In the End
Rated T for violence and adult situations
Cho Chang looked out over the decimated landscape. All was silent—it seemed as though the battle was finally finished, that everyone could rest in peace. She clambered over what was left of the castle walls and slowly made her way to the Great Hall, weighed down with exhaustion yet buzzing with apprehension—who would she find lying amongst the dead? Which of her friends had departed from this world forever?
Cho hardly felt the pain from her injuries anymore—the multiple scratches, the deep cut on her arm oozing thick, viscous purple liquid, her sprained ankle—for she was too numb from the horrors of the fight. She'd seen things that no girl of eighteen deserved to see. Barely picking up her feet, she trudged into the Hall, cringing at the lines of mutilated bodies. Her worst fears were confirmed—her friends, her family . . . all gone. Terry, Michael, Anthony, Marietta . . . she would never see those faces again. Her parents, who had come to join the fight, lay side-by-side next to so many others.
She sunk to her knees, hopelessness washing over her like ice water on a winter day. Nobody noticed her. They were too caught up in their own tragedies to feel anything but their own pain and loss. She stayed there, unmoving, on her knees for what seemed like ages until Professor Sprout picked her up off the floor and said something soothing that Cho didn't hear. It was as if someone had covered her ears and eyes, making her oblivious to her surroundings. It was grief that clouded her senses, grief and the torment of war.
Professor Sprout sat Cho down on a bench and handed her a cup of something warm and steaming, but she didn't drink it. Sprout hurried off to help more students. Cho stared at Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived through it all—and found love with Ginny Weasley. Her heart ached for him. Tears fell into the cup, mixing with the dark liquid, forming swirls and spirals.
Loneliness was Cho's constant companion for the long hours that followed the battle. She never moved from the bench, never said a word. She had killed that night. Death Eaters, sure, but killing was killing. She remembered only too well the sectumsempra that finished off the one with the dark hair and ski-slope nose. She didn't even know his name. Bloodlust and anger had become a part of her as she fought—emotions that, when put together, were incredibly deadly. She had transformed into someone that was not her, someone that she hadn't seen in herself. She was terrified of that person—that monster—and hoped to never see her again.
Eventually, Cho got up, and without a word or any warning, snapped her wand in two. She was done with magic. She was done with wizards and witches and Hogwarts. Cho Chang exited the Hall and walked out of the school, turning her back on Harry and Sprout and all who remained with only a single backward glance at everything she was leaving.
She did not join the Ministry of Magic as her parents wished her to—instead she banished herself from the wizarding world and went to college as an ordinary Muggle. She found a respectable job and lived the rest of her life trying to make peace with the demons that would always haunt her.
She continued battling her thoughts and memories for the years to come, never truly finding harmony with herself. She married a Muggle and gave him several children, all who never discovered what they were. Each and every night, the spirits of those she had killed came back to haunt her with all their evilness, until the night she died, slipping away in her first tranquil, dreamless sleep since that fateful day that changed everything. She died with a faint smile playing on her lips, with the beautiful calmness showing on her face.
Peace at last, in the end.