Prize

Prize.

By Draco Petulans / Greg Steele

The air smelt hot and metallic. Death and the electric buzz of curses permeated the winter breeze, leaving a dull luminosity to ride on the clouds of wizards' last breaths.

Screams and death rattles and desperate curses flung haphazardly into the void rang out between moments of infinitesimal silence.

The cold snow bit cruelly into Draco's left cheek, but he didn't notice. Dirt and mud wrapped his lips, tasting of filth and ruin, blood and death, but he didn't care.

There would be no winners on this day, no prize except oblivion.

He opened his eyes and saw the angry red burn grinning at him from his own forearm, and the pain and smell of scorched flesh gave him purpose. He dragged himself up like a wounded animal, millimetre by painful millimetre, ignoring the agony of his shattered leg, slipping a few times, cold sweat running through his hair down his brow to mix with trails of crimson from a dozen gashes torn through his crystalline features by shards of debris. What would he see when he dragged himself upright? A friend, a foe, a flash of green light or nothing at all?

Or Harry Potter?

Draco spat out a muffled curse and lay back, a dark, cynical smirk crawling across his lips.

It was always going to be this way. Potter's shadow had followed Draco across the battlefield and throughout the last few miserable months, his loathsome, wholesome leer lingering behind every death, every defeat they had suffered. Draco hadn't been afraid in any of his battles, not as the curses flew or his friends fell beside him because he knew that there was only one way his story would end; facing Harry Potter, the way it always had been, the way it was now - the gods of fate and irony appeased by the symmetry of it all.

"Enjoy it, Potter, you've earned it."

"That all you have to say, Draco? Somehow I always had you down for one last witty epithet before, well, you know."

A shockwave tore through the ranks of wizards to their left, but neither paid it much attention - this moment was theirs, the endgame of a thousand tiny wars, played out in a muddy field in Scotland, a burning castle for a backdrop and screams of agony and terror their soundtrack, completing the picture.

Potter was right, Draco wasn't going to just lie down and die. Well, actually that was probably exactly what he was going to do, but he wasn't going to do it without a fight. Weasley and Granger had done that; given up. Draco hated them for it.

Potter was too close, gloating in his victory. Draco swept out a wrecked leg, screaming as it connected with Potter's own and rolled on top of him. He punched Potter in the face with the heel of his palm, once, twice then grabbed his wand arm wrestling for the eleven inches of holly that would mean death for one of them. Draco pulled Potter's head back to jam an elbow into his nose, but wasn't quick enough. He gritted his teeth as Potter's forehead broke his nose and he rolled them over as a knee connected with his groin.

At another time Draco might have been able to keep hold of Potter, but this wasn't another time, and Draco felt a wave of cold fear and perhaps relief sweep over him as he turned over to find himself again at the end of Potter's wand.

"I suppose that was more fitting than one of your witty comments, Draco."

"Actions speak louder than words, Potter."

Potter levelled the wand with Draco's face, "Indeed they do, Draco."

As the pain hit him, quickly washing over his body in waves of unfocussed agony, the last thing Draco saw through a mist of green was a skull and a snake hideously entwined, and he laughed at the bitter irony.

The End.