The first couple chapters are very dark. I need to break everyone so even though the outcome of the war is the same in the book, the cost came at a price to high, high enough they'd risk everything. To fix it or die trying. So the life they survive to live was worth living. So some lives weren't lost at all. They set out to stop a madman but this time, they were out to save the ones they loved and even some they despised. This time they didn't want to end a war they wanted to stop it. This time they wanted to saviors and not heroes.
I'm writing around not giving anything more than the outline away. So just note these chapters are very dark, the story becomes much lighter in later chapters, a story about friendship, family and love (lemons are likely in later chapters) though it starts dark and depressed with mention of violence, rape, addiction and suicide.
PLEASE NOTE THE M RATING. DARK BEGINNING LEMONS LATER!
She let herself in with a nearly silent whisper of the door and stood a moment, taking in the scene, a low fire burning to provide a small bubble of warmth and light in the otherwise cold and dark library. A tray of food sat untouched on the coffee table, books were piled high beside the couch, one flipped over to keep the page as though its owner could return momentarily to it and she swallowed biting back the wave of anguish that always hit as she noted the empty chair set by the old chess set with pieces set as though to be played again but everything is coated in a sheen of dust. Two chairs set near, one opposite the chess set but facing the low fire, its occupant sitting with a half empty glass of whiskey, legs stretched out in front of him as he slouched staring sightlessly at the low fire and beside it another occupied chair, the girl in it curled tightly as she to stared unseeingly at the hearth.
A wave of her wand brought the fire to life, if they noticed, neither occupant of the room showed it. Another wave of her wand and the untouched tray was banished to the kitchen. With a last mournful look at the empty chair set by the chess set, waiting for her brother, she turned and as silently as she let herself in she let herself out and went down to the kitchen where her brother was preparing food and tippling from a large bottle of whiskey.
"How are you?" The question was whispered as though not to disturb the silence of the house.
Ginny shrugged and bit her lip forcing herself to swallow the lump in her throat. "George is better today. Lee got him to give an opinion about a problem with a product at the shop instead of just telling him to burn it down and Angelina got him to eat two full meals."
Bill gave a grim smile and looked his sister over, "How are you Ginerva?"
Ginny shook her head and pulled in a breath, not today, the gesture said, I can't think about me today.
Bill nodded and turned away, fighting back the wave of tears, "Did you see Charlie today?"
"He's settling in at the reserve again but he sent an owl and said he'd arrived safe. I stopped in and saw dad at the ministry, he's… he…" Ginny stuttered as the tears burned her eyes and she choked back a wave of pain.
Bill nodded, knowing she needed him to ignore her agony and not coddle it. "Fleur extended her stay in France."
"Again." Ginny sighed, Bill just nodded, "Where's Victoire?"
"Andromeda has her and Teddy." He sent her a tight smile, his wife was suffering sever post partum and cried every time she looked at the infant. She'd tried to drown the little girl 'to save her from this terrible world' but Bill had come home early. After a month at the hospital her family had suggested she come home for a visit. It didn't look like she was coming back.
The door quietly clicked drawing their attention as steps shuffled down to the kitchen and Percy ghosted in, giving them a tight smile in greeting and picking up the whiskey bottle for a long tipple.
"Perce?" The name was both a greeting and a question. Percy just shook his head, gave a grim smile to his baby sister and left the room, carrying the bottle by its neck as he shuffled up the steps to the room he called his own.
"I'll start on supper." Ginny turned absently to the stove, her hands shaking as she began to prepare food no one would really eat.
"I better check on dad." Bill sighed and patted her shoulder before heading up the steps. His father had a mattress in what had been his shed before the Burrow had been blown up. Inside, had once been clean if cluttered with various muggle artifacts, which now sat abandoned and strewn with unwashed clothes, empty whiskey bottles lay strewn across the floor and one, half full one was clutched in his fathers hands as he slept, its contents dripping onto the mattress.
Bill picked up as best he could, not bothering to be quiet, nothing would wake his father at this stage and it was so quiet at Grimmauld Place it was like the whole place would shatter if a sound was made but sometimes he just wanted to sing at the top of his lungs and screw the delicate balancing act, let it all come down around them. Two of his brothers and his mother were dead, his father and middle brother were turning into alcoholics, his younger brother cursed any sort of reflective surface in violent fits of rage which were followed by days of apathy steeped in dreamless sleep potions. His closest brother, in both age and relation, avoided the family as though by not seeing any of them he could pretend everything was ok, that their mother was at home cooking for them, waiting to set him up with some eligible witch and harp on the dangers of his chosen profession. He was in such sever denial Bill wasn't actually sure Charlie didn't actually believe his family was home and still whole and healthy and happy. Bill himself was all but a single father to an infant girl he had no idea how to care for though he was fairly certain the only thing keeping him together was his baby sister. She seemed to be the thing keeping them all together but she was crumbling before his very eyes as she struggled to keep them all from drowning.
Back at Grimmauld Place, the quiet of the house was broken by screams. Hermione had drifted to sleep. Percy, lulled by the bottle didn't wake and Ginny just lay there listening, tears streaming down her face as she shut her eyes, wanting to scream as well, instead she mentally went through a complex recipe her mother had once taught her a long time ago. It didn't matter that no one ate, she cooked to be close to her mother, she cooked to keep busy to keep from thinking, from giving in to the grief and insanity waiting to embrace her, as it was her broken family.
Harry held Hermione to his lean frame, his grip almost to tight until her screaming and shaking subsided. Then he tucked her into his side as they sat before the dying embers of the fire.
"We can't do this anymore." He whispered to her. They only ever spoke to each other and only in the dark of night.
"I know." She agreed taking in a shaking breath and turning her head so the chessboard came into view. "I miss him so much."
"Me too." Harry agreed as he turned and frowned at the board. He remembered the last time he'd sat there, playing the game with Ron while Hermione read, enjoying a rare moment of reprieve, of peace before the Order meeting began.
So long ago, it was so very long ago, and yet it was only yesterday. He turned and caught sight of the books abandoned by Hermione when supper had been called by the Weasley matriarch, the woman who had quickly become mother to them all, who'd given her life protecting her family. Silence fell around them as they both lived in the memories again. Harry reached out for his wand and summoned a bottle of whiskey but her hand on his forearm stopped him from reaching to it to pour a glass.
"No more dreamless sleep My." He shook his head at her. "We've had to much." They rarely dulled the sharp pains of the horrors in their minds but when they did it was sparingly, a drop of potion or a tumbler of whiskey but no more. The potion made the nightmares worse the next night and the whiskey made them all the more real.
Hermione shook her head at him, "We can't do this anymore Harry. I can't."
Harry nodded and set the bottle aside pulling her tighter into his arms, "You have to, we have to." He waited for her to nod and poured her a tumbler full before taking one himself. "We have to remember, to share it all between us so we can have the strength."
"We make it better or die trying." She agreed with a grim smile.
All day they sat numb, drifting in and out of sleep, all night, staring into the flames of a dying fire, they sat huddled together and talked out the nightmares, reliving every memory from the now bitter and hard ache of past joy to the horrors of the war itself. It was the good memories that were the hardest, the dreams of the lives they almost had or saw a glimpse of or once hoped for. They had become accustomed to horror and pain but the happy memories, those hurt worse than the nightmares.
Harry started it tonight, "I dreamt of Sirius today…"