The Only Killing I Regret

I am watching the younger ones train. They duel with a desperate sort of longing to triumph over their opponents. I can see they are imagining their heroic entry into the next battle. I recognise this because it was once me.

I was once being trained by the senior Aurors for battle. I had the same sort of desperate courage and thirst to prove myself in front of the face of evil. I'm sad that I class the ones training as younger, because it reality they are only two years younger than I am. The gap between us is huge. I am battle wearied, they are eager; I am tired, but they are alive with bright eyes.

As I watch from the battlements I feel like an old woman in a teenager's shell. Yet other times I feel so small I just want to crawl onto my mother’s knee and wish it all away. It doesn’t go away. My mother does not come either, she's been dead for weeks.

Again, my attention focuses on the frenzied parry of curses being thrown at each other. I feel another surge of sadness as I watch. At fifteen they have mastered the killing curse and will be using it with no qualms whatsoever in their first battle. That's what makes me sad. At this age they should have nothing more to worry about than wondering if the boy they sit next to in Potions likes them. Instead they worry about waking the next day.

At that age I was still expecting Prince Charming to come any minute and whisk me away on his Firebolt (only a Firebolt mind, nothing older). That seems so long ago, and instead I got Draco. At the sound of his name blood rushes to my face and my stomach flips. For a second I can pretend I’m just seventeen and in love. For an instant I can believe I am not in the middle of a war and in love with someone on the other side.

For that priceless instant, time stands still, and I am taken to a place where his arms are around me and his mouth on mine. A place where I am still at school and do not know how to torture people with the simple flick of my wand. A place where the only obstacle for us is the fact that I am a Gryffindor and he is a Slytherin. Where we are young, carefree and most of all, in love.

On the other side of the courtyard there are several pops as five people apparate into the grounds. Time speeds up and my real life intrudes, the instant is over. The people look haggard and exhausted as they silently move into the castle. I'm not surprised, I know I must look much similar; all those who have fought must look tired and world-weary.

Draco once told me that evil is a man made concept: that in nature there is no good and evil, only survival. Perhaps that's the only thing that makes us any different from the wild beasts, birds and insects. We are ruled all our lives by the concept of what is good and what is bad. We are given choices to make to see whether we will be ‘good’, or whether we will be ‘bad’.

I look at myself and think, am I good? I'm fighting for the side of the Light, but am I really good? Does killing people from the Dark side make me good? Is killing ever good? Where are the lines between good and evil drawn?

The concept of good and bad is a blessing of the greatest burden. In the wild, a tiger does not have to think- is it evil to kill this baby antelope? It doesn’t have the choice; it only has survival and the knowledge that it is hungry and needs food. Good and evil wouldn't be something it could fathom.

As humans we are not ruled always by food and survival. Some might say we have risen above it, others may say we have sunk below it. I don't know. All I know is that I find it hard enough getting through the day than to muse on whether I think we are above or below our wild neighbours.

I look up in a hurry as I hear the doors of the castle swing open and cloaked fighters storm out. In their midst I can see Ron, next to him is Hermione. They can't see me and I don't show myself. I pull my hood up around my face and move down the stairs to join them. Battle is coming and I don't want to be left here alone.

I apparate to the battle with the rest of the fighters. I apparate into hell. Curses wind their way through our ranks like oxygen flows into my lungs. The ranks are breaking up and spreading out. Each time I raise my wand and chant the fateful words that will end a life, I try to crush the feeling of guilt.

The practised ear can tune out the continuous stream of screams. All I can do is focus. Focus on here and now; focus on dodging that curse being flashed at me. I send the emerald light back at them and they crumple, black mask slipping off their face as they fall. Acrid fumes wind their way into my nose, and bile rises in my throat as a head cracks against a rock. I push down the urge to retch, because if I once break concentration I will fall.

My wand is near red hot with the energy streaming though it. I am feeling the fatigue of using the killing curse continuously already. I spin around and my heart nearly stops beating in my chest: Draco. There. He is standing metres away from me, facing someone else. His mask has come off and his face and hair contrast starkly against his robes and the broken sky. He's facing death with the same arrogant tilt to his mouth.

I know what I must do. I move quickly, dodging corpses as I go, moving just behind him. His adversary doesn't see me; she is focused on her target and the triumph he will bring her. I know what will happen next. The wind whistles in my ears as I dive for my goal. Time slows down as the emerald light of the killing curse arches its way to my chest instead of Draco’s. His adversary's eyes have widened as she sees my position in front of him. Draco, the man who is second in command of the ranks of Death Eaters. She screams my name and runs towards me but it is too late.

