White Horses

HERMIONE AND DRACO BOTH STARTED when the shrill siren went off, echoing down the empty hallways. Flinching away from the painful noise, Draco looked to Hermione for some explanation but before she could try to say anything, they both heard the pounding of running feet coming towards their little room.

The first one in the door was the same woman who had been so unfriendly earlier while taking Harry's vitals. Her blunt and hurried manner hadn't changed, but since her efforts were now directed at helping Harry, the two teens didn't mind it. She shoved past them, saw the flashing monitor and immediately yelled back at the staff following her, "We've got a v-fib pattern in here!"

A sudden rush of people into the room pushed Draco and Hermione to it's edges. Hermione struggled to make her way around the crowd without interfering with their desperate actions and arrived at Draco's side, where they had a glimpse of Harry within his ring of doctors and nurses.

The glowing line that had been rocketing across the screen of the heart monitor seemed to be settling down. Draco watched it, since he couldn't bring himself to look at Harry, and nudged Hermione when he was quite certain that the peaks and valleys had been growing shallower. She followed his eyes to monitor and he whispered in her ear, "It looks like its getting better-"

The doctor had also glanced at the monitor but her reaction was quit different from Draco's. Her voice was shrill with urgency, not excitement, as she shouted over the din, "We're down to a fine pattern!"

Another doctor - male this time, young, and cocky as hell - piped up, "We may have a case of undiagnosed Long QT syndrome on our hands."

The terse woman didn't even bother looking at him and grabbed a pair of wickedly sharp scissors from a table of equipment, biting out, "Yes, we may indeed. But what we definitely have is a flat line on our hands." She pulled the loose hospital gown away from Harry's flat chest and brought her scissors down through the material with a decisive chop. Within seconds, she had the gown cut open down to his navel.

Her timing was providential, for at that moment, the chaotic line on the heart monitor, whose movements had been growing fainter and fainter, fell completely flat.

Harry was dead.

The failure of his heart was accompanied by a ominous tone, less shrill and desperate than the alarm that had first brought all the doctors into the room. This alarm didn't seem to be calling for immediate action, it seemed to signalling the end of any need for action.

Yet wild action was what it finally brought about. Someone called out the time and it was jotted down by one of the scrubbed women. A nurse started immediate compressions on Harry's chest, another had wedged something which looked like a balloon into his mouth and was squeezing it regularly. A cart was rolled over from another end of the room and everyone immediately stepped back to let it pass.

Draco looked at the flat line on the monitor.

There was no movement. Harry's heart wasn't beating. He wasn't breathing. He wasn't...

Finally, the boy forced his silvery eyes over to the bed at the centre of all that frantic movement. Not even conscious that he was doing it, he began muttering under his breath.

Ki dunc veïst cez escuz si malmis...

Glimpses of his boyfriend, his best friend, his conscience, his soul, his Harry could be seen between green scrubs. He didn't look very different. He didn't look dead.

But now the doctor was pulling Harry's gown away from his flat chest, spreading the flaps of the thin cotton robe that she'd cut through just moments before. Draco's eyes darted to Hermione but flashed involuntarily back to the body before she could say anything.

A nurse grabbed a large tube from the cart, squeezing out a generous dollop of clear gel onto Harry's still chest. The woman doctor sharply thrust forward a pair of strange metal paddles expectantly and the nurse squeezed some of the gel onto their metal faces as well. Rubbing the paddles together and coating them with the gel, the doctor called out, "Charging!"

There was a sudden hum and whine in the air, raising the tiny hairs on Draco's skin. This was the Muggle's magic? He watched as the woman yelled briskly, "Clear!" and every last person who had been touching Harry stepped hastily away. The doctor brought the paddles down onto Harry's bare chest, pressed a button and there was faint whoomp of power as the pent up energy flushed itself out of the machine and through the limp body on the bed.

It seemed obvious that something should have happened, that a release that strong should have some result, but Harry laid still, unchanging and unmoving, on the rough white sheets of the hospital bed.

The sharp woman turned back to the nurse operating the large machine, ordering her, "Raise the charge to 250!"

The older nurse nodded quickly and turned a knob on the machine, then flicked another switch, causing the reverberating hum of power to start up again. The doctor called "Clear!" again and then pressed the paddles to Harry's chest, which had bloomed with two pink spots where the power last hit him.

Cez blancs osbercs ki dunc oïst fremir…

She discharged the power again, but still there was no effect on Harry, other than the very slight jump his body gave when all that stored up power hit him. The monitor which measured his heart rate flared momentarily when the paddles discharged, with a hopeful beep, but then the flat line returned with its dull tone.

"300!"

The young doctor's voice was getting desperate and she pressed the paddles to Harry's chest before she had even called, "Clear!"

"350!"

She didn't even lift the paddles from his chest now.

"360!"

She yelled over her shoulder at the nurse.

