This is for Ariel-wofl - aka Starrie Wolf. It's your birthday, darl, and I wish you a very happy day, week, month and year. You're a special person, you know. Wonderfully unique and uniquely wonderful. And, though I don't think I'll ever learn you, quite - well, it's been fun knowing you, wofl, it really has. This fic isn't nearly as good as you deserve, but I do hope you like it.

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There has never been a sound as bleak as the silence following a battle. After the foe has been vanquished, and the ragged cheers have died down; before the weeping, and the mourning, and the heartbreaking entreaties to a deaf god: - it is now that the survivors wander, numb and lost, through the ruins of past actions and future possibilities. The moment seems to stretch on forever; the world seems to have stopped turning. For some, it has.

Harry sat on the rubble of what had once been a house, and watched a hazy figure pick its way across the ruins towards him. Their face was hidden in the shadow of a cloak's hood , but even so Harry could easily recognise the woman he considered his closest friend – or the closest thing to a friend he had, at least. He bowed his head and closed his eyes as she walked closer; focused on the whisper of his breathing and the crunch of gravel beneath her boots. Somehow he knew that, if he looked at her, he would cry.

He heard her footsteps come to a halt a metre away from him. The world was suddenly utterly silent, and utterly still. Harry knew she would not speak; but he could not bring himself to open his mouth, to force himself back into a cruel reality. So, as always during the silences, his mind returned to the past.

How many years ago had it been since they had sat, talking and laughing in the peaceful idyll of Hogwarts? How long since they had been innocent? Too long – far too long. The war had torn so much away from them - and given them so much, too: an iron hardness, a steely determination, a cold, uncaring side that should never have been allowed to see the light of day. No longer students, but soldiers... with all the pain that entailed.

And now, as they waited, him and Hermione, it seemed as though their time at Hogwarts was a memory belonging to strangers - children ignorant of all but their own paradise of youth. Yet wasn't that a good thing? Wouldn't he give anything just to be restored to that state of unknowing bliss? Harry opened his eyes, but kept his head inclined towards the ground as he spoke:

"It's never been real before this, has it? Somehow we believed that, once we'd defeated Voldemort, everything would go back to how it was before. Everything would suddenly be all right. That's why I fought, you know. I didn't fight for the future. I fought for the past."

Silence again, but for the muted sounds of breathing. A minute passed, then another; Harry's thoughts swirling confusedly once more.

"We can't undo time this time, Hermione. You can't resurrect someone you've killed. You can't undig your way out of the hole you've dug-" He broke off. "I'm babbling, aren't I? I don't even know what I'm trying to say... It's just that everything, everything has changed. For so long, Voldemort has been our only purpose; this fight has been our lives. We've given up our youth; we've given up our dreams, our hopes, our innocence..." He looked up at her – begging, pleading for her to understand. "There's no place her for us, Hermione. There's no place for people who can't start building something new. There's no hope for us if we can't make our own hope. We have to leave."

She was good at silence. That was a skill she had been forced to cultivate, during the long months while she recovered from her wound and the shock of losing Ron. Days and weeks and months had slipped away after the death eater attack, healers coming and going constantly during Harry's vigil by her bedside as he struggled to accept that one friend was dead – and another, almost so. For a while he hoped against hope for a complete recovery, a cure, a miracle. But all reports were always the same: apologies, excuses, justifications – and finally, the dreaded words: "We're sorry, but she will never talk again."

Harry looked up at his friend steadfastly, ignoring the long scar running down from her ear across her cheek and twisting her lips into a permanent sneer; ignoring the anger and bitterness that stained eyes once filled with such vivacious joy. Right now they were in another place and time: in this moment, they were young again, students basking in the sun of what had truly been another existence. Suddenly, there was a whole world of possibilities before them.

He rose and held out his hand. Silently, she took it. Together, they limped away along the long road to another life.