Checkmate

Endgame Part 3

This is an all too familiar scene
Hopeless reflections of what might have been
From all sides the incessant and burning question:

"Bearing in mind your predicament now -
- what you did then -
- we're just dying to know would you do it all again?"

But they know full well
It's not hard to tell
Though my heart is breaking
I'd give the world for that moment with you
When we thought we knew
That our love would last
But the moment passed
With no warning, far too fast

Lyrics from "You and I" from Chess by Benny Anderson, Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus

* * * * *

Beyond the pain, there was green all around him, vivid emerald and jade and viridian, a dizzying swirl of color that gradually shaped and settled into leaves and vines, and towering, overarching walls of forest. Vines pinioned his legs where he knelt, vines encircled his hands and wrists, holding him tightly bound, tethered to the forest floor, immobile.

Raindrops, warm and heavy, dripped from leaf-tips, trickled over his shoulders and down his bare chest to mingle with the blood that ran in dark rivulets from the deep wound in his chest. He turned his face up and closed his eyes, letting the droplets roll down his face like tears.

He remembered this place . . . remembered the fear . . . remembered the inescapable, ruthless lancing of his heart with an ivory horn that burned like fire and was as cold as ice, and he knew again the agony of that cruel piercing.

The pain was everything now. Radiating out from the wound in his chest, it seared his throat, ran in excruciating waves along his spine and trembled with a pulsing ache behind his eyes and under his fingernails. Intense and brutal, it consumed him.

Hushed, urgent voices whispered all around him, but were far outside his understanding, fading away into some remote distance.

Except for one.

Why should you live? asked the memory of a soft, insistent voice in his mind and the weeping forest seemed to echo . . . Live . . .

But the question had no answer, no meaning for him now . . . nothing mattered anymore. Pain possessed him, filled him, tore at him with no mercy. He could no longer fight and yet was held captive beyond endurance.

Let me go . . ." he whispered, a dry sound, bare as bone. "Let me go . . ."

* * * * *

Harry lay on a bed in the hospital wing, dry-eyed and spent, staring at the ceiling, listening intently and clinging desperately to his awareness of that one fragile connection he held on to - for as long as he held it, he could still hope. The ordeal of getting Draco back to Hogwarts had exhausted him, both emotionally and physically. He felt weak and shattered, hollow inside - had felt so, if he thought about it, since Lucius had cast the Killing Curse.

Madam Pomfrey, in her rush to treat Draco, had taken only a glance at Harry's shocked, ashen face, but had thrust a chocolate bar into his hands and ordered him to lie down. He'd eaten half of the chocolate in a mechanical daze and then had dropped wearily onto the bed opposite Draco's. Time had passed agonizingly slowly. All he could do was lie there and wait, stunned and anxious, as from behind the curtained screens drawn tightly around Draco's bed, he could hear Madam Pomfrey talking in low, distressed whispers to Dumbledore.

When a house-elf appeared with a dinner tray, Harry found that he was famished and yet could scarcely bear to eat. Sitting up made him dizzy; the chicken tasted like cardboard, the potatoes like sawdust. He tried to eat anyway and managed to get a little of the food down, along with the rest of the chocolate bar, knowing that he had to keep up his own strength if he was to help Draco. For a short time, he did feel a little stronger, but it wasn't long before fatigue crept up on him again.