Prompt: Death.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter rights belong to Jo Rowling.
You ask yourself how you let this happen, and you cannot answer.
Isn't that ironic? Thrown in the midst of a war, surrounded by friends who are now soldiers and classmates who are now enemies, and the one thing that makes you more valuable to your side is your brain. Your ability to think, your ability to know.
But the war fucks everything up, and you realise the world was never in black and white. And you now understand that the shades of grey makes everything so much harder.
1.
When you're camping with the rest of the resistance, all you can think about is what you notice about your friends now.
You see Harry's eyes that were once so unburdened, marred with the strips of grief. You see Ron's face set in a determined mask, but you can hear his voice waver. You hear Ginny's bold voice, but see her hands shake when she lifts her wand. You feel Neville's reassuring touch, but the brave smile slipping down his face. You still hear Luna saying things you always deemed strange, but you don't miss the tear you see her brush aside every now and then.
You were never one to be observant as any other, but you can now go around the camp and pick something up off everyone. From your best friends, to even the git Cormac McLaggen, whose kisses you once thought were like slimy fish but who you've walked in sitting by his mother's grave only a few weeks ago.
You find yourself wishing you knew what he did now that he was also one of them. Another soldier in an army, only for the wrong side.
2.
You know the meaning of loss from a young age.
You were four when your grandpa died, and you didn't understand what your parents meant when they told you that he couldn't come to visit anymore. You told them that you would visit him instead, and you didn't understand when your mother left the room to cry.
You were ten when your pet goldfish died, but you couldn't say that you were too upset. Yet, he was the one that you talked to about your problems at school and the one you cried in front of. He was your friend when no one else wanted to be.
You were seventeen when your mentor died, and that's when you finally understood the true meaning of loss. When you saw the anguish on your best friend's face, and you saw the hopelessness left in McGonagall's eyes as she told the rest of the Order.
You were eighteen when you watched the people you grew up with die, one by one, in the span of nine months. Whether it be friends you were once close with, like Padma Patil, or foes you were once tormented by, like Vincent Crabbe. But in the moment, it doesn't really matter which one, for the realisation of someone you once knew gone was enough as it was.
And there was one more that you wouldn't tell anyone for the world- not Harry or Ron, nor your parents or Ginny.
You were sixteen when you saw a lost boy die, and that was the loss that hit just as hard as the others. He didn't die physically, he didn't pass on like everyone else you once knew, but metaphorically, you realise, was just as bad. He was the boy who called you Mudblood more often than not, who made you cry into the depths of your pillow after he gloated, who was horrible and mean, but a boy. A child. He died somewhere along your sixth year, and he was replaced by a man who never forgot how it felt to be alone, but was on his way to forgetting how to be human again.
3.
You thought you saw enough suffering, saw enough dying, that it couldn't possibly hurt anymore.
You were wrong.
Every one more corpse that you saw, every jet of green light that found its target, still leaves fresh tears on your face. They're only additions to your nightmares; the new faces mixed with the old. You doubt you will ever forget about any of them.
Cedric Diggory, Sirius, Dumbledore, Moody, Tonks, Lupin, Fred, little Colin Creevey, Snape, Padma, Crabbe, Terry Boot, your stupid cousin that you used to hate but the Death Eaters tracked down, even your parents...
You blink back tears. If humans could turn their feelings off, you would. You wouldn't even think about it.
4.
You seem him on missions sometimes.
You find yourself volunteering for every mission, even if you don't want to. You busy yourself with distractions so you don't have enough time to mourn and to feel. And you realise that, the more you kill, the more of your humanity you are stripped of. So it's stupid, suicidal, that you now only use spells that won't end up in their direct death from your wand. You've never used Crucio, and you make sure that you do not use Avada Kedavra unless necessary. But you still maim every Death Eater you come across.
Except him.
You were sending a Stupefy to a masked enemy when you caught him right behind your opponent. The Death Eater you Stunned fell without another word, and you were left face-to-face with him. You have seen him kill himself, but who hasn't anymore? The resistance can say the deaths they cause were defensive, but does it really matter when they've take human life too? You have.
Your wand is still raised and the spell is on your tip of the tongue to say. And he doesn't do anything, only stare at you. You look at each other for a pause, neither one making a move to attack the other. But it's broken when a green light is tossed your way, missing his ear by an inch, and you're thrown back into reality. The spell was obviously meant for him and he whirls around, finding the offender before he sends one of his own back. It hits its target and your scream dies in your throat.
You raise your wand again at him and this time you disarm him. His eyes meet yours. You had him there, you could just kill him as easily as he did to Katie Bell right then, but you can't. You see the remorse flash in his eyes, even with his cold sneer he still manages to have on, and you realise that there's still a part of him that can maybe be saved.
So you toss his wand away, cast a body-bind on him, and you walk away. You let him live.
You find yourself looking for him every time you're on a mission now.
5.
You're lost.
You went on a mission with Dean Thomas to only spy on a meeting two Death Eaters were having. But you were nearly caught and you had to split up to avoid either of you being taken in. Two Mudbloods part of the resistance? Too valuable. Dean had Apparated away first, because you told him to, and you were halfway through Apparating away yourself when the Death Eaters put a ward up to prevent you from doing so. Luckily, your Disillusion charm still upheld, and you were still disguised by Polyjuice Potion so you ran for it.
