Shattered

You left.

So I did too.

It was easier than I thought it would be, simpler than I expected it to be. It shouldn’t have been so easy, so simple…and yet it was.

I missed them at first, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I knew that I would miss Harry and Ron, and even Ginny, but what I hadn’t been expecting was how easy it was to let them go, to forget them as though they’d never been.

It was easy to devote myself to you, much easier than I thought it would be.

I thought for sure that we would drive each other mad, that we would push each other into leaving one another…but we didn’t.

Instead, you were patient with me.

I was, at first, shocked at how patient and non-demanding you were after years of being under your grueling teaching, but then I realized why you were. You were trying to be everything that you hadn’t been before…you were trying to stop the cycle.

Trying to fix what had been horribly broken.

I know that neither Harry nor Ron would ever believe it of you, but you are there for me in ways that they never had been or ever could be.

You are…with me, beside me, all around me, silently supporting, resolute in your solid stance, never wavering.

You took my pain and made it your own, and in return you gave me your trust. A gift that I know has never been given to anyone before. You’ve given loyalty, blind obedience, and many variations of those in the past to different people and different masters…but never your trust. You’ve given me something that is precious and I still hold it tightly in my grasp.

As I think back on the war and all the things that I could have done to help you, the guilt begins to set in…

…but then you hold my head in your hands and whisper into my ear that the past is past and everything is as it is, and nothing can change that.

That all that matters is here, and now, and the fact that we’re together.

And I, of course, realize that you’re right, and that nothing will ever change how I feel towards you, no matter what people might say, or what rumors may fly about, that you will always hold my heart in your hands like no one else ever has before.

I’ve given my heart foolishly a few times before and it’s been bruised, battered, broken…but in your hands, it has been healed.

You have held it as though it was the most precious thing to ever grace your presence, and, I hope for the both of us, that we are the last people to ever hold each other’s hearts.

Sometimes, late at night, you hold me close you so tightly that I think that you might be afraid that if you let go, I would simply cease to exist, that your dream would slip away from you…but I can promise you, with all of my soul, that that will never be the case.

I love you, Severus, and I will keep your love with me until my dying day.

No matter how broken you think you are, no matter how foolish you think you’ve been…and no matter what mistakes you’ve made that make you think that you don’t deserve to have me in your life, I don’t care.

I’m your wife.

And I love you.