The Killing Fields
@ofthelune
Beau hated battle. He fought when he had to, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy fighting. War was no better. That much should have been obvious. The only reason he’d even enlisted was to protect the people he cared about and to help those he could. And times of war seemed to be the only times when the Statute of Secrecy didn’t matter. No one cared that there were people casting spells--or in Beau’s case turning into animals--when they were all under fire on the front.
Being an animagus made it easier for Beau to help the other young men--boys, most of them, really--in the trenches of no man’s land and the battlefields where they fought, he found. He slipped from human form in the chaos and bounded about as an Australian shepherd-Malamute mix--which made him quite a large dog indeed--gathering up the wounded and dragging them from the battlefield to the medical tents. He still had to duck and dodge bullets and bomb blasts, but being on four feet instead of two made him much quicker and a much tougher target to hit.
He flopped on his belly beside a wounded soldier with ginger hair as a shell exploded nearby, doing his best to use his furry body to protect the young man from the blast. He nosed at the soldier’s cheek, trying to catch a scent to tell him whether the soldier was dead or alive, snuffling happily--well, sort of happily--when he felt a shallow breath puff against his nose. He shook himself so the collar he wore in this form clinked, hoping the soldier could see or hear it well enough to grab on so he could pull him to safety.
