Author's Note: This is a direct continuation of [Snapped] Fractions, in which the Snap occurs on Harry's birthday in 1981. I've not decided how long it will go, so each part should be considered potentially the last.
The war ended that night. The larger chaos consumed it, the world shifting itself around to fill in the holes left by half the world vanishing in an afternoon.
Voldemort disappeared, along with half his Death Eaters.
Along with half of everyone else.
The magical world was used to chaos. Voldemort and Grindelwald before him had seen to that. They mourned and consolidated quickly, moving even further into secrecy away from the muggles and their chaos.
The muggles were hit hardest. Planes without pilots crashing down, or with untrained passengers desperately trying to land, caused swaths of destruction all around the world. Hundreds of thousands of additional casualties on highways; with over a third of the cars rushing along unguided, roads became a solid string of pileups.
But everyone moves on.
In the muggle world, a year after the disaster things had settled. After the initial rush of additional deaths and looting and madness, enough calm was restored. Three years, and factories had resumed work, the most important roads were clear, and everything seemed almost normal. Five years, and life had resumed its ordinary flow. Deeply scarred, both the physical spaces and the hearts of those who survived, but alive.
Society rebuilt itself, reborn like a phoenix. Weak and struggling but growing stronger year by year.
Ironically, in this, the wizarding world had the harder task. Where the muggles had hundreds of millions to fill in their empty spaces, the wizards had thousands. Already divided and devastated by the war, unwilling to just accept what had happened, with half the Ministry's leadership gone in the same day as Voldemort and Dumbledore both.
Hundreds of witches and wizards came out of Imperius trances, their confusion only adding to the general chaos. A very few Death Eater fanatics like Bellatrix Lestrange continued their attacks, but without Lord Voldemort's backing they were almost overlooked amid everything else and quietly hunted down by surviving Order members.
The refugees who'd fled the country didn't feel safe enough to return. Individual pockets of survivors locked themselves down under heavy protections and became tiny communities reverting to survival and leaving society to its own devices. Ottery St Catchpole, Godric's Hollow, Spinner's End - almost every surviving wizard settlement became its own entity. Its own tiny island of survivors, supporting one another and blocking the rest of the world out.
The Ministry elections were fraught with havoc, but even there the turnout underperformed even the most skeptical predictions. Lucius Malfoy took the position with hardly a contest, and set about creating a new and firmer central core to the wizarding world.
They were inextricably linked to muggle London, with the Ministry there and Diagon Alley still one of the biggest shopping districts in wizarding Britain. With half the muggles missing, it was easy to carve out a section of the city for magicals. The survivors were already in chaos, making a few hundred forget their home address and find places elsewhere in the city didn't bother Lucius in the least.
Expanding Diagon Alley to include the muggle shopping district in which it was located, rerouting the Ministry entrances and exits to the new center of magical power, and building anti-muggle charms into the streets on either end occupied everyone who could be hired.
Give them something useful to do, time to calm down, and a firm voice of authority. The new Remembrance Plaza renovations continued. Each time they completed one task, Lucius - or Narcissa, who headed up the team - had another lined up.
The splintered communities remained apart. They didn't know or care what was going on in the city; they had their own problems, their own triumphs, their own tiny battles to face day by day.
Molly Weasley, only weeks away from giving birth to her first daughter, lost five of her six sons. Ron went from youngest to only in the space of a minute.
The entire Lovegood family vanished, as the Weasleys learned when Mary and Alexander Vellacott - Pandora's parents - came knocking on their door, asking frantically if they had the correct address. Xenophilius, Pandora, and their six-month-old Luna; gone. As was Xenophilius's ailing mother. And Pandora's brother, Leander, along with his wife and his two-year-old son.
The Vellacotts stayed. At first, because Mary was an accomplished healer and wanted to ensure Molly's pregnancy wasn't adversely affected in its final weeks, but soon because both families had lost too much and it was better to support one another. They'd been living with Leander's family when the disaster occurred, and now they moved into the empty Rookery.