People say that before you die your life flashes before you eyes. That's a lie. All I can see is Draco, filling my vision even though he is behind me. Even as I breathe my last, all I can see, feel and smell is him. Darkness wraps itself around me and my eyes dull, yet still in the gathering darkness that is death I can see him bending over me.

~~~~~~~~~

They walk past me with the same question on their faces. I can see it each time they come in. I see it each time they go out. It's the first and last thing they ask me. I don't answer, just like I don't answer their other questions. They seem to expect me to break down and spill all because of what happened; they expect me to join the side of the Light because one of their number died to save me. They expect I should regret every killing I ever made.

I don't, not one. Why should I regret them? I fought for the side I believed in, and the people I killed were not worthy of what they were offered. That angers them; anything angers them that they do not expect. They are still holding onto the thin beam of hope that I will announce the tactics my side of the war used.

I have an extremely immature urge to say 'whatever'.

Granger has come in to question me. Or rather, yell at me. She comes in and stands there, tears streaming down her face, and screaming at me. She is screaming at me because she thought it should have been me that had died yesterday, not Ginny. Ginny should not have even been in the battle that day, she yells. Why? Why did Ginny throw herself in front of the curse to save you? Draco Malfoy of all people? Why? What gives you the right to live and take her right to breathe away?

I laugh at her. She slaps my face, but it only makes me laugh harder. She really has no idea does she? The Mudblood who was top of the class all her years at Hogwarts. She is blind to what she does not want to see, like the Muggles who walk down the street next to Wizards killing each other in cold blood. They don't want to see, so they just... pass on by. Their minds making up logical excuses for what their hearts cannot bear to see.

Granger’s mind is overflowing with reasons why Ginny did what she did. She was under a spell... she thought you were someone else... she hated anyone being killed. Anything. Anything but accepting the truth of the matter: that Ginny killed herself to save me.

Yes Granger, that she loved I, Draco Malfoy the previous Prince of Slytherin and Death Eater to the Dark Lord; the person most generally referred to as the scum of the known world. She didn't know the latter in the beginning, of course. Even to me the thoughts of my future were blurry and far off. What was important was Ginny and I, together. This was what mattered to me. This was of course before the war began, when we were still at school and she was still innocent. Ginny would still have been in school if all this hadn't happened.

It did happen. I became what she hated and fought against, so we obviously couldn't be together. How would it look? I, a trusted and loyal Death Eater with one of the Order’s most trusted members. It would have been laughable. It still is, I suppose, yet I can't laugh. Ginny left me when she discovered what I became. What did she expect? That I would become the reformed Slytherin that everyone is so fond of imagining? I don’t think so.

Ginny was the light to my darkness, flame to my ice. Oh, if things had been different... if she had been a different person and willing to change… if I had been a different person and willing to change. But we weren't, we were simply Ginny and Draco, two teenagers who were on opposing sides of the battlefield and happened to love each other.

I still find it hard to believe what she did. I hide this from Granger of course. Granger wants me to show some remorse or horror at what happened. I don't show what I am feeling, but grief and loss are the ones that make me pause and steel myself before speaking, just in case I get emotional. Only my upbringing as a Malfoy prevents me breaking in front of her.

She is gone. Of course I know she is gone, Granger. Unlike you, I haven't got the mistaken belief this is all a terrible mistake and somewhere she is waiting for me. That would be too easy. But that's the hope you cling to, isn’t it Granger? That’s what keeps you going isn’t it? What keeps you killing? The hope that somewhere out there, Harry is waiting for you.

Granger doesn't like it when I mention Potter. Why Mudblood? A little too close to home for your liking? Her tears are drying up now, the hysterics gone; her anger is overtaking her grief for Ginny. She wants answers to questions that I cannot give her. Will not give her.

I stare at the ceiling as she shoots questions at me like the killing curse from my wand. There is a crack in the roof and the water is making a steady trickle onto the ground near me. I move so I dodge the splashes as the water hits the ground. Granger takes this for a sign I'm about to break. Dream on Mudblood, I simply do not like being wet. Not that there’s much choice in this dingy cell.

What do you expect? She shrieks. A five star hotel? You are a murdering Death Eater who is going to die tomorrow. Why should we cut YOU any slack?

True, tomorrow they intend to kill me. Who cares? There are other ways to die Granger, other than being killed at wandpoint. I'll be dead before you come and get me the next morning. I don't tell her this either, or she will get them to search me and find the dagger. Not that they could do much with it, they'd die themselves from lifting it from my body.

You are looking at me again with disgust Granger. They all look like that before they leave, before they leave they ask me one last question. Always the same last question, but this time it will be different. This time I'll answer.

"Don’t you regret any of the killings Malfoy? At all?" She turns once to look at me before exiting the cell. My voice trails after her as she leaves, my final words. She pauses and freezes as they sink in.

"I only regret one kill, and I wasn’t the one that used the curse that caused it. You did Granger."

~~~~~~~~~~

In another place not so unlike here, where the word war is only used in memories of a sadder place, two people are running towards each other. They are running with a desperate sort of hope that only comes from a love un-matched in the mortal world. In another place that is outside of time and mind, the Lioness and the Dragon are reunited forever under the one banner of death.