AN: Well, here it is, my first ever H.P. fanfic, and my first fanfic ever to involve established characters. I hope you like it, I'm sure I'm gonna have fun writing it. Please let me know if there are any glaring errors, either grammatically or in terms of the Canon, as I'd like to keep my stories as true to the books as possible.

Prologue:

"Ere the Red Sun Rises."

*Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters featured in the Harry Potter series, and although some characters in this book may have my own take on them they are also not mine. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.

There was so much death. The bodies were laid out all around her. Student, teacher, Auror, Death Eater, it didn't matter to any of them anymore. The sun rose red through the shattered windows of the great hall. Luna could hear the crying and wailing of people grieving for loved ones, and the bittersweet tears of joy at the realisation that all this horror had finally come to an end, and the faint chirping of birds and animals in the forest beyond the grounds, completely unaware of what had just taken place.

A new World was dawning. The end of the Second Wizarding War. The end of Voldemort's rein of terror. And yet, so much sacrifice, so many dead for their cause. These wounds would take a long time to heal.

Luna felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Neville Longbottom standing next to her. Obviously having given his new crowd of admirers the slip.

"You alright?" He asked her, his voice more than a little shaky.

"I think so," she said, in her lilting, lyrical voice, "you?"

"I… I suppose," he didn't seem too sure of himself.

"That was pretty heroic of you, killing that snake," Luna said in her usual airy tone.

"Was it?" Neville asked, seeming equally distracted, "Hmm, I guess. I saw you duelling Lestrange, you were pretty heroic too." He managed a thin smile, "I guess we're all going to be considered heroes now," he looked around at all his fallen comrades, "Strange," he said, "somehow I don't feel all that heroic."

"I don't think any true heroes really would," Luna said, very sagely, as she looked at the bodies being lain out in the middle of the great hall. She could see the Weasleys huddled around the body of their brother Fred. Mrs. Weasley Hysterical with tears, all the Weasley men looking pale and lost and her dear friend Ginny on her knees, moaning in grief with her face in her hands.

"I don't even know what to feel," Neville admitted, "I mean, You-know-who's gone. We've one haven't we? It's all over. So why doesn't this feel like a victory?"

Luna looked at Neville, "Daddy says that, when we die, the people close to us get hounded by different memories and emotions, and they buzz around in our heads and sometimes bang into each other, messing up all our thoughts and emotions. So that we don't know how to feel about it."

"A little like wrackspurts then?" Neville asked, with another brief smile.

"A little yes, that's why it's so hard to know what to feel when someone you love dies. I remember when my mother died, daddy and I spent months not knowing what to do, or how to feel. Grief is so different for everyone, but it all stems from the same thing. Just not knowing what to do."

They heard a sniff from behind them, and turned to see Hermione Granger in floods of tears.

"Oh Luna," she sobbed before giving her friend a big, tight hug, "you do say the most beautiful things sometimes."

Luna returned her friend's hug and saw over her shoulder Ron Weasley standing behind her, a look of abject absence on his face, and next to him a very tired looking Harry Potter.

Slowly Ron turned to look at her, he didn't look like he'd been crying. The shock of losing his brother, from realising the war was over, and everything else that had happened that night, was still too great for his mind to accept it.

"So how do we get rid of these… emotion-wrackspurt-things?" he asked her, sounding a little bemused.

"Oh you can't get rid of them," Luna stated, "just like you can't forget those you've lost, the only thing you can do is let them out into the open where they have more space and can fly around where they want to, so you know what to feel."

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Neville said, taking her hand, "what do we do?"

"Follow me," Luna said, and she led them out through the blasted front doorway onto the scorched grounds and to the cliff overlooking the mighty lake.

"So what do we do now?" Hermione asked quietly.

"Well, the only way they can get out is if we shout, and the louder we are, the further they go so the more room they have. Daddy and I did it for days after my mother died."

"Did it help?" Harry asked.

"Oh, yes," Luna said placidly.

Just then Ron ran between them all and collapsed onto his knees on the cliff-edge. He screamed at the very top of his lungs, the tears finally streaming down his face. Luna could almost see all his mixed-up emotions flying out of his mouth and flying away in the wind. Hermione was next, letting out a mournful wail, then Neville and finally Luna.

They screamed at the tops of their lungs out across the still lake into the crisp morning air until they were hoarse, and as they screamed, the blood-red sun rose higher into the sky, and it's crimson stain on the sky slowly faded, to be replaced by a beautiful, cloudless summer's day. The first dawn over a New World.

*****

AN: I hope you liked my prologue. Chapter one should be up soon-ish. I wanted to start this off with a kind of "bittersweet sense of hope", like the end of Deathly Hallows, hence my setting it mere minutes after the end of the last chapter. The tone will pick up later on, I'm not planning on this being a particularly dark or angsty fic. Please feel free to review, I need constructive criticism.