Be Careful
109: What You Despair Of
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on a floor of stone, his arms outstretched and his robes gone. The sky above him was streaked orange and black like a tiger’s hide, though the black was maneuvering to cover the orange as he watched.
Dawn of the dementors.
He sat up. The Great Hall was empty around him. His left arm was whole once more, though a probing finger found the link between flesh and ferecarne. He wore the same T-shirt and jeans he’d had on under his robes, but the string around his neck held only the velvet bag with the lock of Abby’s hair. The soul flask was a shattered memory on the floor beside him.
I don’t think it matters now. Not if that Killing Curse connected, and I can’t see how it could have missed. He rubbed the aching spot on his chest. This isn’t what I thought the afterlife would be like, but you don’t exactly get to pick.
A glowing sphere on one of the tables caught his eye, and he clambered to his feet, sliding across tabletops and benches to reach it. It was the orb Professor Dumbledore had used on the skyship, a lifetime ago, to create the Patronus fog powered by the singing of the school song. The silver mist within it was swirling in mad patterns, double spirals and miniature whirlwinds forming and falling apart as Draco watched. He sat down and placed his hands on it, as though he were taking his Divination O.W.L. again.
It may be morbid curiosity, but I still want to know.
“Show me,” he said. “Show me what’s been going on.”
The orb flashed once with light. When it cleared, a familiar and distressed voice was coming out of it. “But we have to go back! We forgot about Aunt Cecy! She’s still in the hospital wing where we took her after Draco went away!”
“Abby, you know our being up in the skyships is just a precaution.” Hermione was about to pat her little sister’s shoulder, but thought better of it after being treated to a famous Abigail Beauvoi Death Glare. “Aunt Cecy will be safe in the castle as long as the perimeter holds.” However long that is, said her face.
“No, she won’t! There are dementors getting in right now!” Abby stamped her foot. “And you don’t believe me, I can See you don’t! If you won’t help Aunt Cecy, I’ll do it myself!”
“I didn’t say I don’t believe you,” Hermione began, but broke off with a scream. “Abby!”
She was too late. Abby had already darted across the tiny room, snatched up one of the emergency broomsticks kept in every room in the skyship, and thrown herself out the window with it.
“Why couldn’t Mum and Dad have waited just six more months to start on Jenny?” Hermione moaned, pulling down a broom for herself and following her sister’s course gingerly as her reflexes attempted to cope with a new center of gravity. Far below, the thin silver line of Patronuses and wards shimmered back and forth, holding firm against the solid black onslaught of dementors.
For now... Draco groaned aloud, and the orb flashed again, as though to answer him. When it cleared, a different scene was playing within its depths. He peered at it, seeing only darkness at first, then recognizing a passage below the castle. A withered gray hand wielded a wand, and a one-eyed witch’s hump gaped. Two black-robed forms glided out of it and separated, one moving up the hallway, the other down.
Abby was right. Of course, when is she not? Except the last time, the one that mattered...
The orb flashed again. On the perimeter, Ron glanced over at Ray. “You think he’ll come through?”
“He’ll come through,” Ray said confidently.
“Because the prophecy said so?”
“No. Because I know him.”
“Yeah.” Ron turned his eyes skyward, where the ungainly ships hovered over Hogwarts. “Hermione’s out of it, anyway.”
Ray nodded, the thankfulness he would never voice flashing across his features for a split second. Clearly his earlier confidence was more a matter of wishing than fact.
“Less talk, more happiness,” called Professor Riddle’s calm voice from somewhere down the line.
Both boys turned back to their Patronuses, their foreheads wrinkled as they tried to think of good memories they hadn’t yet used.
Used up would be more like, and they’ll never have a chance to get more...
The orb flashed. Mum lay in a bed in the hospital wing, the crease between her brows that only appeared when she was thinking or worrying very hard. Down the ward lay the body of Severus Snape, its only movement the automatic rise and fall of the chest. The lamps on the walls were beginning to dim.
