Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, JKR does.

We All Fall Down

There were so many graves, it looked like the sea; each one rising, row after row, like waves coming to meet the shore. He had fought hard to ensure that everybody who lost their lives had a place in this field, whether they were on his side or not.

"They're Death Eaters," everybody had cried, looking at him as if he were mad.

"And now they are dead, and what they did in life is insignificant. Everybody should be honoured after death," he had tried to explain. He didn't think they quite understood, but he didn't care; it only mattered that he had gotten what he'd wanted, in the end, and everybody was buried here.

Of course, that didn't mean he had wanted HIM buried there; but, if not there, where would it go? Who would honour Tim Riddle, Jr.'s body after his death? Nobody, he was sure, and so he had secured a spot not too far off from the others, on the opposite side of the island from Dumbledore's, content that there was now a place for everyone. Evil or not, he had been a person, and – as that childish yet wise Dr. Seuss had sat – a person is a person, no matter how small… or, in this case, no matter what they've done.

There was a line of course, and it was on that line that he stood now. People had argued until he had given them a little leeway, and the Death Eaters were not buried amongst his friends, but instead on the other side of an invisible yet clearly-there line in the graveyard. He knew it was only their imagination, but he had heard some people say that they thought the grass looked much greener on the side where only the good lay, and that over the line it appeared dead and unkempt. The silly things that people would come up with to ensure that they knew the difference between right and wrong.

But now, standing between these two contrasting – yet, in the end, quite similar – things that are labelled right and wrong, good and evil, he wasn't quite sure that he didn't need a reminder like that. From his vantage point, he could see the graves of Bellatrix Black-Lestrange, and for a moment he could recall the shocked – almost horrified – look on her face as her cousin, Sirius, fell beyond the veil, a place nobody could reach him. As he turned to the left, he saw the headstone of Fred Weasley, who died protecting his family, and recalled that this same look was on George's face as he saw his brother fall.

No matter what side, didn't they all feel grief? Didn't Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy go against everything they had believed in for thirty years to get to their son? Perhaps it was too, late, yes; and this sudden act of love could not change everything they had done while following the Dark Lord, but that didn't mean anything. They had been fighting for what they believed in, and while morally wrong, to them it was right and pure and that is all that should matter, in the end. Draco Malfoy and his parents were safe because they refused to let go of family when the point came to it, and all that is good and right with this world is family.

And without family, if he had been forced to tell Narcissa that her only child was dead, he himself wouldn't be alive and the war would have been lost. Sure, his friends would have fought valiantly, but he knew – dreadful it was to say – in his heart of hearts that they would have lost.

He glanced once more to the dark stone of the Dark Lord, remembering what he had chosen to have written on it: Death Comes to All Those Who Fear It. While some hadn't understood, his friends had; and, as always, they had remained by his side.

He turned away from Lord Voldemort's final resting place, away from the graves of the Death Eater's, and into the side of the good. Fred Weasley, he saw again, as well as many more… Colin Creevey, Lavender Brown, Severus Snape… he bypassed them all, knowing in this moment who he wanted to see most.

And at the very end, where he knew they would be, for it was the place he had asked to put them, were the two people who were lost in the Battle that he missed most. The stone was made of white marble, just like his parents' in the graveyard of Godric's Hollow, and he knew that they would have liked that. The names were simple, in hindsight, but to him they stood for something he would never get back. Remus Lupin and Nympadora Tonks would never be able to return to the living.

As he always did when recalling all those he had personally lost (though every death had felt personal to him), he wished that he wasn't human as the pain washed over him. It was always fresh and always all-consuming, and he couldn't stop himself from hanging his head and curling his shoulders in on himself, feeling the weight and pressure that had never left as it should have with Voldemort's death descend on him.

He stood there for a few moments, thinking of the last of Marauders, his wife, and the little boy they had left behind in the sea of graves. Then he turned once again, though this time away from all of the graves completely, and moved towards the hill where he could see his friends standing as he knew they would be.

They didn't say anything to him as he approached and walked straight passed them, knowing that nothing would make him feel better in this moment. As he brushed passed his second oldest friend, though, he recalled something.

He stopped walking, his back to them, and forced words passed his raw and rough throat. "You were right, Hermione."

He could almost feel them glancing at each other in confusion, her and Ron. They were together now, and he was happy for them, though it still made him feel oddly lonely. After a few seconds of thought, she spoke. "About what?"

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in and thinking about all that had happened over the past years, ever since he had turned that retched age of seventeen. Finally, he answered her. "We should have stayed there and grew old."