Grief

She lay in bed, her eyes red with unshed tears. She'd not cry.

Hermione walked in. She asked if Ginny was ok - ever since the night at the Department of Mysteries she had been strange, not talking not eating. She had to pull herself together, she said, it hit everybody baldly, but life still goes on.

If at least she knew.

Ginny shock mer head and mumbled something about grabbing a bit at the kitchens earlier. Hermione didn't have to worry about her. She was fine - she knew how take care of herself, she always had.

Hermione exited the room.

Oh, if she had known. But she couldn't know. Nobody could. She had promise him that. And now he was dead.

If at least that night she had stayed in her bed. If nothing had happened. She'd be better now, she wouldn't be feeling it so strongly.

But no. She had went down that night. And she had found him. He was drunk - he had been most of the time, lately, even if many of the people at Grimald place didn't put it together. He was good at hiding it.

But she saw it. She had always seen these things - she saw through Draco's mask of coldness and maturity that he was no more than a scared child, doing his father's bidding, even if it disgusted him. She ha saw behind Tom's gentle and nice words, how he really was - maybe that was how she had learned. It had probably came with all the other things left in her - memories, abilities... hate. She kept all those locked up in the back of her mind, but that single ability had leaked out.

She had seen him there and he had seen her. She had seen his drunkenness and his sorrows, his hate and his whish of revenge, his sadness and his regrets. But even so she had came and sat by his side. And they began to talk. She reminded him of somebody, who only later he'd reveal to be Lily. But she didn't mind - he reminded her of someone too. Maybe because of that it had began.

And so, in secrecy, it began. Sleepless night after sleepless night, she would come down and he'd be there. He didn't sleep, Azkaban had taken even that from him. He taunted by dreams and so was her.

It wasn't until the last night that he kissed her. Or she kissed him. They didn't know, they didn't care. He had pulled back, afraid.

She was just a child, he said. But she wasn't. She had been trough things, in too much of a early age, that had stolen away that tittle from her. A child she would never again be d nothing would ever change that.

People could not know. She knew it and she understood. And she did not care. He kissed her again, visibly afraid of hurting her, but the hunger and need that for years taunted him undeniably present. Bigger and yet not as strong as her own unfeedable hunger.

It was not her first time, but in many ways it was. It was the first time she gave herself in. It was the first time she felt it, the pain and the pleasure searing through her body as one. It was the first time she longed for it so and the first time she ever needed it that badly.

For a moment, they loved each other, not for any lost loves but themselves. He loved her and she loved him and it seamed like a blissful eternity.

And then it was all over. She had to go away and, though she didn't know, she'd never see him again.

So she went back, back to the boredom of routine, back to being nice and amicable to dull friends which she did not care about and, though she let them think otherwise, knew nothing about her, back to classes to which she paid no attention, back to Dean's sloppy kisses and latter on to Draco skillful, but cold ones.

Back to the never-ending charade, back to the happy and content facade, back to the crowded solitude.

But, whilst nothing changed, it was never the same.

The memory of him, of his passionate and yet fearful kisses, of his so rare and yet loveable laugh, it never abandoned her.

And she grieved. Grieved for something no-one could, or would ever, know, something she'd have to take to the grave with her. As he had.

The pain of his lost burned in her like a never-healing scorch on her soul. The wound that had been made on her as a child and never quite closed, now had been reopen, wider and more painfully than ever.

And Harry grieved for him, too, she knew.

Harry grieved for the life that had been lost, for the injustice that had been made, for the one he had held dear and now no longer was.

She grieved for what there had been and no longer would, she grieved for the love that briefly was and not ever would again be, she grieved for the man that had never the opportunity to fell and never would have it.

Harry grieved in anger and innocence.

She grieved in lust and knowledge.

She finally let the tears stream down her face. Tears for all, tears she could have never let out and never again would.

Bittersweet tears, touching her face with its salted sadness, burning her chopped lips, which she had bitten into so many times while trying to hold back the tears.

Tears that were like of the blood of her reopen wound.

She cried herself to sleep when she dreamed about him.

Her momentary love, her forever companion.

Her friend.

Her Sirius.

~Finis~