The war was over.

But there would always be more battles to come.

This was the thought that flashed through Hermione's mind as she looked at the carnage. She tried to make sense of the blood and tears, tried to find a pride in the evil they had destroyed. But she couldn't as she stood next to Ron who was crouched over Harry's body shaking him and screaming for him to wake.

Tonight's the night the world begins again……….

The world felt new. Life had begun again and she felt in the air that some where a new person was being brought into the world to take Harry's place.

She felt the souls, as they drifted by in slow ascent to become sparkling stars and new galaxies to live the rest of their time above the world. She wanted to join them in their journey, be whisked away from this world. She heard them sing, it was a slow sensual melody and she lifted her face to the sky looking at the souls already there.

I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this endless fight

Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

"We will," She whispered, "All of us will find better days Harry." She felt a puff of breath against her face and she smiled in farewell.

take these words
and sing out loud

"I need someplace simple where we could live/and something only you can give/and that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive/and the one poor child who saved this world/and there's 10 million more who probably could/If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them." Hermione sang softly closing her eyes.


Harry's soul was out there soaring, singing his song to her even as he drew farther away. It was sad that one child had to save the world when 10 million could have done the same.

The battle was over.

The war would never end.

Bella flexed her hand trying to adjust to her missing finger. She was the Dark Lord's successor. The war against the Mudbloods and Muggles would never end. She had loved him and that stupid Mudblood and Half-Blood had taken him from her. His passion, his hate had intoxicated her and Rodolphus was forgotten. How could any other man match up to Voldemort, her lord, and her love? She sneered angrily her eyes taking in the crowds of people standing of her. She sat back her hands coming to rest on the arms of the throne.

Yes, this was where she was meant to be.

The battles hadn't ended, the war was undecided.

How could he reconcile the fact that he had betrayed his family? And it was all for nothing. He had walked through the streets of what had once been a city now reduced to rubble and he thought:

This is what I have come to.

He was alone, abandoned in a world that was not any less dark. The most evil wizard to ever live might have been killed but it didn't make the sunrise any brighter, the mist any thinner. One death wouldn't create a perfect world, he realized. People would keep on killing to try and obtain this thing called peace.

But what was peace? Harmony between conflicting ideals? If it was then it would never come. People were flawed in to killing those who didn't share their beliefs. Life would be no different under Voldemort, then this new order.

He saw what life for what it truly was now. People made these lies up about destiny and fate. Safety nets, he thought, to keep people content and happy. But, life wasn't that at all. Life was the decisions you made, the choices that nudged the direction of your life.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Draco looked around him at the broken buildings and the people walking around the ruins their faces set. Maybe he had betrayed his family, maybe he had gone against all those ideals that were set in stone. But maybe it had been the right choice. He knew that one death wouldn't change everything yet possibly they could rebuild the world to remember the past. Maybe they just had to salvage what they could.

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cause everyone is forgiven now
Cause tonight's the night the world begins again

A/N: This was a random idea that came to me while listening to the song, "Better Days" by Goo Goo Dolls. There is also an excerpt from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost