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The words beat like wings inside his chest. Draco couldn’t ignore them even if he wanted to; The Dark Lord’s wheezing voice is branded into his mind, repeating them over and over, growing louder and louder until every time is like the whack of a hammer into his skull:
“Kill Harry Potter.”
He can’t think. He can’t breathe. He’s never been able to see tasks like this all the way through to the end—he couldn’t kill Dumbledore, nor anyone since; he can’t even Crucio correctly half the time. An idiot might call him kind. Draco knows it’s merely selfishness.
He’s never been able to stomach the thought of ruining his own soul.
Images blur through his mind, thoughts of chasing Potter down dark streets and aiming the Killing Curse, of Potter falling, of winning the war. For once Draco would be lauded by the Dark Lord instead of ridiculed. Surely Potter isn’t invincible; surely Draco could get to him somehow.
Maybe this isn’t impossible. It’s just one spell.
Then he thinks of what he would do if Potter turned on him, tried to fight him, glared at him with that same contempt from their school days, and he immediately blanches.
Maybe this will be impossible after all. When it comes down to it, Draco is a coward.
He stands and listens to the Dark Lord prattling on about how Potter needs to be dealt with once and for all, ignoring the fact that the Dark Lord himself has gone after Potter too many times to count, ignoring the fact that everyone in the room knows beyond a doubt that this is just an excuse to get rid of Draco, the useless Death Eater, the waste of space that everyone thinks he is.
The Dark Lord smiles his terrible smile and adds that, of course, there will be consequences if he is to fail.
Then he leers at him and calls it “an honor”.
Draco calls it a death sentence.
--
Distrust prickles on Harry’s skin—or maybe it’s just the Glamour he’s wearing, as he stands in the shadows of the Muggle alleyway. He doesn’t even fully know why he’s here, if he’s being honest. Ron’s going to chew him out if he ever realizes what he’s done, and Hermione might just hex him—
Hermione would hex him. If she could.
Grief cinches in his throat, and even after so many months it feels like he can barely breathe. He dreams every night of the expression on her face when the curse hit her, like she was screaming for help with no sound, but Ron was too far away and Harry wasn’t fast enough—
A noise sounds from behind him, a rock skittering in the alleyway, and he jumps and curses internally at letting himself get too lost in thought. He turns and sees that it’s only a rat darting past, but seconds later, there’s a neat pop of Apparition at the end of the alley, and a wizard in dark robes appears.
Malfoy. He’s wearing his own face. It’s either brave or stupid and Harry can’t quite decide which.
Nonetheless, Harry draws his wand.
“What do you want?” he asks gruffly, casting a quick surveillance spell to ensure there’s no one else around. It comes up empty—for now, at least.
Malfoy raises his hands in the air, empty. “I have information for you. I’d like to talk.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Do you really think I’m going to fall for that?”
“Please,” Malfoy says, and the desperate tone to his voice gives Harry pause. “There’s going to be an attack. They’ve found out about the Phoenix Gardens.”
A chill runs down Harry’s spine. Teddy.
His hand tightens around his wand. “Fine,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake but it wants to. “What do you have to tell me?”
--
Draco’s always been a good liar.
He’s known about his cousin’s whereabouts for a long time. Death Eater or not, they’re still family, and secrets like these are ones he’d take to the grave.
He’s a good liar and an even better Occlumens—probably the only two things that have kept him alive through three years of being an entirely unenthused fraud of a Death Eater.
He supposes it’s fortunate that he was given this job just when Greyback’s pack happened to scent out the Phoenix Gardens, despite it being warded to the hilt. Even if Draco doesn’t succeed in killing Potter later, at least he has some comfort in knowing that his cousin will be safe.
He doesn’t want to think about what the Dark Lord would say if he knew he was baiting Potter with information. He doesn’t plan on letting him find out.
What he didn’t plan on was this: discussing logistics with Potter in a shitty Muggle motel room and arguing their way into a petty disagreement on how best to extract Teddy without the Dark Lord noticing.
And he didn’t plan on this either: ending with his hands on Potter’s wrists, slamming him against the wall—and wanting completely unexpectedly to kiss him.
He doesn’t, but it’s a close thing, shared breath warm and heady between them. He’d forgotten how green Potter’s eyes are, but there’s no way he’ll ever forget now, as Potter glares back at him but doesn’t even try to get away.
Potter’s always been brave in the face of death; Draco wonders if he can tell that Draco means to kill him. It’s fitting, then, that Draco is the one who steps away. He can’t do it, not now, with Potter’s eyes hot on his skin and anxiety scrambling his thoughts.
