Pick Up The Pieces

We are nothing and everything. We are alone and united. We are the leftovers of a brutal war, torturers, responsible for deaths...on both sides. We are not asking for sympathy. We are asking for understanding. Though understanding never came easy to us.

Who am I? No one. I used to be a bright, bushy-haired Gryffindor. Ha! That was before, before him. Before everything. If you've ever felt what it's like to be lifted up so high you think you might fall and then smashed to the ground in one fell swoop...you'll know what it's like to be me.

The sorting hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know. But I begged, I pleaded. It was adamant. Slytherin, it wanted to yell. Then I asked what would happen if a Muggle-born was put into Slytherin. It was silent. Gryffindor, it yelled...for my own sake. Why did I go back on the help it gave me? Him. Only him.

We are the double agents. The ones on both sides, the undecided some liked to call us. The weak, the cowardly, the in-between, the neutral. Call it what you will. Call us what you will. When it all ended we were left shattered. Pick up the pieces...all that's left. Those pieces were our mind, body, soul...and heart. I gave mine to him. Luckily for me, I got his back. Not that it helped at all.

It tortures me that I'm apart from him. We depended on each other, we knew, but we would never admit it. We were far too proud. The mark on my arm that no longer burns tells me where I went to help him. I can't imagine what reminds him of me. Darkness? Loneliness? Mornings, when he wakes up with an ache in his heart and tears on the pillow because I'm not there next to him?

Does his body ache like mine because there's no other to hold me? No one to please me; help with even the most basic human desire? I suppose he does, though I expect that we both ignore it for the sake of professionalism. That was always the way. Always.

Everything reminds me of him. Everything. From the rip on the hem of my robes to the dirt under my fingernails. Everything reminds me of him. I can still smell him, you know. Around me, behind me, in front of me...inside me. He was everything to me. That's why he's everything, you see. And me? I'm nothing. You're nothing, there's just...him.

Pick up the pieces when nothing's left, my mother always used to say. Of course, that was before she had her skin peeled off limb by limb while my father watched. Before they sent jolts of electricity through her spine, causing an involuntary heart attack, before they raped her, hard and brutal. My father had to watch everything. All before the letter.

They're dead, Granger.

That was all. That was always all.

What about friends you ask, good honest friends? They left me when I fell in love with him. It was too much for them to take. It had too many...complications. He had too many complications. Too much to think about - too much for them to handle! My two best friends couldn't handle me. My best friends couldn't be bothered to try. I was broken. I still am. Where are you when I need you most?

I don't know where my lover is now, and he doesn't know where I am. I'm a mediwitch at Beauxbatons now, who'd have thought? Although he did hint at it once. I'm writing this because I don't know if I'll ever see him again, and I wanted someone to know...how I...how much I...

Loved you, Severus. And love you, I still do. Even after everything.

That was all, and still is, I suppose. Unless you're reading this because I've been careless - I'm getting more like that nowadays, not like the me you knew - I'm drifting without you. If that is the case I think I'll need your help pretty soon. I promise to pay you back. You always paid me back when I helped you.

I'm feeling like I have nothing to offer because you're not here.

I love you, but...where are you?