The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Sixteen

Day: 1350; Hour: 17

You do not ever get used to it. She had thought she might after a year, two, three with no doubt. But her body still shakes like her blood is ice water and she still hesitates half the time when the crowd is mixed and she has to fire off something at oncoming targets. She would do much better if she didn't need to think about it after, because was I right, was I right? is now a far more dreadful question than in the short silence of waiting for a teacher to tell her the answer to it. She will always doubt herself here, because she has seen too many people who were wrong. She has been wrong.

She is more advanced than she had been though, by leaps and bounds, and there are less times that the two sides meld into a frenzied jumble of confusion and friendly firing. They were like children in the beginning. It's hard not to think that they still are.

Everyone makes mistakes here. Even the highest ranked Aurors have hung their heads on a battlefield. Her hardest enemy, perhaps, was her own determination to be confident in her own excellence. Sometimes people can be nothing more than instinct, shed of all the layers of civility and society, and she struggled too long in accepting her own raw humanity.

She was better now though, and came down to her humility enough to think, at first, that everyone was getting worse, before she realized she was just improving and they were all shit at war.

Two bodies, clad in black, send vestiges of winter spiraling around them. Draco's feet dig for purchase, turning weak snow into sludge, and both their feet kick up the top layer of mud that the ice left for puddles as they fall. Specks of blood scatter, but are lost in the palette their boots make, turning flawless white into dark brown lines and shapes around them. Fred is screaming himself hoarse, and Draco is a silent fighter trading words for breath.

She thinks to stop them, but remembers the abuse Malfoy and herself bestowed upon one another in the beginning and changes her mind. They need this maybe, in a way none of them really understand. Neville yells about fighting the other side too much to fight with each other, sending quick glances to the battle going on just twenty yards up, but he still doesn't stop them either.

There is so much tension here, in war. A weight, a deep pressure against your chest and heart that feels like it might need to be ripped and broken and pushed until it's gone. And, at times, one needs someone else to tear it out for them.

Day: 1354; Hour: 19

She thinks that, perhaps, she is starting to feel more for Draco Malfoy than she ever wanted to allow herself to. Her time is either filled with him being there, or her waiting for him to be. This is dangerous, and reckless, but she keeps heading down this path as if it is the best thing she could do.

She does not like that she thinks about him constantly, or enjoys spending so much time with him even if they are arguing, or that she has grown to care about if he lives, or dies, or gets hurt. She does not want to care about another person right now, no matter who they are, because the risk of losing anyone now is too great. But she realizes that she can't help but to give a damn about him, no matter what she tells herself, or how much she tries to remember and convince herself of why she should not think of him in a positive light at all. Because then she is back to thinking about how he's funny in a dry, sarcastic way, or how he challenges her in a brilliant way, or how much she likes his mouth and the look on his face when he is moving inside of her. She likes that he is broody and caustic, and that she never knows what she is going to get when she is near him. She likes that he is a remote hog, watches corny infomercials, never willingly shares his snacks, and doesn't take any of her crap without giving his own back.

It is now a sad fact of her life that she likes Draco Malfoy. Her friends would surely flip if they found out, he would probably make a snide comment and laugh in her face, and she doesn't much like it either -- but there it is, and they were all just going to have to deal with it.