Building anew

A/N: On one of our movie nights a couple friends and I somehow found ourselves discussing fan fiction, and one of them came up with a dare that ran more or less like this: "Try and write a story with the Harry Potter gang, the Naruto gang AND the Final Fantasy VIII gang all together and make it believable!". Well, I'm rising to the challenge. It will be slow going, I think, but I'm confident I'll get them all… You'll be the judges of whether the story makes sense as well…

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize – especially the characters – belong to J. her various publishers and Time Warner, I may be playing with them but I make no profit from this.

Warnings: I think I'll go with chapter-by-chapter warnings, as I've got the general outline of the story but am still unsure on most details. The only general warning valid overall is: this is a multi-crossover. So… for Chapter One: sadness and a bit of angst but that's it.

One. Like Phoenixes on Burning Day

Chateau de Malfoi, somewhere in France. Beginning of May 1999

Harry felt the last of the wards snap in place, sealing him and his closest friends off from the rest of the world, keeping them safe at last, and let himself collapse on the elegant sofa in the middle of the beautiful and yet cold – so cold – sitting room.

Eyes closed, he could feel the others around him, scattered on armchairs or the other sofa or the rug, each as weary, as sad, as lost as he himself felt.

Ron. Dejected and bitter and furious, his first and best friend, betrayed by those he loved the most, the family that used to be his world.

Hermione. Scared and lost and miserable, his beloved sister, trapped in loneliness even here, with them.

Neville. Strong still, yet disheartened, dispirited, the friend he should never have underestimated, who hadn't spoken a word in over six months and really, Harry couldn't blame him.

Luna. As lovely and absent-minded as ever, but there was a clenched quality to her expression these days, belying her apparent act, sadness and resignation and loss in her dreamy eyes.

Draco. Him, Harry still wasn't sure how he had ended up with them, and yet he was one of them now, his dimmed eyes and resigned frown too similar to any of theirs to deny how alike they all were now.

And Ginny… beautiful, tough little Ginny, refusing to admit the pain her eyes told of, so close and yet so distant from him, from any of them…

They were all tired, they were all burdened and sad and weary, and he was the most drained of them all.

They had nothing left… except perhaps each other...

A small pop alerted them of Kreacher's arrival and Harry opened his eyes wearily in time to see his elf distributing mugs of hot tea and disappearing without a word. Like they all had, Kreacher had changed a great deal since the Final Battle. Unlike them, he had changed for the better, and now stood proud in a sort-of-uniform made of expensive white tablecloth, kept pristine at all times, Regulus' locket shiny and smugly displayed on his chest. His manners had changed too, nowadays he was as proper and well-mannered as a butler of the Victorian age.

None of them made a sound as they cradled their mugs, their eyes unfocused. In a way, they were saying good-bye to their past, to their world, to what they had believed in and fought for. They had come to this safe place with hope, but it was despair that had driven them.

Like Phoenixes on a burning day, they were losing everything and themselves.

Then, they would try and start anew, reborn from the ashes of what had possibly been the worst year of their life. And how horrible was it, that it had happened after the war was over?

When they should have been safe…

when they should have been happy…

Harry scrunched his eyes tightly shut, his breathing ragged as he struggled not to cry, not to give in to the recent memories.

But they came nonetheless…

A/N 2: This story will be very slow-going. Please do not expect frequent updates, I cannot guarantee them, and please do not expect a lot of action or the story to move along quickly when the updates do come. I hope you can come to like it anyway.

Luna

P.S. The title is pending, it's there mainly because FF requires it, but I'm not satisfied by it. If you can come up with something better let me know, I'll be glad to change it!