Twisted (Charlie Weasley)

Chapter Fifty

I was once again shaking from my thoughts. I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but the fight was heating up. Instinctively I was shooting spells every such way. I kept trying to look over to Fred and George to see how they were fairing, but I could clearly tell George was no longer in the corridor with us. Percy was fighting amazingly, in a way I had seen only professional duelers fight before. There was no time to ask how he gained these skills, I was too busy myself sending my own spells every which way. 

It was hard to tell how much time had passed, but seemingly out of no where the doors to the Room of Requirement once again. This time was much unlike before, the doorway roared with flames, and Harry, Ron, Hermione and two death eaters came flying out of them. For a moment there was simply shock about what was happening... but then I realized who the death eaters were. There stood the young frames of Gregory Goyle and Draco Malfoy... and the entire world seemed to stop for a moment. And then they dashed off.

Before I could even completely register who was standing in front of me, they both ran. Thoughts didn't seem to register in my mind, because before I knew it I was running too. After one of the people whom I had run away from when I was younger than even him and the boy who I knew who had no choices. He sent spells back at me as I chased after him, but I reflected them with ease. Eventually, he came to a stop and I was finally able to truly look at him. The first time I had been able to do so in years.

When I saw the blonde-haired slender frame of Draco Malfoy, I couldn't help but feel my stomach drop. Now seventeen years old this boy, this young man, was not the baby I always pictured when he was brought up in conversation. My cousin, a boy who may very well be repulsed by the sights of me, had grown up in a flash. He was not the same babbling baby who giggled when my hair flashed a series of vibrant colours behind closed doors. He wasn't the fussy toddler I saw from time to time after my parent's imprisonment, before I had moved in with the Tonks'. He was, in the wizarding world, all grown up. He was of age, he was as good as through with school, and he was horribly corrupted by the adults that had surrounded him his entire life.

This Draco Malfoy was hardly smiling, and he didn't look as though he was glad his side was winning, and how could I say they were anything but wining. They had giants, more people fighting for their cause than our own, and I had no idea how many people we had already lost. More importantly, their people were shooting to kill immediately and we were only trying to defend our home.

Draco looked, for the briefest of moments, pained that he had met me in this battle. Pained, perhaps because he had a flicker of memory of me being around when he was just a boy or pain that only someone like myself could understand. Draco had not been as fortunate as I had. He had been pushed into the very life my own parents had imaged for me all my youth. He was looking for the briefest of seconds, on a life that could have been his, in another world. There wasn't anyone in the world I felt worse for than my younger cousin because while he looked at me and saw the life he could have, I saw the life that I could have had if my parents had never been arrested.

I couldn't help but want to reach out to the boy. To pull him into my arms and tell him everything would be okay. I wondered if this was because I was a mother now, that if when I looked at Draco I saw my own son and a future I had been able to save my son from when I hadn't been able to save Draco. I had not exchanged a word in more than eleven years with him. I had hardly seen him since then, flashes of his blonde hair on the occasion I was at the school, but I hadn't looked out for him. I think instead I had actively avoided him. He, like much of the rest of my childhood, without even realizing, was something else I had shut out. I wondered if he longed for me to talk to him over the years... He had only been six years old when I left. Had he understood then why I disappeared? Had He understood at that age I had committed the ultimate sin in our family.