the girl who lost it all [d.m]

thirty one: sanguis

sanguis: blood, bloodshed, carnage

———

DRACO knew one thing for sure.

He was going to die.

There was one more thing he knew: Elara was already dying.

One moment, he'd been finally—finally—kissing her as death sped towards them and the next, everything had exploded into darkness.

They had been ripped apart and Draco had desperately tried to grapple for her in the icy water before he slammed into something so hard, he passed out.

Now, as he came to, he could feel something sticky against his cheekbone where it was pressed into the ground. There was pain everywhere, lacing through every bone and muscle, and his lungs felt like they had crumpled in on themselves.

Something was hammering away within his skull and he could taste blood in his mouth, in his throat, could feel it coating his skin underneath his clothes. His ears were ringing so loud, he couldn't hear anything else and his vision was blurry, blood dripping into his right eye.

Elara.

Her name sent his torn muscles into action and gasping for breath, he tried to raise himself onto his hands and knees, groaning against the agony that ripped through his body like wildfire. His hands gave out and he fell back into the grass, chest desperately heaving for breath, his head spinning and leaving him disoriented.

He lay there for a moment, the shrill ringing in his ears making his skull vibrate painfully.

She'd kissed his ring. Why had she—

Previously impenetrable objects will suddenly open up when in contact with other Dark Objects and others can even explode when brought within the radius of others.

The words in the book Elara had been studying—after which she'd realised she could detect Horcruxes. Draco had read through it himself, seeing as Elara hadn't wanted to acknowledge him.

She'd kissed his ring as a last resort to get them out of that room—and it had worked because even though Draco was lying in a pool of his own blood, at least he was outside.

Draco's breath rattled in his lungs as he tried to rise again, pushing himself up onto the palms of his hands, blinking blood out of his eyes. Brown dirt stared right back up at him, dead grass wilting in the winter.

Draco turned his head, ignoring the pain that tore down his spine and spat blood out into the grass before raising his eyes, unable to lift his head up much further.

The grounds were a battlefield.

Death Eaters swarmed out from the manor—ten, fifteen, twenty—and Draco could just make out Potter and his group sprinting straight for the small wooden door in the west wall. Ginny Weasley was with them, red hair flying as she cast curse after curse over her shoulder. Some of the other prisoners had been freed too—he could see Shacklebolt by the door shouting at them to hurry up, to get through.