Space clouded his mind as he watched life crash around him. Hatred and loathing changed his features into a mask and he saw the rest of his soul escape into nothingness. A black void interrupted his vision and the air he breathed tasted like blood.
***
The war was not over. Ash hovered in the sky as Draco tried to get a good look at his surroundings. He saw death as a blanket covering the ground with the taken lives of the defending students. Hogwarts loomed in the distance; he knew it but no longer possessed the ability to move. There was no alteration in the air; no life that could speak to him.
The stars in the sky loomed closer and he hated them.
***
He woke on the ground and stood silently, peering at the scene that surrounded him. Life lost littered the Quidditch pitch. He recognized some of the faces at his feet where the blood oozed onto his bare toes. He felt dizzy, the need to vomit almost uncontrollable as he took the carnage around him in. There was something sticky on his face that was hardening and with irrevocable knowledge he knew it was blood. He swallowed metallic salt.
Draco felt eyes on him like a slap to the face. He turned; pain stabbing his mouth as if he had tried to eat a sharpened bolt. Draco barely registered blonde hair before he attacked. Teeth cutting through flesh to life source pulsing in an erratic rhythm. Draco felt his victim go limp for milliseconds before bursting with surprising strength through Draco’s arms. Instinct kicked in and Draco pounced forwards, sliding through nothing before colliding with blunt muscle. They went sprawling before separating and Draco was on his feet scanning the dark until he saw that blonde hair. Picking up a rock he snapped it into a dagger used to kill. He dragged himself to his prey and took the rock to the man’s chest.
“Stop.”
Power resonated behind Draco as a woman appeared to his left. “Michael, stand up,” she ordered. Draco crouched in confusion as he witnessed the man he had supposedly killed rise and fall back to his commander’s side. Mischief played in the newcomer’s eyes. “Kill him.” Another order, Draco didn’t know whether she was talking to him, or Michael.
Without a moments hesitation Michael threw himself at Draco. The boy had Draco’s sharpened rock in one hand as he lunged for his face, but Draco seemed to be twice as fast. Catching Michael’s arm and twisting it behind his back, Draco stole the rock back and plunged it into the back of his neck, under the sharp knob of bone. For a second time that night Draco felt the blonde boy go limp, he set the body on the ground and stood.
“What’s your name, solider?” The woman asked. Draco could do little more than stare at her at this point. Hunger pains had twisted his stomach into knots and he was having trouble not bending over and heaving.
He mumbled something that was incoherent to even his own ears.
“Speak up, fledgling. I don’t have time for you.”
“Draco.” He rasped.
“Well, Draco. You just killed my second in command. We’re going to have to remedy this situation with some compensation, I would think.”
Draco couldn’t stand anymore. He sunk to his knees, his hands on the ground. Draco’s fingers slid through mud and white noise drummed through his head in pulsing beats. He tried to breathe slowly, but he gagged on the oxygen. Red burst in his eyes like the blood he craved and with that last piece of sun stored in his memory he blanked out completely.
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