"Again!"

E cez escuz sur cez helmes cruiser…

The nurse controlling the machine's controls hesitated for the slightest perceptible moment. The young male doctor put in knowingly, "Using a full 360 was probably too much for someone this small. Give it up."

The woman froze with the paddles in her hands and, almost unwillingly, her eyes shot to Hermione and Draco's white faces. She looked away so quickly, the look might have almost been imagined and she commanded, "We'll crack the chest and try heart massage, and direct charges if we have to." She glared at the doctor opposite her and held out a hand expectantly, "A number twenty."

Looking slightly resentful, the young man handed her a glinting scalpel from a table of sharp, sanitized tools. She hefted it for a moment and then started lowering it toward Harry's bare chest.

No. No. No! Without thought, Draco grabbed Hermione's hand and dashed toward the bed, shoving them both through the mess of scrubbed hospital staff. He reached past the silver scalpel that was flashing its way towards Harry's chest and grabbed at the frail necklace that had been left, forgotten, around the Gryffindor's neck. With a half-whispered word, feeling the finely carved dragons of the chain dig into his skin, he activated the old portkey and sent himself, Hermione and Harry's body back to Hogwarts.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

HERMIONE'S hysterical voice reached him through the screaming maelstrom that accompanied portkey travel and landed next to him on the front steps of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She hauled up and seemed to be about to strike him but he caught her hands instead. He asked her in a deadly voice, "Can you continue what they were doing? That artificial respiration thing?"

Gaping wordlessly for a moment, Hermione felt as if her brain and perhaps several other vital organs had been left behind in that hospital room. Tears were dripping down her face but she wasn't even vaguely aware of it. She breathed out in the faintest whisper, "Yes."

Draco's silver, inhuman eyes bore into hers and he said simply, "Then do it."

Harry's body was lying limply at their feet, sprawled over the cold stone steps of the castle. Draco laid the boy out flat upon one of the thankfully broad, shallow steps and Hermione dropped beside them. Glancing only once more at the blonde, she bent over Harry and started up her own awkward attempts at CPR.

Draco didn't allow himself to think about what he had just done, what he was now doing, or what he was about to attempt – he couldn't possible attempt – no..

Shaking his head, he picked up again the words that had been trickling out of him in that Muggle hospital, but to no avail there.

Cez chevalers ki dunc veïst caïr…

His voice caught on the old words and he smoothed down the mussed hair from Harry's waxy, still face. The cold winter sun was setting over the lake and in the gathering dusk, Draco thought he saw what had been missing at that unfamiliar hospital. The faintest lights, like the ghosts of fireflies, were drifting toward them on the knifelike winter breeze. The Sending had begun.

Draco whispered down to the boy, "This is your home, Harry. This is where your heart is. This is where you should be."

E humes braire, contre tere murir…

Up in the Gryffindor Tower, Ron lay on his bed in the Seventh Years' dorm, his curtains drawn tightly around him and a book about the Killing Curse open on his bed, next to his sleeping head. Twitching in his sleep as he saw strange dreams filled with green flashes of light and familiar faces, he was unaware of the sudden cloud of twinkling lights that exploded from him, like dust shaken from an old robe. They wafted through the open tower window and down to the huddled figures waiting on the ground.

De grant dulor li poüst suvenir!

Similar fairy lights detached themselves from the walls of the Gryffindor common room, sprouting from the shabby but comfortable overstuffed armchairs and drifting out of the smoke rising from the many cheery fires at the many open hearths. The few students still lolling about, satiated, after their hearty Christmas supper, noticed and nudged each other. They watched silently, slightly awed, as the tiny lights trickled out of the room, dancing past the Fat Lady as they went.

Ceste mult fort a suffrir.

Out on the empty pitch, early evening stars seemed to be appearing in reddish sky. But these evening stars weren't meant for the heavens and they fell gracefully from the sky, grazing through the empty hoops, long defended, and skimming the fragrant, crisp grass, made their way towards the school's entrance.

Ell'ent adunet lo suon element:

Alone in the echoing library, about to pull yet another ancient book from the teetering shelves, Ginny's hand drew back as a faint spot of light squeezed out from between the books. Looking around, the ginger girl noticed other flickering lights issuing from around the library, then realized that there was a whole host of the lights quivering around herself as well. Only momentarily alarmed, then quickly curious, she ran her fingers through the shimmering, dancing motes of light. They gave a slightly warm tingling feeling and Ginny smiled involuntarily. Cupping several in her hands, she brought them to her face and blew them gently on their way, murmuring a wish in their wake.

Ne por or ned argent ne paramenz…

On the other side of the wide grounds of Hogwarts, in a lone but snug looking little hut, Rubeus Hagrid was humming happily and off-key as he pulled a batch of his famous rock cakes from his blisteringly hot hearth. The dancing lights that were hovering about him, he brushed away as if they were idle sparks from the crackling fire in front of him. They went happily on their way, squeezing out beneath the rough hewn wooden door and into the cool night.

