A/N: Drabble 3 — Category: Potions - Angst — Prompt: The needs of the many are worth fighting for, worth dying for, but so are the needs of the few. The needs of one. Drarry + throwing it all on the line for love.

Word count: 640 of 640

Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter belongs to our queen, JK Rowling!

Drabble 5: The Sacrifice

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Everything was burning.

The acrid smell of smoke — the air was thick with it. Heavy. He could taste the burnt sharpness of it in the back of his throat. It had settled around them heavily. The weight of the entire world. Like a dementor's cloak.

Harry's breath caught in his chest as he stole through the broken pieces of a courtyard where in just six years, he had known more happy moments than he'd had in the entirety of the eleven years before.

If he was to give his life for something, what worthier cause could there be?

He inhaled sharply, his eyes momentarily tearing up as he pictured their faces. Ron. Hermione. His friends. No — his family. The only ones left. Everyone else had gone, after all. Everyone else was untouchable… But not for long. He would be the final sacrifice. Just like Dumbledore had planned it.

It hurt.

It hurt so much that he could barely breathe. That he feared he would falter, that his lungs would breathe their last too soon. That he would fall before he was meant to fall. But he walked on. He had chosen his path long ago. Had chosen it, even if someone else had chosen it for him. And there was an upside to it all — to this cold and brutal death, which loomed closer with every breath. With every footstep.

He would see them all. Soon. In the short amount of time it would take to walk across these broken stones, across the burnt grass soaked red with blood, across the looming shadows of the forest. As soon as his footsteps ran out, and his lungs expelled their last breath — in a death that was cold, and brutal but, at least, not meaningless, he would be with them once more.

Ron and Hermione would understand, he knew. They would grieve, certainly, but they would heal. They had each other, after all.

They would forgive him.

No, he had only one regret.

He froze.

It must have been a trick of his vision — an illusion, because he had been thinking about those silver-grey eyes, hoping against hope to see them one more time, even though he feared that doing so would rob him of the last bits of his courage.

But no.

Draco Malfoy was standing there, cloaked in shadow, the still-burning fires in the courtyard reflected in his dark grey eyes.

"Potter."

His name on Draco's lips was like a bullet… like an Avada Kedavra let loose too soon, too fast. It hit him right in the heart —almost brought him to his knees — as memories of days long locked away broke free of their dam and rushed through him like a river.

Draco, smiling at him shyly from the table at the very end of the library, his silvery hair casually falling across his eyes.

Draco, coming closer, in an empty corridor, his face filling Harry's whole field of vision. His lips soft.

Draco, his arms braced against an old, chipped sink, meeting Harry's accusing eyes in the reflection of a dusty mirror. Curses flying. Blood. Sobs.

He stood before Harry now, watching him silently, and Harry stared back, unable to move, to breathe.

Here they were. Two broken boys, on opposite sides of a war that had torn them apart and would destroy them all, before it was over.

"You're going to him."

It wasn't a question. A nod; it was all Harry could manage.

"You can't." Draco's voice broke.

"I have to. It's the only way to end it."

"Please, Harry, don't. For me. Stay alive. Run with me."

"I can't," he whispered, his own tears finally falling.

He pushed past, leaving Draco behind him, his sobs fading into the night.

Another sacrifice. Love.

Another casualty.

But if he kept walking, would Draco finally find the light?