Empty

Empty

A h/d slashfic by Abaddon

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The young man crossed through the graveyard, ignoring the many plaques and tombstones, searching for the one that mattered.  There were hundreds here, probably even thousands, in a place dedicated to the fallen of the last great War.

But now the War was over.

This particular grave lay under a gnarled old oak tree, stripped of its’ leaves in this bitter autumn.  Refusing to give the wind the satisfaction of seeing him shiver due to the cold, he pulled his cloak tighter around him, and made his way up the small hill to the grave.  From here, one could turn and see the entire graveyard, appropriate when you considered that this had been the first grave laid, the first victim in that terrible conflict.

The man stopped in front of the grave, and scuffed his right shoe on his left leg, clearly nervous.  His voice was quiet on the wind, his head bowed.  After a moment to compose his thoughts, he began.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited you.  I just…couldn’t.  Not until now.”

He smiled then, briefly.  “We did it.  He’s dead.  He can’t kill anyone else.”

He cleared his throat.  “And that got me thinking, about us, because I always think about us, love.  We had six months together before he took you in the night, and the first half of that was spent denying what we really felt, telling ourselves it was just lust and we could stop anytime we wanted.”

He looked up for a moment, to face the grave, the pain obvious in his eyes, before, as if unable to stomach what he saw there, his gaze turned downwards again.  He shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, leg to leg.

His voice continued, a little more halting from the emotion he was trying to hide.  “I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d just given in, to what we felt, even the very first day we saw each other at Hogwarts.  Or that day in the robes store.”  He gave a half-laugh then, and smiled as if in remembrance, shaking his head sadly.  “But we were always too stubborn.  Ron used to say if they could give out prizes for dragon-headedness, we’d come in equal first, remember?  And so we didn’t say anything, until that night…”

He trailed off for a moment, and swallowed, before resuming.  “Even after we started seeing each other, I was too scared to admit what I really felt…in case you ran away, or didn’t feel the same way, or something.  If I didn’t admit how much I loved you…how much I needed you, and always had and always would, I could keep it a secret from myself.  Stop myself from getting hurt.  And then finally you told me that you loved me.”

The voice was breathy now, caressing each syllable with joy and wonder.  “You loved me.  With those three words I wanted to go out and take on Voldemort that very night, just to protect you.  Just to keep you safe.  Because without you, I was nothing.  You made me whole.  You completed me.”  His hands were tense by his sides, squeezing fingers into palms, unable to express the emotion any other way.

Blinking the tears away, he regained a level of composure.  “When you…weren’t there, that morning, I nearly went mad.  After all, this was Hogwarts.  We were supposed to be safe, weren’t we?  He wasn’t supposed to be able to get to us there.  It was supposed to be our refuge…where I could hold you in my arms and pretend that none of the badness outside existed.  That it was just you and me, no fears, no worries, no anxieties – just our love.  But he took you.  I tried to kill myself that day.  Ron stopped me, thank Merlin.  And Hermione pointed out there was still a chance – after all, you weren’t dead yet.”

He breathed in deeply, and tried not to sob.  “But then when they found your body, love, all battered and…broken…” he couldn’t help it now, the tears glistening his eyes, his voice taut with emotion, but his frame was unbent, refusing to bow to the turmoil inside, refusing to break, “you were so beautiful….so perfect, and when I saw what he had done to you, I – I went mad.  I went into the Forbidden Forest and lived like a beast for a month, existing on berries and roots and all kinds of things.  I don’t remember much of it actually, it was like I really was some kind of beast.  Apparently every night I would howl out my rage and grief – I’m told I could be heard for miles.”

He shrugged, as if to say he didn’t believe.  “Ron and Hermione came to see me every day – they left food.  I remember…food, and nice people giving me food, so I guess that was them.  I think what brought me out of it was Ron.  He finally snapped, and yelled at me ‘behaving like this isn’t getting him back, you know!’  And it clicked.  Wallowing in my grief wasn’t helping anyone, and the moment he took you, really, was the day War was declared.  And I needed to fight, you know?  I needed revenge.”

His voice grew hard and steely.  “Six years.  Six bloody years of War.  We even had to reveal our existence to the Muggles and enlist their help, because Voldemort was targeting them willy-nilly.  Can you imagine that?  Wizards suddenly pop out of the woodwork and say, ‘oh sorry, magic really does exist, and you’re getting caught in the crossifre.’  But they listened.  Against all hope they listened, and they even helped.  You should have seen what their weapons, their science can do – it’s truly magical.  For the first time in history, science and magic were united.  Computer banks that ran on magic; misslesarmed with potions instead of warheads.  We fought them and kept fighting them.  So many people were killed.  So many.”

He paused for a second.  “Dean and Seamus died in aambush in the Midlands.  One of them could have gotten away, but they loved each other too much.”  He snorted, a touch of his old condescension returning.  “We found them curled up in each other’s arms, whole rows of Death Eaters surrounding them.  They were smiling.  And Percy survived, albeit minus an arm, and Neville’s doing his best to take care of him.  And Ron and Hermione…they got married.  It was so wonderful, and they looked so happy.  ‘Mione was radiant that day, as if she was born to be a bride, Ron’s bride….It was a little moment of calm and peace while the storm raged overhead.  It was their little moment.  You should have been there, love.”  He smiled, briefly.  “I always wondered what it might have been like had you and I gotten married.”

