Title: Path Between the Stars
Author: Cher )
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
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Notes: Yet more angst. Yet more deathfic. Passing reference to seasons; it got away from me. Sorry.
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When the world ended, it was a photograph that wished him well.
Draco had never heard of a photograph that could talk, and wondered if he was delirious. He wondered for a moment measured in years as the Manor broke apart around him. There were Aurors like a swarm of insects taking apart Draco's world, and the thoughts came slowly. The wall next to him exploded, and he decided it was just that Potter would break rules wherever he found them, and why not the rules about photographs too?
"I could have loved you, Malfoy," Potter said to him, his expression that stoic Gryffindorish one that used to infuriate Draco so. He'd broken that rule, too. "I would have followed you, you know. If you'd asked. I still would."
Draco blinked at the picture, falling back into memory when the flames started to close in.
Leaving Ball. Damned Creevey with his ever-present camera and never- fading obsession with Harry. The creep had managed to sneak a picture of the two of them together, the union that should have split the world. Maybe it had. Maybe that's what happened after the ball.
But. The picture, just for that fleeting moment Creevey had stolen from time. In the picture, Draco was something he'd never been before or since. He was looking at Harry, laughing at some stupid inane thing Potter had said. He looked happy. Potter looked happy. They were Malfoy and Potter, lifelong rivals, with their arms slung around each other on a night that would change the world. Their eyes in the picture were bright and clear, shining.
Draco remembered the kiss that had followed moments after, the only piece of his life he held in any regard. The two of them had been incandescent together, laughing and high on the way their magic seemed to want to meld around them. There was something in their bloodlines that wanted to push them together, something in the way the magic ran in their veins that made logic of their lunacy and lust of their rivalry.
He'd wondered, after, on winter nights that froze him into the Ice Prince his housemates had accused him of being so long ago. He'd wondered what might have happened if he'd refused to let go of that alien glow of happiness that night. He'd wondered if the world might not have ended if he'd held tight to Harry and his magic.
But he hadn't, and it did, and he cried the first and last tears of his life when the flames swallowed Harry's last words.
"I would have followed you, Draco."
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