She’s going to be Kissed, and I can’t stop it this time. At least his soul got away when the flask broke...
Flash. Abby stood in a hallway in front of Hermione, the younger witch’s hands out in a “Stop where you are” gesture. Hermione had her wand half-raised, but judging by the residue of silver feathers now disintegrating around the fringes of the black robes floating in front of the sisters, her Patronus had been less than effective.
She can’t get any closer, or she risks losing her baby. I don’t know if she can cast a Warrior or not, or if it would even do any good...
Draco wanted to scream, wanted to howl in anger and throw the orb across the Hall. What was it all for? he demanded silently, watching Abby watch the dementor. What was it for, if I was going to die at the last second like this, before I could save the people I love the most, and then have to watch them all go down without even being able to help them?
“I know what you’re feeling,” Abby said, her voice shaking, and Draco had the oddest feeling that she was speaking both to the waiting dementor and to him. “I know what you want. You want everyone to feel as afraid and alone as you do. You want the whole world to be dark. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
The raspy breathing paused. Then a single word was spoken, malformed and difficult to understand but unmistakably a word.
“Yes...”
“No, it doesn’t!” Abby shut her eyes and opened them again. “I can See you,” she said. “Both of you. I already knew you were a wise dementor, there’s no other way you could speak to me, but now I know for sure. And that means you can’t take my soul away, because you have an extra soul already.”
“Another...” the dementor breathed.
“I know, there’s another one of you here,” Abby said with a matter-of-fact nod. “He’s not wise. He could take my soul away and make me one of you. But you won’t call him, will you?”
“Yes...”
“No, you won’t.” Abby’s face was paler every second, and she reached behind her to clasp Hermione’s hand, but her voice stayed steady. “Because I know who you were. One of your souls, anyway. You would have been my godfather if you’d been there when I was born. I know the darkness has had you for a long time and it can make you do mostly what it wants, but I was always taught you were a hero. A hero wouldn’t let a dementor take his goddaughter’s soul away, no matter how hard he had to fight.”
Draco sucked air through his teeth. Nice try, Abby, but it doesn’t work like that...
“Expecto patronum emeritum!” Hermione shouted, and her hawk Patronus streaked free of her wand and attacked the dementor with beak and talons. The dementor tried to defend against the strikes, but its swipes at the bird were feeble, as though it were fighting not only the Warrior but itself. Abby buried her face in Hermione’s shoulder, shaking, as silver feathers and black cloth flew.
It isn’t enough. It can’t be. Or if it is, it doesn’t matter, because the other dementor will come along after taking Mum’s soul and hold them both there with their own fear until the perimeter breaks and the next two in line come for them.
Draco let his hands slip off the orb and put his head down on the table, succumbing to the black despair he’d been trying to avoid with his friends’ faces and voices. He’d failed, failed not just a little but completely and irrevocably. His birth world would be saved, but it would have been even if he’d never meddled in its affairs, and this world, the world he loved, was going to drown under a tidal wave of darkness.
All because I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I had to throw that one last log on the fire, telling Father about Hermione. Why did I do it? Why? I knew it would drive him mad, he’d never be able to stand having a Mudblood as his heir, but why couldn’t I see it would send him looking for her to kill her?
A shuddering sob escaped him. If I’d never said it, I’d have got to Luna while everyone was watching Mrs. Weasley duel Aunt Bella. Luna still had her wand, she could have worked the dream-trance spell in an instant. We’d have been home free, I’d be beating the dementors now, and everything would be all right.
Instead it’s all wrong, and it can’t ever get any better. You don’t get a second prophecy if your first one fails, and there wouldn’t be anyone left to hear it or carry it out anyway. No one will even come to be with me here, I’ll always be alone, because the dementors will keep their souls, and dementors live forever...
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to everyone and no one. “I tried.” Another sob closed his throat for a second. “I guess some people aren’t meant to be heroes. They’re just meant...” He had to swallow hard before he could go on. “They’re just meant to die.”
