Failure

Two months before we left Hogwarts, you told me you loved me.

Six months after my twenty-first birthday, you made me your wife.

Five weeks after our first anniversary, I was told I had been pregnant.

Three days before that, you died.

Kill or be killed, you joked badly as you wrapped your father's damn cloak around yourself. I followed your bodiless head to the door of our flat, alternately demanding to be taken along and wringing my hands in dumb anxiety. You grabbed me as I began another round of protests and pressed your lips to mine with a desperation your horrible nonchalance belied.

I hated you for that kiss. I hated you for showing just how much you needed me, when I was lying to myself about how much I needed you.

My eyes followed the path you would have had to take - down the steps, through the garden and out over the lawn, past the anti-apparation boundaries. There was a pop just as my gaze left the flowerbeds; you were faster than I thought you'd be. Or I was slower than you thought I'd be. You knew what I was doing.

Unwilling to sit in our home - alone - I snatched my cloak up from the back of your favorite tattered, overstuffed, impossibly well-loved chair, where I had laid it minutes before. I had known we would be leaving. I had thought it would be together.

I arrived in Dumbledore's office, ignoring the smudges of soot littering my skirt. He conjured me a teacup and offered me a sherbet lemon. Insufferable old man.

No, he could not take me to you. The prophecy, he cited, Either must die at the hand of the other and such, you understand. While you fought for the world, I sipped Earl Grey and nibbled on biscuits.

Snape stumbled in a time later, clawing at his arm. Dumbledore put a restraining charm on him, tethering him to a chair, and healed the shredded flesh, but he bucked like a madman once his hands were glued to the armrest, desperate to relieve the burning of his Mark. As long as he thrashed, I knew Voldemort still lived; I selfishly used him as an indicator of sorts.

Dumbledore did as well.

After what seemed like hours of muted, agony-fueled howling - Dumbledore's spell protected me from hearing my former Potions Master's terrible shrieks, though I doubt he granted himself the same reprieve - Snape went suddenly slack. More quickly than I'd thought possible, the headmaster was at his side, checking for a pulse and holding his wrinkled cheek above the man's parted lips, feeling for breath. He, thankfully, found both.

The Mark was fading. Voldemort was dead. Either must die at the hand of the other...The words, spoken in your voice, echoed through my consciousness. Voldemort was dead - by default, you were alive!

But for all that my heart leapt at that thought, it dropped ten times as far when the office floo flared to life and Ron stepped out, carrying your limp form.

It felt as if I had been ripped in two by the scream which rent my throat. I don't remember much else, save that you - only minutes dead! - that your skin was so much colder than I expected it to be.

I woke in the hospital wing hours later with Ron in a chair by my bedside. Ron. Not you. I pretended to be asleep. He pretended not to notice how horrible I was at pretending.

I lay in that bed for hours, my eyes leaking traitorous tears - sleeping people don't cry - and stubbornly ignored everyone and everything in the world around me.

Nothing in our past had prepared me for this. I was no stranger to worrying over you - it was part of your unique charm, your whole saving people thing - but all the worrying in the world couldn't have prepared me for that day. You had been in very real danger so many times, but you had never died before. In fact, every time you had come out on the better end of those life and death struggles of yours, I had felt more convinced, despite all logic to the contrary, that you would always come out on the better end. Never the worse.

And they called me the smartest witch of our age. I who never realized the most basic of facts; humans beings, for all our charms, are mortal. We die.

You died.

Our child died.

It was all just...too much. My body couldn't handle it. Three days after I had lost you, suddenly, it was over before I knew it had begun. And I had failed. Again.

I swear, Harry, if I had known, I would have...

I don't know.

I just don't know.