Safe and Sound

“We’ve got an hour,” Draco murmured, sitting down on the table next to me. He placed his hand on the inside of my thigh, rubbing it with his thumb. I placed my hand over his, linking our fingers, squeezing. “An hour for Harry to turn himself in. You need to find him.”

“He’ll find me.” Draco nodded, looking down at the ground. Muffled sobs and pain were all that could be heard through the great hall. People were pulling sheets over bodies, wounding cuts that tore the flesh and brushing rubble out of the way to sit and pull together. “Harry always finds me. Thank you for helping me, with um, you know.”

“I’ve never had a sibling,” he said dully, looking out where the Weasley family were mourning over their fallen brother and son. Draco looked away from it, his eyes finding mine. “You were the only person that I was ever close to, and I’m in love with you. So I don’t know what it’s like to have a fallen brother or sister, but…” he shrugged then.

“You know you had to help.”

“When you left,” Draco said carefully. “I knew why you left. You couldn’t watch your brother die. I didn’t get it at first and I wanted to hate you, but I can’t hate you. You don’t just hate someone you’re in love with, even when they leave you.”

“Does it help at all if I tell you it was the most sickening thing I’ve ever done?”

“No. I never want you to feel like that.”

At that moment, Harry, Ron and Hermione barged into the great hall. I looked up at them, my heart stopping. Ron had looked tired at first, and then he looked up, his gaze zeroing in on his brother and his family. Horror lanced across his face, the color draining completely.

It was the kind of thing that I would have nightmares about, I knew. The horror around me was what would haunt me. Not the fighting, not the terror of curses flying around. But the aftermath, the broken bodies, the broken souls, the destruction of it all. It was something straight out of a dream.

Silently I watched my own brother’s face as he looked down, unable to figure out what it was he could say to Ron. There was nothing to say. Harry had lost almost everyone he had ever known. I was his only remaining family. He already knew how Ron was feeling.

“Why do you think they Dark Lord only wants Harry?” Draco asked quietly. He brought my attention back to the conversation at hand. I lifted a single shoulder. “Because I’m not Harry. I may be the girl who lived but it was always about Harry, always about the boy. I was just an inconvenience at most, that night Voldemort killed my parents.”

“You’re not an inconvenience.”

“Most people would disagree. I am the Potter twin no one knows what to do with, Draco. Don’t look at me like that either; I don’t pity myself. It’s true and I’m okay with that. I just have to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”

“I think you’re supposed to help your brother. Maybe you’re not an inconvenience. Maybe you’re an instrument, a linchpin.”

I rolled the word over in my mind. Linchpin. Sometimes it was just a part. Other times it was a person who was crucial to an operation, to something. I never thought of myself as a key player the fight against the darkness, but somehow I was. Even though I had fought on the wrong side for most of my life and made a shaky, complete turn around, people around me didn’t glare at me as I passed by. They didn’t look at me like it was my fault. They looked at me as if they were relieved.

“Linchpin,” I repeated, looking up, a light bulb going off. “I’m not the right twin, but I am a twin, correct?” Draco looked like he wasn’t following. I stood up, kissing him on the brow hard. “I’m a Potter twin, which means Harry has got a back up. I have to talk to my brother, I’ll find you after, alright?”

Hurrying to my brother, I paused to touch Ron on the shoulder. He looked at me through tear stained eyes and reached his hand up to me, touching fingers with me. “Thank you for carrying him.”

Unable to respond through a tight throat, I nodded. We let the connection go as I hurried to Harry, who was speaking quietly to Hermione. I touched him on the shoulder and he turned to me, pulling me into an embrace. I hugged him hard, clinging to him for a minute before stepping away. “Can we talk?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re going to think this is crazy.”

He glanced at Hermione. “I think that we could use a little bit of crazy. Come with me. We can talk after I look at something in Dumbledore’s office.”

“Agreed.”

*

“Did you know I was going to have to do this?” I was standing in the very dark, very cold room. I had only been to Headmaster’s office once. Now it seemed just as dark and dreary as I felt. It made me uncomfortable, knowing that I was standing in the office that had belonged to him before it belonged to Snape. I had a hand in his murder, and I felt as if it were unkind of me to enter the room. “To die?”

“I only guessed,” I admit. “You could hear the horcruxes- I could too. I could always feel that connection to him.”

“But you don’t, not even right now?”

“No. When he sent the message out, it didn’t hurt like it used to. It was just… normal. I haven’t felt it since- you know.”

“You died and then came back.” I nodded. Harry licked his lips and let out a breath of air. I hugged myself, not sure what else to offer him. It was an insane idea and it could very well get him killed. But Harry and I both knew that the only way for this to work was for him to go to Voldemort and let Voldemort kill him. “Do you think this is going to work?”

“With my luck? No. But with yours…” I shook my head, giving him a soft but sad smile and shrugged my shoulders. “Yes. You’ve got bad luck but you’ve got the best damn luck in the world for who you are. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what I know anymore.”

“Know that whatever happens, it’s going to be okay. There are two of us and one of him. Even when we were split apart and I was brainwashed, you always overcame him. You will still overcome him, and when you can overcome him no more, I will overcome him.”

Harry didn’t say anything for a long time. While he thought about his response, I looked around the room. Snapes touches were not obvious. I wondered if he even used the office, knowing what I now knew. He had been the biggest linchpin of it all, and it had all been in the name of my mother. Snape had loved Lily Potter to his end.

In a world filled with hatred, it seemed that all anyone could do was love someone until their end. My parents had loved my brother and I to their end. Dumbledore had loved Harry and the students to his end. Remus and Tonks had loved one another to both of their ends. It seemed that the only thing that never ended was the death, the body count.

Loving people to an end was nothing more than a means of an end. The thought made me sick, knowing that I would love Draco to an end. I would die for Draco. I would die for Harry. I would die for my friends. But it was just a different way to die. Was it sacrifice if you were meant to die someday anyways?

“I have to do this,” Harry agreed, nodding his head. He put his hands in his pocket, forming a thin line with is mouth. His face was covered in dirt, glasses cracked and caked in dirt. “I don’t know any other way.”

“Neither do I.” We stood there for a moment before I felt my lip begin to tremble. I looked at the ground, wondering what would happen if it didn’t work. My throat constricted and I felt a tightness in my chest. My eyes burned with tears and I it my lip, knowing I was very will sending off Harry to his death which he may or may not return from. I rushed to him, hugging him. We squeezed one another. “I’ll hold them. But you better come back, understand? I will hold them.”

“That’s all you have to do.”

“You’re going to tell Hermione and Ron, right?”

He nodded, stepping back away from me. “I think she already knows.” I nodded. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to find Draco. I’m going to need him standing next to me if I’m going to try and do what you do. People seem to follow you without much convincing. It’s going to take a lot of effort on my part.”

“Don’t worry. You’re a Potter. You’ll do it.”

I nodded. “Come on, it’s time.”

“It’s time,” Harry agreed.”