He turns and leaves the room, acting the coward after all.
--
Harry doesn’t know what to think of any of it. He returns to the tiny flat he’s forced to call home and absolutely doesn’t tell Ron what he’s been up to, and then he goes to bed and stares up at the ceiling feeling slightly queasy. The next day, he firecalls Andromeda and tells her that he’s got a bad gut feeling all of a sudden, and that he thinks it would be a good idea for them to quietly leave the Garden for a while.
Three nights later, the Garden is in shambles. Harry walks through the burnt remains in the aftermath, heart racing.
Malfoy’s intel was good. But that doesn’t mean he can trust him.
Inexplicably, he thinks of how it felt to have Malfoy’s body pressed against his own, hands painfully tight on his wrists, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut to scrub the image from his brain.
He shouldn’t go to meet him again, the next time Malfoy owls. But he goes anyway.
--
Draco’s not sure what Potter wants from him. He thinks they both know he doesn’t have more information, and he can feel the distrust coming off of Potter in waves.
“I’m not sure,” Draco says, in answer to a question he’s already forgotten. He scrambles for something else to say. “Unfortunately I’m not privy to that kind of thing.”
“Fine,” Potter says, eyes going hard. His hand is on his wand. “Then what the fuck did you call me here for?”
Draco pictures putting his hands around Potter’s throat and squeezing until he goes limp. The image makes his stomach turn. He can’t do this.
He pictures returning to the Dark Lord and telling him that he’s failed, that Potter caught wind of what he was trying to do and escaped, of the blissful feeling giving up, of letting go—
It occurs to him that he’s not even sure he wants to be alive anymore. He can’t even remember the last time he wanted something.
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? He thinks of the last time he was here, remembers having his body up against Potter’s and wanting something more, wanting him.
He swallows nervously and finally answers Potter—“What do you think?”
Then he leans across the table.
He half expects Potter to punch him in the face, or at least to pull away in disgust—Draco would deserve it, after all. But when Draco kisses him, Potter’s shaking as he leans forward instead of backing away, as he lets Draco brush their mouths together, softer than either of them have any right to be.
“It’s been a long time,” Potter says when Draco pulls him to the creaky bed, and Draco nods and swallows his doubts and tries to pretend that it’s been a long time for him too, that this isn’t his first time ever, that it wasn’t always Potter he’d wanted to do it with in the first place.
--
Harry didn’t realize it would change him, seeing Malfoy bare against the sheets, watching his expression go slack with pleasure, coming apart himself with his arms wrapped tight around him. He curses at himself over and over, because he has a million things to worry about—like not dying, for one. But all he can think about is Malfoy.
He supposes it’s not even surprising. This is always how Malfoy has been to him, an unhealthy obsession, a puzzle that he wants desperately to crack, even as he continues to slip out of his grasp.
Harry chases him. He can’t help it; he keeps coming back, long after it would have been wise to stop.
Ron notices he’s different lately, of course he does, but neither of them bring it up. They don’t talk that much anymore, after Hermione. The empty hole of her absence hurts too much, invisible ghosts at the breakfast table or on the couch, and any other possible happiness has long since been eroded by the unending war.
Hermione was the glue that held them all together, the one that really made them face their emotions. Without her, they’re just barely getting by.
--
“They’re catching on,” Draco says, desperation filling his lungs. What he’s really saying is that Greyback’s pack has caught up to Teddy again, or else he’d never be meeting Potter out of schedule like this, but what he wishes Potter could hear is that he wants Potter to save him—whether from the Dark Lord or from himself, he’s not sure.
Draco could have tried killing Potter a dozen times by now, but there hasn’t quite been the opportunity—Potter never lets Draco’s wand out of his sight. Even when he comes apart, Draco deep inside him, bodies pressed flush together and filling the room with ragged moans, he never closes his eyes for more than a moment.
He wonders if it’s sick how much he wants Potter, even though Potter can’t know what Draco’s real goal is. He wonders if Potter can tell how much of a coward Draco is, or if he’d ever be scared of him, even if Draco were to raise his wand.
But Draco doesn’t think he’s the only one who feels that meeting like this is keeping him sane. He can see it when Potter looks at him with poorly concealed fondness in his eyes; he can see it when Potter comes close to kiss him, lips pricking into a smile, and it makes Draco’s heart starts to race.
Green is the color of Potter’s eyes as Potter slowly starts to let him in.
Green is the color of the Avada Kedavra Draco imagines when he closes his own.
