twisted with beams of lightning and let loose torrential sheets of rain. The wind was howling to a fever pitch
that nearly blocked out the voices raging just as violently through Harry’s head, but it would take a lot more
than weather to stop the flow of his emotions. His mouth was working wordlessly letting loose a blue streak
of curses in languages he didn’t even understand.
His robes lay somewhere a few hundred yards back at the height of a sand dune, now drenched and sticky
with salt and sand, blowing further and further away with every tree toppling gust of wind. It was forgotten,
unimportant. Harry stood bare chested, a drenched pair of pants his only cover stinging beads of matter
riding on the wind pelting against his skin and driving it raw. He fought the wind, fought the weather,
unceasingly walking forward. He could barely see, glasses tucked away, useless in these conditions anyway.
Once in a while he’d trod bare foot on a stone or sea shell, and ignoring the ever growing amounts of cuts
on the soles of his feet he would scoop to pick it up, rear back, and hurl it into the face of the storm where it
clove through the wind and eventually gratified him with a splash in the sea that he just couldn’t seem to
walk to. Not that he should- nor should any sane living creature- want to, as it pounded down upon the sand
with a force as if it was remembering some old offense and was taking out its anger in spades.
Finally, a work laden time later, Harry felt his toes begin to dip into the icy water, and surged forward with
renewed determination. He sunk it down to his ankles, his calves, his knees, and his hips. Finally he simply
let himself fall face forward, welcoming the dirty sting in his eyes as the waves began to wash over him,
washing the grim from his legs and the tears from his cheeks and the blood from his feet.
“Maybe it will bring a shark,” his mind managed to produce, a jumbled and useless thought paired with a
thousand other jumbled and useless thoughts. He was barely coherent, and his lips worked wordlessly as his
arms flailed through the water. He pressed unheedingly forward, and when he felt the sand disappear from
under his feet he simply paddled forward, taking choking gasps of air whenever he was raised above the
waves and wasn’t being pelted down upon with rains.
*
A half mile away, magically slickened and accentuated gears ground against each other. A chain that should
have snapped under the pressure whirled as smooth as liquid, and only a smokeless heat billowed from the
exhaust pipe as the bike sped through the sand at well over a hundred miles an hour. On a windless night the
sand would have been launched a dozen feet into the air from beneath the whirling wheels, but instead the
raging air made it disappear just as fast as it was stirred up.
The bike ground to a halt almost intaneously when the brake was tapped, and at that speed a normal man
would have been launched from the seat and flung twenty feet forward before landing easily on his head and
snapping his neck like a twig.
But Draco Malfoy had proven time and time again that he was no normal man.
He leapt from the side of the seat, allowing the bike to fall and sink halfway into a sand rapidly becoming
unpassable due to its soaked condition. He scanned the sand for foot prints for less than a second, and
quickly realized there wasn’t a chance in hell that even an elephants imprints would stick around for a minute
or two in this sort of weather. Instead, he simply sprinted foreword, relying on what he relied on for most of
his life to get him by- his instincts. He was racing towards the sea.
He’d learned straight up this week to follow his instincts. The second he tried to over think something, to
make sense of it, to shove it down into happy little logical pin holes, *this* happened. How typical that the
biggest mistake in his life had come from letting himself think quietly for a minute. What the hell was wrong
with him? Didn’t he realized he was a paranoid overactive idiot?
Apparently not, and then... Justin. That scrawny little kid couldn’t have meant less to Draco if he’d simply
passed him on the street, but the look in Harry’s eyes when he’d stumbled upon them in the Owelry. It had
meant everything to him. It was amazing... the heart and the face are connected by absolutely nothing,
except the expression that passes over the latter when the former is shredded like some old paid bill before
going into the trash can.
He’d tried to chase after him, he’d always been faster than Harry before... until this day. Apparently pain can
give your feet wings like nothing else can. Even Draco’s former pride and baby, the beautiful machine which
he now valued less than the sand he’d left it lying in, hadn’t been fast enough to catch up to Harry before
he’d reached here. The beach. *Their* beach. The beach where Harry had finally managed to break him
down into admitting his feelings. The beach where he’d cried for the first time he was seven years old and his
father told him that love was just the weaklings substitute for power. The beach where Harry had given him
that all knowing little smile, taken off his glasses, and laid him back into the sand.....
But this wasn’t the time for reminiscing, it was the time for finding. Draco fell, hard, tripping on an air filled
pocket of sand at the bottom of the bump. Pain ripped through his ankle like the feeling of being stabbed
with something electric, probably broken, but he ignored it the best he could as he forced himself forward. In
this weather, he needed to reach Harry as fast as possible.
In this weather...
Ten feet away from the spot where Draco had unknowingly stripped every ligament in the lower part of his
leg from the bone, he suddenly stopped. It was like God had reached down and flipped an old switch,
turning off the storm. The final blanket of rain blinded him to most of the change, but when he’d finally
cleared out his eyes the clouds were peeling back, the wind had halted, and the crackling bolts of lightning
had ceased. All was quiet, and Draco stared around, at the empty beach and the empty ocean. Everything was... calm.
Harry Potter was never seen again.