Chapter Text
The air in the gallery above the Great Hall was thick, saturated with stone dust and that sickening, metallic stench of blood that simply wouldn't stop flowing. I was collapsed next to a granite pillar, my palms pressed so hard against my ears that I felt the bones of my skull cracking under the pressure. I was trying to block out the screams not the ones echoing through the castle, but the ones inside my own head.
A violent spasm wrenched my shoulders and I leaned to the side, retching a bitter, yellow liquid onto the cold floor. My stomach twisted like an iron fist, as if it were trying to expel not just the fear, but life itself from within me.
Bellatrix was dead. I had felt the exact moment. The blood bond had snapped with a dull thud in my brain, a burst of darkness that extinguished itself in a second. A part of me wanted to laugh; a wild, hysterical, and utterly guilty joy tickled my throat, which was already raw from vomiting. The monster was gone. But the terror that followed was a wave of ice: if she, the most loyal and cruel of them all, could be crushed like an insect, what chance did I stand? What chance did my parents have, lost somewhere in the chaos below?
Where was my godfather when I needed him? He was supposed to be here, he had promised we would meet here to convince me that what I intended to do will only lead to an unnecessary sacrifice. Where were you, Severus? My head began to throb, and I felt myself starting to disconnect from reality. Yes, Severus. Focus, Draco. Severus
The visions crashed down upon me like a ceiling of shattered glass. I saw Snape, over and over again, in a pool of blood widening beneath his slashed throat. "It's not true. Visions lie," I told myself, as another wave of nausea made me stagger. But the taste of his blood was already on my tongue, a flavor of wormwood and death that no Seer can ignore.
Suddenly, a voice that seemed to rise from the depths of hell tore through the air:
"HARRY POTTER IS DEAD!"
My heart stopped. It simply refused to beat for a second that felt like a century. The silence that followed was more painful than any Cruciatus Curse. I crawled on my stomach toward the edge of the balcony, my fingers scratching the stone, leaving tracks of dust and sweat.
I looked down into the courtyard. Hagrid was advancing like a collapsed mountain, and in his arms in his arms was Harry. He looked so small. So fragile. So still.
But then it happened. The moment my eyes locked onto him, my chest began to burn. It wasn't the hollow ache of loss. It was an electric tension, an invisible silver thread stretching between us, vibrating at a frequency only my soul could hear.
It was ticking. Harry’s heart was still ticking, a hidden rhythm beneath his ashen skin.
"You're alive, you bastard," I thought, and for the first time tonight, I didn't want to throw up anymore. Instead, I felt a cold fury and a razor sharp clarity.
My head pounds again, a horrific pain signaling my imminent collapse. I try, with the last shreds of my willpower, to raise the Occlumency barriers, to stop the wave that is about to engulf me, but it's useless. I am a sand dike standing against an ocean of nightmares.
The visions pour over me, blurring into the cruel reality of the gallery. I see Harry dueling Voldemort beneath a sky of ash. I see Harry collapsed, his body covered in cuts so deep I can count his heartbeats. Another image tears at my chest: Harry kissing Ginny in a world where I am nothing but a bitter memory. And then, the most terrible of all: Harry dead, those green eyes staring fixedly into an infinity where I failed to save him.
Which one is reality? Which is the truth among all these destinies crashing into one another inside my mind?
I feel the answer burning through my consciousness. Harry has multiple possible futures for one simple reason: the enormous magical power he possesses and, above all, the involvement of a Seer. I am the variable that can tip the scales. I am the one who can decide which of these images will come to life.
I know he needs me. I can feel the void left behind by the Horcrux destroyed by its own creator, Harry is pure now, but he is weakened a warrior left without armor in the face of the greatest evil.
And I know something else, a truth that hurts more than any vision: he hates me. He probably wishes that once this war is over, I will cease to exist. That I will vanish back into the shadows from whence I came.
"I will grant you your wish, Harry," I whispered, feeling the tears mix with the dust on my cheeks.
If he never wants to see me again, so be it. I will give him everything I have. Now is the moment to show him that I am by his side, that I have always been, even when I wore the mask of the enemy. He needs strength a whole core to feed his depleted magic.
I stood up, leaving the nausea and panic behind. If this act of love means erasing myself from the world, it is a price I pay with pride. It is time to give him the victory he deserves.