--
They move Teddy again. Harry wonders if Malfoy’s making the raids up at this point, because it’s the only information he ever seems to have. Maybe this thought should scare him more, not being able to make sense of it all, because he must keep Teddy safe—and maybe it should bother him that it doesn’t.
He goes to visit Teddy just to remind himself that he’s still alive and well. Teddy’s tired but happy, all round cheeks and tempered innocence of the kind one tends to have when they’ve been stripped of a real childhood, and Harry breathes a sigh of relief and tries to put it out of his mind.
Then he thinks just as he’s thought hundreds of times by now that he should stop meeting with Malfoy, that all he’s doing is leaving an opening to be taken advantage of—already he’s losing sight of what’s important to him in lieu of grey eyes and frantic embraces.
He goes again anyway.
“What’s in this for you, anyway?” Harry asks, quiet in the still room, asks even though he’s almost certain Malfoy will lie.
But Malfoy is quiet for long enough that Harry wonders if he’s going to tell the truth after all. “I have nothing left,” he says finally.
“You have your parents,” Harry reminds him indignantly.
Malfoy’s face twists into misery. “No,” he says, “I don’t.”
Harry wants to ask what he means, but for some reason the rawness in Malfoy’s expression stops him. In the end he only holds him closer.
--
Draco’s lost track of how many times they’ve met. Every time he deludes himself into thinking that this will be the time he does it, that this will be the time he casts, and every time he looks at Potter’s face, soft in the dim motel light, and puts the killing off for another day.
It’s the most twisted sort of thing to realize that the only reason he wants to live right now is because he doesn’t want this to end.
The truth strikes him like lightning, like the scar across Potter’s skin. He’s gone and done the worst possible thing and started caring about him.
If he kills him, he’ll want to die. If he doesn’t kill him, he’ll be dead.
Desperately, he thinks to himself that it will be fine, that he can talk himself out of these feelings. It’ll be just like ripping a bandaid off. All he has to do is catch Potter unguarded and lift his wand; all he has to do is say those six syllables to save his own life.
He’s a good liar, but he wishes he was better at lying to himself. To cast Avada Kedavra, you have to mean it, and he has the sinking feeling that he’s not capable of even pretending to want Potter dead.
He must have gone tense, because Potter’s arms tighten around him. “You’re not going to tell me what you’re thinking about, are you?” Potter asks. There’s worry in his words, and Draco wants to cry.
“Of course not,” Draco says, even though his chest hurts, even though he has no idea what he’s going to do with himself.
He decides he’s not going to think about it right now. He kisses Potter instead.
--
Harry can feel Malfoy getting more and more desperate. It’s killing him that he has no idea why. Malfoy simply avoids the questions he doesn’t want to answer, which is frequent—though to be fair, Harry does the same.
But Malfoy’s obvious misery worries Harry nonetheless.
Harry wonders when exactly it happened that he started to care.
It’s been weeks since the last time Greyback’s pack found Teddy. They’ve put him on a small island with only Muggle ways of transport to enter, and it’s looking like for once it’s secure enough that they won’t find him. Still, Harry returns to the motel room, even though everything in him is telling him not to.
Malfoy could turn on him at any moment. Harry knows that.
In a way, he wonders if he’s stopped caring if he lives or dies. In a way, he wonders if he’s asking for it, flirting with death, sick and tired of running away from all the things that could hurt him.
Or maybe it’s as simple as just wanting to be held, to be needed, as simple as craving the desperate look in Malfoy’s eyes when he leans in to kiss him.
--
“Are you in love with me?” Potter asks, in the middle of unbuttoning Draco’s shirt, and Draco chokes on air.
“Of course not,” Draco says roughly, pushing Potter’s hands away and yanking the shirt off over his head. “What kind of question is that, anyway? Love is for fools.”
“I didn’t think so,” Potter says after a moment, and Draco wonders if there’s really a wistfulness to his tone or if he’s only imagining it, willing it to be true.
“Why?” Draco asks, then has to swallow sharply. “Are you?”
Draco wishes Potter would lie for once in his life because it might save them both the heartbreak. Instead Potter sighs and says, “Sometimes I think I might be.”
“Well, don’t,” Draco says, climbing off the bed to undo his trousers, as if it’s simple as that, as if Draco isn’t pretending he doesn’t want Potter to love him at least a little.
He imagines running away with Potter, imagines being the kind of people who could just forget about the war, about everything except themselves, except each other. But that would require telling Potter about his mission in the first place, which isn't an option, and anyway Draco could never simply hide. He’s Marked, and wherever he goes, the Dark Lord will be able to find him.
