Children of the Revolution

"Somewhere between now and what is to come, lies a moment. In that moment, all deals are off, all bets reneged, all promises broken and all things possible. The dreams of many are torn asunder, and it's up to the children to fight the battles of their parents. It's a brave new world; and a strange one. In this world gone mad, the only certainty left is war, and there is no time left for the future. And once you've run out of time, all you can do is hope to survive."

prologue.

[1 January 2000.]

In the end, there was just the three of them: Harry, Draco and the body that lay cool on the stone floor. Harry wondered briefly if the body still counted.

"Your glasses are dirty," Draco observed, and Harry clumsily took them from his face, in the hope of some cleaning. His robes were dirty, ripped and torn, matted with blood and grime, so all that resulted was glasses that were more smudged than they had been in the first place, and a lot of squinting.

Harry squinted over at the young man in front of him. Draco squinted back. Suddenly Draco did not reach over and offer to clean them, as he might have done once upon a time, but this fairytale was dead and done and there were no longer any happy endings.

Harry bent and turned the body over, frisking through its pockets and tucked the wand that had been his own into his tattered clothing. A part of him knew he'd never want to use it again, that he'd snap it in two as soon as he could, and toss it out into the wide, wide world where it could get lost and he could forget all that which had happened. It might only give him a moment's release, of pretend and make-believe, but it would be something, and right now, he'd take anything he could get.

He was about to check the pulse, fingers touching skin that was still warm and far too familiar and smooth for his liking when Draco stopped him, and Harry looked up.

Harry might have been a mess, and he ached in a dozen places, and bled in several more, but Draco wore the lines on his face of a youth spent in anxiety, frittered away in worry and care and biting his nails to the quick. His clothing was immaculate and not a hair was out of place, but his towering arrogance, his unshakeable contempt for the world around him, his anger and denial and frustration no longer marked his face. His posture was just a little bit more stiff, and a lot less trusting if one knew how to judge it, which Harry did. This Draco Malfoy could be alone in a room full of people, and he didn't trust Harry one bit, didn't even like him, didn't give a fuck about him. All that had defined Draco was gone, and here was this stranger in his place, old and worn before his time. Harry had been the general, his purpose fixed and his destiny set, but Draco had tried possibility after possibility, unsure and uncertain as he changed from peacemaker to apologist to traitor and a thousand things more in between. It showed.

"He's dead," Draco said flatly, "you don't need to check."

"I was just making sure..." Harry trailed off, unsure of what to say, unsure if there was anything he could say.

"You don't need to," Draco snapped, "I killed him, you don't have to check! I would have done it right, I would have made sure he was dead!" He lunged forward, and kicked the corpse heavily in the side, eyes red rimmed with tears he hadn't quite let go of yet. "See, he's dead! He's dead and we're not and are you happy now?"

The last was almost a scream, and Draco took a step back, digging fingers into his palms. Harry didn't need to see the telltale crescent marks on his skin to know there would be blood there. "No. I didn't want it to end this way."

"What other way could it end, Potter?" Draco snarled, and there they were again. The Golden Boy and the Bully, and Harry couldn't tell who was who anymore.

Harry fell silent, and Draco strode proud and unbending to the door, as if he couldn't bear to stay one moment longer in that horrid room, the office that had once been Dumbledore's back in the days when that name still meant something more than memory and a fool's hope. "I love you," Harry murmured, and he knew that Draco could hear him as his hand pressed against the door.

It slid open, and Draco was silhouetted briefly by the light pouring in from the corridor. The torches were lit, a new day was dawning and the war was over. What did it matter, that two young men had lost and loved and lost again?

"Yes, I suppose you do," said Draco, and then he went away.