0.1 War Is Over
Oak Cresswell looked around with no emotions. Tears dried against his face along with loads and loads of blood. He was covered in blood but he had no idea whether it was his or someone else. He couldn’t feel anything.
Around him people were hugging each other, celebrating the end of everything. The sun shun through the broken walls of the Great Hall, showing that a new dawn would come.
There would no longer be fear of death or fear of war.
The sun had just risen across the sky, warming the students who were sitting in the ruins of what once was a school, some had fallen asleep out of exhaustion. Others were happy and beamed with smiles while some were crying over their losses that were spread on the floor on gurneys with white blankets to cover their dead and cold faces.
Oak sat next to a corpse. It was the corpse of who used to be Oak’s girlfriend, Sabrina. She would have looked incredibly peaceful if it weren’t for the crusted blood across her face along with her slightly gaping mouth. Oak tried to close it again and again but it fell open and her face kept falling to the side, like she was looking at him.
However he couldn’t bring himself to close her eyes for he was afraid that he would have to accept her being gone.
Instead he now sat paralyzed in the corner of what used to be the Great Hall but now was simply ruins. He couldn’t feel anything.
As a pearly shape floated above him he looked up at the voice of Peeves the poltergeist. ”We did it! We bashed them, wee Potter’s the one! And Voldy’s gone mouldy, so now let’s have fun!" Peeves sang with victory laced in his tone.
But Oak didn’t care.
How could the war be over when there clearly was only misery to be found? The end of the war was supposed to be happy and warm. They were supposed to feel thankful for the ending and they should be hugging their loved ones. The sun would rise on the sky, spreading warm rays of orange and they were supposed to feel relaxed.
Oak realized that was what everybody did but he didn’t understand.
How could the world just go on like this when his world had collided and been smashed into pieces? How could the world keep spinning when Oak’s world was non-existent?
He knew that everything was his fault, the teachers had locked the Slytherins in the dungeon but Oak and his friends snuck out and found that they hadn’t gotten all the first years and the younger ones put yet, even though the path was shut. Oak and his friends spent the first hours of the battle by rounding up the younger ones and leading them to the dungeons, the only place where they would be kept safe since it was so far underground.
A lot of the older Slytherins tried to comfort the younger students, but couldn’t for the other students were to afraid, so when it was late Oak and his friend Blaise started transfiguring candles to glow in different lights, much like a nightlight. Pansy and Millicent worked on cancelling out the loud noises from the battle above, using Muffliato charms and singing lullaby’s to the children who didn’t deserve to be here.
The nine Slytherins who stayed in the dungeons were all older, and they didn’t understand how these innocent children had been so afraid just moments ago but then fell right asleep on the mattresses that they had taken from their dorms.
To be able to watch them all they moved all the beds downstairs to the common room where they lit a big fire in the fireplace and tried to distract the kids from what was going on.
The elders also took shifts in protecting the hallways leading into the Slytherin common room and therefor they had to fight off a lot of death eaters who were looking for their sons and daughters.
Oak had helped Pansy Parkinson when her father had approached them, begging her to follow him, because ”the battle was getting nasty“.
Oak believed that night had changed something in the girl, because instead of following her father to do the dark lord’s bidding, she had stayed.
She even told her father about the hundreds of students who were cooped up in their common room, afraid they might never see their families again and then she told him how the battle had been downright nasty from the beginning.
As Oak watched Pansy using the cruciatus curse over and over on her father, he couldn’t help but finding it calming somehow.
Maybe this was a sign, some sort of metaphor for what’s to come, he thought.
Pansy’s dead screams about how the man who now lie dead in the hall had ruined her childhood echoed through the corridors.
Oak made sure to move the body so the young ones didn’t have to see it when it was over.
When Oak had gotten rid of the body he realized that maybe he could do something. He ran into the common room to tell them that he was going into the battle, seeing as the kids now were asleep. Blaise nodded tiredly, obviously sleep wouldn’t find him for a long time even after this battle was over.
So Oak went to join the battle, but he was already too late.