Not to mention they’re not really in love, and they’re not that kind of lovers.
They’re not in love, Draco repeats to himself, and tries to believe it.
“It’s not that easy,” Potter says.
No, Draco thinks, it isn’t.
--
Harry wonders what it would be like if they weren’t in the middle of a war—if they were allowed to just be two people with chemistry, with wants and needs like everyone else—but he supposes they’d never be together without some amount of baggage, and at any rate he thinks it’s probably the war-soaked desperation that led him to want Malfoy in the first place. He’s not sure he could even stand to be around him if he were still the Malfoy of years ago, proud and arrogant and missing that hint of franticness that Harry now identifies with so well.
He wonders if he’s betraying Hermione’s memory by sleeping with Malfoy, by leaving himself open to attack, and worse, falling for the enemy. Malfoy wasn’t there when she died. Harry doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse, and he hates himself for wishing he wasn’t worrying about it at all.
Every time he goes to meet Malfoy, he thinks to himself that this will be the last time, all the way up until Malfoy touches him and his thoughts go slack. Some part of him wishes there was more intimacy between them, more than just sex and moans and stolen glances, more than motel rooms in the dead of night. They’re not dating in any sense of the word, but Harry can’t imagine that it’s really just sex either—it’s too intense, too full of tension, both of them clinging to each other as if it’s the only reminder that they’re still human.
Harry tries to call him ‘Draco’ just once, but Malfoy flinches and looks so terrified that Harry has to take it back. He doesn’t try again, after that.
He wonders, too, what it would be like to hear his own name from Malfoy’s mouth. Then he wants to laugh, because he’s sure Malfoy would rather die than say something like that aloud.
--
Draco thinks he’d rather die than tell Potter he’s falling in love with him. It seems like the worst part of this whole thing, that meeting with Potter is all he’s living for, even as Death prowls behind the motel door.
It makes him wonder how Mother felt, forced to follow Father along on his awful quest for power. He wonders if she still loved him up until the end. He used to want to hate her for it, until the day she refused a task from the Dark Lord and—
He stops thinking about Mother then. His chest is far too tight.
Father is beyond hating at this point—it seems Mother was the last thing keeping him from giving in to the Dark Lord’s will completely, and he didn’t even flinch when Draco was given his mission.
He probably wouldn’t even care if Draco died.
He goes and loses himself in Potter and wonders if this is supposed to be heaven or hell, wonders if he deserves either of those things, wonders if this is the calm before the storm. He knows Potter still thinks of him as a threat—he can see it in the way Potter’s eyes go hard every time he reaches for his wand. But somehow, sometimes, it seems like Potter is falling for him anyway.
“Do you ever think about dying?” Draco asks one night. It’s raining, tap-tapping on the window, and Potter’s hands are warm on his waist.
“Sometimes,” Potter says. “I’ve had enough run-ins with death to last a lifetime. You kind of get used to it after a while.”
“I guess,” Draco says, because he’s nowhere near used to it.
He thinks about dying all the time.
--
“Where were you?” Ron shouts, and grabs at Harry by his shoulders as soon as he steps into the living room. Harry is stunned. He thinks maybe he hasn’t talked to Ron in days.
“What—what happened?” Harry asks. Sweat is still drying on his skin from meeting Malfoy at the motel. He wonders if he smells like him too, and abruptly feels ashamed.
“They found Charlie,” Ron growls. “He got away, barely, but you were supposed to be here. We could’ve gone after them, Harry, but I can’t do it without backup!”
Harry’s stomach drops. He swallows, then swallows again. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Are you really?” Ron asks bitterly, then lets him go, walking away.
Harry stands in their tiny kitchen and stares at the floor.
Ron’s right. He hasn’t really been here for a long time.
He feels stunned, like he’s been punched in the face. He’s lost himself so much in Malfoy that he’s forgotten what he’s fighting for, or that he’s even fighting at all. But push comes to shove, he has to be the one to end the war—his fate was sealed the moment Voldemort put the scar on his forehead.
He can’t keep doing this. He can’t let his only family down, not after all they’ve done for him.
He has to end things with Malfoy.
He should’ve ended it a long time ago.
--
Potter is distant the next time they meet, and it puts Draco on edge. Draco can’t tell at all what’s running through his head, and he’s afraid to ask, so he doesn’t.
