For the If You Dare Challenge (522. Destroyed Childhood); the HP Potions Competition (Drink of Despair) and the Legendary Gods and Goddesses Competition (Horus)

For Emily (why the caged bird sings) in the Summer Fic Exchange

i.

he was young. too young.

children his age shouldn't have been burdened by the responsibilities of war. but when there was no other choice, it was children they needed to turn to.

ii.

he volunteered. everyone he knew was fighting, and he refused to be left behind.

once upon a time, he had taught children to play quidditch. it meant that he knew how to motivate people, and suddenly he was a radio sensation alongside the boy who had once commentated his quidditch matches.

iii.

commentating was one thing. actually fighting was another.

he watched people – children – die in front of him, tore apart by vicious creatures masquerading as humans.

maybe he could have handled that, but war didn't only leave the marks of the innocent dead on the world.

iv.

he saw the man raising his wand at the back of an eleven year old child and he just reacted. no overthinking it, no hesitation, no regret.

(he doubted he'd have done differently even if he had had time to think. his actions meant the boy got to live.)

but he had cast the worst of the worst spells, the greatest unforgiveable, in order to save that life, and even if the ministry and the rest of the world said that it was okay, that it was justified, it still haunted him.

v.

he tried to push everyone away. he wasn't the boy who had taught quidditch anymore, he was a killer.

she refused to be pushed away.

vi.

she was one of the people he had trained, so very long ago when it was still quidditch he was focussed on instead of the war. they had been friends, kept up communication even after he had left hogwarts. that was all they had ever been – friends.

he had never thought of her as more than that.

but then she decided that his new habit of pushing everyone away after the end of the war was unhealthy, and that it was her duty as his friend to stop it. so she visited him, each and every day.

sometimes she brought things to do with her, like muggle board games or a book she thought he might like. sometimes she forced him to go out with her, to diagon alley, or quidditch game or even a muggle movie. but most of the time, she was content to sit there with him and jabber about everything and nothing at all.

somewhere along the line, she became his primary mode of contact with the world, someone who was necessary to his survival.

so when, staring at her blabber about the other girls he had once upon a time trained in quidditch, he realised he had fallen in love with her, he wasn't really all that much surprised. but that still left him the question of how to deal with the feelings.

there was a large part of him that screamed at him to keep them quiet, to not say a word. but even though the war had changed nearly every piece of him, it hadn't been able to change the fact that he was, and always would be, a gryffindor. and the last thing that a gryffindor was was a coward.

so he gathered up every ounce of courage that he still possessed and the next time that she – katie – came over, he offered her both a rose and a heart. and she laughed, a delighted, happy sound that warmed his heart, and promised to go on a date with him if he agreed to actually take her out for it instead of organising something in his home.

and maybe they didn't kiss, or go much further than deciding on a place and a time, but that was okay with him.

katie bell had spent hours and days and weeks and months on him, helping him to recover from horrors he never thought he would be able to overcome, and oliver wood was more than happy to wait for her in turn.

I hope you guys liked it! As always, plaese don't forget to drop a review on your way out :)