Notes: In this story, Voldemort was defeated in Harry's sixth year, meaning Harry was able to return for his 7th. Also, I know that wizards can cure themselves of muggle disease like cancer, which is why I'm giving it a more magical element.

Warnings: Alternate universe setting, major character death (yes, Harry will die in this story, so anyone that does not like that can freely turn around now), unpleasant imagery regarding illnesses and some coarse language. There are no pairings in this story (except for established Ron/Hermione). It will purely revolve around the trio's friendship. It's also not particularly plot-heavy.

Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters and settings belong to J.K Rowling. I make no profit from the writing of this story.

xxxxx

Chapter One

Harry sat in the compartment of the Hogwart's Express, his head leaning against the cool pane of the window as he stared out at the passing scenery. His thoughts were a bit far away, and there was an incessant throbbing in his head from a headache he'd had for days now. He figured it had something to do with getting so little sleep over the summer, and possibly a little to do with stress in general. Even though Voldemort's demise meant that he no longer had to stay with his aunt and uncle, he found the summer to still have been a miserable one.

After the war, he had rented a flat of his own with some of the money his parents had left him. It was a small place, barely enough room for one person, and Harry supposed it had something to do it the fact he was already quite used to living in small spaces. Anything larger would have felt odd to him, and he was sure he wouldn't have known what to do with it. Despite knowing that he should have been happy to finally be living on his own, Harry actually found himself quite lonely and sad the entire summer.

Every night, he was haunted by either old nightmares of Cedric's and Sirius's deaths, or new ones of Voldemort and the battle at Hogwarts. He could still see those ruthless, red eyes in his mind, still feel the the panic he'd experienced that night, with such vividness he sometimes forgot he wasn't actually there. Some nights, he would wake up drenched in sweat, his mind frantic and irrational, convincing himself that Voldemort was in the room with him. It was nights like those that he wasn't able to return to sleep.

Even when Ron and Hermione stayed over, it wasn't enough to banish the heavy cloak of despair that had settled over his flat. The nightmares still came and the loneliness persisted. Hermione assured him that it was common to experience such feelings after such war and a near-death experience. She also assured him that it would eventually fade with time. Harry just wondered exactly how long that was going to take, because those feelings were becoming unbearable to handle.

The gentle slide of the compartment door opening brought Harry from his thoughts and he looked up to see Ron and Hermione walking in. They had spent the first part of the ride in the prefects compartment, attending to their new-found duties as Head Boy and Girl. They assured him that they would return for the remainder of the journey as soon as they were done. True to their promise, they settled in the seat across from Harry, who sat up straight to greet them.

"Blimey, cheer up, Harry," Ron said in a good-natured tone, though Harry did not miss the undertone of concern in it. "I didn't think you could out-brood yourself from last year, but you're definitely giving it a good go."

Harry gave a small smile.

"Oh, Ron, leave Harry alone," Hermione swatted the red-headed boy on the shoulder and turned her sympathetic brown eyes onto Harry. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good," Harry lied. His head was still killing him and his thoughts were still annoyingly heavy. Sometimes he wished he could just shut his brain off, because it was generally just troublesome. There was no such luck for the Boy-Who-Lived, though, because his brain was still as functional as ever and frequently reminding him of how miserable he was. He nearly laughed at himself.

'Ron's right. I am broody as hell.'

"You should have come over more during the summer," Ron said, stretching his arms above his head as he tried to get his lanky body into a more comfortable position. "Mum would have adored having you there seeing as things have been kind of, I dunno, empty ever since...well."

Ron's words fell into silence and Harry could tell that the red-head was struggling to keep himself together. He never missed the way Ron looked like he wanted to cry when the subject of Fred came up. He truly felt sympathetic towards his friend, and though he could not understand exactly what he was going through, he knew he could empathize with him more than most. After all, he had lost many people too.

"Anyway, you seemed so down all by yourself in that flat," Ron finished, seeming to have gotten himself together enough to continue.

"I guess I just needed some time to, you know, adjust," Harry said, shrugging his shoulders. Truth be told, he would have loved to have spent the entire summer at the Weasley household. He was finally free to come and go as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted, which was something he thought he would never be able to do. There were some days in the Dursley household where Harry had felt sure he was going to be trapped there forever.

