Saviour

1 - Nothing

We were very much the same, that day I pulled him out of the gutter, although neither of us knew it then. We were both lost and alone, albeit on some higher plane of thought and feeling. The only real differences were our outward manifestations of these demons.

Such a poor and pitiful sight, lying sprawled and broken in a pathetic heap of tattered robes and vanquished pride. I found him there, unconscious next to a pile of scraps from a Diagon Alley restaurant.

I didn't know then that the failed creature before me had nursed secret dreams of owning a similar enterprise himself. Neither did I know that the injustice he suffered that day was ordered by the only man he ever cared enough about to defy.

Of course, I was surprised at first. Draco Malfoy, heir to all that is rich and evil, lying bruised and beaten in the street? How very tasteless of his attacker. Then again, I never considered the man to have any taste.

What else could I have done? Left him to die, to be robbed of his few remaining possessions by thieves and crooks? Let him bleed to death in a ditch?

I did what I believe anyone in my situation would have done. I lifted him gently, feeling his muscles tense in pain despite his stupor, and I carried him to my room at the Leaky Cauldron.

You see, I was visiting London on business. Legitimate business, you understand! My days of skulking in the shadows are long over, thank goodness.

The way I see it, I was his Good Samaritan.

*

So I took him back to my room. Michael was still there, waiting for the book I had gone out to Flourish and Blotts to get him book. He was sitting on his bed.

Michael was a beautiful boy. Beautiful face, beautiful hair, beautiful body. He was articulate in his beautiful speech, a quality emulated in his beautiful handwriting. The only problem was that he had nothing to write or day that was worth writing or saying.

I think I thought I loved him, I really did, which is why a little part of me still hurts after what he did. Although I'm not sure why, it turned out our love was merely a flight of fancy. I was attracted to the superficial projections of his deeper self, and he was attracted to the picture that the textbooks painted of me. Each of us were deceiving each other, and ourselves. He fell in love with the Boy who Lived, and the boy who fought, and not the man that was left at the end of it all. He didn't realise I wasn't who I am until it was too late for his poor, beautiful heart.

I laid his down on my bed. Michael and I still had the decency to book twin rooms at hotels that we were using for work purposes. That was how we met, as colleagues in the same department.

I saw Draco's blood ooze, semi-solid into the fresh white linen, deep and burgundy and seeping from some unidentifiable vein.

He reminded me of myself, lying cold and wounded on the battlefield many years ago. Except then there had been no one to save me.

*

"Harry, you can't go out there. We need you!"

"Damn it, Hermione, my men need me too!" She knew I referred to my troops as men, out of respect for their abilities, although many were women. We all preferred it that way.

"What if something happens to you?" she pleaded.

"They're dying on the field...I can't just stand by and watch the Dark armies swat us aside like flies."

"We don't need them as much as we need you."

"Every soldier we lose is a soldier we could, and should have saved," I said, trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince her. "At least let me take them supplies."

She moved away from the entrance to the tent and handed me a box of medical paraphernalia. Then she stepped up on tiptoes and kissed my nose.

"I wont tell Ron," I said jokingly, and she smiled. There was something slightly tragic about a war wedding, even though their necessity was obvious. Her husband was asleep in a back section of the tent kitted out with camp beds, along with a dozen or so other soldiers.

Ron had really come into his own after the war broke out, and soon rose to the rank of general, a position I held myself.

The tent itself was enchanted with noise-blocking charms, but once I stepped outside I could hear the full horrors of the battle vividly long before I could see them.

Grown men screamed like small girls as they were subjected to curses worse than the Unforgivables ten times over, curses that were newly developed by Voldemort's forces, curses we had not yet developed strategies against.

I was just inside the once cool and fragrant woods when he caught up with me, his long blonde locks dappled in the light of the fires that burnt in the thick of the fight, vivid light that filtered through the dense foliage.

Lucius Malfoy had certainly seen better days. There was no disguising the deep lines etched into his regal brow, or the nasty purple bruises that blossomed and flared at his collar.

There was blood on his hands. Literally. Blood that I doubted was his. It was not the randomly splattered blood of battle. It was the smoothly daubed blood of a vicious crime, and my instincts all pointed to slit throats. My stomach turned when I realised he had been walking from the direction of our camp.

So another of our number was dead by Lucius' bloody hands, hands that shot spells from his teak wand, hands that palmed knives and blades in combat against the unarmed, hands that unfastened his robes as he raped our womenfolk, and menfolk I don't doubt.

"Harry," he said nastily. "Harry fucking Potter, saviour of the world. Why aren't they keeping you in a glass case for when they really need you?" He laughed a soft, taunting laugh.

"Watch it, Malfoy. I know your tricks." This seemed to amuse him even further.

"Oh do you? How unfortunate. I do so love surprising people." I could tell he was wandless from the moment he lunged at me, and I felt something sharp enter my back, slicing effortlessly through the flesh between two of my ribs.

I fought, and I fought hard, tooth and nail all of the way, but he won, and left me for dead.

Hours of cold and ceaseless agony ended abruptly in an unconsciousness that I was sure would result in death. My broken body and shattered mind gave up on me.

Even now, I'm still thankful to Remus.

*

I awoke a week later to the news that the blood on Lucius' hands was that of Ron, Hermione and the other soldiers who dozed in our tent.

*

After that I returned to the field, stronger and better than ever before, pushed to my limits not by anger, or the wish to avenge the deaths of my friends, but by a cold apathy that ran slowly through my veins.

I detached from myself, from my surroundings. I turned my back on the very depths of depravity, and I wouldn't allow myself to care. If you care you only get hurt. That's the principle that the greatest victory of Harry Potter was based on.

Ironic, isn't it?

*

"Who is that?" Michael asked.

"An old friend," I lied. "I have to take him home. I hope you understand that I can't stay."

"Of course," he replied, and nodded forlornly.

Then I turned on the heel of my well-shod foot, little knowing that it would be the last words that we exchanged in person for a long time.