder and louder until it was painful.
As he ran he tried to tell himself that his panic was sourceless, that there was no cause for it, that he had last seen Draco only a few moments before in the Ceremonial Chamber, shocked but upright, as well as could be expected. He told himself that even as the breath hissed in and out of his chest and he ran until his sight was flecked with black motes, and he turned the hundredth corner, and there was Hermione, sitting on the ground, her back against the wall and her long brown hair shawling down over her shaking shoulders and covering her face.
Her wand was in one hand, and it blazed with light like a fallen star. Her other arm was curved around Draco, her hand on his chest, and the fierce glow of her wand lit them both as if they were players on a stage. Harry could see everything, very clearly, limned in pitiless illumination: Draco's head in Hermione's lap, the bright fringe of his lashes where his eyes had fallen shut, the silver hair stuck to his forehead in pewter strands, the thin hand open against his chest, the clawed scars stark against the skin.
He's fallen asleep, Harry thought with a crazed lucidity, and as if she heard the thought, Hermione raised her head and saw him there, and her mouth began to tremble. He saw how her hair was stuck to her damp cheeks, and then she set her wand down and reached her hand out to him, and as she did so, she slowly shook her head, answering the question he had not, yet, asked aloud.
The sword slipped from Harry's hand. It struck the stones at his feet with a harsh clang that resounded down the corridor like the sound of a tolling bell.
Author notes:
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, and better than thy stroke:
'Death be Not Proud': John Donne
Not a breach, but an expansion:
Valediction Forbidding Mourning: John Donne
