Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

A warrior friend and myself were working on The Forging of Quel'Serra at Onyxia and dropped our swords around 10%, both changed to heated but mine was deleted as she died off the floor with no item returned and his got treated inside her corpse but was never added back. Any help as to what we should do to avoid rebuying/farming the quest item would be a major help, thank you for your time.

http://i.imgur.com/8xmxxYQ.jpg This is a few seconds after the lootable heated sword deleted off the ground almost exactly as onyxia was killed (due to me tanking the dragon and the threat of an auto-attack or fear cancelling the loot i was forced to wait till after she was dead). The quest item was dropped and correctly shifted over to "heated" before this moment.

http://i.imgur.com/IpY4NaE.jpg This is much later in my attempt to get a new unheated sword to drop from the quest giver but even after this moment and the quest was dropped i was not able to pick up the quest again NOR get a new item NOR able to even fully drop the quest as it is no longer in my log but he still only allowed me to complete the sword quest I no longer have.