Light

Light

He was a vision in white, pale hair glowing in the half light of the cold sun, flaring out around his face like a halo. His eyes, pale grey like tainted icicles, were filled with a mingling of fear and determination, and he held his head high like a prince. The pale, anaemic skin seemed faintly luminescent and made him look still more ethereal, as close to a ghost as a living man could get. The white robes completed the travesty, for he was as far from angel as man can be.

His opposite number was far less elegant, and much more alive. Shorter, but more robust, he seemed a lot more real. Eyes the colour of wet grass shone with righteous anger and hatred, and his whole body seemed to glow with animal vitality. His coal black hair was plastered to his skull by the morning's rain, and his face was streaked with mud. Something about the carriage of his limbs suggested that he might be tired, but he was still eager, almost snarling at the man before him, his anger bearing him on.

Draco Malfoy - for it was he - said nothing. He stood solid, his questionable bravery not deserting him now, when he faced a man with more power than he would ever know, with more experience despite being the younger. He stood silent, knowing almost certainly that whatever words he said would be his last. He did not want to have trite words attributed to him forever, even in his death. He stood firm, though he knew that all was lost, because he had nothing in the world now except an idea, and all he could think to do was defend that idea with his life.

His enemy, Harry Potter, did not see the need for silence. He did not feel as Draco did, and he could not know that he would taint the other's death with his words. His anger rendered him more insensitive than usual, driving him insanely onwards, even to maim, even to kill. His motivation of so many years was gone, and all he was left with now was a face from his past and an idea to which he still so desperately tried to cleave. He said, making every word a challenge:

"It's all lost, Draco, you know that?"

Draco just jerked his head in affirmation. He did not want to speak. He knew that his enemy wanted to kill him, and he did not understand why that death should need to be postponed. It was all lost. He had seen his foes kill everyone; destroy everything he had ever held dear. There was nothing left for him now. He knew that his Master had given power to Harry; he knew that he could never compete - that he never had been able to compete. But he knew also that he could never give in, and so he knew that he had to die.

"You won't do any good," Harry continued, his exasperation at his bedraggled enemy's determination showing through. "It's over. Why not give up? Why not come quietly?"

It was that arrogance that made Draco break his silence. He couldn't bear to hear his actions belittled so, to be thought of as merely stubborn. The words left him in a rush:

"If it was the other way round, what would you say? If everything you'd ever known was gone, and there was nothing left in the world for you, and someone stood there, offering you life if you would just betray your principles, what would you do? If I told you that you would be shown mercy if you worshipped at the feet of my Lord, what would your answer be?"

For just a moment, the green glare softened, as if in understanding. "I would say no," Harry replied. He paused, and then went on, hotly, "But it's not the same!"

"Isn't it?" breathed Draco, and in those words were the seeds of doubt born. "You have your answer," he went on. A flash of lightning burst unbidden and uncontrolled from the end of his wand as he raised it. It was no spell, just raw power, the last thing he had left to fight off an opponent he would never be able to beat.

Harry dodged the burst, and then stood back upright to face his enemy. There was a look of satisfaction marring his face. Here - facing a man who would not run, too stubbornly devoted to a misguided ideal to back down, determined to die for his misplaced faith - he was on his own ground. He raised his own wand to the challenge. He scorned spoken spells; the light that issued was just a manifestation of his desire.

Draco never knew, then, what the spell was that caught him and flung him to earth. He was winded, and gasped vainly for breath. His body was failing, his breath drawn from him and held away. The light was fading away and his blood slowing painfully. His dying, terrified mind registered the thought that the spell that had hit him needs must have been dark. He did not even feel surprised.

The killer stared down at the body for a moment, as if afraid that he was not really dead. It was only after several minutes in which the other did not move that it finally hit him that his enemy of old was gone. Seven years of mutual hatred came down to this - an unspoken curse and a limp, pale body on a damp, bloodstained field. It was strange, he thought, that killing Draco should affect him in a way that killing Voldemort had not. But then, the Dark Lord was a monster. Draco, his lieutenant, was only human still, and a familiar face on a cooling body was never a sight he could look on and remain untouched.

People came and went around him but he did not notice them. His only focus now was on this patch of white light in the darkness, on a boy who might well have been so much like him, if he had only bothered to find out. He had always imagined them to be so very different, but it was obvious to him now that that was not the case. The light of Draco's costume mocked him, and the darkness of the mud beckoned him, and he slumped to the ground, in a dead faint from sheer exhaustion.