Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, it is the property of the brilliant J.K Rowling. This story is the product of her marvellous characters and world and my imagination.
Summary: At the end of the war they mourn the people and innocence they've lost, and the lives they could have had.
Character: Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, George Weasley, Luna Lovegood, Andromeda Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt
None of them really know how to mourn.
They've lost people in the far past, the countless names from the first war against Voldemort are always in the back of their minds – James and Lily Potter, Fabian and Gideon Prewett, Marlene McKinnon, Frank and Alice Longbottom and so many more.
They've lost friends along the way too. Sirius, Dumbledore and Cedric Diggory most prominent in their thoughts.
But there has always been the fight and the return of Voldemort to focus on. They've never had time before to really consider who they've lost and what could have been if things had been different.
But now it's all over and Voldemort is dead for good, his Death Eaters dead or imprisoned and they can't help but think of the losses.
The sorrow they feel for some has ebbed a little over the years but the sadness they feel about of the victims of the final battle brings up their old pain all over again to contend with the new, raw misery.
None of them cope very well to begin with.
Hermione feels a little bit like a fraud when she spends hours alone sobbing into her pillow.
She wasn't linked to anyone who died in the way the others were. She feels sometimes like she's not allowed to mourn them as fiercely as others do because she didn't know them as well.
She can't quite believe Fred isn't there anymore because for so long it's been Fred and George together and now it's just George who never smiles anymore. Fred was a thorn in her side at times but he was loyal and funny and kind and brave and people might think they were just acquaintances but Hermione knows they were friends. She just hates to push her unhappiness to the fore when there is George to think about and the whole Weasley family to comfort.
She knew Sirius and Remus just as long as Harry, though. True, they had a history with his parents but Hermione talked and laughed with them too. She heard most of the same stories as Harry did. Sirius gave her pep talks about dealing with bigoted purebloods when she felt down and Remus indulged all her intellectual curiosity with the enthusiasm of a fellow bibliophile.
Tonks was Charlie Weasley's best friend. She'd been a feature at the Burrow since she was eleven and was well-known to all the Weasleys. But Hermione has never had many close female friends, just Ginny and Luna really. Tonks was a much needed break from Harry and Ron, a sort of big sister she's never had. They made so many plans for the future that will no longer happen and all Hermione can think about are the holidays and day-trips and fun they should have to look forward to but never will, of the son both Tonks and Remus will never see grow up.
She misses Cedric because she might not have really known him but he always smiled and said hello, helped her reach books in the library when she was too short and scared off Malfoy and his cronies once or twice.
She misses the reassurance Dumbledore gave – he made mistakes, especially with Harry, but he was always committed to the fight and he always made her feel like they'd come out ok in the end.
She's sad for Regulus Black, almost forgotten by history but a hero like his brother. She mourns for Professor Snape who made monumental errors and was really quite a horrible person but who tried for the sake of a girl who was once his friend. She thinks about Harry's parents, Neville's in St Mungo's, Ron's uncles and the others that her friends never really got to know.
There is a long list of people to cry for and a long list of those to cry for them and Hermione feels like she doesn't really rank on the list but she weeps anyway.
Because she mourns the lost, regrets the loss of the innocent girl she used to be, tries to cope with the nightmares and thinks wistfully of all they could have had.
Harry can't seem to mourn privately.
Everyone wants to see him, to touch him or hug him or thank him. He is the Boy-Who-Lived to most, now the Man-Who-Won. Only to a small number is he Harry, the boy who grew up without his parents and lost all the father figures he gained and had to fight a madman far too many times before he even reached eighteen.
They see him as a figure for their sorrow. He represents them and they want to know how he's feeling and who he misses most and it's far too much like a circus for his liking.
He's never liked the spotlight. He's got used to it but he's never enjoyed it. And it's even worse now, when all he wants to do is shout and scream at the world for taking so many good people away.
He's always watched and they always want to see him mourn in an 'appropriate' way. Sad but not too sad. Damp eyes but no tears. Strong and stoic.
All he wants to do is be with his friends. Hermione is doing too much and appearing in the morning more bleary-eyed than he's ever seen her because she's spent half the night crying. Ron swings between anger and sorrow. Ginny just stays close to her parents and tries to be brave. Harry knows he should be sharing in their distress and trying to ease their burdens but he's stuck being a spectacle and focus for everyone and they may think it's his duty to be the strong public figure but he's spent years of his life fighting the darkness when he should have been having fun in school and he just wants to rest.
