Author's Note: This will be a 100 chapter Fic, all based on the 100 prompts by xXKissingSinXx in the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges. Each one will feature Neville Longbottom throughout the Harry Potter series, although most will take place during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They are either book or movie compliant, but either way, are strictly cannon. These go in no particular order.

Prompt 1: Haunted

It felt as though every second of Neville Longbottom's life had dwindled down to this moment. Days he had spent preparing the D.A. for battle, those blessed days when every shining face of their numbers was still alive, when he, Luna, and Ginny had been so naively unaware of just how horrendously the night would play out—those days were fading into forgotten yesterdays in a matter of seconds.

Neville leaned out over the sixth floor balcony, hot, bitter tears falling down his cheeks. Too many had died tonight. At his feet, a pool of blood and a broken body was all that remained of Lavender Brown.

Lavender…

That look upon her face, so young, so brave… it had died on her shattered body.

And down on the grounds, so many other bodies were dead, so many that had been alive only earlier that evening, welcoming Harry back into the castle, cheering with hope. But Neville sobbed as he realized one last thing about those bodies…

Colin…

Fred…

Lupin…

Tonks…

The Fifty score more who's numbers seemed endless…

…They had died to save him. And his future wife. And his children. And he could never, never repay them.

If truth be told, sometimes the heartbeat of the silence still echoes in his heart, even now it's nineteen years passed. Why, oh why, do all beautiful things seem to break? Lives, soldiers, his friends…When he looks in the mirror, everything seems alright. But as he looks closer, it all changes. Somewhere within, he seems them there still. Fighting for him. Dying for him.

And even though the dead are now just an echo, left in a world that has moved on, that world will never forget them. The footprints are in the sand, washing away but never leaving those tides.

Left to sit, haunted, in the hearts of the men who lived because others had died. True, Neville would always be haunted by their memories. But he lived, oh how he lived, because of their sacrifice.