Already Lost

One step… just one step at a time, I thought. This should all be over soon. I swallowed hard. This entire ordeal was about to come to an end… I hoped. Nothing, not the war, not my stint at being the hero, nothing, could have prepared me for what I was about to let her do. Her… that glorious creature I had watched, wanted, for so long. That deadly phrase popped into my head again.

After it feels like you’ve been losing for long enough, you should know you’ve already lost.

Shut up, I told the traitorous voice in my head, I don’t need you adding to this right now. What was I doing? Yelling at myself? I had truly lost it now.

I saw a picture sitting on a counter a picked it up. There she was, that glorious creature. A heroine in her own right with this war, having killed Bellatrix Lestrange on the field of battle, giving me the opening I needed to defeat the Dark Lord. Yes, I had killed Voldemort. There was still some confusion about that among the press. It hadn’t mattered. I had known that they would all flock to me eventually as the one who truly killed Voldemort. Not that it really mattered now.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” Her voice broke me out of my reminiscing, startling me. I hadn’t even heard the door open. Her eyes were alight with a fire I had seen only twice before, both during the best times of my life. Now… well, I could hardly see how this could possibly turn out to be one of the best moments of my life. In fact, it seemed like it would be one of the worst.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice broke me out of the daydream I had been locked in. You know the kind, the one where you are at home, safe in bed, as a small child, ignoring everything around you. All the loud noises, the screams of agony, the yells of victory, and the wails of grief… she just brought me back to all of that. I stared up into her fiery brown eyes blankly.

“What are you doing here?” She repeated. The body laying next to me drew her gaze. It was Greyback, the werewolf. Her eyes then followed to my right arm, the robe covering it torn and bloodied. I saw concern well up in her eyes, those beautiful brown eyes of hers, and she opened her mouth to form a question. I cut her off with a quick shake of my head.

“It’s just a scratch. It’s fine, he didn’t bite me.” I offer her a weak smile and try to stand, but I sink back to my knees in the mud. The strength in my legs is gone and I don’t know why, but they really should be working, I think.

“Look, you’re hurt. Injured. You need to get to Apparate out of here, or at least get to safer ground. You’ve done what your duty.” Duty… the word rang hollow in my head. No, I knew I hadn’t done my duty yet. Not unless…

“Is Voldemort dead yet?” I ask, pushing myself up to my feet. It briefly registers in my head that that movement took much more effort than it should have, but I brush the thoughts away.

“No,” she answers, looking at me with concern, allowing me to lean on her for support. “He and Bellatrix Lestrange are some of the last few standing Death Eaters, but our side doesn’t have much left either.”

“Help me to them.” I say, my resolve hardening. I know that it is I who must kill the Dark Lord, no one else. It is my job, for what he did to my father… to my mother… to the childhood I was supposed to have that was now gone, shattered. She opened her mouth to protest, but I started forward on my own, and she moved to help support me. As we moved, I both leaned on her more and stood on my own. I wanted to feel her touch, to feel her, to have her hold me and tell me everything was going to be alright, but I also needed my strength. If we both made it out of this alive, maybe that could happen later.

After a few minutes, both Voldemort and Bellatrix came into view. Green and red jets of light, along with the occasional blue jet, spat from both of their wands like angry lightning. A small group of Death Eaters covered their perimeter, but, one by one, they were slowly falling.

We were approaching from behind, and nobody had noticed us yet. Voldemort was standing atop a small hill in the cemetery, a large gravestone at his back. We were both hidden behind a smaller one near the base of the hill. She started to move and I grabbed her arm.

“Look, I wanted to tell you… in case we don’t make it out of this...”

“Don’t talk like that. We’re both going to make it out of this.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I love you.” She smiled softly.

“I know.”

“I said, what are you doing here?” Her voice was harsher this time, and my face reddened the slightest bit. Reasons of why I was here flashed through my head a million a second. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Funny, for the first time in my life, I was speechless. She stood there, tapping her foot impatiently, her hands balled in fists and on her hips.

I understood why she hated me, I understood why everyone did. When it had finally come out that I, not him, had killed Voldemort, he had planted information that I had been the one that had revealed the location of where Ron, Lupin, and Tonks were hiding. This was utter rubbish, of course, I would never had hurt any of the Weasleys. But despite my most vehement denials of the accusations placed against me, no one would listen. I stood trial, and was found guilty, mostly based off of circumstantial and fabricated testimony of those who supported him, my enemy among my allies. I was sentenced to fifty years in Azkaban, a sentence that was reduced to five months because of the information I had provided the Order, including Voldemort’s location the night of the Final Battle, as well as the service I had provided in killing him. I went from hero, savior of the wizarding world, to Azkaban prisoner CX1007666.

While in prison, I had discovered who had actually leaked the information, and it was none other than my accuser, the one who was now hailed as a hero, the one who had taken my angel away from me.

Thinking of Azkaban made me shiver slightly. I had left that wretched island only six days ago, and had tried to integrate myself back into society. What a surprise it was to find that she, the one who had professed her love to me, was now engaged to him, the one who was responsible for the death of her older brother.

Licking my lips, I drew in a haggard breath and looked her right in the eye, right into those big, beautiful brown eyes, and opened my mouth to speak.