Everyone sees Harry's despondence. Everyone shares in it. But he just wants a little solitude, a little quiet, to piece himself back together as best he can and to stop seeing dead bodies in his dreams.
Ron has always had a temper. It goes with the red hair, well-known as a Weasley trait.
He's also never been very good with emotions. Before Voldemort's return he'd never really dealt with loss. His uncles had died when he was too young to do more than miss a vague memory. He's had family who have died, but none he was overly-close to.
He's spent the past few years repressing any pain he felt when someone died. The deaths don't hit him as hard as Harry, who seems to lose any pseudo-family he makes and always feels personally responsible for casualties, or Hermione, who finds it hard to connect with her peers but who manages to strike up strong friendships within the Order and then loses them to the war.
He's a little guilty that he can't feel as deeply about it as his best friends. His emotion lies in his anger at Voldemort and his worry for his friends.
But when he sees Fred lying there, pale and still and the ghost of a smile on his face, he feels as he never has before.
He weeps over his brother's body and then he dives back into the fray with a ferociousness he knows scares Hermione, who tries to hold him back so the carelessness that will result from his unstable emotions doesn't get him killed.
He holds on to his fury for the rest of the battle, uses it to fuel his fighting and to stop himself from being overwhelmed by his pain.
And when Voldemort is dead he keeps that temper. He snaps at Hermione, is sullen with Harry and won't talk to his family. He goes outside almost every day to rage and curse and fire spells at the trees. He doesn't go back to Hogwarts but joins the Aurors in an attempt to find an outlet for his angry energy.
It doesn't really work. He's still full of rage and hate. It burns him up inside and he thinks it might destroy him if he doesn't try to control it.
But he finds himself welcoming the hurt as a distraction from reality.
George doesn't speak for a week after Fred dies.
After that its monosyllables for months, all in a tired, monotone voice that is nothing like the George they all know.
He doesn't smile or laugh. No jokes or puns or witty comments leave his mouth. He's just lifeless.
But he can't find anything funny or interesting anymore. He keeps seeing things Fred would have loved, or remembering how his twin always managed to make everything twice as amusing.
George's world has always been full of colour but he thinks Fred took that with him. All he can see now is grey.
He hears Hermione talk about depression. None of them are doing well but he's self-aware enough to realise that he isn't coping at all. He might not be drinking or taking drugs or hurting himself but he's not doing anything at all, sitting in near-silence and wasting away. Depression is probably the right word to use.
He talks to Fred, sometimes, in the middle of the night as he lies awake wishing he could just get some rest. No one ever replies.
He feels like half a person. He and Fred were always adamant that they were two separate people, that they could be one without the other. But he thinks maybe that's not true. They can survive alone, of course, but what he's doing isn't really living.
He refuses to set foot in their shop.
Luna has always had a sort of innocence about her. Not in the usual way, perhaps, because she's seen her mother die and her father become even more eccentric, and been bullied by numerous classmates. But she's always had an otherworldly sort of aura and she finds it easy to slip away into her own dream world.
The war changes that. She has to confront reality. She can't hide behind her clothes and her quirks and all the wonderful creatures she knows are out there somewhere. She has to fight and be so very brave and, at times, deadly. She's not used to that. She doesn't like it at all. But she does it because she has to.
She mourns all those lost like so many do, but she also mourns for those that are forgotten by most, for the nameless casualties that aren't usually remembered.
Luna is good at that. She always finds something to say about everyone, even if she doesn't know them. She thinks about the cheerful smiles on the photograph of the muggle family Death Eaters killed, of how the St Mungo's healer killed in a riot in Diagon Alley saved so many lives, and how the quiet sixth year Hufflepuff who fought and died at the Battle of Hogwarts pushed her friend out of the way and saved her life.
It hurts her, to think of so many people who are gone. But she thinks of the good they left behind too, of the world that is safer because of them. Luna thinks of the sad but she can also see the happy. She can always push past her sorrow.
It's a beautiful gift, really.
Andromeda thinks of the saying that a parent should never have to bury her child.
