So you guys probably don't know Caradoc Dearborn, but he was a fighter in the First Wizarding War, and he dissapeared, never to be found. So this is just a fic on him for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition with the prompt of Caradoc Dearborn+ Christmas at hogwarts and the additional prompts of If I Die Young by The Band Perry, and the words 'frostbite' and 'sealing'. Enjoy!
"If I die young, bury me in satin
Lay me down on a bed of roses"
~ If I Die Young, by The Band Perry
Caradoc Dearborn always melted into the crowd. He would never be like the great Marauders, the legends of his year, nor would he ever be the smartest, nor the best dueller. Caradoc was simply an extra in the play of Hogwarts. He'd been fine with that, for a long while, but at the Christmas of his sixth year, he decided it was time for a change.
He'd been sitting outside for a long time, listening to the far-off Christmas carols and laughter in the distance. He supposed that the great lake, frozen into ice and dusted with pure white snow, could have been pretty, but he wasn't in the mood to enjoy the beauty. It was cold, much too cold, and he could already feel frostbite starting to kick in. He didn't really care though, he didn't want to go inside, and the sting of the cold dulled the aching loneliness in his chest. All of his friends had gone home for Christmas, but for Caradoc, home didn't feel like home anymore.
His older sister, Anastasia, had been killed by Death Eaters just months ago. She hadn't even fought, although that much Caradoc had assumed. Ana had always been a peaceful witch, and had married only a year after graduating Hogwarts, deciding to live in the muggle world rather than facing the dangers of living as a witch. She was a pureblood, from a proud line of wizards, but blood traitors were right next to muggle-borns in the eyes of the Death Eaters. They hunted her down and killed her, along with her muggle husband, and left the two of them lying in their front lawn for the neighbors to find.
There had been a funeral, and Caradoc had hardly been able to gather enough courage to go. Pure, gentle Ana, lying in a coffin of roses. She'd always loved roses. She admired their beauty, and everyone knew that she had wished to be buried with them. Her fair hair was loose, splayed out around her face, and she looked as though she was sleeping. Sleeping, Caradoc had thought, Forever sleeping. Forever young.
He had planned to go see her house over the Christmas break. It was new, she had warned him, and would still probably smell like wet paint, but he didn't mind. He hadn't seen his sister early summer, and they needed the time to catch up. He'd tell her about what had happened at Hogwarts since she graduated, and she'd confuse him with the muggle terminology she'd picked up after leaving behind the wizarding world. But it never happened, and now it never would.
Trying to find something, anything, to distract himself, Caradoc picked up a shard of ice off the snow beside him and hurled it out over the lake. He watched it bounce and skid along the frozen surface before it fragmented into smaller pieces and was lost from sight. Strangely satisfied, he threw another piece of ice, and another, watching them all shatter and break.
He didn't realize he was crying until the tears started to freeze, and he threw his last ice shard at his feet. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all. People were all just like little bits of ice, and if someone decided to throw them, they would break. There's no saving yourself, when you're in midair, preparing for the fall. Because that's all that's left to do: fall, and break, and die.
Unless, a voice in his head spoke up, Unless someone catches you. Suddenly, Caradoc's mind was whirring. Murder by the hand of the Death Eaters was not always slaughter, sometimes, there was a fight. There was a group that resisted the Dark Lord's reign, wasn't there? The ones who were called the Order of the Phoenix?
Suddenly, he was on his feet, not even bothering to brush off the snow that was plastered to his robes. He'd heard talk of the Order in Hogwarts before, in the confident voice of James Potter. 'Slimy Slytherins. My father's working to hunt them down right now. Before they know it, all their Death Eaters will be gone. And we can all thank the Order of the Phoenix.'
Mere minutes later, Caradoc burst into the Gryffindor common room, cheeks flushed from the cold and hair coated in ice. Luckily for him, the Marauders had decided to stay at Hogwarts this Christmas, and were sitting together by the fire. "James," Caradoc said as he approached them, and the four boys looked up. "Could I talk to you?"
Shrugging, and thankfully without any sort of sarcastic comment, James stood. "I swear, if someone stole something, it wasn't us-" he started, but Caradoc cut him off.
"No, it's not about that," he said, "It's about something I remember you saying, a while ago, about the Order of the Phoenix?"
James raised his eyebrows suspiciously, "What about the Order?"
Caradoc raised his hands defensively, "I'm not trying to start anything here, I just wanted to know about them. You said they stop Death Eaters, didn't you? Because You-know-who's men killed my sister, in October, and-" he choked, effectively cutting off his rambling. It hurt more than he thought it would, to say it out loud: 'Killed my sister.'
James' eyes softened just a fraction, "Look, mate, I'm sorry about that. But yeah, they oppose the Death Eaters. My dad's working with them now, and Dumbledore's head, too. They're recruiting all the time, you know. You just need to be of age."
Caradoc thanked him quickly and was gone again before James could even turn around. Soon, he found himself outside again, staring up at the sky and imagining Anastasia looking back. "I'll join," he whispered, "I'll hunt them down, the ones who killed you. I will, I'll avenge you. I promise." Lapsing into silence, he signed 'Promise' into the wind, sealing the deal. Sign language was one of the first things Ana had taught him, and they used it to seal deals. They would make an oath, and sign 'Promise' to each other. In all his sixteen years, Caradoc had never gone back on his mind, it was the same as an Unbreakable Vow.
"And I won't be an extra anymore," he said, to himself or his sister he wasn't sure, "I'll help people, I'll save them. And if I die young, so be it. They'll bury my body next to yours, and the other war casualties. But one day, this war will be over, just like you always said. Promise."
And he had no way of knowing that when he died, his grave would stay empty. His body would be left by Death Eaters to never be found. So his soul would never rest, because his last Promise Vow to his sister, to be buried alongside her, would never be completed.