What Might Have Been

[Post-war, post Hogwarts] Draco is appointed to pull the plug of his best friend's life after an accident. How will he cope? [boy/boy - nothing graphic]

Disclaimer: The wonderful world of Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. I only dare lay claim on my imagination.

Prompts used:

Male: Draco

Sentence: Though I knew that staying friends until our old age was a long shot, I never thought I would step over his corpse as I entered the throne room.

Image: : / / i m g . / 0 6 / / 1 . j p g

Death: Your best friend has just been in a horrible accident and is on life support, possibly for the rest of his or her life. Your friend has appointed you to be the person who pulls the plug for his or her Do Not Resuscitate order. Describe your feelings.

Disney: Tarzan

"Of all the words in Of Mice and Men, the saddest are, 'It might have been'. "

- Kurt Vonnegut

Your breath hitches in your throat, your chest squeezes tight. You don't move, you don't know how to respond. You feel as if dementors had come along and sucked the happiness out of you, sucked the life right out of you.

You can feel your blood pounding in your ears, and for a moment, all you can hear is your own heart beat. Blood rushes out from your head and you lose your balance, stumbling forward before catching yourself.

The movement awakens your sense, jolts you back into reality unkindly.

Kevin.

You quickly gather your thoughts and emotions, then apparate to St Mungo's.

You think you might have splinched something, but you don't slow down to check. There is no time. You rush past the administrative officers and burst your way into the ward.

And then you see him. You see him lying on his hospital paler and frailer then he'd been this morning. He wasn't moving, he wasn't awake. All he had to show for his life was the ever so shallow movements of his chest.

You breathe heavily as your facial features sag beyond relief. But you stand rooted by the door, unable to bring yourself to cross the distance between the door and his bed.

A nurse walks in, and you vaguely hear her tell you, "Stunner to his chest, his heart is not taking it well. The healers are still trying to figure out what's wrong though."

You nod, because it is a appropriate thing to do. A thousand thoughts races through your head; you don't move, you don't react - suddenly something in your brain clicks and snaps you back to attention.

Familial dilated cardiomyopathy. The term echoes painfully in you mind, and you quickly tell the nurse to transfer Kevin to a muggle hospital.

You sit on the chairs outside the emergency room, but you find you cannot sit still - so you stand up, you start pacing the hallway.

The pacing doesn't help, not at all. Your mind reels, whirls, you don't know what's going on, how to feel, what to do.

Then a painful memory grasps at you from nowhere, steals your attention from the hurricane in your brain.

"Draco, I -" Kevin pauses, a abnormality from him since eloquence is the Ravenclaw's strongest trait. You stare into his brown eyes, first with curiosity, and then with worry. You completely stop what you're doing, urging him to continue.

"Draco, promise me. You're the only person I've left. If anything happens -" He takes a deep breath, struggling to find the correct words. "I have a muggle genetic disease. A heart problem, the technical term for it - familial dilated cardiomyopathy. When it happens, please, please promise me -"

The red light of emergency room switches off, the door of the operating room slams open. There, on the rolling bed lay Kevin. His eyes shut, his face pale, his body weak and shrunken - a striking contrast to the olive-skinned, toned young man he used to be.

Your heart sinks, your chest constricts, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from breaking down.

You follow the doctors into the ward, unsure of what to do, what to ask, what to feel. The fluorescent white of the hospital walls, the strong medicinal smells attack your senses but you're too shocked to care.

"Excuse me."

The sharp noise pierces your mind, and you register that the doctor is trying to speak to you. You slowly raise your head to look at him.

"Are you his next of kin?"

"No. He has no kin. I'm his best friend."

"Mr Malfoy, I suppose?" You blink at the doctor in shock. How does he know your name? Then for the first time, you notice the clipboard of information in the doctor's hands. From your angle, you barely make out that he is holding a form that you signed.

Your heart sinks, then you cannot breathe, you suddenly feel like fainting. Tears threaten to fall but you close your eyes and will them to go back in. No, now's not the time. Now, you have to be strong for him.

"I apologise to be the bearer of bad news, but as you're already aware, you friend has a genetic disease. Today, the disease manifested itself, reducing the amount of blood flowing through his body. His brain couldn't cope with the lack of blood for the prolonged period of time. I'm sorry to tell you that he may forever stay in this vegetative state, only staying alive through life saving equipment. As per your prior decisions, you have agreed to pull the plug for his Do No Resuscitate order."

You nod, because somehow deep in your heart, you knew this was coming. Although, you don't speak, you don't trust yourself to. The doctor leaves after telling you to call him when you're ready.

You pull up a chair beside Kevin and hold his hand in yours. You remember the first time you both met.

It is the beginning of 7th year and your grades are slipping drastically; a side effect from your father dying in Azkaban, and your mother going crazy. Head Mistress McGonangall took it upon herself to assign you a student tutor to help you.

You sit in the classroom, skeptical. Who would be willing to help you - after all that has happened, after all your bad deeds exposed?

