“It had to happen sometime.”
Draco’s voice was raspy, blood seeping out the left side of his almost blue lips onto the once porcelain but now deathly pale skin of his cheek. Harry could feel the tears welling but willed them desperately not to fall. Draco was all he had left, the only family he had, and here he was, the life draining slowly from the body that had lain by his side for three long years.
“It will be okay. It’s over now.” He placed a hand over the one Harry held on his chest. He could see the blood creeping over Draco’s fingers, the pressure of both hands doing nothing to stop the gushing wound. “He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Voldemort can’t hurt anyone because there is no one left to hurt, no other survivors but us, Harry thought bitterly as he surveyed the mass of bodies lying on the grassy field around him.
“I had to do it. You know that don’t you?” His breathing was slowing down, eyes shifting out of focus. “For my father, for my friends, for Snape.” He could still see the look on Draco’s face when Snape had gone down, the cold determined gaze that overtook him when he could not be persuaded from doing what he came to do. “I had to. For you.”
He brushed the matted hair off of Draco’s forehead. The once silver-blond mane was now red and brown and orange, coated in blood and dirt and the light of the ever-spreading fire.
“I love you.”
Three simple little words and one shuddering breath and he was gone. Harry could see the fire of the castle’s ruins reflected in Draco’s eyes. Gun metal grey eyes that stared up at Harry like glass orbs, the glitter distinctly Malfoy now snuffed out.
Harry lay his head on Draco’s chest and cried. Once again, The Boy Who Lived.