A/N
I'm having a really bad week and I miss people, please review this but please don't be cruel. I am on a knife's edge between life and death. Luna out
The heroes who live to tell the tale don't stay a hero for long. The horrors of war take too big a toll to leave no mark. While the marks may not manifest on their bodies, their minds are changed forever, scarred deeply, and slowly, those heroes we know and dearly love, morph into the villains.
Take Hermione for example. The scar on her wrist was a daily reminder of her 'failings'. Even with everything she tried, she was never good enough. She barely ate these days except to stay alive, and even then she lived a cursed existence. Sometimes she wondered if she had accidentally created a horcrux from the emptiness she felt. She broke it off with Ron, feeling she was inadequate, unlovable and broken. She didn't just see the death eaters in her dreams, they were her reality.
She couldn't sleep for fear of them, and she couldn't open her eyes for fear of seeing them again. Bellatrix, laughingly mocking her, Mulciber blasting her, Greyback advancing on her in wolf form. The apparitions of those scum shook her to her core. Every morning she would wake, fresh from dreams of terror to see one of them right in front of her.
It wasn't real, she told herself, but the rational part of Hermione Granger had disappeared and all that was left was a shell of a human being. An empty, cold hearted bleak version of herself.
Or Harry. The boy who lived was broken into tiny little pieces. He saw daily the face of the dead, unable to change anything.
He saw Sirius fade into the veil with a sad smile on his face. He saw Lupin and Tonks dead bodies, cold and stiff laying on the table.
He saw Colin Creevy's smile slide off his face as he died in his arms, as his precious camera slipped out of his hands and smashed on the ground, as he was unable to do anything about it. He saw Lavender Brown attacked by Greyback over and over again, her blood spurting from her neck, her flesh mangled by claws. And he couldn't do anything about it.
He started to dream of those he loved who lived. But he dreamed of them dead.
Ginny, her body sliced to pieces by a sectumsempra.
Ron with werewolf bite marks down his body, then Ron morphing into a wolf and killing him.
Hermione, torn to flesh by avis'd birds, but the worst part was that he was the one who cast the spell every time.
He saw Luna covered in fiendfyre burns and as she hobbled towards him she wheezed why over and over again, then fell dead, eyes cold and glassey.
He finally put those nightmares to bed for good as he eternally slept.
Ron was ruined by war. He lost all motivation. What point was there if you defeat one evil just to have another rise up? There was no change, the purebloods still ruled, the muggleborns still quashed, prejudice still reigning, what had changed?
He lay on the couch day after day watching TV and waiting to die. He couldn't bring himself to attend family gatherings not after Fred, seeing George there without his other half broke him.
Hermione breaking up with him had destroyed what little self confidence he had left. She had told him it was for the best but that little voice in his head told him you're worthless, she doesn't like you never did. DIE!
One day, he listened to that voice
Luna's dreamy attitude was massacred by the war. She lost her father, the only one who had ever believed in her when she needed him most. The image of his body was seared into her brain, unforgettable in death. Her anxiety took control of her and paranoia was her constant companion.
Her period disappeared and she would not sleep for fear that someone would come through the window despite the fact she had nailed it shut, or someone would aparate into her room to finish her off despite the apparition wards. Fear controlled her every move, trapping her with talons of black.
Anxiety became her constant companion and she could not or would not let it go.
Ginny was broken. Her brothers had been her support net, but with one gone it was as if they dissolved. She had been soaring on the winds of winning the war, but without the safety net she fell and how it hurt.
Her mother had gone into her own world, cleaning and cooking and looking after war orphans in their little home and her father was a nervous wreck. She had no one to turn to so she turned to the high life.
She partied the night away every night and returned home wasted. She slept off her hangover only to do it all again the next night.
One night she didn't return. She didn't return the next night or the next.
They found her body in a ditch, almost unrecognizable from the abuse it had endured, broken and raped by some druggie. Ginny Weasley, life wasted, her hopes and dreams popped like a bubble.
Lavender Brown was scarred. Her body bore permanent signs of the werewolf attack. She went through painful transformations every full moon. She hated her body now. It hurt to look at it, hurt to even think about who she had been.
Slowly she started to become dangerous, even to the ones she cherished most. She slowly became more and more a wolf every single month and she refused to hear reason. Her ears became sharper, her nose better sniffing out the weak and gradually she turned into a complete beast.
She started to eat raw meat and snarl and howl in her sleep. She tried and tried to get out of her body but she couldn't.
She was no longer sane, but it wasn't until she attacked Parvaiti while she was unmorphed that she realised she was broken, until she realised she would never be sane She ran into the woods and nobody ever saw her again, at least nobody who lived to tell the tale.
George was destroyed. His other half was dead, gone, blown to bits. He locked himself away into his room and blocked out every bit of love. He couldn't bear anything that reminded him of Fred. He stopped quidditch, stopped magic all together and closed the joke shop.
When his little sister disappeared he shut down completely. He refused to eat or drink. When her body was found he was emotionless. He planned the funeral for her and tracked down the killer. The killer mercilessly crucio'd until he was but a blubbering mess, incapable of even the simplest of sentences before George slowly killed him. After that, George found a new focus, as an Auror, tracking down people.
And killing them.
A/N
I just updated this story to be a little more descriptive. Please review, I'm in a dark place and I need some light