Suppose I might as well see how that happened. I don’t remember much of it.
He pushed himself upright and laid his hands on the orb once more. “Show me,” he commanded again. “Show me what went on there. Slowly.”
The swirls of mist cleared away to reveal the crowded Great Hall, his father holding tightly to his prosthetic and his robes, Voldemort opening his mouth to speak the Killing Curse. In slow motion, the white lips formed the two words, and as they did, movement started elsewhere in the Hall. At an angle to Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter pulled off his Invisibility Cloak and aimed the wand he’d won from Draco at the Dark wizard, his own lips moving in a different set of syllables.
He’s trying for a Disarmer. Hoping to save me, maybe, or just taking advantage of Voldemort looking another way. Draco grinned in spite of himself. Very Slytherin of you, Harry. Keep it up.
Motion near his own figure drew his eye away from the burst of green now gathering at the tip of the Elder Wand. Two individual figures were moving very near him, and a slightly larger group a short distance away.
What... who is that?
Fascinated, Draco adjusted his point of view so that he could clearly see the spell each person was casting. Ron, behind him and to the right, had thrown a Cutting Charm—
And sure enough, there go my robes. A little more to the left would’ve been better, though, you’d have caught Father’s hand then.
Hermione, on his left, fired a Relashio at—
Why is she aiming that at me? What good’s it going to—
Draco’s mouth fell open as his miniature self in the orb staggered sideways, leaving Lucius clutching nothing but a torn set of robes and a hunk of ferecarne.
She knocked it off me! I remember now, I told her how it worked while we were cementing the blood-bond, what made it stick and what would get it off—
Lucius was staring dumbfounded at the objects in his hands; he hadn’t yet noticed that a Killing Curse was bearing down on him at high velocity. As Draco followed that curse back towards its originator, he saw Harry’s Disarmer speeding towards Voldemort’s right shoulder, its angle of attack somehow familiar.
It’s the same one he hit me at in the Room of Requirement. The one that threw me back against the wall head-first, hard enough to hurt even with padding. And I said, if it had been a real stone wall—
A few steps away, Neville and Ginny flung forward the person they were holding between them. It was Luna. She careened across the floor, slammed chest-to-chest with the stumbling Draco, and wrapped her left hand around his right, while her own right hand brought her wand to bear and her lips moved in a sequence Draco found eerily familiar.
Alucino. The dream-trance spell. Merlin’s beard and boots, does that mean—it can’t be—
The Draco and Luna in the orb disappeared. A fraction of a second later, Voldemort’s Killing Curse blasted into Lucius’ unprotected chest, and an instant after that, the Disarmer Harry had thrown sent Voldemort reeling backwards, his wand flying high in the air. His head hit the wall with a sound like an overripe melon, his neck bent at an angle distinctly unnatural for necks, and Harry took one step forward and caught the Elder Wand neatly in his palm as it dropped.
Draco lifted his hands from the orb and glared around the Hall. “Someone,” he said with all the emphasis he could muster on short notice, “was having me on. And when I catch them, they are going to catch it.” Luna’s distinctive giggle floated back to him, and he grinned. “But first...”
But first, it’s time to do what I thought I’d failed at doing.
And now I finally know how.
One last time he planted his hands on the orb. “Show me,” he told it. “Show me the dementors.”
Multiple pictures flickered into life. The perimeter, wavering but still holding. The battle in the corridor where Abby and Hermione huddled, almost over by the faintness of Hermione’s hawk. The hospital wing, where a dementor hesitated in the doorway, as though drawn by the scent of food but unwilling to go any farther.
No problem. None of you are going any farther.
Not while I’m here.
Shutting his eyes, Draco found words for what he had just seen in the orb.
We made it out. We got away in time. I never have to go back there and pretend to be something I’m not, not ever again.
And I’m alive.
His hands tightened on the orb as the joy of that knowledge flooded through him, shaking him where he sat, rushing in his ears and his veins until he was astounded he was still flesh and blood and bone. It didn’t seem possible for one heart to contain so much.
