The sky was stained orange by the time dawn came. In the red valley screams could still be heard, the cries and laments of a thousand dead and dying. But even that was pleasant to the sounds the prisoners from the other camp across the hill.
Above, in the lightening sky, flew a mass of ravens, crows and vultures, biding their time until the humans left the battlefield, despite anyone who had the energy throwing curses and sometimes rock at the fowl winged beasts.
The scavengers payed these petty annoyances no mind. They were willing to wait, born to wait, made to wait, until all the weary survivors of the war picked themselves up and limped home, too exhausted to even care for the fallen dead. In this way, carrion eaters profited in a way no one else did from war.
"Lucky bastards," muttered Harry, glowering up at the sky as he waded through mud that was as much blood as it was earth, and entered into a dingy tent where the remnants of his army where cowering.
"Hey mate," Ron said in the weary whisper of a man who has said a phrase so many times it has begun to lose all meaning, and now the only reason he does it is to keep some illusion of normalcy in his life.
Some of the new recruits just didn't get that.
"Hey, you can't talk to the General that way!" squeaked a voice whose owner had just barely gotten past puberty. "Who do you think you are?"
"And who the hell are you?" demanded Ron, looking at the young man with half-crazed eyes that promised pain. The man didn't seem to even notice.
"I happen to be very good friend of General Potter!" The next thing he knew, the man was crushed against a post, held there by his 'very good friend' by his throat.
"Are you now?" asked Harry so softly, yet everyone heard him clearly s his glowing green eyes bore into the man. "Because if I remember, Ron is the one who trained with me every day since I was eleven, Ron is the one who has taken a Cruciatus for me so many times I couldn't count, Ron is the one who is control of my army, and Ron is the one who has killed thousands at my command." He dropped the man, who slumped against the tent post, holding his neck and gasping.
"Where were you during all this?" Harry asked, and the whole tent reverberated with the question.
Suddenly a feminine voice interrupted the tense silence.
"Harry, stop scaring the shit out of everyone! Its bad enough we have to fight Voldemort in half an hour, and we can't do that if everyone has deserted!"
Harry hung his head, as meekly as anyone had seen him do since his first kill and mumbled a quick, "Sorry, 'Mione."
Mollified, she just nodded, and started barking out orders. Soon Ron and Harry followed her. The three friends didn't speak to each other. They didn't need to. They had been preparing for this war, this battle, this moment ever since the age when they could hold a wand, and they knew what this meant. They didn't need to open their mouths and let useless sounds spill out. A glance here, a small gesture there, that was all they needed to communicate.
Their friendship had been baptized in magic. Hermione's parents, as she found them, sliced, cut, and punctured so thoroughly it was hard to identify them, and finally dead of a Killing Curse. The wounds were from the torture the Death Eaters had inflicted. The Killing Curse was a gift from their daughter, the only medicine the most expert healer in the Wizarding World had been able to offer them. Because it was too late, and now Ron and Harry always held her in the terror of the night.
Their camaraderie had been bound with fire. The fire that had licked against Ron's face, had left him blind, had permanently scarred his hands, as he dragged his parent's bodies from the smoldering wreckage of his childhood home. Just as he had done for hours before, searching, seeking desperately for his siblings, only finding Ginny alive enough so that she could die in his arms a moment later, a look of peace on her face. Eventually, there was no more wood he could tear apart, no more stone he could overturn. They were gone. And he turned back to the only family he had left, Harry and Hermione.
Their intimacy secured with blood. The blood on Harry's hand as he ripped into Wormtail again and again, not only with curses but with his fists, feet and even mouth.
When a friend saved your life as often as they had for each other, there was no need to cry for the end.