A/N: Written for the Fanficer's Monopoly Challenge, light purple 1 square (random poem: Byzantium by Yeats), and for the Hogwarts Fair 2014, refreshments stall. A bit short, but I think fics like these are my HP specialty. :D

a celebration that only the mourners attend

It was a celebration that only mourners attended.

Soon, the ripples of pure joy would spread, and those who hadn't been so close to the tragedy and blood would no doubt ring the gongs of a happy sleepless night that had begun with their freedom. No doubt people would pour out into the streets and take glasses from any stranger's hands and cheer and laugh and get drunk until the sun came up –

But for those that had been a little closer to the final battle, the echoes of the fighting, of the deaths, echoed painfully still.

The hall was taken up by them: by the living wounded who were slowly getting their cuts and bruises and other ailments tended to. By the dead bodies laid out on the platform: an honour they did more than deserve. By the mourning who collected in little knits, hovering uncertainly and unsupported, or sitting at one of the tables looking for some familiarity.

It didn't look like a celebration of victory at all.

.

Night had fallen down
but the sun would still yet
be a time to rise.

The flashes of stars shooting
new life through the skies
was far away;
there
was only the soft, gentle ripples
of tears.

.

Tomorrow there would be eyes blinking at the sudden brightness, the freedom they'd been granted through blood and toil. And the hurt would be a little farther from them; the future a few steps more near. Then they'd be able to run through the injured halls, whooping so their voices echoed off broken stone.

Tomorrow they would be able to wake up in a new world, the world they had saved, the world those people further away and not splattered with blood were enjoying that very moment. Tomorrow…when death had gone on its merry way and that heavy blanket was lifted.

And how long would it take for tomorrow to come? Who knew. Some people said tomorrow never came, after all.