The young man chewed on his lip briefly, as if unsure as how he should continue.  “You can’t imagine the carnage, love.  Hordes of Death Eaters coming over the horizon like ants swarming over a cliff…the Dark Mark in the sky burning so blackly that it cast a shadow over the sun…and the bodies…the twisted, bleeding wreckage of lives and hopes and dreams, strewn across the battlefield like mangled dolls.  But eventually, we beat him back.  We drove him back, cut off his support, broke his forces and carted them off to Azkaban, until only he and his most trusted lieutenants were left.  We had plans to take them out, of course, and they worked.  But Voldemort was mine.  He was mine.”

The man gazed into the distance, the quiet tenor of his voice at odds with the passion of his narrative.  “I guess when I got there he still thought he had the upper hand; after all, he was the greatest Dark Wizard in known history.  What, really, could I do to him?  In a dusty little basement in South London, the War came to an end.  You wouldn’t have thought so, though.  The moment I came down the stairs he cursed my wand out of my fingers.  Of course, if he was clever, he would have killed me right then and there, but no, he had to be such a Dark Wizard, and gloat.  His mistake.  Especially when he started gloating about you.  About how you screamed in those last few hours, screamed until your throat was raw.  You called for me, love, apparently.  Asked me to save you.  I…didn’t hear you.  I’m sorry,” he added, his voice refusing to betray what he really felt.  His throat choked briefly, a keening sound emerging from its depths as he stretched his fingers out, as if he could reach the grave from where he stood, and reach beyond the grave to awaken the soul that lay within.  “And then he told me that your last word was my name echoing through your lips and I just didn’t care anymore that I didn’t have my wand or anything….He had taken you from me, ripped my soul in two, ended my life.  I died the day you did, love.”

The young man impatiently brushed some stray hair from his face and continued the story.  “It’s amazing how we wizards overlook the obvious, really.  He thought he had the upper hand, just because he had a wand and I didn’t.  He didn’t count on me running across the room and slamming into him, knocking him to the floor.”  He shrugged, and grimaced.  “I know, such crude actions don’t suit me do they love?  But at that point I didn’t care – and it worked.  Knocked the bloody wand out of his hand.  We both scrambled for it, and I got there first.  He wasn’t that scared; after all, you never have the same strength with someone else’s wand as you do with your own.  But suddenly his demeanour changed; I guess something about my look scared him.  I don’t know what…all I was feeling with numb.  Just nothing.  You’d think I would of, after this was it….what I’d been waiting for ever since you were taken from me.  My revenge.  I guess some of that cold inhumanity showed in my gaze, because Voldemort starts backing up, like a rabbit caught in a ‘lumos’ spell.  Can you believe it?  The most powerful Dark Wizard since Merlin-knows-who and he’s scared of me!  Me!  Eventually he stumbled, and fell back, caught between me and some old bench, strewn with muggle tools.  He begged me then, promised me power and money and jewels, to be raised in his place even, anything I wanted.  I stopped, and I guess he must have thought he’d succeeded in tempting me.  I smiled then, and I told him, ‘Anything?  I want my boyfriend back, you son of a bitch.’

A dark emotion shone through the young man’s eyes then, a compliment to the savage, predatory grin on his face.  “He didn’t even have time to squeal before I stabbed him through the heart with his own wand.”  The young man’s brow grew furrowed then, his eyes seemingly looking at something far off, his expression now passive and distant in an attempt to recapture the memory.  “The wand…broke in my hands, half of it still stuck in his chest as he slumped to the floor, shock on his face, his skin turning grey.  There was blood…so much blood – who’d have ever thought such a heartless bastard could have so much blood in him? – but he was dead.  Finally, truly dead.  No resurrection this time.”

He spoke softly, idly, as if talking of someone else.  “I was a hero that day.  But I couldn’t help but think – I should have acted sooner.  No-one more than I knew what evil he was capable of, I who had seen it up close many times before.  If only I had done something or warned you, maybe you might still be alive…It’s all my fault.  And now I’ve got him back, there’s nothing else.  My constant need for revenge was all that was stopping from realising…from realising…I feel so alone without you, love.  I’m empty.”

Finally he could not stop the tears from flowing, and his knees buckled, as he feel forward onto the grass in front of the grave.  The sudden sharp contact jolted pain throughout his body, but he could no longer feel it.  Waves of grief and loss poured over the young man, crying pitifully into the earth, his long silver-blonde hair covering his head like silk, like a shroud.

Finally, the sobs subsided, and the man looked up, his stormy grey eyes red and swollen from so much crying.

He looked at the grave and stared, as if comprehending an impossible truth.

“I miss you, Harry”, said Draco Malfoy.

Nothing answered back but the impenetrable face of stone, and the haunting voice of a bitter winter wind.

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Harry Potter

1981-1996

His life was an inspiration to us all.

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