Simple Kind Of Life

With No Way Out

There was something circling the air of the crumbled building. It tickled the nape of their necks, tracing all the way down their spine. The odd feeling settled there, making its presence known with all the panic and defeat racing in their blood as they began to be surrounded by the wrong side.

There were loud footsteps colliding with the old floor, people coming up the hall that led to the doorway where the battle had stopped, where the two raging sides had ceased to throw spells. Instead they held their wands at the ready, wand-tips pointed in every which way as the battle halted, but their need for protection still there in case anything set off the fight once again.

"Harry! Hermione!" And with loud noises of thud, thud, thud on the ground, sounding like galloping horses, Ron and a few other Aurors left behind raced into the room the others had disappeared into. "What's—" But he paused.

"Draco?" Teddy asked hesitantly  as he noticed his relative stand frozen. At the lack of response, he turned and raised his eyebrow in questioning, sharing a quick look with his father. "What's going on?"

Silence.

Ron frowned, taking further steps into the destroyed room as he headed away from Harry and to his other best friend. "Hermione, you okay?" he asked in the lowest voice, something inside of him setting off a warning signal at her tears. There was a look of glowing disgust, worry, and grief on her pale complexion.

"Ron, don't." In a movement  Harry Potter had not calculated, he raised his wand high as his feet followed Ron approaching the door where another fellow Auror stood. "Malfoy, stop him!"

Both sides of the battle moved at the Chosen One's sudden movement and command. Wands were pointed again in different directions like a muggle concept of cowboys during a showdown; no bullets yet fired, but the guns pointed at the enemy.

And just as he arrived at the doorway, looking past the shoulders of both Mrs. and Mister Malfoy, Ron was stumbled back a step when a terrible reality smacked into him. "Percy?" Ron breathed, his bright eyes shooting open as soon as he caught sight of what laid on the other side. He roared at the thought that in his lifetime he'd get to see another one of his brothers lay dead on the floor. "Percy! Percy - You?" And in his fight against Draco's restrain, as Harry came and tried helping in his collecting, Ron noticed that man from a past.

"Ron—"

"You did this?!" Ron ignored Harry as he pointed a finger past Malfoy's body, looking at the man that stood on the enemy line.

There was cackling in the background, the opposite side of the battle laughing mockingly from the pain and anger in Ron's voice. 

"Weasley, pull yourself together!" shouted Draco.

"Pull myself together?" Ron hissed, trying to shake off Harry's arms as the other Aurors started glancing through the other side of the door to see what was causing a turmoil in the Head Auror's second in command. "Of course you would say that, Malfoy!"

During the heated subdue they were trying to put Ron into, Harry and Draco shared a decisive look; an understanding between two powerful and easily composed wizards.Both were trying to find a common ground, something they could both agree to without having to speak and give anything away. Because they both knew what lay on the other side of that door—what sent Ron into a rage and Hermione into a frozen state—was worth more than the others might think. It was up to them, it was their moment. What happened next was going to be a move that was going to save all of their side or kill them all if the cards weren't dealt right.

"Don't," Hermione whispered to Draco, her eyes filled with more tears as she could see what the others couldn't, what her clever mind could calculate in less than a second as the Head Auror and one of his finest nodded in silent agreement. "Don't do it, Malfoy. Please."