This story has been written for Freestyle 2000 of the Hogwarts Games. I was inspired by one of their earlier prompts, 'a story with no romance' and so this happened: a story from Hogwarts perspective.

The building had long stood empty, in the lifetimes of humans.

In the life of the building itself, it was not an ancient time. Long in the sense that a decade was long to a child, but short, when looked back on from age forty, fifty. The crumbling castle had long stood empty, but for its dead. But in hindsight, those centuries did not seem terribly longer than the centuries before it-merely sadder, lacking the life of the children that had roamed its halls, grown up on its grounds.

Peeves was gone now, without the constantly shifting and contradicting emotions of those children to give him life. The castle missed Peeves. Not in a living sense, it was never truly alive, it was a bit of a spirit, a collective mind of all the magic that had soaked into it. It had been made self-maintaining, and it had changed from there.

To walk the ground would be to feel the sense of missing it had spent half a century contemplating-there was no other word to describe, though contemplate was not quite right. The energy of Ravenclaw studied it, the energy of Slytherin wished a use for it, the energy of Gryffindor the same but for more heroic purposes and the energy of Hufflepuff merely felt it, and accepted that it missed, and could easily turn it into strength.

And the rest of the energy merely was, and the building once called Hogwarts continued to weather time.

The children had been sent away, that long human time ago. Portraits upon its walls had whispered that the Ministry had finally collapsed, and all were to merge into Muggle society, forget their heritage.

Or that was not right. The Ministry had been destroyed, someone sabotaging it. The paintings had argued their rumors for years, having nowhere left to check. Eventually they had become still, their magic and minds and memories leaching into Hogwarts, no hope that the children would return.

Hogwarts missed their chatter, too, though it no longer contemplated that.

The ghosts had gone dormant, for they could not move on, only cooler wisps of breeze in the halls where they had finally faded from sight. The Bloody Baron had been last, faithfully protecting the building from Peeves, but it wouldn't have minded anymore, if all the chandeliers fell or the library became painted in ink, for Peeves was life. But after a thousand years standing, and the emotions of living inside it, and the memories of the portraits that had been truly alive, it had understood. The Baron felt a duty.

It now cared for the lake, exclusively, nowhere to donate all the energy and magic, no longer deflecting and soothing a child's rampart magic before it hurt someone. It had worried, for seventy-seven years, one spring, and twelve days of summer, about what the children would do in those growing up years without it keep it from harming others, about how the children would cope without others like itself to explain why it did such harm. Without elders to teach it how to use a focus, direct the magic.

And now, it missed, and it cared for the lake.

It once been called the Black Lake by some, its waters like a night sky, and inside, murky green for depths the sunlight wormed till all became darkness.

Now, it was clean. Shades of blue and tints of green and clear, reflections of the sky tinted by it, and even the little island was so much more healthy than it used to be.

Hogwarts delighted upon this, touching upon the life of the merfolk, the Squid, the little fish and tiny creatures that could be felt, not seen. Its magic cared for all, the creatures all around came to drink.

Once, the phoenix that a Headmaster had named. It came and drank and rested in the crumbling halls until its rebirth, foraging in the forest until it became winged again, and Hogwarts delighted again, magic trailing every step and hop.

And like the ever-cycling children, it left, and Hogwarts was pleased. It was still useful. The energy of house-elves. To be useful, a help, devoted.

That had been fifty-two years and twenty-six days from being fifty-three. It was why Hogwarts missed Peeves, part of it decided, since such familiar magical life had come and gone. For when children had left, more children had come, but when the phoenix left, none had succeeded it.

But the building had long learned hope, and held onto it, for a memory.

The girl had been Hermione Granger, some portraits had said she could have become Weasley, but to the building there were no married names. Alas, some things would always remain a mystery to it. She had been there, among others, and Hogwarts had known each once-child that had been there at its closing, and none of them had faded. Hogwarts had no living body to decay and fray memories and while time might make all a blur from a distance, it remembered each moment with perfect clarity, and never forgot a name of one of the children.

The memory of Hermione had stood at the gates and promised her that one day they would come back, she would ensure it, and other voices had chimed in, their echoes stretching across the gate, promises that Hogwarts would fill with children again, and then the gates had shut with a bang as always.

Hagrid had never left the grounds, dear giant-child. He had stayed in his little hut, caring for his creatures till the summer day he died, sitting in his chair, and three weeks and two days later, the centaurs burned the building, unable to remove the body. The spiral of smoke had drifted up to the afternoon sun, and Hogwarts had followed it until it cleared the tallest tower and it was no longer within its reach, and it had experienced the many fragmented forms of grief, contemplating and thinking and piecing them together as it worked through the stages, as it always did when one died upon its grounds, a decade to think patchwork thoughts about death and wonder about it.

