There was an eerie quiet about the castle resting gracefully on a soft, green gentle hill. Although this quiet was calm, the silence could match the screams of the dying. The fact that no one was there to fill the castle with the usual boisterous laughter and joyful chatter was heart wrenching. Everyone that had once gave the long now empty halls life no longer took comfort in its walls. They were gone. Some even dead. They were never returning.
Empty and sad, the wood of the rotting floorboards creaked with loneliness. There was no pitter patter of feet running up the stair cases nor friendly voices conversing between classes. Yes, this castle resting calmly upon a hill was a school. Not just any ordinary school though. This was a school that taught magic. Yes, this school had everything the human mind could imagine. Mythological animals such as unicorns and centaurs roam about the forest whose ancient trees looked so forbidding and unwelcoming that the forest earned its name, The Forbidden Forest. At the bottom of a huge, great lake, an overgrown ink black squid restes lazily. High in one of the towers of the castle, abandoned owls flutter frantically looking for a way out.
The summer rain has began to quicken the growing pace of the brush around the base of the monstrous structure, causing vine like plants to climb up the walls and coat the windows like sickly green curtains. No light natural shines through the large pains anymore, making the huge dining hall dark and dreary. Broken and cracked plates and goblets litter the four tables arranged horizontally with quite a lot of space in between, as if they intentionally wanted distant separation. Used candles and dried wax litter the floor. All the the food that has been left was now rotted into nothing. It's amazing what just a few months with no magic can do. The castles spark has died. The magic that has once sustained it was gone. It died along with most of the wizards and witches that had given there lives in the war. Even the witches and wizards that has fought on the wrong side of the war had once had a special place in the castle, and their deaths took at tole as well.
The original builders of the school had not intended it to bring so much harm onto its students. All they ever wanted was for it to be a place of learning. They did not intend it to be a place of betrayal and rivalry. It was meant to bring the wizarding world together not tear it apart. It is sad to say the truth. The castle was indeed the root of the dark evil that has caused its down bringing. It raised the darkest wizard of the century. He who must not be named. The wizard whose name is now to feared to even be spoken was taught to not only use magic but control it in this very castle. Now it sits as a sad reminder to all of the terrible war that so many had given there lives for. In the end it is believed that the good and just side had won. He who must not be named was vanquished. He is also gone along with his followers and the brave witches and wizards who died fighting him.
This is what a distressed Minerva McGonagall was led to believe as she opened the great doors of the castle and began to slowly remanence her past. As she walked by the portrait that had once guarded the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, she suddenly had vivid flash backs of her former students. She remembered Sirius Black and James Potter racing to get back into the common room, thinking that she hadn't seen them pull their latest stunt. She remembered their soft hearted friend, Remus Lupin and there small, chubby buck- toothed friend Peter Petigrew chasing after them. She remembered how Remus would scold them and Peter would worship them for everything they did. She remembered them yelling the password, and the fat lady grumbling as she let them back in for the tenth time that night. She remembered. As all of the memories came rushing to her, so did a wave of sadness. Oh how she missed the days where they had been young and carefree. Two of them were now dead. One had been taken by he who must not be named. The other had been taken by one of their own. A friend. A betrayal that had taken everyone by surprise. She still refused to believe it. But no matter the way it happened, they were still gone. Taken. Taken from their families. Taken from each other. Taken from her...
Minerva continued to walk. She remembered Lily Evans standing up for her former friend Severus Snape as she walked past the court yard. Lily was now also dead. Minerva believed that Snape was at fault for Lily's death. He had become what she had always hope he wouldn't. The darkness had to much hold on him. He do was also taken. A tear made it's way down her cheek. The bright, red headed muggle born who was the top of her year was taken as well as the long haired slytherin who had given up hope.
As Minerva walked away from the huge wooden doors, she decided something. This was not the end for Hogwarts. She would fight to make this school become whole again. She would not abandon her home. Her former students legacy would live on in the castle. Their children shall learn magic in the castle on the hill just as they did. Nothing else would be taken from her. Hogwarts would never be silent again.