Dead Before Dawn

He's leaning against the battered wooden door of the Shrieking Shack and watches me approach with a barely suppressed smirk on his face. I walk up and lean next to him, without making eye contact.

"Potter," he drawls.

"Malfoy."

Silence ensues. I wouldn't know how to start this conversation, so I wait patiently for him to take the initiative. Let him get in a couple of shots if it gets me off speaking.

"Cat hexed out your tongue?" A lot of playfulness for a top-ranking Death Eater. "You asked me to meet you. I'm here. Say your bit."

I close my eyes and let out a deep breath.

"I'm surprised that you came alone."

"Ah, but Dumbledore negotiated a truce with the Lord until the battle, right?" His voice drips with scorn, directed both at the old headmaster and myself. At our... weaknesses.

"Did you think I'd bring some Death Eaters to secretly finish you off tonight, Potter?" He reaches over and pats my cheek condescendingly. "I'm going to kill you tomorrow, in front of your allies, for the whole Wizarding World to see. You're quite safe until then."

So certain. So arrogant. So secure in his superiority.

"So, Potter, what do you want? Have you decided to give up? You know, the Dark Lord might still let you live and take you into his service, after cutting you down to size a bit, of course. Do you want me to act as your intermediary, Harry? Shall I make your excuses to Voldemort?"

I shake my head, mutely.

"Pity," he hisses, bringing his face up so close to mine that I feel the heat of his breath against my skin. "I would so love having a hand in your punishment. But then again I will. Tomorrow, Potter. Maybe not as... elaborate as if we had you prisoner, but I'll do my best to make it memorable. Promise!"

I bite my lip to force back tears of frustration. Oh Merlin, there is no way of getting through to him. But I have to. I have to try.

"Malfoy... Draco..." It's like probing a very fragile sheet of ice over a bottomless lake with steel-toed boots. Not to mention a starved water dragon just below the surface itching to devour you. "Please, listen to me! I can't fight you."

"You...!" Fury and confusion struggle in his pale grey eyes for an instant. Fury wins out. "What? Are you going to offer me your throat without a fight? Are you scared?" He grabs my shoulders and shakes me roughly, slams me hard against the Shack when I just remain passive. I hold out a hand to keep him off.

"Malfoy, tomorrow I will have to destroy Voldemort. I cannot defeat you both."

He smirks, almost as if we were back at Hogwarts, trying to score hits at each other's expense in Potions. Then, like now, the cards have always been stacked in his favour.

"That's the idea, Potter. We know that the old fool and the Order have spent five years preparing you for the Dark Lord. It's my job to make sure you won't even get near him."

Despairing, I lean my head back against the wooden wall of the Shrieking Shack and avoid looking into his gloating face. Did I really think I could connect with him somehow, after all those years of warfare? Even back at Hogwarts it might have been futile, and he's changed so much. Does he ever consider that I've changed, too?

"That's why I asked you to meet me," I push on. "Leave the fight to me and Voldemort. Please don't cross me tomorrow." For your own sake, I add silently. He just scrutinises me with a mixture of contempt and amusement.

"Dammit, Malfoy, I'm begging you! I'll do whatever you want, but please stay away!"

This is it. I cannot offer him much more than that. But there's this sinking feeling in my stomach telling me that it might not be enough.

"You're begging?" He laughs, crystalline and delighted. "My Potter, I never dreamed of hearing you say that. But you should have reserved that line for tomorrow, when you'll have a reason."

I hiss in exasperation and grab his arms to force him to look me in the eyes.

"All right Malfoy! All right, tell me what will it take to persuade you? Do you want me to kneel? To crawl before you?"

His eyes narrow, but the sudden intensity of his gaze seems to try and drill a hole through my head to get at my thoughts. There is something deeply unsettling about this sudden, speculative look.

"Why Potter, you seem almost serious..."

Swift as a snake he jerks free off my increasingly limp hold and grips my wrists. He pulls them up and uses them to trap me against the door, one hand at each side of my face. He's so close that our noses practically touch. The phrase 'deer in the headlights' suddenly acquires a lot of frightful meaning.

"Let's see how serious you are..."

He touches his lips to mine, light as the touch of a feather, and keeps them there just long enough to savour the look of utter perplexity that I know is reflected on my face all too clearly. Then he bites down on my lower lip with deliberate calculation, slowly increasing the pressure of his teeth until my skin gives way and blood starts to well up. A muscle in my cheek is beginning to throb and goosebumps are breaking out all over my body. I feel his mouth smile over mine as he continues to draw blood from my lip. It hurts, and I have to fight back the panic. He tastes like ice and blood and bitter, bitter hatred.

Finally he breaks the bloody excuse for a kiss and pulls up my wrists over my head to grasp them in one hand. The other slowly trails down my face to my shoulder, pausing for an instant to tap a nail gently against the pulse at my throat. I tense, half expecting him to draw blood again. He just grins maliciously, and lets his hand wander lower. And lower.

Oh, no, no, no! This is far, far more than I've bargained for! He can't be bloody serious! He's just trying to rile me. Please, let him just be trying to rile me!

