Hey guys, thanks to all of you who picked this up and will read the whole thing and review. To those of you who read any of my other stories: I won't be able to really update them until summer starts and school ends... I have so many conserts and such lined up it's not even funny. So again thanks to you all and I hope you like this short story :)
"Two day's past eighteen, he was waiting for the bus in his army greens. He sat down in a booth café; there he gave order to a girl with a bow in her hair. He's a little shy, so she gave him a smile so he said 'would you mind sitting down for a while and talking to me? I'm feeling a little alone.' She said 'I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go'…"
My mommy lost my Daddy during the war against the Dark Lord when I wasn't there yet. She doesn't really talk about him much but I do know that she misses him horribly. Sometimes at night when she thinks I'm sleeping, I get up for some water and I hear her crying over his picture. She must've loved Daddy a lot.
I've asked her about him but she only replies that 'he was a brave man and died to protect us.' I had to go to Auntie Ginny, Uncle Harry, and all of my other Aunts and Uncles… They said that when the first wave of the Dark War started, Grampa was the Dark Lords most trusted Servant. They said that Grandpa did many terrible things in the name of Darkness and he was lucky not to get the Dementors Kiss. When the second wave started Grandpa convinced Daddy to follow in his footsteps and Daddy did many bad things too and hated Mommy's kind – the muggleborns – and he used to call Mommy all sorts of bad words.
Auntie Ginny says that 'somewhere deep down, Mommy always loved that uptight African donkey…even when she wanted nothing more than to hate his guts and feed then to Fluffy… It took Daddy a bit of a shove – however – to realize how much he loved Mommy as well.'
'You could tell instantly when he realized how much he loved her,' Uncle Harry told me once. "He went from being a stuck-up, evil ferret to an innocent man who would do anything to get your Mommy to look at him and then he'd do a hundred times more just to hear her laugh. He loved her with all his being and when he found out that he was going to be a Daddy, I think he about kissed the Dark Lord himself out of happiness during the meeting he had five minutes later.'
"So they went down and they sat on the pier. He said 'I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care; I got no one to send a letter to. Would you mind if I send one back here to you?'…"
'When your Uncle Ronny-kins asked your Mommy out on a date in the middle of Potions class, the Ferret nearly lost his mind… Poor bloke looked shattered," Uncle Gred told me. I never found out how he knew that tidbit since he'd already left the school a year prior, but he and Uncle Forge have their ways I guess…
'Your Daddy moped around for the whole year and he hit an all-time low. That year he was ordered to kill the old headmaster, Dumbledore, and God did he try. He nearly killed many people in his attempt but in the end he just couldn't kill him and Grandpappy Snape had to do the deed for him to make sure that the Dark Lord didn't kill him for it,' Uncle Blaise and Auntie Pansy told me one year at Christmas when I was ten. 'When Fenrir Greyback brought your Mommy to Malfoy manor after he'd caught your Mommy and your Uncles, your Daddy nearly died of horror at what Bellatrix Lestrange did to her. He thought that she was going to be killed before he'd even had a chance to talk to her.'
"I'm crying; never gonna hold the hand of another guy. Too young for him they told her, waiting for the love of a traveling soldier. Our love will never end, waiting for a soldier to come back again. Never going to be alone when the letter says a soldier's coming home…"
Right after Uncle Harry and Dobby, the House Elf, saved Mommy, Daddy ran away from home for a short time looking for Mommy to tell her how he felt and make sure she was okay, leaving a note for his parents saying that he was going over to Uncle Blaise's for a while. He'd asked Uncle Blaise to vouch for him, so Uncle Blaise had gone on an extended camping trip till Daddy told him that he was ready to go home.
'I remember your Daddy's face when he found us at Shell Cottage,' Uncle Bill said. 'He saw your Mommy and it was like nothing else existed and he went into a trance. He went up to her and hugged her close, taking in her smell and making sure that she was okay and safe. He didn't even care that the rest of us had our wands trained on him; he just wanted your Mommy in his arms and he didn't want to ever let her go.'
'When we realized he wasn't going to harm Mione, it took Harry, Fleur, Bill, Remus, Olivander, Griphook, and I nearly an hour to detach him from your mother,' Uncle Ronny continued. 'He was like a leech but your mother told us to let him be when we still couldn't get him off. She could feel how he needed her right then and was afraid that if he let her go, he might never get the chance to hold her in his arms again. Even the Dark Lord had to admit that he loved her with everything he had.'
