Chapter 1

"Harry, don't…"

"What?"

"You died! I saw you, dead, and now you're back! Just give me time to process this, okay?"

Reluctantly, Harry let go of Ginny as she went and sat back down, fanning herself with her hand. Ash and soot was still on her face from the battle, but she still looked beautiful to Harry.

"Look, I know it's hard, okay? I mean, I'm the one who died! It's still not sunk in. And Fred's dead, and Lupin, and Tonks… I don't want to rush things either. But in that split moment when Voldemort shot that killing curse at me, all I could think about was you." Harry tried appealing to her but her only reply was a long, exasperated sigh.

"Did you really have to mention Fred? I don't want to think about that right now."

"Ginny, none of us do. None of us want to think about how in order to save all the strangers of this world we had to lose the ones we care about most. But…it's happened. One day you'll have to accept it. My parents are dead. I had to grow up with an aunt and uncle who hated me. I've lost the closest thing I've had to a parent…twice! It's never easy, but we have to stay strong throughout it." But what tore Harry apart the most, is when Ginny lifted her head from staring at the ground and looked pleadingly at Harry with her heart in her eyes.

"But why Fred? Why Tonks? Why Lupin? Why all the good people?"

"Because we don't get to choose who goes, it just happens." The tears that shone in her eyes started to slowly glide down her dirty face, leaving clean trails. "Come here." And this time when he held his arms out, she went willingly. "It's going to be different for you than it was for me because you'll have people to support you. When Bellatrix sent that killing curse at you, my heart stopped beating in my chest. If your mum hadn't have got there first, I'd have made sure she suffered through all of the pain she's ever caused us before I killed her."

"Harry, don't speak like that. You sound like one of them."

"I'm sorry Gin, I'm just bitter about everything still. Come on, let's go and find Ron and Hermione."

They made their way through what still remained of the Great Hall doors until they were once more reunited with the rest of the Weasley family and Hermione. She and Ron had their arms about each other whilst they mourned over Fred with the other Weasley's. Arthur was supporting Molly as she silently cried against the front of his shirt. Not far off were the bodies of Lupin and Tonks and everybody else who had died in the war. At the very end of the Great Hall, with nobody surrounding him, Harry spotted the body of a man Harry had only ever begun to understand during the man's final moment.

At the end of the row, he found the man who had loved his mother, who had killed his favourite headmaster on Dumbledore's own wishes, who Harry had hated for seven years before finally realising that he was good, but realising too late. There lay Severus Snape. There were dry patches of blood all over his shirt beneath his black robes, but Harry used Scourgify to clean it up until they were the same immaculate white that Harry remembered from five years of potions lessons and one year of Defence Against the Dark Arts with him. He knelt down beside him and grasped the limp, cold hand of his old professor. In some ways, Harry wouldn't have been able to defeat Voldemort without him. It was his silver doe he saw that led him to the sword and him that was able to infiltrate the Death Eaters without them realising he was good and gained Voldemort's trust. He owed a lot to Professor Snape.

He kneeled silently by his side for some time until he felt a hand on his arm which had begun to go cold and numb from sitting so still and holding the limp hand. The sudden touch made warmth run through his arm once again and he looked up into the brown compassionate eyes of Ginny. He clasped the hand that wasn't on his arm and she supported him up. They made for the doors of the Great Hall where a swarm of gingers could be seen. The Weasley's were departing. Hanging limply in the air in front of them using the same spell Harry remembered Sirius and Lupin had used on Snape when him, Hermione and Ron had knocked him unconscious was Fred. Mrs Weasley walked by one side and Mr Weasley on the other whilst George stood further back, avoiding looking at his dead twin brother as he passed. Harry and Ginny walked over to him. Harry lay his hand on his shoulder causing him to look up and when he did, Ginny flung her arms around his neck and wept into his shoulder as he did the same with her, using her soft ginger hair as a blanket to lean on as it fanned over her shoulder and back. Harry silently retreated until he was out in the sunshine alone and could hear faintly in the distance the sound of a phoenix singing. He smiled slightly, and then turned to look at what lay of the castle that he'd come to think of as home.

As tears began sliding down his face, the rain came pouring down until everybody who had stayed to fight in the battle were cleaned of all the ash and soot that must have fell when the castle was destroyed. He knew that this was the end. Voldemort was gone, and with him were most of the people he cared about. His parents, Sirius, Professor Dumbledore, Fred, Tonks and Lupin, everyone. All he had left now was his best friends. And as he thought this, he felt tingles on his neck and turned around to find Hermione and Ron staring at him. They walked forwards until Hermione was in the middle and she grasped one of Ron's hands and one of Harry's and just held it. They both looked up at the sky.

"This is it then, isn't it?" Ron's deep voice broke the silence. No one else could speak so Hermione just nodded as tears streaked down her face. "We've survived…" She finally managed to say, holding their hands tighter as another minute went by until they were almost turning blue from the cut off of the blood circulation.

"We've survived…" Harry repeated then turned to face his best friends. He gleamed at them as he saw the faces of the two people he loved most in the world, with the exception of Ginny and the rest of the Weasley family. But they were his family now too. They'd stuck together this far, and they'll stay together forever more.

"I guess we still don't know the answer to that question McGonagall asked us some years ago; why's it always us three?" And they all laughed at Ron's joke and the sound echoed around the deserted castle making it seem like every ghost of every one who had died today was laughing with them.