#malfoid The moment after the fall of Tom Riddle The green light faded and Voldemort hit the flags with the hollow, unceremonious thud of a dropped side of beef. The Hall was silent. The fighting had stopped. Draconia stalked towards Harry, directly across the room, and didn’t break stride. She planted her left heel squarely between the dead Dark Lord’s shoulder blades, the ribs cracking as she stomped over him like another flagstone, and kept moving. A choked sound came from the foot of the Hufflepuff table, Ernie Macmillan staring with his mouth open, wand dangling. She didn’t spare him half a glance. Harry was still swaying on the spot where the backfire had thrown him, the Elder Wand held loose, gray soot caked into his lashes. She reached him in three more long, predatory strides, caught two fistfuls of his ripped shirt, and shook him hard enough to snap his teeth together. “You let a giant carry you down the hill,” she said. The voice was low, viciously polite, and cold enough to strip varnish. “Like an unwashed sack of produce.” Harry blinked behind his cracked round lenses, his brain visibly struggling to catch up with the end of the war. “Draconia…” “Don’t you Draconia me, Potter. You let me think you were DEAD.” she shouted. She let go with one hand, curled it into a fist and thumped it into his shoulder. “Three years. Three agonizing years of doctoring letters, swallowing bile, smiling at an insane half-blood, and spending every night walking a razor’s edge through this moldering castle. And you strolled into the Forbidden Forest and laid down like a tired sheep.” Around them, the vast, echoing wreck of the Great Hall seemed to seize up mid-breath. Ron, half-propping up a bruised George near the splintered dais, slowly lowered his wand. His eyes tracked from Draconia’s hand clutching Harry’s chest down to the dead Dark Lord she had just used as a stepping stone. Hermione’s head snapped sideways. Her lips parted, moved without sound for two seconds, and then her brow furrowed into the terrifying, furious calculation of a girl mentally retrofitting every suspicious library run, altered roster, and near-miss since the Triwizard Tournament. “I didn't lay down,” Harry protested, his voice hoarse from shouting curses. “The H… he had to destroy the piece of himself, or…” “You let him hit you with the Killing Curse, you colossal, mutton-headed infant!” The shout rang off the hammerbeams. A few paces away, Neville was still holding the bloody Sword of Gryffindor by the hilt. He froze mid-step, looking between them as if wondering whether to intervene or back away very quietly. “It worked, didn’t it?” Harry’s temper, rusted and frayed from thirty-six hours of siege, flared back. “And don't act like it was easy from where I was standing! You were here all winter with the Carrows. You were wearing the badge, you were…” “And who do you think Severus used to blunt those two pig-ignorant brutes?” she snarled, leaning in so close her nose nearly grazed his. “Who do you think swapped out the brass knuckles Amycus kept in his desk for ones charmed to cushion on impact? Who do you think ‘accidentally’ tipped off the fifth-year Ravenclaws five minutes before Alecto raided the third-floor corridor with bloodhounds? Did you think Severus walked around brewing half-strength boiling draughts himself? The Carrows are vulgar, illiterate swine who couldn't tell a proper curse from a tavern brawl. I spent eight months keeping them from turning this school into a slaughterhouse. For you, you ungrateful lout!” Neville blinked, a strange, baffled look washing over his battered features. “The detention rosters... she told us to clean the silver in the trophy room instead of going down to the dungeons.” “Because I didn’t want blood on the runners, Longbottom, and Harry likes you for some reason,” she snapped with a quick angry glance, her knuckles trembling against Harry's collarbones. “And at the Manor. Why do you think the cellar latch was loose? Why do you think Aunt Bella spent twenty minutes shrieking for rope while your house-elf took half the drawing room with him? Why do you think I stood there looking at your swollen, ruined face and told them I couldn't be sure it was you?” Harry went rigid. His mouth opened, closed, then stalled. “You think I’m blind?” she shouted. “You think a Malfoy doesn't recognize the boy she’s been..” she paused, a flush forming and then continued. “Alecto and Amycus were common rabble playing at dominion, and the Dark Lord was just a jumped-up half-blood. My loyalties belong to my family and to myself, not to some grotesque lunatic. And against every scrap of my better judgment, Potter….” “You... you lied to Bella,” Harry interrupted. “Right to her face.” “Of course I lied to her, you complete cretin! I'm a Black. We lie to the mirror starting at 2 years old, but usually we do it for a reason better than a Gryffindor who possesses the survival instincts of a dead badger!” She shook him again, her voice rising in exasperated pitch. “I risked Azkaban. I risked death and worse. I risked my mother's life. Do you know how difficult it is to keep going in the face of all that? To smile at a madman who is planning to ‘gift’ you to one of his cronies?” she paused again and drew in a breath. “Of course I betrayed them.” she shouted. Over by the hourglasses, Pansy Parkinson stood with her arms crossed over a torn cloak, a slow, vindictive smirk spreading across her face. “Told you so,” she muttered loud enough to reach Blaise Zabini, who merely closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in deep, long-suffering resignation. “Draconia,” Harry began again, softer this time. His free hand came up, hovering near her wrist, fingers twitching against the wool of her sleeve. “You didn't have to…” “Shut up.” “I’m just saying…” “I love you, you utterly insufferable, stubborn waste of oxygen.” she hissed, the words coming out fast, hot, and laced with absolute, aristocratic venom. “I love you, which makes me a fool, and I have spent three years dealing with second-rate cutthroats and illiterate Death Eaters because the alternative was spending the rest of my life without you. You do not get to die on me now. Do you understand? If you die after I stepped on that filthy half-blood's corpse to fetch you, I will drag you back out of the veil just to curse you.” The silence that settled over the hall was absolute. Ron’s jaw dropped entirely. He looked at Hermione, looked back at Draconia, then tapped his own temple with his wand-tip as though checking his ears for a Confundus charm. “Wait.” Ron blinked hard. He shook his head. “Her? Her and you?” Draconia didn’t turn around. “Weasley, if you speak another syllable, I will transfigure you into the guppy you resemble and feed you to the kneazles. Sit down and have a biscuit.” Harry didn't move. The Elder Wand slipped from his grasp, clattering uselessly against the stone. He brought both hands up, his fingers closing gently around her forearms. “You’re shouting,” he murmured, the corners of his mouth giving the faintest, exhausted twitch. “I am perfectly calm,” she snapped back, though the flush along her throat had climbed straight to the tips of her ears. “I am the picture of pureblood decorum. You, on the other hand, look like you were dragged behind the Hogwarts Express.” “Probably.” “Not probably. Definitely.” Her grip on his shirt didn’t loosen, but the furious, rigid stiffness went out of her spine in one long, trembling shudder. Her hands stayed bunched in his torn wool, and then, with an irritable little huff of breath that smelled faintly of peppermint and ash, she let her forehead drop forward against his collarbone. Harry’s arms came around her, one settling across her shoulders and the other around her waist, pulling her in. Both of them drew in deep shuddering breaths. Across the hall, Minerva McGonagall lowered her wand, pressed her lips into a tight, severe line to keep them from twitching, and addressed the room at large. “Someone,” she said crisply, “move that creature’s body out of the thoroughfare.”