Every Second

Harry

Potter

You fucking bastard,

How dare you. How dare you make me crave you without my permission. Who the fuck are you to think you could come into my life and rip me apart and remake me the way you did and then leave? Fuck you and the war you rode in on. You were just there--just there, right place, wrong time, and the attack came, and your destiny and mine were remade in one flash of light. You told me about it. You told me it was green in your dreams but you never told me, you little shit, how much it hurt--how much it hurt to lose your parents. You never told me what emptiness was behind those nightmares, and you never told me how lucky I was to be the one to make the nightmares cease. And now, now when it's too late, do I finally learn how much you loved me--how much trust it took to stretch that emptiness open so someone else could come in. Because I know now--I'll never let anyone in again. I only want you, you fuck, and you're gone and I'll never be able to crawl into your arms and thank you for bringing your emptiness to me and letting me fill it; and I'll never be able to beat you into a bloody pulp for not taking me with you. Why the fuck didn't they strike here first? Why the fuck didn't you stay out instead of going back inside to help? Why the fuck can't I crawl in bed every night with your ghost, if you're going to haunt me this way? You fucking bastard, Harry Potter--you goddamned perfect miserable heroic dead angelic bastard. Why aren't you here? Why have you cursed me with the guilt of living a life that was never worth anything to anyone but you anyway? Did you think a year would make any difference? Did you think we'd all just forget--go on with our lives?--did you think I'd find somebody else to warm your pillow or wrap my arms around each morning? Did you think I'd've forgiven myself yet for not being with you when it happened so I could have kept you safe--or at the very least, dragged you down to hell with me when the saints came to separate us and take you to heaven where you belonged? Did you think I'd've forgiven you for leaving? Not a chance. I won't forgive you--forgiveness means eventually I might accept, and acceptance means I might move on, and moving on means one day I might forget--and I would go to hell cursing your name so loudly you would hear it every night in your heavenly dreams, Potter, before I will ever forget how much you loved me. How much it hurts, this unfulfilled need for you. How much it will always hurt, every second I am alive and breathing without you. Every second, Potter. Every goddamned second.

Mine. Mine, mine, mine.

You think that I'm not with you but you're wrong. I'm right here beside you, every second. You think I could rest while you were crying? I float, I sift, in places only your love could send me, and I drink you in--the tired defeat in your eyes, the lackluster way you comb your hair--you don't care anymore how you look, I know--but it's really, really okay; in the way you shrug on your clothes every morning as if the pockets were filled with stones. I absorb you, and I love you, from sunup til sundown, and I caress you every moment and try over and over again to take you in my arms. I know you hate me. I know you want to curl up and collapse under your hurt and your hate--and I know the only reason you don't is the fact that people are depending on you to carry out my destiny--my unclaimed destiny, unclaimed just as you went unclaimed--incomplete, just as I am--and you are without me.

So I curl my arms around you every night, hoping the morning will discover a dent in my pillow--but there's nothing, and I know how empty the bed must feel, and how much you ache. How much I ache for you, my sterling rose. But I am here--they could not make me cross the bar without you. Never without you. I will stay and look on your face, though you grow brittle and hard, and crack under your pain; and I will love, and love, and love you, til, if only you choose to see it, my love will burgeon everywhere around and inside you; and I will never leave you: I will be the cool wind on your cheek, the rustle of leaves under your feet, the shy young man watching you from lowered eyes across the room, despite your best efforts not to notice his interest, the whisper of rain that kisses your lashes, the glow at the end of your wand as you murmur the killing curse against my enemies, the swish of air under your broomstick as you finally start to fly again, though only to honour me. Oh, mine, mine, mine, you honour me with every second of your life. Every second. And for as long as you breathe, I will be your oxygen; and when you are finished breathing, I will be the kiss that closes your eyes, just as it was your kiss that first opened mine, all those moments ago. All those moments that will keep me with you, and you with me.

Every second.