𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑

the one with another mother's sacrifice

"Malfoy!" Harry shouted. He was trembling when he reached him, tears falling from his emerald eyes, rivuleting on his tan skin, marking clear spaces through the dust on his skin. He grabbed Draco's coat and shook him. "Can you do something- anything-she is not breathing!"

Draco eyed the boy before him. He wasn't much shorter but he bore strange resemblance to Skylar-he looked too much like his dad and she looked too much like her mom. Draco's eyes fixed over Harry Potter just as Cedric Diggory passed him, his tears falling on her face.

Her face was still porcelain, showered with a small array of freckles that seemed to, on most days, remain invisible until you went really close to her. Her big almond shaped eyes remained closed,as if she had closed them when she . . . died. Her lashes were darker than her hair, more black than red, and they cast a strange shadow as the fanned over her cheekbones. Her skin was flushed, almost as red as her lips. She was way too limp, way too floppy and way too much at peace for Draco to do anything at all. Her hand that clutched the wand, hung limply on her side, still clutching the wand,ready for battle even in death.

She was dead.

Draco learned to identify a Killing Curse from a mile away since he was just a child. He also learned that there was not coming back from a Killing Curse. His body felt foreign to him as he wrapped his arms around Harry Potter-something he never thought he would do in his life-and walked with him towards the Great Hall.

The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of light now, no bangs or screams or shouts. The flagstones of the deserted entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds were still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and splintered wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away. Ron led the way to the Great Hall. Draco stopped in the doorway. The House tables were gone and the room was crowded. The survivors stood in groups, their arms around each other's necks. The injured were being treated upon the raised platform by Madam Pomfrey and a group of helpers. Firenze, the banished Centaur, who was a Divination Professor, was amongst the injured; his flank poured blood and he shook where he lay, unable to stand.

The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Skylar Firegold was placed on a white stretcher right next to Theodore Nott, both their faces serene, both their bodies turning cold. As Skylar was laid, her hand with the Dark Mark fell out-Draco realized her Mark had been bleeding too, for she had out bandages on it, alone-and limply touched Theo's finger, both their Marks deactivated, both lives taken.

Harry Potter struggled free from his embrace, his eyes wide at the row of dead, his sister, his own sister, his only family at the very end-and he backed away. Draco didn't have to ask why. Just like Harry, Draco too felt overwhelmed by everything. The War had taken from him a little too much than he was willing to give. All those nights when Skylar planned the War, planned out the details, how nothing could go wrong-neither of them had for even once considered her death, when it was blatantly obvious that she did not exist in the foretold, so why must she now? He sat on the small space between his best friend and the girl he had sold his heart to, and reached out, encasing his warmer, bigger, alive hands around their smaller, colder, dead ones that conjoined in the middle.

He would never forget this night; his fingers painted circles over their hands, his eyes finally burning. He wondered how the rest of the world was, how the world hadn't stopped turning by now, that Skylar Nova Firegold, a girl whose heart that was made of iron-clad bravery had stopped beating. The noise around him, of reconciliating family and friends, who huddled around the injured, who huddled around the fallen, had dulled into a distant humming. His fingers started running cold at the dread that only started pouring in as his eyes, now pooling with tears from a pain previously unknown to him, wavered between the two most important people in his life, now dead.