Oliver felt very, very old as he slowly scanned the formerly familiar halls of Hogwarts. Without a word, he opened a door for his companion, scant inches shorter than him. His grim mission slowed his steps. When dull shock completely halted the weary man, it seemed as if he naturally had paused. Mutely, the fellow searcher saw what slowed the former Quidditch fanatic. Those days, those carefree days, seemed long ago when they turned over the mousy-haired figure and saw his marble-white face. Of all of them, Oliver thought that this one would be the last one to ever walk into war. The fair face was scraped clean of any remnant of childhood innocence.

He obviously had not made it out easy. None of the students had, for that matter. Though it was the Aurors who the Death Eaters were killing at alarming rates, they were not where the war was. The Ministry that had been instituted to help the Wizarding World had been overturned, though there were still resistant few there. However, like the Aurors, it was not them who were in the war. And the Boy-Who-Lived, Potter might be the Chosen One on a heroic mission from Dumbledore, but he was not where the war was. Not until the battle had begun, which he had brought upon them.

It was children. The ones who deserved to face perils only as large as O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s and hormones. Their worst enemy should have been the fear of the world after graduation, not the adults within the school. Finding empty broom closets should have been a goal for amorous couples, not frantic soldier-children trying to protect the innocence of their classmates. Never spending the better of the night comforting those who could not be protected and thus were having nightmares that would have shaken old Mad-Eye himself.

Having to give up his dream of professional Quidditch was nothing. Nothing at all. Not when he had walked into the Room of Requirement and saw a band of students who were tortured, beaten, but living in spite of their circumstances. In a situation where many would, and had, given up, they continued on their fight. Perhaps they wavered, but they were human. How could you expect more of them than of yourself? This band of survivors in every sense of the word was led by a man, the same man that gently cradled the cold head of the companion he had lost. The grief and anguish couldn't be verbalized. The slight lines that ran underneath the gouge marked face hinted at what lay dormant underneath the stoic exterior. He, like Oliver, had wept over many, many lost friends.

This one should have never been lost. Never should have been there. He had always been energetic and smiling, now wiped away like chalk by a summer's rain. Willing to do anything to receive praise. Loyal to a fault, but his temerity undoubtedly sealed his House. The eerily white, nearly ghostly, face had its fair share of scars. They were ridges marring valleys. Gone were the carefree laughlines and the sparkling eyes. Only cloudy orbs of color remained.

It is the aged men inside of the battered bodies of young adults that carry the fallen soldier in through the doors. His is the body of an adolescent, but shows the wear of one older than even Oliver himself. Alone, having hoisted him onto his back, Oliver carries the body, the shell of a lost soul and its unfulfilled dreams, of Colin Creevey to the Great Hall.