Title: Guardians
A/N: A very odd idea that slipped out. What with the bucketload of WIPs I already have really don't think will continue this without some support (that really means one person- I'm not too picky!). Of course, it also depends on my muse who, of late, seems to have found a really nice desert island complete with margarita bar and has taken up permanent residence there. Anyway, just a little prologue that explains nothing just to see if anyone would like anything explained.
PROLGUE
The first time that Draco died he was eighteen years old. He remembered it with a vivid clarity that he could never quite rid himself of, even now three hundred years later. He could still smell the scent of the trampled wildflowers when Springtime was at it's peak and the wind rolled in the right direction off the Great Lake. He could never dispel the stench of the blood that had become as thick as the mud underfoot. Had never been able to wipe his mind clean of the expression on his brothers' faces as they had fallen, their blood mixing with the cloying mud.
He sometimes still had nightmares.
The Guide had said this was quite normal, that the first death, the natural death, was always the one everyone remembered. That the later deaths became mundane, filled with the anticipation of the next phase and a clarity of grief that you can't achieve with the first death, when one doesn't really realise what death is.
Of course Draco had always thought privately to himself, though he was sure the Guide knew he thought it as the Guide always knew things of that sort, that the later deaths were always going to be easier. If only because one knew that they weren't final.