Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Chapter Twenty-Six — Closest to Heaven

"And I’d give up forever to touch you

Cause I know that you feel me somehow

You’re the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been

And I don’t want to go home right now."

-Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris"

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Draco stood in the doorway of the empty Potions classroom, watching Severus Snape hover over a covered body lying on the table. He looked paler and greener than ever before. "Professor?" Draco murmured, trying to keep from startling the older man.

He failed miserably. Snape dropped a glass beaker to the floor, spinning to face the door. His eyes looked dull, his hair greasier than ever, with locks of grey peppering his hair. He was midway through his forties, and he looked closer to a hundred. The despair twisting his face was something Draco had come to know all too well. "Dammit, Draco, couldn’t you knock?" The other man grimaced.

"I have the feeling the same thing would’ve happened. Are you ill?" He crossed the classroom to his mentor, ignoring the stench of blood and death coming from the covered body. If Snape wanted him to know, he’d be told in good time.

"Wouldn’t you be ill if your job was to clean up the bodies of children for the grave?" Severus sneered, pain overwhelming his usual sarcasm. And he turned to the body, pulling down the coverlet from the face. Draco gasped in disgust, turning away from the mangled flesh. "Recognize him?"

Draco didn’t have to turn back to answer. "Terry Boot. Ravenclaw. He was alive Sunday morning." He gulped, finally giving in and closing his eyes against the tears of regret threatening to come. "Shit. I left them all there to die, didn’t I."

A long sigh from Snape. "Yes, you did. No one blames you for not being able to get them out."

"Because I’m not Potter. I’m just a pathetic turncoat Malfoy. Is that it?"

There was silence as Severus turned back to the body and muttered a spell. "I don’t know what he put on the knife, but the cuts won’t clear up. I don’t want to have to give the body back to his family like this. He was a good kid. He deserved better."

Draco was sure Terry would’ve given anything to hear praise from Snape, when he’d been at Hogwarts. Fanatical, work-obsessed Ravenclaw — though that was all Draco remembered about him. Five years was a long time. He turned and caught sight of a small circular mirror on the wall and winced. The haggard face of a war veteran winced back at him. It hadn’t been five years... it had been fifty. "Ernie MacMillian’s were like that too?"

"Yes." Snape sighed again. "I shouldn’t be burying my students."

"You’ll soon be burying five more," Draco murmured. His gaze was fixed on the mirror, still in shock over the affect that a few days could have. He looked so old. So defeated.

Like a light-haired version of Snape.

Draco turned away from the mirror, trying not to look at Terry’s face in the process. "Does it ever stop hurting to look in the mirror? Does the guilt ever go away?"

Snape looked up from his work and gave a searching look at Draco. Finally, he bent down and pulled the coverlet over Terry’s head. "Come in to my office, Draco? I have something I’m working on that I’d like you to look at. It may be important."

He shrugged indifferently. "It’s not like I have anything else to be doing." And so he followed the dark figure across the cold stone dungeon and into his equally dismal office, sweeping himself into a Slytherin-green chair as Severus conjured up a pair of teacups.

They were left sitting on the counter, forgotten, as the Head of Slytherin House walked over and snatched a parchment from his desk. "First of all, I think Divination is a load of rubbish," Snape began, moving to take the chair across from Draco. "However, certain theories within the discipline have their uses. One of those theories is the Theory of Circular Time."

"I didn’t take Divination," Draco reminded him. "I don’t have a bloody clue what that means."

"It bloody means what it sounds like," Severus replied with a snort of indignation. "Time moving in circles. Events repeating themselves. It doesn’t mean reincarnation or any of those silly Muggle ideas — but it does suggest that grand, sweeping events in human history happen on a cycle. Usually, the cycle is hundreds of years long, but sometimes, an event happens that smashes the cycle and sends the world into a spin until the break has been corrected."

Draco pursed his lips. "That sounds like fate. Or... or a time gap, or something."

Another snort. "Or something. Yes, it is awfully like fate, or a plan. Or maybe just human nature. But whatever the case, I started to detect the beginnings of a break pattern twelve years ago."

"When Harry Potter came to school," Draco finished, giving a deep frown.

"Yes. Potter. As far as I can tell, we truly are reenacting the first Voldemort war — the same events, the same outcomes, the same roles played by different individuals. It’s a horrible thought, that we’re stuck in a cycle of war every fifteen years, unless something changes." Severus slammed the parchment into Draco’s hands.

His eyes flickered over the names and dates and battles scribbled on the paper. "Potter plays his father’s part. James plays Harry’s part. Voldemort... Granger is Lupin, Ron Weasley is Black... I’m you?" Draco snorted, a wry smirk crossing his face. "It seems rather fanciful."