Yet, something kept him from truly enjoying his freedom. A large part of him wanted to shut off from the world so he could just sit back and breathe. He needed to figure himself out. What was his life now that it wasn't constantly revolving around Voldemort and trying to defeat him? Oddly, the absence of those things left a huge, gaping hole in Harry's life that he wasn't sure how to fill. It was almost as if he'd lost his purpose and now he just existed.

The rational part of his brain told him that he was being ridiculous, and that his life was, of course, worth more than that. However, the emotional, irrational part of his brain always begged the question: but was it really? For the last few months, he had felt extremely displaced, like he was awkwardly bumbling about in life, trying to find his designated spot in it and not quite getting there.

"That's understandable," Hermione nodded. "It's been kind of a strange time for everyone, you know? I mean, getting used to You-Know-Who finally gone and trying to live normal lives. It's juststrange."

"You can say that again," Ron chimed in, his expression taking on the seriousness that Harry was becoming increasingly used to seeing on his once good-humored friend. "I still forget he's gone sometimes."

"Same," Hermione said. Harry just nodded along. He knew exactly how Ron felt, as he spent many nights thinking Voldemort was going to jump out of his closet and kill him. It was kind of relieving to know that he wasn't the only one going through it. He figured the entire world needed time to heal and get used to the new state of things.

"All the more reason to make our last year the best one yet," Ron said, perking up again and grinning at his two friends. That grin was infectious and it spread quite quickly, both Harry and Hermione smiling as well.

"I'm kind of hoping for a dull year, to be honest," Hermione said thoughtfully. "I don't think we've had one normal year since we started Hogwarts."

"Knowing Harry, he'll figure a way to botch this one up too," Ron joked. "He's always getting into trouble."

"You talk as if you weren't getting into trouble right alongside me the past six years ," Harry replied, though he was grinning. For the first time since he'd boarded the train, Harry was starting to feel a bit of ease settle over his heavy heart. His friends were one of the few things that could bring him out of the fog of his depression. At least just enough so that he wasn't drowning in it.

"I should have known being friends with Harry Potter, of all people, was going to be a bloody disaster," Ron teased. While most people took to walking on eggshells around Harry, he could always count on Ron to treat him just the same as always. It made it easier for Harry to forget there was a reason everyone treated him so delicately nowadays. It was like they believed he would break if they even so much as thought of Voldemort near him.

"Love you too, Ron," Harry replied. Hermione was sitting to the side and he could practically hear her rolling her eyes at them. Sometimes he wondered what it was like for her to be stuck between two idiotic teenage boys all the time. Chuckling at the thought, Harry leaned his head back onto the window, closing his eyes so he could try to use the cool glass to soothe his headache again. Hermione and Ron struck up a conversation, though their voices were starting to fade out until they sounded very far away.

Avada Kedavra!

Harry jerked awake, taking in a sharp breath as he sat up straight, eyes wide as he looked around the compartment wildly. It took several moments before the dream faded away and Hermione and Ron came back into view. They were both looking at him now, Hermione appearing concerned and Ron frowning. With embarrassment, Harry realized he must have fallen asleep sitting there. He hadn't realized just how fatigued he was until he had closed his eyes.

"Bad dream, mate?" Ron asked a bit tentatively. Harry wished he would just crack some smart-ass joke instead, so he didn't have to feel guilty for worrying his friends, but Ron's face remained serious.

"It wasn't too bad," Harry said, not entirely lying. He'd had worse ones than that. At least this one had been short.

"Seemed like it, though," Ron said, eyeing Harry. "You're drenched in sweat."

Harry frowned, running his arm over his forehead and feeling the slick slide of sweat across his skin. That was a bit odd, seeing as he didn't normally sweat quite that much, even after a particularly terrible dream. Perhaps his dream had been worse than he'd thought. Wiping his face some more, Harry glanced out the window and noticed it was dark out now. How long had he been asleep?

"How much longer until we're there?" he asked, having lost complete track of the time. He still felt a bit disoriented from his nap.

"Not much longer," Hermione answered. "I think about 45 minutes."

