The hero of the story did not live their life without any consequences. In fact, their consequences were such that they had to pay for the sins another person.

In most stories, the hero walked off into the sunset, everything was happy, all was well.

That was fiction and unfortunately, fiction did not line up with reality. It was idealistic, fiction was a means to escape from the real world which was an awful place full of the consequences of the evil that men do.

All of this was because of one self-serving megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur and then there was also Lord Voldemort who played no small role in what happened on this day.

The sun might have set but a victory was hallow when there was no solace in what happened. No joy to be had as everyone was injured or dead. Some of the injured would physically recover but emotionally wounds ran extremely deep.

There were no emotional wounds that were deeper because of that of the heroine who made her way up the stairs. She could barely stand because of the exertion that she experienced during that final battle.

None of this need not happen if they had just seen the warning signs; it did happen and there were countless lives that were lost now. She did not envy anyone who had to tally up the number deceased in this battle. It would be much easier to tabulate the survivors.

There were trials that would have driven the strongest men and women to the brink of sanity and she was not quite certain that she was completely sane.

Never the less, she fought until the very end but it had all backfired. The best laid plans of mice and men often went awry. And this plan of Dumbledore's, hinged on the fact that he was completely right about everything that happened.

He wasn't.

There would be no tomorrow for hundreds of bodies currently strewn across Hogwarts and the grounds. And there were many bodies that were not found as well, for they had been destroyed in the magical discharge.

The Gargoyle swung open, she did not care about it, she did not care about this office. In fact, she was not certain why she even bothered to come here, other than the need to vent before she exploded.

She collapsed on the desk, sending papers flying everywhere. Her red hair flew in disarray as it was matted with blood, her green eyes were blood shot and haunted. Her robes were actually still in pristine condition, for whatever that was worth.

And she was not sure it was worth all that much to be honest. She ached in places where she did not even know she had.

"He's gone," she whispered as she looked up at the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. The man who would not have to live with the fact that his games had cost countless people their lives. That part made the girl sick to her stomach. All she lost, and it would never matter to him. He did not knew empathy, even though he lied to everyone including himself. "Riddle's done…."

"I knew you would win," Albus told her, disconnected by the fact that there were many casualties.

"Did you?" she asked as she looked back at the Headmaster and the glass instruments in the office rattled but did not break. "Did you know that he would slaughter every single student who stood up to him? His Death Eaters….did you know….did you know what would happen to them?"

"I had hoped that would not be the case," Albus whispered to the young girl.

"You hoped…..but they always assume that you know everything," she said, practically laughing at the situation. "But….maybe you knew too much and it addled your brain, made you not think clearly. He did have the Elder Wand. Do you realize what I had to do to get it away from him?"

"Alexandra….."

"No, its Ms. Potter to you, you don't have the right to call me that name," Alexandra Potter said as she resisted the chair. "It's done, I have the Hallows….."

"They are extraordinary power," Albus warned her. It had cost him much and had torn apart what would have been a great love.

"You really don't know, you weren't always at ease with what I could become, were you?" Alex asked as she stared back at Dumbledore. "Ten years with them, and you thought that I would somehow be grateful, and I was sorted into Ravenclaw….it complicated things. There were a lot of good people in that house although Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were always pawns for the never ending pissing match between Gryffindor and Slytherin, something you didn't do much to discourage. And when I was out of Gryffindor, that allowed me to form neutral opinions, dangerous for you."

Albus said nothing.

"Redemption…..comes to very few who you offer it, people in this world often bite the hand that feeds them," Alex continued, getting on a role. "I'm not a perfect person, I'm not a fucking saint. I've done things that you might consider to be evil in the past year, maybe longer and I'll freely admit it. To defeat a monster, you must become one yourself….."

"It's a dangerous path….."

"One that you planted my feet on, Dumbledore," Alex said to him as she tried not to lose herself. She felt her body heat up with a warning of the power that it held. She bit down on her lip, counting to ten. "What were you hoping to accomplish, Dumbledore?"

"I don't understand," Dumbledore argued, he was confused at what she was getting at.

"Bullshit," Alex cursed at him. "You and I both know."

Alex did not give Dumbledore a chance to explain. There was really no point in arguing with a portrait. She had to get out of this office before she torched it. With her powers, she could burn it into ashes, magic or no magic. She had to keep her temper in check, something that got more difficult for each passing year.

The redhead made her way down the hallway, going into the Girl's Bathroom. She did not pay attention to where she was going. She could navigate Hogwarts were her eyes closed.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, aren't you?" Alex asked as she looked in the mirror, the scratches on her face slowly healing but the marks would linger. Her robes were ripped slightly, more than she thought at first. As much as it seemed like bragging, she earned her victory.

Alex stumbled around the school, she pretty much had nowhere else to go right now. She made her way towards the hole in the wall that was much the Ravenclaw dormitory. Or what was left of it. She did find a bed in the middle of all of the carnage. She cleared up all of the wreckage.

"Sleeps all I want," she whispered as she sunk down onto the pillow. Her body tended to heal herself when she was in a state of rest a lot better.

It was hard to keep her eyes shut. She had seen a glimpse of heaven and had to walk through hell to get back, earning her powers as Master of Death. A title which she only had the slightest idea of what it meant and she didn't care. The Hallows were hers to hold now and she was going to defend them with her life.

Something she did prey was not taken all that literally.

The Girl-Who-Lived felt like she stood at the precipice of ultimate power of some sort although she was not sure what it was. The magic she saw frightened her but she was at ease where it would frighten most people who saw it. She was not a coward but she was not a pragmatic fool who would stick his head in the mouth of a lion just to prove that he was one.