Ron had voiced a suspicion like this once in our sixth year, after a particularly nasty clash in the Great Hall left Malfoy with celery sticks in place of fingers and me in the hospital wing from a draught of pumpkin juice transfigured into Bubotuber pus.

"Do you think Malfoy's so obsessed with hurting Harry because he's attracted to him?"

"Eugh!" had been Hermione's horrified reply, but she'd been rather thoughtful when they left.

A stinging slap jerks me back to the present.

"Don't space out on me, Potter, just when it's getting interesting," Malfoy snaps.

Damn! Three years out of Hogwarts, and I almost forgot how much I despise the vicious bastard! I have to fight the strongest urge to break free and wrap my hands around his neck to strangle him until he turns blue. I resist it. Barely. This is too important.

"So," he purrs in a voice that would be seductive if it weren't rimmed with ice, "what will you do to sway me? To betray my Lord, for you?"

Fear is coiling itself into a knot inside my chest, sending cold shivers down my spine. My wrists are beginning to hurt in his vice-like grip. Have I overlooked something crucial in the history of our mutual hatred, or has he just pushed buttons at random and chanced to land on one that would really devastate me? Agreeing to what he seems to imply would be worse than suicide. There is such an infinite sea of hate beneath that mocking exterior - I can practically hear the venom dropping from the frozen dripstone cave of his mind, trickling down the stalactites and dissolving into a black subterranean sea that never has, and never will, encounter a single ray of light. He would annihilate me.

He leans in close enough to make me claustrophobic and runs his tongue over my mangled lip again.

"What, Harry?" he repeats darkly.

My mind brushes over the alternative, and cringes away as if it had touched something corrosive and poisonous. It would still be better than the alternative. Everything would be better than the alternative!

"Whatever it takes," I acknowledge, as much to myself as to him.

"Is that so?"

Very slowly a smile begins to take shape around his lips, a smile as cold and brilliant as the parting glance of a neutron star at the hapless sun it had just incinerated. His nails scrape roughly across the crotch of my jeans. I jump violently, waves of heat rushing up my back and neck, and he revels in the utter terror and embarrassment that are bleeding from my eyes. Then he releases me with an abrupt shove, causing me to stumble back against the Shack.

"Very... impressive, Potter. Maybe I have underestimated you. But then, maybe you have underestimated me."

Malice spreads over his features, and it looks as if he were wrapping himself in an armour of ice that burns away every shred of the Draco Malfoy I thought I knew at least a little. This, finally, is the Death Eater, Voldemort's right hand. Absently I wonder how something so dark can look so bright. "If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I might have agreed. But not any more. As I said, I want the chance to kill you. More than I want a chance to fuck you."

And so it ends, shrouded in ice, chained behind the dungeon walls of hate. Too late. I will not absolve myself completely of guilt. If I had taken his hand, years and years back, I might have been able to steer him off this course. Transformed him into something a little less evil. But I failed, long before Voldemort stepped in to hone and polish him into that deadly weapon he is now. As he blights everything he touches. My life. Malfoy's. The world. And that's the reason why he cannot be allowed to win.

Malfoy gleefully watches my face close off and adds, challengingly,

"And Potter, I swear, if you ask me again I'll tell you whatever you want to hear and take you for a little ride through hell for the rest of the night, and show up at the battle tomorrow and rip your heart out. Slowly. What do you say?"

For a split second the temptation to let him pull me under into that madness is almost irresistible. Fragmented images flash before my inner eye, of warm blood, blinding pain and dark, savage desire. To throw myself away and pray he'll drown me before I can drown him. Maybe I should. I owe him... something. But there are limits to what I'm capable of. I am not that callous.

"I won't ask you again."

He gives me a final contemptuous look, and turns to leave. I reach out to stop him, my eyes capturing his, and put a hand on his cheek to direct his attention away from what I'm about to do.

"I'm sorry."

No wand - both sides have put up magical wards to ensure tonight's truce will be upheld. I slip my other hand into my pocket, and when I pull it out it conceals the small penknife Sirius has given me for my fourth Christmas at Hogwarts. He never notices, too occupied with trying to read the shadows in my eyes. It slides through skin, flesh and muscle with hardly any resistance, and he only realises what is happening when the blade is already embedded to the hilt in his stomach. His eyes widen and he coughs violently, utter, absolute disbelief written on his face. I catch him as he doubles over and gently lower him to the ground, watching consciousness slowly seep out of his eyes. No words, to the end. Just surprise.

Cowering on the ground next to the body, hands still touching his cooling skin, it feels as it his ice armour gradually lets go off him and creeps across to shroud me. I wish I could cry, but this is no place for tears. Tears are for sins that might be forgiven. I hide the body in the Shrieking Shack and cover it with a blanket that looks old enough for Lupin to have slept under.

Tomorrow I will kill the Dark Lord. There is no apprehension or fear at the thought any more, just quiet, cold certainty. I will kill him, hopefully before Dumbledore and my friends find out what price their 'hero' has paid tonight to guarantee their victory. No, not I. Him! And hopefully, after the Dark Lord has been disposed of, one of his Death Eaters will grant me the same mercy. It would only be consequent. For the Boy Who Lived may triumph tomorrow, but Harry Potter has died tonight.

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~