Mary acted as healer for the scattered wizarding families in the area. Martha Diggory, already in fragile health, took a turn for the worst with the disappearance of her husband and only son. Though once she'd have been sent to St. Mungo's, now they were understaffed and oversaturated, so Mary moved her into the Rookery and tried to coax her back to good health.
Further down the road, the Fawcett family didn't even realize anything was wrong at first. Of everyone in Ottery St. Catchpole, their family alone survived untouched.
They did not take this for granted very long. As everyone around them struggled to regain their equilibrium, the Fawcetts proved themselves a solid support for the entire community. They took charge of organizing protective spells, of resource allocation. They headed up the consolidation of split families, pairing lost children with grieving parents.
No one could replace those that were lost, but in helping others they could find a way forward beyond their own grief. Not to say that it was easy. But time softens pain, even if it can never fully erase it.
The little town came together to rebuild and move on.
Life went on.
James Potter and Sirius Black loved Harry more than anything in the world.
It hadn't been easy, moving on from losing Lily, but his truest friend and practically-brother had stepped up in a big way. That first year, both James and Sirius had been forced to mature faster and in more ways than they'd ever imagined possible.
James still missed Lily. Every morning when he woke, alone or with Harry beside him. Every time Harry did something for the first time, every birthday that passed without her. Those were the hardest. Sirius usually took point on Harry's birthdays, arranging trips and celebrations to take place outside of the house, but even that had to be done carefully. James wasn't the only person who lost someone that day, not by a long shot, and Harry had the misfortune of a celebratory day which would be forever marred by loss.
They made up for it at Christmases, at Halloween, at every holiday they could turn into a celebration.
Their day of remembrance was September first. In memory of the two of their four who could no longer come around to visit, they took Harry to the pillar monument at the center of Remembrance Plaza, showed him the name of two more honorary uncles he could hardly remember. Showed him the name of his mother.
They didn't tell him why they were the only ones, because he was too young for them to explain the full circumstances around his birthday without it tainting his own enjoyment of it. And they wanted, so desperately, for Harry to be happy.
James gradually repainted the entire house, inside and out. He rearranged the rooms, transfigured the furniture, and did everything he could to hide the memory of that one day.
He continued on with the Aurors, while Sirius worked evenings part-time at Cauldron Corner, a specialty shop whose owners had vanished. Their daughter carried on the business, expanding into a few other niche markets as the economic upheaval settled, and that's where Sirius came in.
Neither Sirius or James earned a lot, but together they earned enough.
James taught Harry to fly. Sirius taught Harry to wink with either eye without squinting the other. James learned to cook. Sirius mastered housekeeping spells.
That's not to say they never disagreed.
The first months were fraught. They were too young, too unprepared for it to be a smooth transition. Under a muffliato to avoid waking Harry, they stood in the front room and argued until they were both shouting.
"You're not his mum!"
"Then stop acting as though I am! I know I'm not Lily, you're the one who keeps expecting too much from me!"
"I thought you wanted to be part of this family, but if you want to go back to the Blacks, be my guest!"
They were both grieving, and they both knew it, but hurtful things are still hurtful whatever the other is feeling. They were both sorry, afterward; and ashamed. But they were so tired and there was always twice as much to get done as anyone had time for, and that was just in their little household.
It wasn't the first argument that got out of hand, nor would it be the last.
But time settles things, and after a few months of wearing at each others' last nerves, they reached an equilibrium. With enough rest, with the world no longer quite as chaotic, with time and distance from the sharp immediacy of loss, they found themselves again.
And time passed.
Until everything changed again.
Those five years of sorrow and loss, and rebuilding and peace, came to an abrupt and final end.
Author's Note:
Thank you so much everyone! I can't tell you how much your support means to me.
I know, I said Snapped was over. And it is. But after watching Endgame [potential, minor spoilers in the next chapter, btw, if you care] I wanted to continue this particular version of it. It'll be a decidedly different tone to the other Snapped stories, taking place post-timeskip for the most part. So, Fractions.