A/N: The Next Life Collection, is a series of stories about the life of our favorite Harry Potter characters after the Final Battle. All the stories depict the same world, same characters, and each one adds new ones that you will enjoy reading about. Each story has their own style and plor but all together is about the same family; the Potter family. Thank you for reading, and thank you to J.K.R. for allowing her fans to use the world she created to write these stories of ours.

Prologue: A History of Chaos

The war had started years before, even before Harry Potter himself had been born. Yet he had become the one destined to end it once and for all. He would vanquish Voldemort, and only because he had chosen Harry as his equal. It would be Harry who would do the impossible to destroy him, to rid the world of his evil, to bring his parents justice. And by Killing Lily and James Potter in his quest to destroy baby Harry, Voldemort had made sure that the prophecy he thought he knew in full, would become true;

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. …

Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies …"

But had Voldemort's servant, then, not been discovered listening behind the door, as Dumbledore himself was witness to the prophecy. The Dark Lord would have won; for a prophecy is only as true, as those who make it so.

"…And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, But he will have power the Dark Lord knows not …

And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. …

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies. …"

Harry had lost his parents. Barely out of his first year, and he was hunted by a power hungry Wizard whose main objective in life was to kill Harry Potter so he could rule all. But he could easily have chosen another wizard boy, born only one day before Harry himself, and whose parent's had three times come face to face with Voldemort just as Harry's had. But it had been what ran through Harry's veins, that had made Voldemort choose him, mark him as his equal. It was his mother's muggle-born blood, just as the half-blood that ran through Tom Riddle himself from his own muggle father. And even though Voldemort no longer considering himself Tom, he still chose Harry as being the one that would inevitably bring him to his own demise.

And it was so, that the war that had started even before his birth, had spread all through Harry's school years at Hogwarts. It had gone beyond, destroying so much he loved, killing so many he cared for. Because of Voldemort, Harry had lost the only family he had left, Sirius, his godfather. Bellatrix Lestrange had killed Sirius, driven by insanity hatred towards Sirius her own cousin and a blind devotion towards Voldemort. Because of Voldemort, he had lost his mentor, Dumbledore, killed by someone Dumbledore himself trusted blindly, Severus Snape forced into killing the only man to ever care, or to believe Snape's words of repentment for his years of servitude to Voldemort. But Severus had made a promise to protect Harry, no matter who had to fall on the way, even if he had to die himself to make sure Harry made it to the battle field to face Voldemort.

And it had been all this that had driven Harry into years of war with Voldemort and his Death Eater Army. Almost two years of complete chaos, as Harry and his friends searched the world for the pieces of Voldemort soul, his horcruxes. Ron, Hermione, and eventually Ginny; searched the continents, as the war back home ragged out of control., as both Death Eaters and Phoenixes held their end strongly waiting for Harry's eminent return.

Eventually, not too long before the final battle Harry and the others returned home to England. Having achieved their goal; finding and destroying the last of the missing six horcruxes, only the final and seventh piece of soul remained within Voldemort himself.

The Order of the Phoenix, which had evolved into an army of thousands, waited for their commander, while holding down the home front in his absence. The day of Harry's return, they all knew, that the war would end soon, and that they would fight, whether it was to live or die, England would live to see better days.

And this decades long war's end started the day Dumbledore's protection over Harry was lifted; the day he turned seventeen, the day his mother's love could no longer protect him against Voldemort. The same day Harry, Ron and Hermione left for their two year journey. Ending the day that Harry, closely followed by his closet, most loyal friends and the thousand's of Witches and Wizards of the Phoenix Army that followed, stood on one side of the battle field facing the enemy, in their black hoods and ghostly masks, a sense of violence in the very air.

"Breath" Harry told himself, as he readied himself to charge. All around him men and women stood quiet, their hearts pounding hard in their chests with anticipation. Then, without a word; he started to walk, and all around him the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of feet started their walk. The Phoenix Army entered the battlefield; wands blazing, nerves steady and hearts ready.

END PROLOGUE