After reading Rainbow's wonderful story, "The Life I Should Be Living" (http://ashwinder.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=11042) and it teased my muse. Actually, thank Rainbow; as it was this story that brought her back. And as Rainbow agreed to let me post my response, here it is.

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Minerva asked me if I would attend the services with her tomorrow. My ex-lover’s funeral. As if I had not seen enough death in my life. This was one service I would gladly remain drunk beyond all possible recognition for.

After all, if I don’t attend, I can still imagine she is waiting for me in my, in our quarters. Her hair tied back in a messy bun, her research papers splayed out across the table. Our daughter, the reason she stayed to begin with, would be doing her homework, after sneaking in for a visit. Sometimes it helps being the head of her house.

And when Kate, who looked so much like her mother, returned to the dorms just before curfew, Hermione would tuck in our other two children. After she returned to my side, we would sit together comfortably in front of the fire, perhaps share some brandy, as we discuss how absolutely idiotic the latest batch of first years have become.

The bedroom would call to us, and my hand would fall at the spot on her lower back, that curved just right to fit in my palm, and I would revel in the shiver it still manages to produce in her.

And I would thank all the Gods for the happy accident that kept us together.

Yes, I would be able to ignore the fact that I told her to go seek her fortune; that she didn’t need someone so angst-ridden, someone so churlish; that I didn’t love her—that I couldn’t love her, and that it was just as well.

I would be able to forget the look of stubbornness and hurt that filled her tear blotched face as she turned to go. I would forget the countless visits to Knockturn Alley, only to leave before even removing my clothing. She had so totally filled my mind that other women simply left me cold and uninterested.

I would be able to look both Albus and Minerva in the eye with pride, without having to hide my feelings for fear of seeing either their censure or their pity.

I enter my rooms, hanging my cloak, and checking my owl box, only to see a rather thick packet of letters. Hands actually trembling (it’s lack of sleep, I promise you.) I lift them to see her elegant scrawl. Carefully, wretchedly, I carry them with me as I sit before the fire.

If she had only come to me sooner, perhaps I could have helped, at least felt as though she were a part of me once more. For someone so logical, it makes no sense that I now live my life in a world of my own design. One filled with her laughter and her light.

Carefully, I open the letters, and my eye skims over the first lines…

I’m dying of Cancer, have been for months. The doctors have all said I’ve got no hope. A year to live, tops. No one, magical or Muggle, can cure me. I want to tell him, but we haven’t talked properly in over a decade…