Sapphire (Lazuli Book #3) - Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

Chapter Four

Hermione and Kingsley had seen Charlie fall.

It turned out that as I'd been staring at Draco, another Death Eater had come up behind me and was about to attack when Charlie had flown directly into him, knocking his wand from his hand and leaping from his broom, pulling the Death Eater into a free-fall. There had been nothing Hermione and Kingsley could do - by the time they were there, Charlie had disappeared into the clouds below. All they could do was retrieve his body.

It caused me more pain that I'd ever imagined, than I'd ever felt before. Knowing that my brother - the one that had been there for me when nobody else was - had given his life to save mine, made me feel as if I was being suffocated. Every time I thought about Charlie, his cheerful smile, his heart-warming laugh, it felt as if I were being stabbed. Like I was being punched in the stomach repeatedly, and I didn't have time to gain my breath and recover before the next punch came.

It didn't seem real to me - Charlie was so full of life, there was no possible way he could be dead. I kept expecting him to walk through the door with a wide grin on his face, and joke about how he'd managed to fool us all. I wouldn't even be angry with him, just relieved that my favourite brother was ok.

But he never walked through the door.

Charlie was completely and irreversibly dead.

I found myself waking up screaming in the middle of the night, my sleep haunted by nightmares of my brother falling to the ground, and me failing to help him. I wished I could curl up into a ball and sob quietly like Ginny, or spend my energy on comforting the others like Fred, George and Ron. Instead I found myself drawing away once again from everybody else, returning to the seclusion I preferred because it meant that nobody could get hurt.

It was my fault Charlie was dead. If only I'd paid a little more attention rather than being the same old love-sick school girl, perhaps I'd have seen the Death Eater coming. For whatever reason, Charlie didn't have his wand - he had no choice but to physically attack - but there was no plausible reason for my lack of concentration. Except for the fact that as usual, I'd been distracted by Draco.

Everybody grieved over Charlie, Bill perhaps the most. Charlie had been his first brother, the one he'd gone to Hogwarts with, had taken care of and learned how to ride a broom with. Of course Bill cared for the rest of us too, but Charlie had always been the one of his siblings he was closest to - his best friend. He was supposed to be his best man at the wedding in a couple of days time, and now all of a sudden he was gone. He'd sacrificed his life in exchange for saving me, his little sister, and had paid the ultimate price.

Once or twice, I caught Bill staring at me, as if he were wondering what was so special about me that Charlie had died for. I wouldn't even blame him if he wished that I'd died in Charlie's place - I certainly did.

We had Charlie's funeral a couple of days afterwards at the small church in the village. Hardly anybody attended due to the short notice, but almost all of the Order and several of Charlie's old Hogwarts friends made the effort to come and say farewell to my brave brother. As we lowered his coffin into the ground, I was filled with a new sense of hatred and anguish, a desire to avenge my brother in any way possible. I would destroy any and every Death Eater I could get my hands on, and would help Harry in bringing down the Dark Lord once and for all.

I would slaughter them for what they did.

Charlie wasn't the only casualty. Mundungus chickened out the moment he glimpsed the Death Eaters, and disapparated right there, alerting them that he wasn't the real Harry, and leaving Mad-Eye open for attack. We still have to find his body.

George got hit by a Killing Curse in the ear, and although it didn't kill him, it did blast his ear off and leave him with an unsightly wound in the side of his head. Since it as dark magic, there was no way of growing the ear back. Still, George was doing better than fine - every meal time there was a new ear related joke for us to all pretend to find funny.