Parts of it raged and parts of it hurt and parts of it as always felt left behind, but it did not want answers, nor demand Hagrid back as a person might. Hogwarts knew, its its piecemeal conscious, that it would always be left behind, and it could have no comfort of going where they were. Buildings did not die.

But Hogwarts began to fall apart. Its keys, where Hagrid had once dropped them, began to rust. The carefully kept boundary between the Forest and the grounds was crept over, seed by seed. A blink of decades, and suddenly a grove of weeping willows shaded part of the lake. The courtyards were broken paving stones and overgrown gnarled trees, thick old roots to trip over. Glass had long shattered, buckled, laying over the grounds or in the halls, dangerous edges. It knew each storm that had shattered them, destroyed the colorful designs of what some children had called its eyes.

The greenhouses were empty rusting frames with magical plants spilling out them like children on a sunny afternoon freed from classes, climbing ever farther, ever higher, new species had been bred themselves here with no more Professors of Herbology with dirt under their nails to restrain them, tame them.

Part of the dungeons was flooded, it could feel it, feel the water inside itself, sloshing against its walls. In the Slytherin Common Room, a magical window had finally given way, three centuries, five decades, one year, six months ago, exactly. The magic had weakened in the windows one deep year of contemplation, and one accident had broken it.

And oh, the glorious Great Hall, Hogwarts had taken the magic from the ceiling, it was now plain stone, more of that dangerous glass, the benches had rotted in exposure to the elements. The tables were there, but aged so heavily, they might never bear another feast again. There were leaves and branches and so much dirt that shrubs had begun their growth there. The doors, however, still stood strong, the tumblers in the lock still holding it shut and impenetrable. As it was for all of them. The gates stood as a guard, and no key could turn in its lock anymore, so rusted and packed with years of disrepair. It was solid piece of metal and spells, unable to even twitch.

But still, Hogwarts held hope, in owls that still roosted in the Owlrey, birds that had been changed for centuries by humans, and still lived in daylight, and somewhere in them, Hogwarts could feel a drive to do something none of them would know about anymore. No letters yesterday. No letters today. No letters tomorrow. No letters. They waited, for the letters.

Some of them were born with no drive towards the letters, to live in daylight that might hurt their eyes, and so Hogwarts helped them, led the best prey to them, and one night with a gentle push, would always send them on their way, with a need to find a place of their own, where they weren't surrounded by owls different than them. The owlets, in a way, cycled like the children. There weren't many of them. But they happened, and grew up, and Hogwarts was glad.

One of the paintings, the last to know the halls before they closed, knew a song. "If I were, a baby owlet, I would never fly away..."

But Hogwarts knew better, and liked it better this way. It wished the children, the owlets, to make their own their way in the world, not to depend upon its nest.

Another decade passed, and Hogwarts turned its shattered contemplation to a new thought-hope. It studied it and wished used and accepted hope, and somehow it felt appropriate, and the building studied that too. It found no answer, at first, but a building as Hogwarts was knew, eventually, of Fate.

And when the Headmaster Phoenix returned, (Fawkes, Elder Dumbledore had called it) it understood. It was healthy, now, but the very feeling of it carried news, though it spoke in no language or magic Hogwarts knew, and days blurred in an instant and yet not, the phoenix flying to the grounds and away like it was leading, always gone by day but roosting by night, the moonlight making its feathers glow like flame burning upon the ground.

It felt the hand upon the door, the touch on the lock and it could hear the voice of the boy, "Did that diary have a key?"

It could not hear the response, for it was outside the grounds, and so it investigated the boy.

"Oh-Holy shit wh-" and the hand was gone, but Hogwarts was pleased. The boy was rich with magic, a taste of it like Malfoy, an ancient aftertaste like Parkinson and Greengrass, most it like muggles whose magic it had never known. Like a day, late in November, cold, but the sun was there, and still trying.

A new hand on the door. "It's just a door, Evanson-Oh... It feels strange... But nice..." This one was Granger, and Weasley, and Nott, and again, so many muggles, an old fading of Hermione's curls in her hair.

Evanson touched the door again, warily. A third hand joined. Then another. One mostly Nott, and muggles, and a little, fading strands of Veela. The other was new, and Hogwarts wasted no time in tying down the boy's magic, soothing it, it was so rough and tossed around, like any muggleborn's would be, something different, something new.

"We could climb it."

Hogwarts worried for their safety, alarm.

"I don't think we should..."

Hogwarts, slowly, moved magic in the tumblers of the lock, melted the solid magic, taking the fear of the alarmed Evanson and using it to give life and soothe him all at once. It spread to the hinges, magic like oil, and then before the childrens' hands, the gates to Hogwarts opened.

Welcome home, children. We have missed you.

I'm still not entirely sure why the Ministry collapsed, I might come back to this story again one day and explore it... But this piece feels nice as a stand-alone.