A/N: 101-word drabble for the Quotes Remix challenge. My drabble was inspired by a quote by the wonderful TuesdayNovember. Go read her fics, right now! (Well, after you read this drabble, of course.)

The First Morning

"Night fell.

For the first time [he] seemed to understand the saying; dark did not creep gently over the heavens, it consumed the sky, plunging harshly from one end to the other." - TuesdayNovember, from chapter 10 of A Cruel Mistress.

"Morning has broken, like the first morning." – Christian hymn

Morning broke.

The sun, orange as an egg yolk, forced into existence the blood and rubble and bits of broken bodies. Fragments of bone, matted locks of hair, anonymous pieces of flesh, hidden under broken walls, or left in the open to congeal and stain the ragged stones.

Hogwarts stank. Death was rancid, like a mouse found two weeks after the trap broke its neck.

Morning broke, like a glass shattering in your hand or the floor falling out from under you, and you realized that it was real. It was over. You had won.

Somehow, this didn't feel like victory.

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