That being said, she was inspired by a growing sense of curiosity.

"Is this a part of my mission?" Alex asked as she turned over her shoulder and then peered forward.

Her red hair hung loosely in a ponytail, revealing her gorgeous green eyes that were the shape of Emeralds. Her soft face fixed with the determination that would frighten even the most hardened of warriors. The battle robes only covered the amazing assets that she had and a few charms downplayed them even further. She was stunning but then again, she got her looks from her mother.

Along with her temper which was not a good thing. It got her in plenty of trouble.

The biggest flaw she found in herself was the fact that she thought with her heart more times often than her head. Even as a Ravenclaw, she was not immune to flights of emotions and that got her in trouble.

The biggest flaw within her was the biggest flaw in the Wizarding World, they expected, a seventeen year old girl with more problems than a math textbook to lead them to some kind of promised land of sunshine and gumdrops. Alex wondered who the fool was in that one.

There were influxes of portal energy as the redhead stared, she felt that she was on some kind of different plane. Her dreams had been extremely interesting ever since she inquired the three artifacts.

She should have known better to touch her hand to the mysterious glowing energy.

Alexandra Harriet Potter should have known better but she was damned by her own curiosity more time often than not.

'Well, I know I'm going to regret this,' she thought. Ravenclaw was bred and born by a sense of curiosity and invention and experimentation. It was not about mindless retention of facts that someone else wrote in a book.

She touched the energy and flashed onto another plane. Time sped up around her and she saw flashes of images. Her mind could have broken from the flood of portal energy that went through her.

Alexandra Potter woke up with a start; she was on her bed, in what used to be the Ravenclaw Dormitory. The good news was that her body was healed of all injuries.

The weird news was that her wounds were replaced by these glowing Runes. She had taken Study of Ancient Runes but this was far more advanced than anything was studied at Hogwarts.

'The more I know, the less I understand,' Alex thought as she got to her feet. She pulled off the tattered shirt that she did not have a chance to change. She found a new one but she was distracted in the prospect of changing by something.

She saw the Runes move onto her back. They resembled a Phoenix of some sort but it was different.

It was a beautiful creature that she had not seen, if the Phoenix represented the personification of the warmth and wonder of life, this represented the exact opposite.

'Almost like I do,' Alex thought to herself as she finally pulled herself out of her room. It was almost like she was reborn again.

She checked the date; she had been sleeping for ten days. A golden shield was over the door way, her subconscious body putting it up to protect people from her. People who woke her up when she slept did so at their own risk.

Now that she was healed, she had to figure out where she went from here.

After taking the Short Cut from the Great Hall, she found that all of the bodies were cleared out. Some had been buried; others had been taken in for medical attention. Some would never wake up but others would.

Alex saw a copy of the Daily Prophet and she read it. Skimming through the news, Alex found the information that she was looking for.

They all thought that she died, succumbing from her injuries after the battle with Lord Voldemort. Suddenly she was everyone's favorite beacon of the light, after being called every nasty name for a female in the book for the past twelve months.

'I'm more beloved when dead than alive…..well that's about right,' Alex thought to herself as she read through the paper. There seemed to be three categories, the dead, the surviving, and the missing, with the missing likely being in the first group. Without a body, there would be a huge mess regarding gold and inheritance. Whilst the goblins could verify who was dead or not, they chose not to because….well to be honest, a lot of them were dicks.

The Ministry of Magic is in chaos more so than usual but that was just another day that ended in a "Y"

"Godric's Hallow," Alex muttered, disappearing in a flash of light and depositing herself at the edge of a college.

It was a memorial to two people who did not need to die but they were two of many who succumbed to him. They would only be another statistic, especially her mother for who she was.

Her mother was one of a kind from what Alex was able to find out, there was no one who could ever compare to her.

She took a chance to look around to see if all of her fail safes were intact. The bag of gold that she got out of the vault was still there, along with the stash of normal money that she changed out a whilst back.

There was enough to make a nice little investment and cause it to grow in the real world. There was no denying that money made the world work and she was thinking about what she did.

If she stayed in the country, people would find out soon that the rumors of her death would be greatly exaggerated. They might try and force some kind of marriage contract with her with some pureblood douchebag. Given that there were so many pureblood lines that had been snuffed out, they needed to keep the remaining heirs together while they could. That was an option that was out for many reasons.

Voldemort was dead, there were survivors, but she mentally disconnected herself from that world a long time ago. She did her job, it was time to see if she could heal and perhaps become something else.

'I've got to go,' Alex thought as she dangled the money bag. She wondered if she would chance a trip to Gringotts to change the rest of her gold. 'Better not risk it, I really better not risk it, the goblins don't exactly like me right now.'

Alex would lay low for the next day and she would continue her adventure. She remembered a letter than she read from her mother when she was sixteen and she recalled now was the time. Lily said that Alex would know when she was ready to do this and she knew, big time.

It was time to claim her inheritance now that she had finally reached the age of consent. There was something on the other side of that door. The Potters had never trusted the goblins completely with everything.

"Will this work?" Alex asked and she shrugged. "Well, what do I have to lose?"

Alex did not want to answer that question for herself or anyone else. She knew that trying to answer such a question lead the road to madness.

A flash of light engulfed her mind and ensnared it as she was tested to see how worthy that she was.

The Runes lit up on her body and burned into her, nearly setting her nerves on fire. A dam of power burst in her body and nearly overwhelmed her as bright lights popped within the eye sockets of the Girl-Who-Lived.

To Be Continued.