Snow Petals

I view your profile in the waning daylight. Graceful, sloping nose, slightly pointed chin. Your silky blonde hair holds a few streaks of grey. Not grey from age, but from simply seeing too much, too soon, too young. And eyes. Your eyes. Eyes that used to be like a storm in full swing. A tumult of grey with yellow flecks. Flecks of lightning. Striking. Giving your face character and detail. Giving new meaning to "stormy grey eyes." They hold your face together, those eyes. Give it dignity and poise you would not otherwise have.

You sit there, right by the window. You prop your face, a face that is so much like a finely chiseled statue, on your palm. You gaze out the window at the snowflakes wafting to the ground in the twilight. A sigh escapes your lips and I know you're remembering again, remembering the times when we loved the snow, when it was clean, and the color made us think of happy things. Now, we both hate the snow, it makes me sick, and it makes you remember. It no longer holds the magic it once did. We fought out in the snow that covered the grounds of Hogwarts. Body after body littered the ground. Fighters from both sides were slain.

I remember too. Mostly things about me and you, but things about the others as well. How we used to be, before death and destruction befell us. Before so many were lost and none were found. Most of all I remember how we laughed all the time. There was humor in almost every situation, even in the darkest moments, even in the final hours of the war, we could find something to joke about. But now, it seems as though nothing will ever be humorous again.

"Draco," I softly speak your name, and you turn to me. You gaze dully, waiting for me to speak. Draco means dragon. Dragons are fighters, one of the most fierce creatures, yet there is no fight left in you. I can see it in the way your eyes have dulled, the storm merely a memory, hidden by the smoke of a dying fire. The fire that once raged within you. I can see it in the way your mouth has drawn taut at the edges. The war has done it to you, as it has to so many. It has sucked the will to live right from you, and now you are just a shell of what you used to be. I say nothing. After a minute you go back to gazing out the frosty pane of glass, out at the trees gathering the flakes. Their branches bending from the accumulating weight. I can tell you get lost in thought by the way your eyes become merely a cover, as you look inwardly, replaying the last minutes of the last battle over and over again.

As you remember, I watch you, as you think of what could have been, and what is not.

Fin