Only you kept running and you don't know where you've ended up.
You wish you could keep running and keep going until you are far away from this- not only here, but the war in general. But you could never live a peaceful life with being racked in guilt. So you come to a halt somewhere, looking around to realise you are by the gates of a graveyard. No one is around, the place deserted, with the exception of a lone figure inside.
Now, approaching strangers in the current environment would be certainly dangerous, and you find yourself doing it anyway.
You walk slowly and quietly, as not to startle them. Your Disillusion charm has worn off now, though your Polyjuice Potion hasn't. Finally, you stop a few feet away to the right of the figure, who is staring at the grave in front of them.
Realising the presence, the figure immediately looks up and locks eyes with the intruder.
Him. Well, who else did you expect it to be?
He looks at you, though he surely cannot know who you are. You are a stranger to him at the moment, the replica of a Muggle you stole a hair off. Yet, he still stares at you.
"Granger."
He said it so quietly that you're not even sure he said it. But his lips had moved the tiniest fraction and you shake your head in bewilderment.
"Granger? Sorry, sir, I do not know who that is. That's not my name," you say hurriedly.
And he continues to stare right into your eyes, until you look away uncomfortably.
"No, you're Granger," he says, more confidently this time, but still just as quiet. "I can see it in your eyes."
And you don't have the heart to protest so you don't reply.
"You shouldn't have let me go before," he hisses so suddenly, you jolt. You blink a few times before realising what he means. "Why did you let me go?"
You shrug at him, because you couldn't possibly tell him the reason why. Maybe that's why he hasn't attacked you yet.
He looks at you one more time, before he clasps the buttons on his black robes tighter around him and he turns away. He walks a few steps but he stops and he tilts his head head to look at you again.
"If you carry on walking to the end of this street and turn left, that's where the Apparation wards are lifted."
It takes a while for the words to sink in, to realise that he is helping you. By the time you look up, he is gone.
You can feel the tips of your blonde hair slowly returning back to its original colour, feel the bushiness returning. Your Polyjuice Potion is fast running out and you should be getting away from here as quickly as you can. But you look at the grave he was staring at himself. It's plain, and it's small, and ere are no flowers left around it. Only the writing engraved in the stone and you have to lean down slightly to be able to read it.
Narcissa Malfoy (nee Black)
14th November 1955 - 3rd May 1998
There is nothing else on it except those words and, for some reason, that makes it ten times more sadder.
6.
When your side has won and the rest of the Wizarding world overjoys, you cannot bring yourself to involve yourself with the celebrations. Not with the deaths still fresh on your mind, not when you can still hear the screams of the victims, not when you can still feel your own body aching.
And so, you do what you always do. You throw yourself into distractions to avoid breaking down. Your distraction this time is keeping him out of Azkaban.
"You shouldn't be worth saving," you tell him one time, as you are once again leaving the court room after defending him. You are alone, because not one of your friends - the ones who have survived, anyway - wants to help you help him. They think you're mad for even trying.
He stops walking and he looks at you, and you see the tired look on his face. "I know."
You watch him walk away again and, four months later, he is cleared. Cleared being him being under house arrest, wand taken away from him for two years, placed on probation and being closely watched. But he's not in Azkaban or executed. He doesn't even thank you; he just walks straight out of the room and he's gone by the time you exit too. You don't bother to chase him.
"He should be thrown in Azkaban," Ron says to you when you tell him the news. "You should've let him. He's a killer."
"He's killed. I've killed. You've killed. It's a war, Ron. People have died, and you can't tell me that none of us has ever ended someone else's life."
"But they're Death Eaters-"
"They're still people. Still human."
He is silent and you don't notice the tears in his eyes until you look up.
7.
This isn't meant to happen. Only yesterday were you worrying if your new classmates will like you, with your mum and dad giving you an extra kiss when you go off to big school for the first time. Where did all the years go? You don't feel like a twenty-year-old.
You find yourself staring at the Muggle girls that walk by you when you're sitting on the park bench, and you hear them chatter on their phones about college assignments and boyfriend problems. And you try to smile a sad smile but you can't bring yourself to.
But then he sits next to you on the bench. And you let him.
You don't say anything for a while, and neither does he.
"Thanks," he says after a long pause.
You shrug.
He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. He does this again three more times until you stop him.
"Is there a reason you're acting like a goldfish?" you say with a raised eyebrow. But there's no conviction held in it.
He glares at you for a moment before he lowers his eyes and lowers something so in audible, you have to lean in to hear. "Sorry."
"For what?" you say, though you know what for. He doesn't answer, though his gaze lifts to meet yours again, and a mutual understanding ran between you two. Sorry for the dead, sorry for the living, sorry for this messed-up world you live in, sorry for everything you had to go through and everything he had to go through.
You sit there with him in silence for longer, both of you watching passers-by.
Maybe living now wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
Sometimes I write things randomly and this is one of them. Read, review, give me constructive criticism!