'I tried to tell Mommy once your Daddy passed out from exhaustion that it wouldn't end well,' Auntie Fleur told me when I was fourteen. 'Do you want to know what she told me? She said that she didn't care, and she would take what she could get while she had it and deal with what came when your Daddy left; only he never left… She told me that she'd loved him since her fourth year at the Yule Ball but I suspect that she's loved him for longer than that. They truly were soulmates.'
"So the letters came from an army camp in California then Vietnam and he told her of his heart; might be love of all of the things. He was so scared, oh. He said when it's getting kind of rough over here, I think of that day sitting down at the pier and I close my eyes and see your pretty smile. Don't now worry, but I won't be able to write for a while…"
'Your mother took it slow,' Grampa Remus said to me one day randomly when he had a coherent moment, before he went back into mourning over Grandma Tonks. 'She told me that she wasn't sure that he wasn't just playing her after all he'd done for her but I believe that his meanness to her in their younger years was because he'd liked her unconsciously and needed her to notice him but he knew nothing of it. It happens a lot with us guys. And since your Daddy didn't know what he was feeling, he let it out in the wrong way at first.'
'When Draco heard that your Mamma and Uncle Ron had broken up during their time away from school at first he was really happy but then he became sad for her,' Grammy Molly told me when I was sleeping over for my seventh birthday party. She was rocking me to sleep because I'd gotten a stomach ache from eating too much cake. 'In that moment I knew he loved her beyond belief because, you see, most men wouldn't think of our feelings over a breakup when we cared for whom we were with before the breakup. Your Daddy couldn't stand to see your mother in even the slightest of pain after a certain near death experience.'
'Your Daddy took your Uncle Ron and I aside one day after dinner about three days after he'd gotten to Shell cottage and asked us a whole bunch of questions about your Mama, till Ron lost his temper and hold him to find out what your Mama liked on his own and that he wasn't a Wikipedia site and neither was I,' Uncle Harry said while laughing and bouncing cousin Lillian on his lap. 'Right after that he started taking your Mother out on very long walks and spent hours upon hours talking to her and playing games with her and learning about how she grew up. You should've seen her face when he came in one day after disappearing for nearly two whole hours after being with her nearly twenty-four seven and then came back with two bags of books and another bag filled with muggle games. It was priceless.'
"I'm crying; never gonna hold the hand of another guy. Too young for him they told her, waiting for the love of a traveling soldier. Our love will never end; waiting for a soldier to come back again. Never going to be alone when the letter say's a soldier's coming' home…"
'At first I was completely against the Ferret courting 'Mione and it took me until that final day to see how much he truly loved her. No one had told me that when he'd gone back to the Manor that he'd started spying for the Order and I'd thought that he'd been playing with 'Mione's feelings. Have to admit that I got in a few good punches at him during the final battle when he had the nerve to go and kiss her at the pause in between. I regretted those punches within the four hours after words when he saved my life twice and then threw himself in-between Hermione and the killing curse. Poor Mione was crying and trying to get him to stay with her but it was no good. Although he did seem like he could've survived once she shouted out 'Don't you dare on me Draco Lucien Malfoy! Don't you dare leave me to be a single mother! I'll find myself a necromancer and have it bring you back so I can kill you over and over! Do you hear me? Don't even think of dying!' Your mother sure can be scary when she wants to be; I swear he was about to live just to make sure that she wouldn't do what he threatened but as it turned out it was his time…'
'I have to admit, I never thought that the guy who got punched in the face in our third year and started crying because of a girl, would put himself in-between said girl who'd punched him in third grade and a killing curse,' Uncle Fred told me late last Saturday. 'I have to say that him falling in love with your mother was probably the best thing that ever happened. No offense but he was a little shite before he came to his senses.'
'Yea, little bugger went out of his way to make all our lives a living hell,' Uncle George laughed. 'Sometimes I wondered if Voldemort would pay us if we got rid of him he was so annoying. But he did come through and he loved you Mother more than anything and he loved you as well. Voldemort saw it as soon as Draco stepped in front of your mother. I still think that old Snake face was thinking 'Oh, shite. Here's a repeat of Godric's Hollow all over again…' When he saw that he immediately tried to kill your mother but your Uncle Harry got to it first and killed him.'
'I never wanted to believe that when my Draco told me that he'd fallen in love with your mother that he meant it…' Grandmother Narcissa told me three days ago. 'My son had always taken after his father, including in his hate of Muggleborns. He knew never to even hint of this to Lucius for the consequences would be severe. It was when he stepped in front of your mother that I realized how much he cared for her… My Draco had never in his life before then sacrificed anything for someone else; he'd learned never to sacrifice anything for anyone else but they sacrifice for them. Lucius saw it and was furious; I had to kill him in order to make sure that your Father did not die in vain and that you were allowed to come into this world. Your Papa would've been pissed with me otherwise.'