Somebody rushes into the classroom, and you look up to see a dark, tall handsome figure walking towards you. Vaguely, you remember him to be a mudblood Ravenclaw.

"Hi, 'm Kevin. Your tutor." He smiles down at you, holding his out out.

"Mudblood?" You can't stop yourself, you just blurt that word out. He cringes slightly at the term.

"I prefer the term Muggle born. But yes, mudblood."

You mentally berate yourself, this is not the way to redeem yourself from all the Malfoy evil. "Sorry, I didn't mean that." You look down, half expecting for Kevin to stalk out of the classroom. A few minuted passed and nothing happened, you see Kevin arranging his reference materials neatly on the desk.

"You don't mind me?" You ask, part hopeful, part curious.

He looked at you, a thoughtful expression on his face. "No. Do you?"

For the first time after the war, you let out a genuine laugh. Relief and joy pulses through your body.

You look into Kevin's peaceful, kind face. He was the first person to accept you. To take you in under his wings after the war. He was the one to heal you.

But now you can't heal him.

You clasp his hand tighter, bring them to your chest against your heart. You're conscious to take even breaths, consoling yourself, consoling him.

How did such an athletic, bright young man be reduced to such a state?

You remember happier times, times that you spent alone with him.

"This," Kevin said with a flourish, "is my favourite place to think."

You observe your surroundings, waves crashing onto the rocks, gathering, then receding. Again, gathering, then receding. A continuous cycle of coming and going, of ebb and flow.

The sound the waves make is mesmerising, the sound of water against rock a resounding splash, and then a shimmer, a whisper from the wave as it says goodbye. The sounds are not consistent - an erratic tempo to which the water hit the different shape of rocks at different places. The sounds pieced together a music for the soul, for it provided a sense of calm not unlike meditation.

You look at Kevin. He too, is enjoying what nature had to offer. You stare at his features, his diamond shaped brown eyes, his pink, supple lips, his perfectly set jaw. You almost lean over to kiss him, but you don't. You don't want to risk your friendship.

Kevin leads you to a big, dry rock and you both sit down, staring into the distance at the beautiful scenery.

"Thank you." You finally say.

A small smile plays on Kevin's lips. "What for?"

"For helping me, for being my friend. I have too much to be grateful for."

He laughs, a melodious sound that resonates within you and makes you laugh, too. "No sweat, my friend. I was trying to learn from Tarzan - ever heard of him?" You shake your head. "You still have so much to learn about the muggle world, Draco."

He lunges into an animated explanation of the Disney story, describing Tarzan as an apeman who embraced the quality of "nature" in men.

"If you belong to the jungle, you belong to the jungle. No point moulding yourself into society's expectations. You belong to yourself, Draco, you were allowed time to learn and change, and I decided to be a Tarzan and guide you through."

"You've been more than my Tarzan, Kev." You wanted to say: you're my existence.

Now looking at the still figure in front of you, you can't help the cluster of emotions that wells up in your chest. Grief, emptiness, regret.

Grief that you are going to be the one unplugging his life support, that you are going to be the one to, technically speaking, kill him. But that's what he wanted, right? He begged you to sign the forms, didn't he? It would be better for you to do it than a doctor he didn't even know.

Emptiness that your life will never be same again. It will forever be missing a great Kevin sized hole - a cavity you believe that will never be filled again.

Regret. This was the strongest emotion of all. Regret because you knew of his disease but pretended nothing was going to happen. Not so soon, anyway. It wasn't meant to be so soon. What will happen to the plans you both have made? You didn't expect to be alive and friends till old wizarding age, but the late twenties seems too early. Way too early.

You regret because you didn't have the chance to fulfil all your promises to him.

You regret because you never told him that you loved him. And now, he'll never know.

You stand up and give Kevin a light kiss on his cheeks. Tears flow down your cheeks like a broken dam of dreams.

"I love you, Kev. I loved you before, I love you now, I will love you forever." You whisper into his ears, hoping desperately, that maybe, just maybe he can carry this little piece of information up to heaven with him.

You press the button to call for the doctor, and suddenly nurses, doctors started filling the room. They instruct you to pull the plug, and wait patiently by the bedside.

You close your eyes, hands poised above the wire. The tears don't stop and in one, swift motion you dislodge the plug from the machine. The sharp beep, beep, beep of the machine changes into one long, sharp note that stabs you heart, over and over again.

A/N: This made me cry while writing, not even kidding! I hope you all enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Oh, I decided to write this in 2nd person because the death prompt (as stated above) is in 2nd person and I thought it would be fun, and the effect it has is quite impactful, no?

As per usual, please review - constructive criticisms are welcomed, flames are not.

This is a one-shot written for the Completely Stumped Challenge by Crimson's Void on HPFC. Prompts are as stated above.

This is a one-shot written for the Pairing Diversity Boot Camp Challenge. Prompt used: (18) "Forever" - underlined. Romantic Paring: Draco x Kevin Ernstwhile