With a shrug, Snape leaned back in his chair. "Yes, it does... but the parallels are remarkable. Terrible. Headmaster Dippet was murdered in much the way Albus was — by a favoured student who turned Dark. The band of Gryffindor tricksters of my time included Potter senior, while yours has Potter junior. The numbers are different, but the outcomes are still there. Only the Peter Pettigrew figure is missing to betray them — which is a part easily taken by George Weasley, if things come to that. The attack on the Ministry... that happened in 1978, as well. More died this time, but there are more people living in the wizarding world. The Ministry was taken over... we lost our media... Hogwarts was attacked and invaded by the Death Eaters, though Albus was able to hold them off."

"So... if this Theory of Circular Time is correct, what happens next?"

Severus took back the sheet of paper. "Ginny dies. Then Potter dies in a move that doesn’t eradicate Voldemort, due to George’s betrayal after Ginny’s death. And don’t think George betraying the light is as ludicrous as it sounds. Percy did it, Peter did it — and George certainly has lost everything he lived for. Ron then goes to Azkaban after trying to murder his brother. And you, after becoming a cynical and brooding man far too old for your years, become Defense Master at Hogwarts after Hermione goes off to wallow in misery. Though I doubt she’ll mirror that pathetic werewolf and become a heroin addict."

Draco stared at Snape in shock. "Ginny? But... does that mean...?"

"I had a reason for coming back to the Light too, Draco," Severus shrugged, though the expression on his face told Draco that shrugging it off was only a cover for hidden pain. "However, I hadn’t been discovered as a spy and wasn’t there to keep her from stepping into the line of fire."

"We have to stop it," Draco croaked, staggering to his feet in a blank shock. "How? What do I have to do?"

"Keep Ginny from going to Hogsmeade when the fighting breaks out there... then George won’t be tempted to betray Potter. Potter can use the spell Albus discovered, when he’s found a way to boost his magic... and Voldemort will be destroyed. For good. Cycle broken." Snape’s ink-black eyes glared into Draco’s, earnest with their desperation. "You MUST NOT fail, or that child finds the same fate as Harry — and you find the same misery as I."

Draco turned and fled toward the guest wing. Left alone in his office, Severus moved over to his desk and quietly opened the drawer, lifting a faded image of a smiling woman.

~

Ginny hummed quietly to herself as she changed the colour of the couch in the quarters she’d been assigned in the guest wing of Hogwarts. Hopefully, her stay here would be short. Harry had the spell. He’d say it, it would be done, Voldemort dead and gone — and Ginny free to return to the Burrow and set life in order. A beautiful hope, after living her adolescence in war.

She had her back to the door when it was flung open, nearly ripping it off the hinges, and nearly screamed when arms were thrown around her and she was held close. "Draco! Gods, you nearly scared me to death!" Ginny turned to face him, eyes glaring ice in her indignation at her treatment.

The frantic worry in Draco’s face was enough to give her pause, however. He sought her lips in an insistent kiss, refusing to give up contact with her skin even as he pulled back to speak. "Don’t go into Hogsmeade. Promise me you won’t go to Hogsmeade, Ginny!"

"What? Of course I’m not going to Hogsmeade, McGonagall would have my head -" While she appreciated being showered with kisses, the frantic urgency was baffling and frightening at the same time. "Draco, what’s wrong?"

Draco pulled back just long enough to peek out the door and then slam it shut again, going so far as to throw the lock manually — and Draco doing actual work was enough to worry Ginny by itself. His hands were on her again in moments, eyes meeting hers a desperate plea. "History is repeating itself. Theory of Circles and Whatchamacalits, or something like that. Snape was showing me the parallels with the Time of Troubles. It was just terrible — Potter will die like his father did, and his kid will have to go through the horrors we did at school, and Hermione is turning into Lupin, or maybe McGonagall — GODS, did you see that robe!? And if you go into Hogsmeade when the Death Eaters attack, you’ll be dead, and I can’t lose you!"

"Woah. Slow down." Ginny pried his hands from her shoulders, shaking her head. "Isn’t that a Divination theory? That’s all just a load of bullshit."

"Dammit, the parallels are all there! I don’t care if you put faith in it or not, but for the love of Aphrodite, DON’T go down to Hogsmeade!" Draco grabbed hold of her chin lightly, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Please, Ginny — promise me you’ll stay out of that battle."

"I promise," she murmured, reaching up to rest a hand on his cheek lightly. "I’m not leaving you."

His gaze was earnest. "I love you, and I don’t want to know what I’d be without you." And if Ginny had any reason to doubt his statement, the eager urgency of the kisses and caresses that followed were surely enough to destroy any fear.