"One Friday night at a football game - the Lord's Prayer said and the anthem sang – a man said 'Folks, would you bow you head for the list of local Vietnam dead.' Crying all alone under the stand was a piccolo player in the marching band and one name read but nobody really cared…but a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair. I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy. Too young for him they told her, waiting for the love of a traveling soldier. Our love will never end, waiting for a soldier to come back again. Never more to be alone, when a letter said a soldier's coming home...
"I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy. Too young for him they told her, waiting for the love of a traveling soldier. Our love will never end, waiting for a soldier to come back again. Never more to be alone, when the letter says a soldier's coming home…"
As I finish my song in front of all those crowded into the small pub in Hogsmead this weekend in celebration of the twentieth year since the war ended, everyone clapped and I could see tears in most everyone's eyes. Everyone lost at least one person dear to them in the war… I thought that this song would fit well for my purpose – to remind everyone of the dead and to tell them that every death was another's sorrow, even if hardly anyone knew that person.
"Thank you everyone for coming tonight," I say into the speaker that my cousin Lily handed me. I'd gotten into the habit of singing without anything to make me sound louder; I consider the voice amplifiers to be cheating. "That song is 'Traveling Soldier' by the Dixie Chicks and I think it comes up why I'm here even if it's about a completely different war.
"In the fight for freedom against Voldemort, people were dying left and right, magical and non-magical alike. Some were people you knew, some you'd never met, some you'd never even heard of until my Uncle's Fred and George announced it on their secure radio station. Those people should've been able to live longer and live on with their families and their loved one's but they couldn't because of a psychotic mass murderer who enjoyed torturing people. I now have a presentation on everyone who died in the war.
"It took me years and lots of help to find everyone who'd died and what their causes were. I collected people from back when Tom Riddle was still in school, when he was no more than a spirit roaming around in Romania. So without further ado, I'd like you all to watch this memorial dedicated to those who lost their most cherished ones," I say as I press a button and the lights dim and the camera starts rolling.
I walk off stage and sit in a seat next to the one that had been reserved for my mother who was supposed to be here. I suppose she's too busy grieving over the twentieth anniversary of my Father's death. I don't blame her, even after all these years it's got to be hard to lose your soulmate. I watched as names, faces, stories cross the screen…
People cry and some have to leave because they still can't deal with the damage that one man did to thousands. The last story on the slide is the story of my mother and my father, starting from when they were in school all the way till today. Those who are still there are raptured as they see a grinning son of a Death Eater nuzzling a muggleborn and kissing her. They have all heard the stories about my parents but they didn't believe it to be true.
I see my mother outside the glass window with one hand raised towards the slideshow, as if reaching for the past could bring him back. The tears are running from her eyes and there's snot in her nose. She smiles sadly at me when she sees me watching and beckons me to follow her as she starts walking away. I ask Lily to finish for me as I chase after my mother.
"I knew I would never be able to keep you in the dark forever," Mom tells me as she wipes her nose on a tissue I hand her. "You're too much like your father; always up to something and getting information you're not supposed to have. You're and identical copy of him."
"I understand why you did it," I tell her. "Though at first I was furious that you'd kept it all from me and it made me more determined to find everything out. That was the major motivation behind all of this… I'm surprised that you didn't find a necromancer and kill him over and over though."
She laughs. "Everyone else said the same thing but I realized something… Why bring back the dead when it would just make it harder for them to leave again. Your Father and I had our month together and we loved but it was his time to go; it's just hard to accept that I won't ever wake up to him smiling down at me and kissing my nose ever again, just like he used to while we were at Shell Cottage. And beside's, do you know how hard it is to find a decent Necromancer and how expensive they are? I couldn't afford that even if I begged your Uncle Harry for a loan."
"Do you think you'll ever find someone else?"
"Honestly, I've tried. It never works out; there's no one out there that can even come close to your father. You'll understand once you find the right one, what I mean…"
"I do understand, Mama. I think I can understand better than you think," I smile sadly back at her. She stares at me while I walk away and feel a tear come to my eyes. I never got to meet the one person I want to meet the most, but I also wouldn't change anything because without my father's sacrifice, there would still be an insane psyco killer on the loose and Momma and I would be dead. But hey, I can always dream of him and go visit his ghost at the ruins of Hogwarts whenever I want!
Thank you all for reading! Please review and tell me what you think and if I should make a sequel when I get the time to.
Mercy
Revised: 6/6/12
