Just in case || Draco Malfoy

Sixty Four - Forever Still

"You have a place in my heart
no one else ever could have"

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

...

Carrows figure in front of me was wrapped in a thick black smoke blocking his face from my view with the end of the speech. With the subsiding of the smoke, Carrow disappeared. I still clenched eyes shut with the fear of something more sinister approaching me to replace Carrow. But nothing did. And as I opened my eyes to survey the scene around me, all I saw were injured teachers and students and order members stumbling to their feet. The forces of the dark lord had simultaneously disappeared on his command, leaving behind the bodies they had drained the life from and those who remained alive, mostly injured. The silence in the air was more unnerving than any shriek - the uncertainty haunting me and all the others that joined me on the battle scene.

...

"I'm so so sorry Helena".

Apologising and with tears streaming down her cheeks, Cass wrapped her arms aroud my neck pulling me into a hug. Her school shirt had blood splatters on it, her hair scruffed up and messy and a bursted lip. I had seen all of them on the courtyard and I wanted desperately to go over to them and help them but I couldn't, spells and defences constantly being thrown at me. In the no doubt short absence of the death eaters, she, Zack, Eddie and Blaise ran over to me each in turn uttering apologies.

They all looked in awful condition, Zack in particular with a large deep gash running down his arm staining his shirt a deep red. Eddie and Blaise both had an array of small cuts and bruises across their faces and arms.

"I really don't know what we were thinking" Blaise said as he hugged me tightly.

"No. No it's fine" I responded numbly. "I get it"

After pulling away from them, I shuffled on my feet uncertain of what to do. I wanted nothing less than to see the collection of dead bodies that would be littering the whole school, but there was no use in preventing the inevitable.

The mark from across my cheek was bleeding heavily, but I hardly noticed it. I was more distracted with the fact that the whole reason I had come here in the first place was no longer by my side. And I had no idea where he was, where he was headed or who he was with. All I knew was that Draco wasn't with me.

...

The collective of nearly silent mourners and bodies covered in blankets in the great hall chilled me to a place further than bone.

Professors sat on benches, silently attempting to heal a student or another professor with a combination of potions and spells.

It is never easy to explain seeing death. Unless you yourself have seen one who is dead or witnessed death itself, I can't possibly even begin to describe to you how it feels to see a pale, lifeless, limp body of someone who once roamed this earth as you did, dead on the floor. The abundance of bodies was enough in itself to give me nightmares for the years to come. But the fact that the vast majority of such bodies belonged to those who hadn't even seen there 15th birthday. The older ones had the experience to be able to save themselves. These children had no such training.

The Gryffindor girl. She was the first I recognised. That girl with the brown hair who refuse to back down. She now lay on her back, the shell of her soul staring, empty, up to the ceiling of the hall. The hall that not a year ago, she would have roamed freely. Seeing her friends each morning. Learning about the beauty of magic in such a wonderful school. It was the same room her dead body lay in, her hand being clasped by an older child, her tears falling down into the girls empty face replacing where her own tears once had been.

I had mere steps to recover from the sight of the girl before I saw two more. Two more lifeless individuals. Only these I knew by name.

Lupin and Tonks. Their faces ashy from the life being drained from them, bruises across them. When they ran from me - running to their death they must have been. There fingers lay touching ever so slightly on the ground. The man with the scarred face from the order knelt beside them. He gently closed the eyes of the two bodies. It gave the illusion they were but asleep. I suppose in a way they were. A sleep they wouldn't awaken from. Though most would call it a coma, a word which is no more comforting than the word dead.

Ron was covering the final one. I look back now and wish I could have looked away before Ron moved backwards allowing myself to see who the corpse was. Beneath Ron's sobs, the still body lay, his counterpart still clasping his hand and sobbing. The ghost of Fred's last laugh still etched onto his face...

I fell to my knees and couldn't tell if it was voluntary or not. I grasped his hand in mine, the haunting coldness of it making me shiver. My tears clouded my eyes but I still looked down into Fred's.

No, we weren't close. But we knew each other enough. Enough for me to sob at his side as he lay dead. Enough for me to relive each interaction we had ever had as I traced a finger across his limp hand. Enough for me to pray that it wasn't true - that he wasn't dead.

I tilted my head downwards trying to conceal my sobs as I lightly rested my forehead on his chest. I almost for a split second expected his chest to rise and fall with his breaths, his heart beat to bang on my head as I rested my head above where his heart was. Where it used to beat. But of course, no. His heart would now lay forever dormant, his chest forever still.

...

"I love you more than I can ever put into words...

...I love you I love you I love you...

...yours forever and longer"

I re read the letter for what must have been the hundredth time.

"I love you". Then why aren't you here?

"Yours forever and longer". Then why aren't you here?

Why aren't you here. I hate that I love you. I had always hated how I loved you. When you hated me, when you told me you were a death eater. And now I hate that I still love you after you wanted to abandon everything.

Why the fuck does love hurt this much. Why can't it be like my fairytale stories where everything works out fine. They live happily forever after. It's all perfect. Why couldn't we be born in a different age away from all this mess. Then maybe we could be free to love each other without hating it.

Maybe in a different age.

...