His heart cracks in his chest when Potter avoids his eyes as they crawl into bed. He feels like he’s teetering, hanging over the edge of a cliff, with Potter the only thing keeping him from freefall—and Potter’s about to let him go.
But Potter lets Draco touch him, and when the desperation finally grows enough in Draco’s lungs that he breaks and says, “Please,” Potter’s eyes soften.
“Sorry,” Potter says, then again, “Sorry.” Then Potter looks at him, eyes green and desperate, and Draco’s saved from falling once more.
Afterwards Potter puts his face in Draco’s chest and says, “Sometimes I wish you were the only thing I cared about. Doesn’t that make me an awful person?”
Draco doesn’t quite know what to answer. They’re different, he and Potter—when it comes down to it Potter has other people to care about, other people that his life affects. Draco only has himself.
As much as he wants Potter to love him, he’s not a fool enough to think that he’s more important than the war itself. But that doesn’t stop him from ignoring the lurch of guilt and curling his arms around Potter anyway.
--
Harry wonders if Draco will be angry.
He shouldn’t have stayed last time. He shouldn’t have climbed in bed with him, because he knew even then that he wouldn’t be able to break it off properly if he let Draco touch him.
He wonders if Draco is in love with him. He thinks of the way Draco said ‘please,’ like a wish, like a prayer; thinks of how Draco melted into him, kissed his mouth, his cheek, his chest. Draco is the only warm, bright thing left, and when Harry pushes him away, it feels like there will be nothing but darkness.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget why he’s still fighting. The Light side is so few, so scattered, that he barely knows who’s dead or alive anymore. He’s tried to strike at Voldemort so many times that he’s nearly lost count—they’ve been in this deadly stalemate for years.
But then he thinks of Hermione, caught mid-curse; thinks of the group of Muggle-borns she’d been rushing to defend, all lost in the same fight, and he remembers—this is why.
--
Draco is shaking when he arrives in the motel room. He came early today, because he had no choice.
Today, the Dark Lord gave him an ultimatum. ‘You’ve had enough time,’ he said. ‘This is your last chance.’
Draco’s head is swimming. He takes out a piece of parchment. Hand shaking, he writes a few words, scribbles some out, then writes some more. Then he turns it face down and leaves it on the table.
He picks up his wand and waits.
--
The aura of the motel room has changed when Harry walks in for the final time. Malfoy is sitting on the bed, pale, paler even than normal. It’s almost as if he knows what’s happening.
Harry bites at his lip. He needs to say it, but the words won’t come out, and in the end they’re just staring at each other from across the room, silent.
Malfoy’s the one to drop his gaze. “Come here,” he says quietly, and puts his wand on the bedside table. Harry’s gut clenches; he’d let his guard down enough that he hadn’t even realized Malfoy was holding it.
Harry comes. He climbs onto the bed to straddle Malfoy and kisses him, and he hates that it really does feel like the last time, like all of their walls are down, all the barriers they had in place to keep this from meaning too much suddenly gone.
“I want you,” Malfoy says, “I need you.” He never says things like that.
Harry presses his face to Malfoy’s neck and blinks away the tears that want to come, because he needs Malfoy too.
But he needs to win the war more.
--
Draco lets Potter inside of him, and it wrecks him more than he wanted it to, Potter leaning over him, weight warm and comforting as they both fall apart. Afterwards they lie tangled in the sheets, and Draco puts his head on Potter’s chest and listens to his heartbeat, the one reminder that both of them are still here, still alive, still whole.
He thinks of crossing out the words ‘I love you’ on a piece of parchment, thinks of what it will really take for him to end this war.
“You make this so hard,” Potter says, and it almost sounds like he’s crying. Draco’s too much of a coward to check, or to ask what he’s on about now.
“This is all your fault,” Draco says instead, even though he’s lying again. He doesn’t blame Potter for any of it. He’s the one who kissed Potter first, so many nights ago.
“Of course you would say that, you git,” Potter mutters.
They fall silent for a moment. Draco’s wand is still on the nightstand. If he opens his eyes, he can see it; he’s almost close enough to reach out and grab it, but he doesn’t.
“I really do wish you were the only thing I cared about,” Potter says eventually. “Maybe it would be easier.”
“You don’t want to care about me,” Draco says, a little bitter.
“I shouldn’t,” Potter replies. It hurts, and Draco wishes it didn’t. “But I do anyway.”
“But,” Draco says, “You have other things to care about.” Like winning the war, like offing Voldemort, like protecting everyone else he loves from people like Draco. Things more important than the two of them, more important than Potter’s own life.
And Draco’s the only thing standing in the way of that.
