𝐚 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 {a Draco Malfoy story}

chapter fifty-five: the war, part 4

Rose

     I was engaged. I was actually engaged.

     Wandless and careless, I ran through the halls to Clara. Draco's wand was the only thing keeping the both of us alive. "How are you feeling, Mrs Malfoy?"

     "God, that makes me sound like your mother."

     When I finally saw Clara alive, I was relieved to see that her biggest injury was a cut on her arm and a bleeding lip. I ran to her and pulled her into a hug. 

     "Fill me in. What's happened so far?" she asked.

     "Er - well," I took a deep breath in. "Theodore's gone."

     "I'm so sorry," she sincerely said.

     "Yeah. And, well," I raised my hand. I showed her my finger and she squealed. 

     "About time!" She turned to Draco. "Treat her right, okay?"

     "I wouldn't dream of doing anything else," he replied.

     Fred and Percy had just backed into view, both of them dueling masked and hooded men. Harry, Ron, and Hermione ran forward to help: jets of light flew in every direction and the man dueling Percy backed off, fast: Then his hood slipped and they saw a high forehead and streaked hair.

     "Hello, Minister!" bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. "Did I mention I'm resigning?"

     "You're joking, Perce!" shouted Fred as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea urchin. Fred looked at Percy with glee. "You actually are joking, Perce.... I don't think I've heard you joke since you were -"

     The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent apart, I felt himself flying through the air, and all I could do was hold as tightly as possible to Draco, hoping we'd be together. I heard the screams and yells of the others without a hope of knowing what had happened to them.

     And then the world resolved itself into pain and semidarkness: Clara, Draco and I were half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told me that the side of the castle had been blown away, and hot stickiness on my cheek told me that I was bleeding copiously. Then I heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause, and I stood up, swaying, more frightened than I had been that day.

     And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three redheaded men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione's hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood.

     "No, no - no!" someone was shouting. "No! Fred! No!" And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

     My breathing became stammered because Fred Weasley could not be dead. He just simply couldn't. "Rose, we've got to go," Draco said, tugging on my sleeve. 

     "Fred..."

     "Rosalind, come on," Clara urged. I went with them as we left Fred's body, but I couldn't get the image of his face etched out of my mind.