Manacled

Once upon a time… there had been a girl who fought. Who believed that books and cleverness and friendship and bravery could overcome all things.
But now—
—that girl was gone.
She’d been all but killed during the war.

Harry died. They—they hung him up off the Astronomy Tower, and we watched him rot. They—they hung Ron and his family next to him. And Tonks and Lupin. They tortured them until they died

So, she had thought that being clever, being good—that friendship, and bravery, and the power of Love were enough to win the war.

But they weren’t.

Being clever wasn’t enough. The goodness in her was being ground to dust under the weight of all those lives lost or ruined with nothing to show for it yet. Friendship didn’t stop someone from dying screaming in agony. Bravery didn’t win a battle when your enemy had a multitude of methods for removing you permanently from the war, and you were trying to beat them with petrification hex. Love hadn’t yet defeated Voldemort’s hate.