A cold, sharp clarity floods my mind, banishing for a moment the nausea that had been consuming me. Amidst the chaotic visions tearing through my consciousness, a memory crystallized, clear as a diamond: those yellowed pages, hidden in the darkest shelves of the Black Library, smelling of old parchment and magic that demands a blood price.
The Core Transfer.
It was not a spell for the weak. It was a sacrifice, a form of blood magic that only soulmates could invoke in pivotal moments, right where life and death merge. It was the way one soul could pour itself into another, offering everything it possessed: magic.
I was no longer that crying boy hiding in the girls' bathroom, trembling with fear over a task he couldn't carry out. I was no longer my father’s puppet, nor the Dark Lord’s servant.
I was a Black. My blood carried the curse and the gift of sight, it carried the fury of generations of wizards who had never feared the dark. I was a Seer who now knew, with absolute certainty, that the future depended on me.
And above all, I was a man in love. A forbidden love, ragged from war, but so real it burned through my veins hotter than any curse.
"I can do this," I whispered, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
My gaze locked onto Harry down in the courtyard. The green pulse of his soul, which only I could feel, was weaka fading distress signal. He needed strength. He needed my core.
If the price was my own magic, my own life, then I would pay it with my head held high. For the first time in my life, I was going to do something I could truly be proud of. I was going to give everything to the boy who had stolen my heart, even if it meant I would be left as nothing but a corpse.
The silence in the Viaduct Courtyard was broken only by the crackle of flames consuming the remnants of the bridge. Voldemort stood in the center, a pale god of death, gazing with satisfaction at the crowd of frozen students.
"Draco!" came the smooth, cruel voice of the Dark Lord.
I stepped out from the rubble, feeling the stone dust beneath my boots and the freezing morning air on my face. I was pale, my gaze fixed, but to my surprise, I was no longer trembling. All the previous panic had vanished, replaced by a cold resolve.
Voldemort sneered, a grotesque expression on his snake like face, and extended a claw like hand toward me, inviting me into his hell.
"Come, Draco. Come celebrate the victory. Your family is whole again. Your father will be proud."
I heard his smooth, cruel voice, but his words no longer held any power over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Father and Mother. They were gesturing to me desperately from the sidelines, pale, their eyes wide with horror, pleading with their eyes for me to cross over to their side, to save myself.
But I didn't look at them. I couldn't anymore.
My eyes were fixed on a single point: the lifeless body in Hagrid’s arms.
I could feel the bond between us vibrating in every cell of my body, a silent cry of agony and hope that sent shivers down my spine. Harry was there. Harry was alive. I could feel the pulse of his soul, but his magic was like a damp wick, a flame on the verge of burning out forever under the weight of the Killing Curse he had taken. He was running out of time. I was running out of time.
I smiled. It wasn't my arrogant, sneering smile of old, but a sad, final one the smile of a man who knows he has absolutely nothing left to lose.
"No," I said clearly, my voice ringing out unexpectedly loud across the smoking ruins. "I have not come to celebrate."
In front of everyone, before the Dark Lord and his entire army, I yanked up my left sleeve with a jerk, exposing the Dark Mark. With a sudden, violent, almost blind motion, I drove the tip of my own wand straight into the soft flesh of my forearm, right into the heart of the skull etched into my skin.
A cry of pure, visceral pain escaped my teeth, and my knees buckled for a split second. Blood began to pour in streams dark, dense, and burning hot, fueled by the dark magic of the curse on my arm. But I didn't stop. I twisted my wand deep into the wound, tearing the flesh, drawing as much blood as I could onto the stone floor to begin the spell, letting my magical core merge with the physical sacrifice.
"HARRY!" I screamed with all my might, a shattered voice that no longer sounded like my own. "CATCH!"
I saw Harry catch the wand mid air, rising suddenly like a ghost from the giant’s arms, and within a fraction of a second, everything around us turned into pure chaos. Curses of every color began to tear through the air, the shrieks of the Death Eaters filled the courtyard, but I had to remain anchored in the middle of this storm of death.
I had to focus only on the ritual. On the Latin words burning my throat which, with every spoken syllable, were slowly emptying my soul, pumping my life directly into him.
I cast a Protego with the very last shred of my personal magic, hoping it will hold long enough, though I can feel the barrier trembling under the external assault. The Latin words, learned from the darkest manuscripts of my family, leave my lips as if they had always been a part of me. The blood streaming down my arm, mixed with the magic of my core, begins to glow with a spectral green light, pulsing to the rhythm of my exhausted heart.