She hasn't had to do just that. She's buried her husband and her son-in-law as well, and that isn't even taking into account the loss of her favourite cousin Sirius two years previously and finally discovering the tragic truth of what had happened to Regulus.
She would give her life in an instant if it meant Dora and Remus could live and raise their son but even magic has its limits and all she can do is raise her orphaned grandson as well as she can and tell him stories about his parents and how they sacrificed everything to make sure he could grow up in a safer and more tolerant world.
She's got some experience with loss and she copes a little better than many others. But the people that constitute almost her whole world have been taken away and it takes a toll on her. She's so tired and desperate to just sit and weep but she's got Teddy depending on her. There are others to help, but the Weasleys have Fred's death to cope with and neither Harry nor Hermione are in a good place, though they try their best to help. Harry takes his godfather duties seriously and Hermione, who Dora had never had the chance to ask to be godmother, is always willing to lend a hand, read a story or babysit for the afternoon to give Andromeda a break.
She copes, though. She can't do anything else. She carries on for Teddy and thanks Merlin for him every day. He's a part of Dora and Ted and Remus that she still has, and he's the only (sane/tolerable/nice) family she has left.
But in the dead of night, while her grandson sleeps soundly, blissfully untouched by the ravages of the war's end, she casts a silencing charm on her room and screams into her pillow, wishing with all her heart that her family was with her.
Kingsley tries to restore some order once the war is over.
He's not sure how he manages to get put into place as temporary Minister for Magic. Perhaps it's because the wizarding world in general looks to the Order for leadership after the battle, no longer trusting those currently installed in the Ministry. Kingsley is the second-highest ranking Order member surviving after Minerva, who has her hands full with Hogwarts.
Kingsley has a fair understanding of politics. He's an Auror first, but as one of the senior members of the department he has a lot of experience with bureaucracy. It's not an ideal situation for him – he is very much a man of action – but he knows that in the aftermath they all have to pull their weight and he's sure he can make a difference.
He's mourning of course. Remus, Moody, Tonks and Fred were friends. Even Snape, difficult as he was, could be called an ally, and though he never particularly cared for the irascible Potions Master he feels sadness at his death. But he's lived through the first and second wars and been an Auror for twenty years – he can compartmentalise his feelings for a while until the wizarding world is more stable.
Percy Weasley helps with the political side and he is an invaluable aide considering his time as Junior Assistant to Cornelius Fudge. Hermione reads dozens of books on the Ministry, political theory and the history of their magical government and then manages to condense the huge amount of reading into straightforward notes that Kingsley reads every night before he goes to sleep. Harry throws all of his backing behind Kingsley and considering his current status as the saviour of the wizarding world that is a lot of positive support. But all that help, as well as assistance the rest of the Order gives him, is not always fully available as they are all, as they should be, dealing with their losses and nightmares and picking up the pieces of their own lives.
But Kingsley sees things getting better. He sees the sparks of life returning and the good he and the Order are doing in rooting out corruption. He knows it will get better.
And every now and then, when he isn't weighed down by papers or information or bureaucracy, he takes a break, has a drink and raises a toast to those no longer with them.
They're all a mess to start with. It can't really be any other way. They've spent so long fighting that peace baffles them.
They look over their shoulders, wake up in the night screaming, are quick to curse and slow to trust, with cynicism replacing hope and grave faces rather than smiles.
But it gets better. The sun peaks out from behind the clouds and they start to remember that they can enjoy life.
They talk of happy times, speak of their lost friends and tell stories about them. There are holes where others used to be and they never leave, but gradually the wounds become less painful and while they always mourn they don't let it consume them.
Instead they focus on remembering the good and keeping the memories of their fallen friends and family as bright and fresh as possible.
Hermione goes back to Hogwarts and faces the ghosts of those who died there. Harry spearheads the Aurors and works to ensure no remnants of the Death Eaters remain. Ron realises the Aurors aren't for him and goes on to help George in finding the courage to go back to his shop and start bringing laughter to their world again.
They fight for equality in their world. They tell Teddy about his amazing parents and, later on, make sure their own children know all about the men and women they will never get the chance to meet but should know through the tales and memories of others.
There will always be nights when they weep, always moments they look for someone who is no longer there, and always regrets.
Bu they live and love and laugh and make the world a better place.
And they try to make the sacrifices worth it.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.