a/n:  This is my first bit of fan fic.  I am a little unsure of my self and so this might change a little, but I ask that all of you please read and review so that I know what to do.  I have this storyboarded in my head and there are some twist and turns on the way but I am always open to make changes.  This will be going back and forth.  This first chapter is set 3 years after graduation from Hogwarts. I will go back as far as 7th year. Thanks again for reading.

Chapter One:  Cursed Land

            It was a stark, cold and empty night.  It was like the clouds were too scared to show up.  A bitter stiff wind cruised through the land as one man approached from the north and another approached from the south.  The man from the north reached the top of the hill first and looked down upon the valley and the man coming from the south. 

"Up here Potter!" said the man at the top of the hill.  "I see you knew where to find me."

Harry Potter stared at the man ahead of him.  It was very dark out, but the moon provided a nice silhouette of the person standing in front of him.  Harry felt a sharp pain in his gut when he heard the voice.  It was a voice from his past.  Harry had a feeling who it was.

"This place feels so different since I was here last, it's like it lost its magic, its spirit." The man on the hill spoke.

"Why?  Why did you do what you did? How come it had to be this way?  I l-" Potter was interrupted.

"It was over there, under that now dead tree" spoke the figure oblivious to what Potter had said.  "That's where we used to study together.  The Quidditch field was over there, man those were some great games"

"Tell me why?" shouted Potter.

"Gryffindor tower was over there" the figure continued to speak ignoring Potter and plotting out a map in the air. "Now where was the great hall?"

Boom, smack.  The noise shook the figure from his train of thought and caused a small fire at his feet.

"Damn Potter, you should be careful with your wand, you could hurt somebody with that." Laughed the figure.

Harry was shaking, as if he was having his own personal earthquake, and had his wand still pointed at the feet of the figure which was now illuminated by the crackling fire.  Harry raised the wand and his line of sight up the body of the figure slowly until he reached his face. At that moment, all of Harry's emotions boiled to the surface, he felt his knees go weak and his stomach wanted to empty all of its contents all over the ground where Hogwarts once stood.  In front of him stood the only person he thought would always be by him. The one person who he knew he would miss the most.  The first person he told about his love for Ginny and whose shoulder he cried on when Sirius died. The one person who took him in and made him a part of his family, so much so that he would call them his mum and dad too. A tear left Harry's face when he realized that the man he had not seen since the great battle and the one man he had been hunting for almost a year had red hair and cold blue eyes.

"Long time no see chum.  What's it been, 3 years?  Since the great battle, I suppose, since you took what meant most to me." Ron spoke with a deadly calm and a self confidence that Harry had never seen.

"Why, Ron, why?" Harry quietly asked as he wiped the tear from his cheek.

"Why?" Ron laughed. "Why?  You take EVERYTHING from me and you have the nerve to ask why?

"I didn't take anything from you!" Harry shouted back stiffening his arm. 

"Yes you did you son of a bitch!" Ron shouted as he drew out his wand.  "You took my soul!"

Harry realized what he was talking about. The great battle had been a defining moment in Wizardry not just for the fact that it destroyed Voldemort and his death eaters, but for the toll it took on the lives of everyone at Hogwarts and in the wizarding world as well. By the time the death toll was mounted, almost a third of the students and half of the faculty and staff at Hogwarts were slaughtered, and the land upon which it sat was cursed forever.

"Your remembering it all now aren't you Potter!" shouted Ron "I never forgot, it haunts me every minute, of every hour, of everyday I breathe on this wretched place!"

Ron's words hung in the air like painful decorations as Harry's thoughts drifted back to that year, that month, that day, back to the minute where he was given a choice.  That choice and their consequences have haunted him since then and will continue to haunt him even in the afterlife. The worst thing he ever did was choose for Hermione to die.