Por manatce regiel ne preiement…

In a high tower, whirring with curious little silver contraptions, the phoenix, Fawkes, let out a warm trill. Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School, looked up from the papers before him on his desk and smiled benignly at his beloved pet, who was sparkling even more brilliantly then usual. He noticed then that Fawkes was not the only one sparkling and watched, still with a smile, though now tinged with bemusement, as glittering lights wafted over himself and through the room.

Niule cose non la pouret omque pleier…

In empty classrooms across the school, cold and unused during the holiday break, the small fairy lights shimmied their way off of pitted desks, sliding from well-worn chairs. They dripped from crusty cauldrons. A pile of pillows once used for Summoning practice positively glowed for a moment, with all the little lights swarming it. And from the space of a hundred charms, a thousand transfigurations, ten-thousand swish-and-flicks, the lights kept coming.

Passet la noit, si apert le cler jor…

They sped down the halls, swooping around statues and old coats of armor. Some of the little star-like particles zoomed through secret passages, behind portraits and tapestries, and swirled around a statue of a hump-backed witch with only one eye. Joining a huge cloud of the sparkling lights in the Great Hall, they all passed through the transparent ceiling and into the sunset.

Ben sunt cunfes e asols e seignez…

In figure de colomb volat a ciel…

Hermione, crouched on the stone steps next to her best friend's body, had to keep reminding herself to breath into his mouth, to force oxygen back into his lifeless body. The reason that she was so distracted was the dense cloud of shimmering, sparkling lights that was hovering all around them. From within this supernova, she could still almost see Draco's white head, but it was difficult, since his bright figure was so easily mistaken within the brilliant light. She focused on her hands, pumping upon the thin, bare chest in front of her, and realized that the little bits of starlight were streaming from her own skin, as well.

Qued auuisset de nos mort mercit…

Draco, on the fringes of the swirling, glowing mass, was running out of words. He held out his hands, as the words continued to fall from his mouth, and watched as tiny pieces of Harry escaped from his empty palms. A seemingly endless stream of glittering lights left him, joining the huge cloud which nearly obscured Hermione at its heart.

Par souue clementia…

Finally, with almost nothing left to say, nothing left to try, Draco saw something. The huge, amorphous cloud was growing less so. It was compacting and drawing itself together. It shrank and began to form definite edges, then definite shape. A roughly human shape, soon further defined by waving, messy hair, a small, slender body, and even the hint of round-framed glasses. Harry's spirit had arrived.

"Qued auuisset de nos mort mercit," Draco repeated himself faintly, staring at the spectre that hung above Hermione's head of thick brown hair, bent over Harry's body. Still with his hands outstretched, he continued to whisper, "Par souue clementia." He switched to his native language, "Par sa pitié. S'il vous plait – soyez compatissant. Prenez la pitié sur nous. Je vous prie. I beg you." He stared up at the smiling, silver eyes of Harry's spirit, "I beg you."

The ghostly spectre turned its familiar face away, as if it could hear something that Draco could not. Draco, remembering how his mother's angry spirit had grabbed him, reached out desperately to Harry. He felt like his hand might just slip through the shining figure, but then something caught, and he was holding onto the shining spectre with a grip like iron.

Draco's voice was beyond desperate, beyond any description possible, as he begged, "Don't listen! Don't you listen to anything but me! This is where you belong, Harry. This is where you're supposed to be. Come back." He tried to draw the spirit down closer to the ground and demanded, "Come back now."

The silvery reflection of Harry looked down at the cooling body laying on the steps. It looked back up at Draco wordlessly, still with a small smile on its lips, but it looked a bit sad. Once more it seemed to hear some sweet siren's song, and it looked away with an expression of childlike yearning.

"Come back now," Draco repeated, hollowly. The spirit looked back at him, staring straight into Draco's silver eyes with its own silver eyes. It's free hand shot out and cupping Draco's white cheek for the briefest moment that ever passed and then the whole thing exploded into shimmering lights again, drifting down upon the body on the ground like a million fragmented stars.

Draco's eyes fell shut. His lips moved again, as if of their own volition, "Ne me laissez pas. Don't leave me." His silvery eyes reopened, staring at the now empty sky above him. They were perfectly dry. There was no amount of tears that could replace Harry. He could have cried a whole river, a whole ocean, and it would not begin to fill the emptiness that filled him, where Harry had once been.

He heard the Head Girl gasp at his feet but didn't look down at her. The sun was falling now. True stars were appearing in the purple sky. Christmas was over.

"Draco.." Hermione's trembling voice floated up to him. Something in her tone grabbed his attention – something not broken. "Draco, he's.. Harry is.."

And he looked down. And he smiled.