I smile faintly, feeling a bitter satisfaction. It’s working.
I speak the incantation with growing confidence, feeling the very center of my being detach and begin its transfer toward him. In the next instant, my shield shatters under a violent impact, and I feel a Crucio hit me dead on but I feel nothing. The physical pain is a mere whisper compared to the hurricane raging inside me. “Thank you, Aunt Bella, for the torture you put me through,” I think with a bloody grin. “You made me immune to pain exactly when I needed it most.”
My chants do not stop. I continue to recite, my fingers dug deep into the open wound on my arm, drawing the warm blood to trace the symbols of the transfer onto the cold stone. I hear curses exploding around me and brace myself to take the hits that should kill me, but they never come.
I lift my head and see them. Father and Mother are standing in front of me, like two cliffs facing the sea, sacrificing themselves to buy me the seconds I need. I won't let them perish here. Quickly, I force the Legilimacy connection and enter their minds, never stopping my chanting:
"Don’t stay here!" I scream in their minds, my mental voice a howl of desperation. "If you are caught, you will be sent to Azkaban for treason! Leave!"
"I am not leaving my son here to die!" Mother screams back in my mind, her voice filled with a ferocity I have never felt from her before, as she raises a shield over us.
"Please!" I beg, feeling my vision begin to blur. "I’ve prepared a Portkey in the Manor, in my room, under the bed, it will take you to safety, far away from all of this. I cannot have you on my conscience, I’m begging you, leave while you still can!"
I feel a cold, calm presence touch my consciousness. It’s Father. For the first time, I feel his unfiltered pride, stripped of any aristocratic mask.
"Narcissa, listen to your son," he says, with a sad smile that tears my heart apart. "He has already decided what he wants to do... and I am proud of him."
Then a gasp escapes Mother, and she seeks refuge in my father's arms, who shields her and, I hope, takes her where they need to be. I struggle to finish the spell until I feel two other figures beside me, and I pray with all my soul that it isn't my parents who have changed their minds. I raise my head as the words pour from my mouth and I see Granger and Weasley.
"You need to stop, I don't know what you're doing, but you're going to die at this rate, Malfoy!" Granger shouts as she casts a shield and tries to stop me.
I feel something hot and viscous begin to trickle from my eyes, my nose, and my ears. The world blurs into a reddish halo, and when I taste the metallic, salty tang in my mouth, I understand. It's blood. The pressure of the magic leaving my body is so immense that it is rupturing my blood vessels, but I don't stop. I have so little left to go.
"He's insane, Hermione! It's dark magic!" Weasley yells somewhere to my left.
His voice sounds cracked, distorted by the din of battle, but despite his words full of scorn, I see him throw himself in front of a curse cast by an anonymous Death Eater, protecting me with his own body.
"If you die, Harry is going to kill us for letting you!" he continues, shouting mostly to drown out his own fear.
In that exact moment, I feel the final barrier of my core give way for good. It was as if a massive dam had burst inside me, a barrier that had kept my soul intact until now. Everything I ever was drains through my mind: the memories of Mother singing to me in French, the foolish pride of bearing the Malfoy name, the rush of adrenaline from my first Quidditch victory, and, above all else, the image of Harry's green eyes that haunted me every night.
I felt Harry at the other end of our soul bond. It was a divine sensation, like a breath of fresh air to lungs that had been drowning for far too long. My power, my pure essence, poured into him like a river of fire, repairing his torn aura and giving him the necessary spark for the final blow.
I uttered the final words of the incantation, a bloody whisper that sealed my fate. I feel my heart slowing down, beating less and less frequent, heavier, until it reaches a dangerous rhythm that heralds the end.
The world began to go dark, the edges of reality dissolving into blackness. I heard Granger and Weasley shouting my name, but their voices seemed to come from somewhere underwater, muffled and distant.
The last thing I saw before my knees buckled and I collapsed into the void was Harry. He had stood up in the middle of the ruins. He was no longer a dying boy, no longer a victim; he was a god of vengeance, imposing and fearless. And my wand, which he gripped in his hand, glowed with a white, blinding light that no darkness in this world could ever extinguish.
“Your turn, Potter,” I thought, feeling the cold floor welcome me into its stone embrace. “Be happy.”