The Brightest Black - A Dramione Fanfic

Bonds

Fred's feet touched the ground and he was immediately grabbed by Padfoot and swung around, the older man's eyes boring into Fred's with a wild intensity. His mouth opened, but then it snapped shut as he let out a small whimper. His eyes growing wide and unfocused.

Fred shivered and felt the urge to do the same. The deaths he had just witnessed suddenly pressing down on him, becoming almost too much on top of his constant grief over George

A distant part of his brain shouted that this wasn't natural and he pulled himself out of the older man's grasp. Stumbling back, tripping over his fallen broomstick he landed hard on the ground. He shivered once more and looked up, raising his wand.

Padfoot stood as still as a statue, grief twisting his soot covered features, tears leaving narrow little tracks of pale skin. Behind him, approaching from a small pile of limp figures, were a good dozen dementors. They glided forwards, eagerly searching out the pain-filled souls lying before them.

Fred scrambled to his feet. His hand was shaking as he raised his wand, but the little beetle moving under his collar and the grief-stricken man before him gave him the strength he needed. Calling forth a memory of George he cast.

"Expecto Patronum!"

George's raven swooped out of his wand, letting out a loud, territorial caw as it soared into the sky before diving straight back down at the dementors.

The dementors did an abrupt about-face and Fred scowled. He could see figures dueling about a hundred feet away, directly in the dementors new path.

Skeeter moved again under his collar and Fred got an idea as he watched the raven run the dementors off.

Tentatively, fearing what he would, or rather, would not find. He moved down the mentally magical path that had always led to George. It still felt as empty as it had since the graveyard, but he wondered...

At the end he found no George, no second half, no equal. But he did find something else.

He and George had once considered becoming animagi after learning about the first Marauders, but they had never gone farther than searching out their animals. They just hadn't had the time to devote to it if they wanted to make their joke shop an immediate success. Though their animagi forms had affected their patroni. Fred's original patronus - a crow - had been George's animagi form. The opposite had been true for George's patronus.

He dived off the end of the mental path, trusting Skeeter to watch his body until Padfoot regained his mental facilities.

Instantly he was swooping through the air, silvery wings spread outwards as he turned, cutting off the dementors' new path and forcing them to turn once more. He kept on top of them, herding them away from the battle and back towards the forest.

When he was almost there he realized that the forest was not empty.

Centaurs stood there in the shadows of the trees. They were watching the battle, and, as one, they raised their arrows, aiming directly at the twelve oncoming dementors.

Fred shot into the air, flying over the released arrows and the golden strings of sunlight that trailed behind them. He swung around to look, seeing them pierce the dementors. One of his silvery wing tips brushed one of the golden strings.

Instantly his heart was filled with the most glorious of emotions even as his mind became clearer than it had been since George died.

"Be careful, young wizard. Mars is bright tonight. Darkness may feed off of hate, but it takes more than love to end the pain that darkness brings," one of the centaurs said, addressing Fred as he flew by.