This Little Piggy

It is all wrong.

The blood, the light, Potter's staggered footprints in the snow beside your own. It isn't supposed to end like this because tradition said it would happen on a warm June evening when the sun was low and the mood was lower. Your seventh year, the end of second term, the battle royale of a century. You know your role just as he knows his because it is basic and unoriginal; the mark of a classic heroic tale. You would stand beside your father's side with a skull on your forearm, a phoenix on his shoulder. The Dark Lord would fall and there would be much rejoicing.

The foreseen, intertwined destinies of the Boy Who Lived and He Who Must Not Be Named were written in capital letters across the future; a perfect headline for a story that had been a long time coming. He would be victorious; you would kick and scream and cry wee, wee, wee all the way home where you'd be put under house arrest for a year or two and then inherit your father's fortunes. Not a bad future for the childhood nemesis of the boy who was destined for glory.

When it was all over, Weasley would go to the market. He would go into the trading business and he'd be damn good at what he'd do because even you have to admit he has a knack for strategy and it would make him a very successful entrepreneur. Granger would ask him to marry her, and then stay home to squeeze out lots of his babies. But no, life as a mother and a wife probably wouldn't satisfy her insatiable need to academically condescend to others. She would become some sort of researcher, disproving years of scientific study simply by writing hundreds of pages of holier-than-thou jargon laced with her signature know-it-all attitude.

And ah yes, the Weasley girl. She'd probably do something humble and almost respectable like her parents, perhaps go into the meat-packing industry. She's a natural born killer behind her innocent freckles and her introspective gaze; always has been, always will be. She would quell this desire by slaughtering lots and lots of cattle, and then she would marry a vegetarian. Probably Longbottom with his unnatural obsession with Herbology. He only pretends like he's interested in the ecology of all of those plants, but really it's just because he wants to eat them.

So it would be back to Potter - Potter the Brave as future historians would affectionately call him. Potter with medals and badges, trophies and women, yes. He would find lots of women. He would become a powerful, brooding figure and he would retreat into himself, too traumatized by all the bloodshed to be able to connect with anyone on a deeper level. First he would try a relationship with Luna Lovegood, but it would be doomed from the beginning. He wouldn't be able to appreciate the full extent of her eccentricities, but the point is he was destined to lead at least a shadow of a life after the death of Voldemort - not this.

Never this.

You move because you have to; there is only one set of footprints in the snow now and they are yours. Clumps of the icy, half-melted flakes suck at your feet when you trudge forward, and a scrap of red golden Happy Christmas wrapping paper clings to the soiled bottom of your boot. You've stepped on one of Voldemort's many morbid presents and you breathe in the clear smell of the afternoon air, and you wonder if the body with the poison gas in its lungs lies much farther away. Countless spatters of blood glare up at you from the whiteness on the ground; the overturned bodies cannot see you for themselves.

You've been trudging along for ages when your knees finally give out and you collapse with him still in your arms. The trip to the ground is a short one, and you sharply suck in a cool breath at the cold sting in your kneecaps. The chill rattles your teeth and freezes your tongue for at least a minute, you cannot be certain. Time has no meaning anymore.

Potter groans, his voice cracking with effort as you gently lay him down onto the tainted bed of snow. He stretches out on his back and looks past you, up to the tops of the trees. You're cold and it's quiet, but only because you don't want to hear anything else. You're focusing too hard on this Boy Who Lived because he will soon die in front of you. "Malfoy," he says when you move to stretch out next to him, eyes to the sky.

"What." The sun is blinding, but you don't care. The rest of the world is fucked anyway because none of this is supposed to be happening. You're not supposed to be here with him. You're supposed to be far away from here. Where are Granger and Weasley? Longbottom? Finnegan and Thomas? Why isn't anyone coming for you? You've shot locator sparks into the air at least a dozen times now.

"Tell me something nice. Something good."

But maybe you don't want them to come for you. Maybe you just want to lie there forever because what does it matter? You don't know what will happen to you anymore because nothing has gone according to plan.

At least you saw your father fall, that much you'd hoped would happen. But Dumbledore can't protect you from the grave; you were a fool to call him immortal. At least Potter will die with the knowledge that you tried to save him. You truly did switch sides in order to save your skin but maybe he'll die with doubt in mind as to whether that was the only reason. Maybe you want to talk and tell him these things, but you won't because you've always been a coward, and what's worse - you've always been afraid of him.

You sigh and lick your wind-chapped lips. "Last words, Potter."

He remains quiet for what feels like ages. But then -

"Listening."

"I don't owe you an apology for anything, but I'll give you the truth. I think you're a rotten, courageous fool, but I like you anyway," you say, and it suddenly occurs to you that you're more frightened than you've ever been before. This is harder than taking the mark, than facing death. You've freely used curses on other witches and wizards - many that you should be locked away for, and even when you did you weren't this terrified.

But you are now. The silence is longer this time, and you briefly wonder if he's dead. He isn't though, not yet. You can still sense him beside you.

"Yeah?" he coughs, and you feel him move a little. You should look at him, but you can't bring yourself to do so. You'd rather blind yourself than have to face the look of superiority in his eyes, even if it's only there for a passing second.

"Yes."

He stops breathing and you close your eyes. Your body feels heavy; you just want to go home.

You can picture a silver horseless carriage as the sobs wrack your body. Fat tears squeeze out from between your cold eyelashes as you succumb to exhaustion and dream of returning to what's left of your manor. Your parents are both dead now and the house should be yours, but no more house arrest, no more inheritance. You will die in prison because Dumbledore is gone.

So you dream of a return ride home that will never end and wait for them to find you. You're crying in your dream because Potter isn't with you and you're wheezing something awful. It's a sound you'll repeat when you're locked away and wasting away with madness.

Wee.

Wee.

Wee.