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It's her third war. It's the third time she's stood in the carnage of battle, robes stiff with the blood of fallen comrades, and wondered- is it all worth it?
It's her third time standing in a field of bodies, but this time it is the children who have done most of the dying this time, heaps of broken bones and dreams and hope.
Her first war was against Grindewald, and she had been young then, so very young, and she had still thought that battle was glorious, that wars were grand, and that the sacrifices she made were important. But when the end of that war came and all she had was a long scar that went from her right shoulder to left hip, she was just tired.
Minerva's second war was against Voldemort, and she hadn't been as young then, she had been older, more tired, bitterer, and she had watched as people who carried the same thoughts as she once did died in the battlefield. She had never been able to cry for them. It was her second war. She was used to it.
It is her third war this time and it is Voldemort again, and she looks at the dead bodies that this time, she will cry for. Colin Creevy, tiny in death; Demelza Robins, staring at Minerva like she could have somehow prevented it; Alicia Spinnet, barely recognizable in the pools of blood; Justin Finch-Fletchley, who looked like he has simply decided to take a nap; Susan Bones, her mouth opened in a silent scream; Terry Boot, cruelly smiling up at her; Fred Weasley, the ghost of his last laugh etched on his face; Natalie McDonald, who had always looked like a young woman throughout the year, but as she lay dead on the ground, she now looked like the fifteen year old girl she actually was.
She has failed them, these children, and those are her scars from this war, not the bruises or wounds or weariness, but the children that she was supposed to protect and didn't.
***
It ends up falling to her to burn Voldemort's corpse. Neville and Ginny say they won't touch it and the D.A. takes their lead; Harry point blank refuses.
She didn't mind, not really. Because in the end, she decided, it was just another corpse. And in the end, it was far, far less frightening than the bodies of the children that lay around it. Because in the end, love fell far harder than hate.
Voldemort was just another corpse, no longer frightening, so unlike the battered remains of the children, her scars of this war.
She just hopes, that in the end, it will be her last war. She has enough scars for a lifetime.