Of Choices and Regrets

It Begins-

Draco sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was one in the morning. He let his taut muscles sink as he slumped over his knees. It was the day of the attack on Diagon Alley. It was the day that he would die for his weakness. Tears squeezed themselves out of Draco's tightly closed eyes, but he hurriedly pushed them away. He couldn't cry today.

Blinking furiously, he looked about his room. Would this be the last night he would ever sleep here? It had changed over the last week. The dark pictures and books had been replaced, and the skull head that had been a fixture in his room was replaced by a vase of flowers. He had purged his room of all of the dark artifacts and had moved them to the next room. If he died, this is what the Death Eaters would find. Even if he was just taken away, he could be killed for some of the things now in his room and for the absence of other things.

Draco threw himself back down. He was sinking back into the darkness, back into the nightmares, back to the anxiety of last year's task. It didn't matter, none of that mattered. He closed his eyes and tossed to get into a more comfortable position that had no ties to his current thoughts, trying to get back to sleep. He would have to be well rested and cunning to get out of his fate.

After a restless night, Draco got up with the sun and picked up a random book to drown out his unwanted thoughts. At 11 o'clock Draco set down his book and got ready for the day, and by 12:30, others had started to arrive. Fenrir Greyback showed up at 12:50, and gathered the roaming men. He quickly briefed them of the plan.

"Now, we know that there should not be a lot of people," he growled, "but we were informed that Potter and his little friends will be shopping today. We hope to give them a ... present." Fenrir's lips curled in an attempt to smile. The men crudely guffawed, elbowing each other, as though they were the only ones that got the joke. Draco sneered, as did two other well-dressed Death Eaters. And he was supposed to associate with these barbarians?

After a pause to let the noise die down, Fenrir continued. "We will be apparating in front of the Weasley Wizard Wheezes. The owners are Order members, and are part of Potter's little circle, so we must destroy the store, and hopefully catch everyone in there. Potter will, of course, spend more time there than in the other shops, so we have a better chance at ... meeting him. I want us to be spread out as much as possible so that they can't escape. Kill everyone and anyone you see." He raised his right fist and punched the air. "No pity! No mercy! No forgiveness! No muggles!"

The Death Eaters went crazy. They stamped their feet, waved their fists, and yell incoherent words. On each of their faces was etched a frightful frown, and they bared their teeth menacingly. They wanted blood; they wanted battle.

The only people that didn't participate were the two arrogant Death Eaters and Draco. All three stood against the wall, sneering at their cheering comrades. They were soon lost in the crowd of the surging Death Eaters who were calling for the killing to begin.

The dark, masked group quickly and efficiently disapparated to the assigned area in Diagon Alley. It briefly amazed Draco how the crude, coarse and, in his mind, barely intelligent men were able to move like a well oiled machine, until he remembered that they probably attacked places at least once a week. That thought shot down through his body as a silent shiver, chilling and sickening him as it traveled; yet he pushed down his thoughts so that he could deal with the situation at hand.

The streets that he had always remembered as being crowded and bustling was now an empty shell of their former glory. The place was dirty, with old boxes and papers strewn about, and it smelled like the trash that had taken over the gutters. Most of the stores that had before proudly shown their bright, exciting wares now were boarded up with scraps of wood, and the windows were covered with cardboard.

The few people were quickly moving from one shop to the next with bowed heads and hunched shoulders. They moved with the fear and burden of the war on their backs. Instead of the laughter and chatter of his happy childhood, Draco now only heard soft, anxious whispers, and the quiet patter of their shoes hitting the hard cobblestones, resounding in his chest. Like Draco himself, one moment the streets had been joyful and carefree, and the next they held danger and fear in their heart.

The scene only lasted a second, yet the image was branded in his mind. The reality of the war was put into a worldly sense for him. It jolted him to realize that the war wasn't all the individuals fighting, but the common and neutral people everywhere that suffered because of it.

Then Fenrir appeared in the middle of the street, signaling the Death Eaters with a wave of his hand, and the battle began. With bloodcurdling screams, Death Eaters ran out of their hiding places, wands raised and eyes wildly searching for a victim. The brave women and children who had come to try to shop now were paying the price. People ran to find safety and family, and terrified screams were everywhere. Spells flew, directed at no one, and boxes shattered into sharp shards.

Draco watched like a ghost as a young girl, no more than four years old, tried to flee. She had no idea where to go, and, confused, she kept on stopping and turning around. The girl ran one way, yelled for her mother, and ran the other way. Tears streamed down her little face, and her arms swung wildly around her, trying to find something or someone to hold on to. She tripped over a shattered crate, and fell onto her hands and knees. She slowly got up, looking at herself, her tears forgotten. Draco was appalled to see that her palms and knees were lacerated and her young red blood lazily flowed onto her rosy skin. She let out a frightened scream and tried to run again but stumbled uncertainly to one side. The spectacle caught the attention of a Death Eater near by. He turned toward her, smiled crookedly, and raised his wand. As if time had slowed down, Draco watched as the Death Eater opened his mouth revealing a row of yellowing teeth. A bright purple spell exploded out of the end of his long, grimy wand, and hit the little girl squarely in her chest. A look of sheer pain and fear overtook her tiny innocent face. Her hands clenched the empty air as she fell awkwardly to her side.

Just beyond the girl's body, Draco saw that the Order of the Phoenix members had begun to arrive. They were too late, much too late, to save the scared, naïve girl. He bitterly saw them attack his worthless colleagues. The brute that had savagely murdered the girl fell to an old auror in a brilliant flash of red, causing Draco to sardonically laugh at the irony. An eye for an eye; the last shall be first; there is always a bigger fish in the pond.

The battle had moved away from Draco, and he reluctantly realized that he too must join the fight, so as not to raise suspicion on either side. He quietly stole out of his hiding spot and dodged past spells to reach the ranks of Death Eaters. But on his way he couldn't help but stray by the motionless child.

He gazed down at her tear-streaked and still rosy cheeks, and closed her unfocused liquid blue eyes. He pushed a stray lock of rich brown hair off of her smooth face, and burned her image into his memory. She was the reason to stop fighting, the reason he could continue. Draco felt his eyes sting with tears. She had deserved to live, and he was determined to make sure no one else died like her.

He glanced at her one last time before he stood up to the others. As he evaded spells, all Draco could see is the innocent girl's terrified face as she died. Although he didn't know her, and didn't even know her name, she embodied every guiltless person that was killed in this horrid war. She was the one who finally showed him the truth of war. She was the face of the naïve children who were massacred at every attack. She was the leader of the murdered people who didn't have to die, that didn't have a part in this conflict other than that fact that they were like lambs to be slaughtered.

Draco's blood seemed to boil, running hot through his pulsing veins. They all deserved to live. That girl could have invented a new spell that cures a deadly poison. This little boy could have grown up to be the greatest quidditch player the wizarding world had ever known. That young woman could have saved a group of young children from a rogue dragon. That man could have been the next prime minister.

Thoughts swirled in his head of all the possibilities if the people hadn't died. To him, death had been a theory, a topic to think about, a useful thing to weed out the weak and old. It had never been a reality to him. Not even seeing Dumbledore's death had seemed real to Draco. Yet here he stood, surrounded by the bodies and souls of innocent people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. A cool wind chilled him, finally bringing understanding in its wake.

Draco stood frozen, staring at the empty shells that used to house living, breathing people. Lost in his thoughts and encircled by his ghosts, he was jarred back into reality when an orange spell grazed his ear. Shaking his head, he reluctantly returned to the present. He had to fight; he had to stay focused. But now he had a purpose, and a new reason to live.