The festivities didn't last long. There had only been just over two days of celebrating the defeat of You-Know-Who before the sheer amount of destruction finally began to sink in. No one had come through the war totally unscathed; if the injury hadn't been to themselves, then a loved one would have been seriously injured – or worse.
It is no longer thought of as a positive thing to be one of the survivors – not when you are awoken every night by the nightmares and the screaming. The visions of torture and death and destruction haunt every survivor, no matter what they were doing during the war.
Foreign countries send all forms of aid that they can manage, and whilst it is appreciated it does not help them to forget. These people were unaffected, they didn't arrive until after the dust had settled; they were just here to help rebuild the wizarding societies of Great Britain. Some don't thing that they should bother – believing that they are trying to preserve an old relic from the past which is better left forgotten – but most people help where they can, wanting to keep busy so that they have little chance to think about everything that they have lost.
The Ministry is the first thing to be re-built and re-designed. An entirely new system of government begins to be designed within the empty halls in the hopes that this will never happen again. People are doubtful that any of their careful planning would be able to stop a second attack – if a new dark wizard were to emerge it would be easy for them to overthrow the poor excuse or order; it would be like a child playing with a toy army, too easy.
Once work is fully underway on the Ministry, some of the workers move on to the school. This is where most of the damage is, and they know that it will be the hardest to re-construct. Most of the magic that went into making the school when it was originally built is so outdated now that no one is entirely sure what to use instead. A lot of the old spells are long forgotten, or at some point in the long ago past were deemed to be Dark Magic.
They do the best that they can for the time being, but they get a specialist work force consisting of the strongest and brightest witches and wizards from across the globe to work on creating new spells to strengthen the school and its surrounding areas. It is a project that will take them years to complete, but it is not something that they are willing to compromise on. They will not take risks on the children's safety.
A lot of parents won't be sending their children to Hogwarts in the upcoming years, but they hope to re-instil people's faith in the school; they hope that with time Hogwarts will once again be the safest place in the country.
Those that are unable to work on the re-construction projects are left alone to their grief. Both sides of the war suffered great losses, but it is the children who suffered the most. They have lost siblings, friends, parents. They have lost their school – the one place that they were led to believe that they would always be safe. They have all witnessed the destruction and devastation. They have lost their innocence.
Once the construction work is well underway, and the foreign countries believe them to be stable enough to withdraw their help, the real level of their loss begins to dawn on people. The graveyards are overrun with bodies waiting to be buried, many people are still left unaccounted for, and Azkaban has never been more crowded.
The time of grieving has arrived.