“I came to say goodbye.”

I shivered slightly, though there was no breeze. She pulled her arms tighter around me, and I smiled. I had left that wretched hospital only six days ago, but I was finally whole again. Well, no, I take that back. I hadn’t been whole again until I was able to see her. To hold her. To touch her. These past six days had been the best six days of my life, however. I didn’t even care that someone else was taking credit for killing Voldemort. Right now, I couldn’t be happier.

A breeze whipped up and her hair swirled around us. The sun was setting over the Atlantic now, casting out brilliant reds, yellows, and purples into the evening sky. Still, none of those colors could even compare to her brown eyes. Her beautiful brown eyes, which now burned with a fire that I had only seen on the battlefield. Her smile, however, was one of mischief.

“What’s the smile for, love?”

“What smile?” She asked, trying to look innocent though the smile stayed firmly in place. When I rolled my eyes, she laughed, an intoxicating sound, and leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips. I kissed her as well, my arms slowly moving around her back, pulling her closer to me. I became lost in the taste of her and the spicy smell of her faint perfume as the wind continued to whip around us, her long hair starting to cover us like a blanket. When the kiss finally broke, she looked out over the water again and giggled.

“What’s the giggle for?” I asked, already knowing that it was a stupid question as the fire continued burning in her eyes and the mischievous smile returned once again.

“The sun just set,” she said, looking into my eyes, as if waiting for me to pick up on some hint. When I didn’t, she sighed dramatically. “It’s that time.” I picked up on this hint and smiled again, opening my mouth for a response that never came. She kissed me again and we spent the entire night under the stars.

“Goodbye?” Her voice was rising in pitch now, and I could tell that she was becoming angrier. “Goodbye?! You had your chance to say that five months ago, when you went to prison.” She brushed past me further into the apartment. I had actually been surprised to find that, even though she was engaged to him, she still lived in the apartment we had shared when we were together. Mind you, all my belongings were gone, but she hadn’t changed the locks. The key they returned to me when I was released from Azkaban still worked quite well.

“At least let me say what I came to say.” I followed her, my voice pleading. My head told me that I should let it go, that I would see her again and have another time and place to say this, but my heart told me that this needed to be said now, because this would be the last time that I would ever see my angel again. She stopped behind the counter, her eyes still afire, glaring at me.

“I have someplace to be in five minutes. Spit it out, and make it quick.” The tone of her voice, along with the hurt etched into every feature of her body was more torture to me than fifty years at Azkaban ever could have been.

“I…” The words stuck in my throat again. I couldn’t believe myself. Any other time, any time in my life, I always had something to say. Some retort, something to get me out of trouble. Now, silence seemed to be the only noise my vocal chords could produce. I swallowed and looked at her again. “You’re not marrying the man who you think you are,” seemed to be the most logical thing to say at the moment. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t, but I could at least plant that seed of doubt in her head. No… that’s what the old me would have done. The new me cared about her feelings, and if she was happy this way… then that would have to be enough. “I just wanted to tell you that I still love you.”

“You still what?” Her voice cracked like a whip, her eyes conveying that I probably could not have said anything more offensive to her.

“I still love you.” I hear my voice say the words again, but mind and body are moving independent of each other as I walk towards the counter. “Please, give me another chance. Things aren’t the way they seem.” If looks could kill, I would’ve been dead five hundred times over, but she still didn’t move.

“You lost all your chances when that court found you guilty of having my brother, Tonks, and Lupin murdered.” Her voice was tense, hoarse, as if she had been screaming. Maybe she had been, internally.

“Angel…”

“Don’t call me that,” she spat, her voice hard enough to cut diamonds, such as the one on her finger that continually goaded and taunted me. A deafening silence hung in the air of our small kitchen, the one we had shared together, laughed in, and made fun of each other’s horrid cooking in. Now, it was as dangerous as a battlefield, more so than the one the Final Battle took place on, and not even there had I ever felt a sense of pain and sorrow as I did right then.

She looked up at the clock. “I have to leave.” The shortness of the sentence caught me off guard, as did the way she stormed past me. I turned to watch her walk towards the same door she had entered from, grabbing a few bags piled there that I had not even noticed before.

“Where are you going?” I asked, my voice straining as I held back tears that I knew wanted to pour from my eyes like a flood. She sighed heavily and turned back to me.

“I’m going to get married. It’s a private ceremony.” I swallowed as she picked up her bags and opened the door. She looked over her shoulder at me, and her brown eyes held a hint of regret. I took a few steps forward, wanted to call out to her, to tell her the truth, when a voice in my head perked up again.

After it feels like you’ve been losing for long enough, you should know you’ve already lost.

I wanted to tell the voice to shut up again, but I didn’t. My shoulders slumped in defeat as I slowly slipped my hands into my pockets, my eyes lowering. My thoughts flashed back over my entire life. What Voldemort had done to my father, my mother, and my childhood as an example to all. My victory. My downfall brought about by the enemy in my allies.

I looked up one last time as she turned her head away, and I, Draco Malfoy, let her, Ginevra Molly Weasley, my angel and soon to be Ginevra Weasley Potter, walk out the door.

I knew then, as tears started to fall from my cold, grey eyes, that I had always already lost.