Sleepless Nights

She still dreams of him. It's been years since he left but he still haunts her nights.

It's bad when she sees the final fight. Sees the hate in his eyes. Sees that scar glowing bright green. She watches in fascinated horror as he turns his wand not on Voldemort, but on Dumbledore. She screams and runs as he turns on the others, red lights flashing as bright as her hair. She wakes up with tears on her pillow and her hands clenched shut and she pries her fists open and examines the scars left behind from hundreds of nights just like this one, and she pulls out the old photos and cries some more.

It's worse when she dreams about the years after. The years of being hunted. She is hiding in a dark alley, trying not to breathe, praying the shield she cast will be enough, trembling with the knowledge that if he finds her he'll kill her. She runs through thick forests, tripping over roots, brambles caught in her hair. She wakes up shaking, tears pouring down, lip between her teeth, almost bleeding. She gets out of bed and washes her face with cold water and stares in the mirror to convince herself that she's still real.

But the worst is when she wakes up and her pillow is wet and she can smell grass and roses. That's when she can tell she was dreaming of him; dreaming of the good times, before he left. And she lays there, face in the pillow, trying to remember the dreams, but she never can. So she dredges up her fading memory and she smiles at their first kiss (Ron's room, at the Burrow, summer after fourth year. She was looking for her socks and he was moping about some random thing so she smacked him with a pillow and they fell together onto Ron's bed and he kissed her first. So she pushed him off of her, smacked him again with the pillow, and then kissed him back.) and she laughs when she remembers Ron's face the first time he caught them (they were supposed to be degnoming the garden but instead were leaning against the big willow tree, exchanging giggles and spit. August 21, 1996.) and she gets sort of misty when the grass triggers the memory of the night she snuck into his bed at the dorms, and she woke him up with kisses and he was mad at the interruption until she whispered, "I'm ready." in his ear and then laughed and slid under the sheets, and the next morning the scent of lawn drifted through the window and she laughed again and said, "Bloody hell, we might as well have done it outdoors." And she smells the roses and reaches for the yellow box in the dresser where she still keeps every rose he ever gave her (Nineteen). And she cries fresh tears when she sees the picture of them, taken three days before he left, and she wonders how he managed to hide and she managed to miss the mark on his wrist.

When he comes back, it's on the worst of nights, and he walks up the stairs, stands behind her, dumps a dozen black roses into the box, and says, "Good bye."