Title: War
Summary: "War makes children orphans. War makes parents childless. War makes people friendless. War makes children grow up far too quickly. War is lonely, and takes everything from you."
A/N: Unlike most of my other recent stories, this does not focus on the next generation, instead this is yet another one about the Second Wizarding War. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!
The grass is still green, the sky still blue. The sun rises in the morning, the moon at night. There are still twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, fifty-two weeks in a year. Those never change.
But yet, the days feel longer, the nights darker, more lonely. The world is mourning. Crying for the lost children.
Parents are burying their children, children become orphans, spouses becoming widowed, teenagers losing everyone.
That's what war does. It takes, and takes, and takes. And won't ever give anything back.
War is why, in a single night, a baby boy became an orphan, a twenty-one-year-old became a murderer, another one lost all of his four friends in one night, and the most powerful wizard in the world became no more.
An eleven-year-old sees his dead family as his deepest desires and fights off that powerful man for the first time and he shouldn't have to stop the bad guy because he's just a child.
A twelve-year-old is suspected of attacking other children and has to save his best friend's little sister and fight off a giant monster even though he's just a child.
A thirteen-year-old finds out he has a sort-of-parent who is an escaped convict and gets torn away from him in the same night and it's not fair because he's just a child.
A fourteen-year-old learned how to kill and how to torture and faces the man who killed his parents, witnessing a friend die because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and is found clutching the corpse, and he is just a child.
He was fifteen when he realised he wasn't a child anymore. He wanted to fight in the war. He knew the world was fucked. He watched his godfather die and tried to torture the killer and found out he had to stop the bad guy and save the world but he's a damned child.
He was sixteen when he saved a life and learned how to kill the one who killed his family and he watched his best friend get poisoned and watched another person die because of this goddamned war and he finally gets to be a teenager and have a girlfriend but then he can't because she'll get hurt and it's not fair because he shouldn't have to save the world.
He was seventeen when he became completely homeless and he has to fight and torture and almost dies and hears his sister, because he loves her like one, get tortured and his friend dies in his arms and there's a fight and people die and the only link left to his parents is just laying there with no life in his eyes and he has to walk to his death and it's not fair, he's a child.
War makes children orphans. War makes parents childless. War makes people friendless. War makes children grow up far too quickly. War is lonely and takes everything from you.
War makes you lose absolutely everything, and there's nothing you can do about it.