Harry was glad. He felt tired and he was looking forward to crawling into his big, comfortable bed and sleeping the whole night through. He wished he could get his hands on a dreamless sleep potion too. He'd kill for one night without the nightmares.

The conversation once again lapsed into comfortable small talk, and it wasn't long before the train started to slow down. Harry, being the only one not in his uniform yet, stood up and began changing, not really caring that Ron and Hermione were there. After all they'd been through together, he highly doubted Harry getting partially nude in front of them would make it to the top of their 'most uncomfortable things experienced by the Gold Trio' list.

Feeling tired from the simple act of standing and changing, Harry sat back down and didn't get back up until the train pulled into Hogsmeade station.

xxxxx

Over the summer, tireless efforts had been made to restore Hogwarts back to its former glory, the school having suffered considerable damage during the battle. As they walked into the Great Hall, Harry thought that it looked exactly the same as it had before the battle. Still, everywhere Harry looked, all he could see was broken pillars, fallen rubble and an innumerable amount of bodies strewn around. He had to close his eyes and take a deep breath to push those thoughts to the back of his head and force himself to walk over to the Gryffindor table.

Plopping down in a seat, Ron and Hermione sat on either side of him and they all waited through the usual sorting and start of term speech by the new Headmistress, Professor McGonagall. That twisting feeling in his stomach returned as Harry thought about Dumbledore, envisioning the wizened old man standing at the head of the school, his long beard standing out in stark contrast against his colorful robes, those blue eyes twinkling kindly and knowingly.

He almost felt the hot prick of tears at the brim of his eyes, but Harry pushed them down and the image of Dumbledore faded, leaving McGonagall standing there in its place. There would be many things Harry needed to adjust to this year, and many faces he would have to get used to not seeing anymore.

'Dumbledore, Snape, Fred, Colin...'

"Harry, aren't you going to eat anything?" Hermione's voice cut through his thoughts as she nudged her elbow into his side. Harry snapped back to the present reality and he looked down at the table, noticing it was now filled with an assortment of food and drink. He blinked a couple of times and nodded.

"Er, right, yeah," he said, reaching over and placing a bread roll and a helping of shepherd's pie onto his plate. However, as he sat there staring down at it, his stomach start to churn at the mere thought of eating it and an intense nausea spread from his stomach straight to his head. He had to grip at the edge of the table to keep himself steady.

Glancing around, he was relieved to see that neither Ron or Hermione had witnessed that. He didn't need anymore fretting over his state of being. Picking up his fork, he experimentally brought a small bite of the pie to his lips and placed it into his mouth. Almost instantly, his body rejected the idea of it and he had to inconspicuously spit it back out into his hand.

'So much for eating tonight,' Harry thought a bit dejectedly. The start-of-term feast was always one of the things he'd looked forward to the most over the summer; he imagined that it probably had something to do with the fact he always arrived half-starved after three months with the Dursleys. Now that he was eating regularly (well, as regularly as he could force himself to) he supposed it was no longer as special as it had once been.

He supposed that was even more so true now that so much was different at Hogwarts. There was an atmosphere of trauma and brokenness throughout the student body, especially from those who had experienced the battle first hand. This helped Harry remind himself that he wasn't the only one going through it, wasn't the only one still suffering even months later. Hell, Ron, who had lost a brother in the war, seemed to be handling it better than Harry was.

By the time the feast ended, Harry had barely touched his food, something that had not gone unnoticed by Hermione. She had her lips pursed over her teeth and a very displeased look on her face. However, to Harry's great relief, she did not say anything about it. Instead, everyone exited the Great Hall to head to their respective houses. Ron and Hermione had gone ahead to take care of some Head Boy and Head Girl duties, while Harry kind of lagged behind the group. He did not understand why his legs felt so heavy and tired; he figured he really needed a good night's rest.

He barely mumbled a hello to his fellow Gryffindors before heading straight up to his dorm and collapsing on his bed. His face sunk into his pillow, and even as he lay there with his eyes close, he was met with the sensation of the bed spinning underneath him. Taking a few deep breaths to slow the spinning sensation, he eventually worked himself into a fitful sleep.

The entire night, his dreams were plagued by the sound of an evil, taunting laughter.