I’d better let some of it out, then.
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and lifted his head.
“Expecto patronum emeritum,” he said clearly and distinctly.
A pulse of silver light began at the center of the orb and shot outwards, through Draco, through the tables, through the walls. He peered eagerly into the orb and saw it taking effect in the pictures as well. The dementor waiting at the hospital wing door was swept away; the one dropping the last few feathers of Hermione’s Warrior was overwhelmed and collapsed into two shining piles of light; the perimeter was suddenly unnecessary as all the dementors surrounding Hogwarts were shoved back as if by a snowplow, and the individual Patronuses bounded towards the light and joined themselves to it, leaving their creators standing bewildered at the castle’s boundary walls as the glory of the dawn burst over them with the dementors’ darkness gone.
They’ll figure it out soon enough. Even as the words formed in Draco’s mind, Ray bolted for the castle, Ron and Harry on his heels. I want to see who Abby spotted inside that wise dementor.
Draco focused his attention on the girls in the hallway, and discovered them both smiling at a small man with a quiet look and a mousy face. “Tell your father I said hi,” the not-quite-ghost instructed them, and vanished with a smile of his own. Abby gave a glad little sob and threw her arms around Hermione, who hugged her back fiercely.
Stupid me. Of course that’s who Moony’d have asked if he’d still been around. At least now we know he’s free. All the rest of them, too. No more wise dementors, not now, possibly not ever if Auntie Isabelle was the only one who knew how to make them...
Abby let go of Hermione and took off running down the hall, her face gleeful. Draco spun around, jumped up, and was at the door waiting when she charged through. “Got you!” he shouted, suiting action to word. “Thought you could sneak in on me, did you?”
“Nooooooo—” Abby shrieked with joy as Draco swung her in two complete circles and tossed her onto his shoulder, running down one aisle and up the next with her.
“What are you doing with my sister?” demanded Hermione, arriving breathlessly in the door Abby had used.
“Same thing I’m about to do with you!” Draco pulled her into a bear hug with his free arm. “Celebrating!”
“I like celebrating!” Hermione hugged him back, getting an arm around Abby as well, who was wriggling in uncontrollable happiness. “Let’s do it a lot more!”
“Hey!” protested Ray, barreling in through the door from the entrance hall. “That’s my sister you’re doing things to!”
“And my wife!” added Ron over his shoulder. “I should be the one doing things to her!”
“Come join the party, then!” Hermione caroled. “Plenty for everyone!”
Ron made an outrageously worried face. “I don’t like the way that sounds...”
Hermione bounced down the hall and shut Ron’s mouth for him as Ray ran up to engulf Draco in a back-slapping hug and spin Abby around a few times himself.
“Way to leave it till the last second, Malfoy,” said Harry, dodging around the Weasley clinch in the doorway.
“You should talk!”
After that, individual memories refused to form in Draco’s mind. More and more people poured in from the perimeter and the now docked skyships, and all of them wanted to see him, touch him, tell him how wonderful what he’d done was, but he kept looking around for the one person he wanted most to see, the one who didn’t come...
At last she came, and the crowd quieted and parted to let her through, and Draco Malfoy closed his arms around Cecilia Black. “I did it, Mum,” he whispered into her ear. “I won.”
“I never doubted you would,” she told him.
In that moment he knew that she never had, and that he had not failed because it was unthinkable that her faith should be misplaced. “We did it,” he corrected himself. “Together.”
“So we did.” Mum smiled up at him. “So we did.” She rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I love you so much.”
“I know.” Draco drew her close once more. “That’s the only reason I made it through.”
Locked in their embrace, mother and son stood silent in the center of their world. Soon they would look outward, seek others to join in their happiness and make it greater, but for this moment, they were sufficient unto themselves, and life was very good.
So there it is. Not much more to tell now, just the elaborations on the happy ending, and a few jokes I kept in reserve. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, and I also hope FD can come out as well as this seems to have done!