Potter’s quiet. Then he nods. “Yeah.”
Slowly, Draco sits up. He feels blurry, discombobulated, and he crawls off the bed and starts to find his clothes. Potter follows suit, and then they’re standing there, trembling, much too far apart.
“I can’t,” Potter says, and then he squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Draco stares at him. “What?” he asks, and his voice cracks.
“I can’t come back,” Potter says, shaking his head.
Draco opens his mouth to say something, anything, and is surprised to find his breath coming out all ragged like he’s been stabbed. He should’ve seen this coming, but he didn’t, and that makes it worse.
He’d wanted to end this on his own terms, but it seems Potter is ending it for him.
He swallows once, twice, but his throat is still just as tight as before. “Why?” he asks, even though he thinks he already knows the answer.
“It’s too much,” Potter says. “I can’t care about you and everyone else all at once.”
Draco feels panicky, hurt. “So you’re choosing them.”
Potter covers his face with his hands. “Yes.”
Draco wants to collapse, or sob, or both. He doesn’t know why he’s reacting like this. He knew when it came down to it that Potter would choose everything else over him, but he can’t help but wish that Potter wouldn’t.
Would Draco, in Potter’s shoes? He supposes it’s not much of a choice. Even without the war, this thing between them is nothing more than a stupid love affair, fucking up all of their choices with useless feelings like the ones currently sawing his heart in half.
And Draco’s not someone worth fighting for.
He shudders a sigh and wraps his arms around himself, as if it’ll somehow stop him from falling apart. He feels raw, like some vital part of him has been scooped out and he's been left drained and empty. “Would you ever choose me?” he asks, and he shouldn’t ask things like that, not now, but he’s gone and done it anyway.
“I can’t,” Potter says, but Draco can see it in his eyes, so green, that some part of Potter wishes he could.
Draco doesn’t know what to feel as he reaches for the nightstand; he’s barely thinking as he picks up his wand. By the time Potter looks up again, Draco’s holding it in front of him, ready to cast.
“I knew it,” Potter says. “I knew you were up to something.” But his eyes don’t go hard like before, and he doesn’t reach for his wand.
He doesn’t care, Draco realizes, even as Draco is shaking so hard he can barely see. Or maybe it’s just that he trusts him.
Maybe Potter did love him after all.
In the end the choice is easy.
Draco doesn’t say ‘sorry.’ He wants to say, ‘I do love you, you know,’ but doesn’t do that either.
He wonders if this is being brave, or if in the end, he’s still no more than a coward—if this is selfishness or selflessness, idiocy or strength. No matter what he does, he's still running away.
He supposes in a few moments it won’t even matter.
Green is the color he sees when Potter’s eyes meet his own, when Potter gives up once and for all, when Draco chooses to cast and his spell arcs across the room.
Then he turns and leaves, tears streaming down his cheeks, before he can face what he’s done.
--
Harry blinks rapidly, his head spinning. His body aches like he’s been hit by a bludger, and he reaches immediately for his wand, scanning the room wildly for whoever attacked him.
But it seems he’s alone, and his surveillance spells encounter nothing.
It looks like he’s in a Muggle motel room. The sheets are rumpled, and the room is mostly bare, save for a blank piece of parchment lying on the table.
Or, no, it’s not blank, he realizes, as he walks over to pick it up. His eyes widen as he reads what it says, once, then over again.
On the parchment are coordinates for Voldemort’s location, and after that, directions on how to reach his private chamber. It’s information that could only have come from someone on his inner circle. Harry sinks into the lone, wooden chair in shock and reads further down the parchment.
On the evening of the ninth, most of the Death Eaters will be staging an attack on the last stronghold of the Light. The house will be mostly empty. If you catch him off guard, you might be able to get a clear shot.
Win this war, Harry.
x
It’s not signed, though there’s something scribbled out towards the bottom, enough that even when Harry squints at it he still can’t read it. Despite the circumstances, somehow Harry’s instincts are telling him to trust the note. They haven’t had new intel in months. At the very least, if this checks out, the members of the Order at the stronghold will be kept safe.
He folds the parchment carefully and puts it in the pocket of his robes, wondering at the strange feeling of loss in his gut, elusive in a way that means he can’t quite put his finger on it. It’s not the same as his grief for Hermione—it’s more recent, maybe, and more raw.
He puts it out of his mind for now—he has other things to worry about. Then, resolve strengthening by the moment, he stands and leaves the room, blissfully unaware of the faint, acrid smell of an Obliviate that lingers there.