Too Late

Too Late

I watched numbly as the Thestrals skimmed the treetops in the Forbidden Forest, their scaly black wings visible to me for the first time. I was sitting by the lake at Hogwarts, wishing I didn't have time to think.

After Voldemort's defeat, everything had been a blur for a couple of days. There had been so much to do, so many people to find, displaced during the few days when terrifying magical battles had torn the whole country apart. With a family as large as ours, there had been plenty of relatives to locate, lots to do. I had been too busy to have time to think, enveloped in the blissful silence which constant noise and commotion brings. But now I was able to hear the thoughts in my head calling for my attention. I wished I didn't have to face them. But I knew that one day I would, and that it might as well be here, now.

The thought which came the most clearly, the most insistently, the most frequently... It wasn't even so much a thought as a memory. His voice was monotone and flat, as if he no longer had the energy to express any emotion in it. But I suppose it's too late now, isn't it?

I hadn't slept in days. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face. Felt again that terrible sensation of being trapped, unable to tear my eyes away from his, yet unable to speak or respond. Even at the end, when those terrible words shuddered through my skull and I knew with a dreadful certainty that they would be his last, even then, I couldn't force out the words.

It was too late to reply, anyway, he was all but dead, it wouldn't have mattered. By the end I wasn't even sure that he knew I was there.

I shook my head, dispelling all attempts to justify my silence. I couldn't deceive myself, console myself like that; he had said my name. How could I try and fool my memory when those words were eternally engraved upon it? How could I, when they wouldn't let me alone, when they haunted me incessantly? I love you, Ginny Weasley. He knew what he was saying and who he was saying it to. He should have had a reply. He had deserved a reply.

But I hadn't known the answer myself, I still didn't. It was impossible to feel anything coherent towards him, after those awful, numb final moments. Anger flared inside me at his selfishness. It was selfish to leave me with those words. Selfish to confuse my emotions like that, leaving me feeling like I didn't know my own mind any more, a stranger to myself. Selfish to make me feel obligated, like I had to... to love him back.

And maybe for those few seconds, when his eyes shone and his soul poured from his trembling lips, from those heart-breaking words which tore straight past my ears and into my heart, maybe then I did love him. My heart had tugged in my chest, as if my soul was trying to escape. Even as I sat there frozen I had wanted, truly wanted, to say the words I knew he wanted to hear.

But would they have been true, not just for those never-ending moments, but for forever? Love, real love, true love, shouldn't be fleeting and fickle. It should be a part of you. So did I really love him now? The clamor of emotion within my mind swelled to a crescendo and my head ploughed forwards into my hands, and I realised that I was crying, that I had been for a few minutes.

How was I supposed to know how I felt, when now all my memories of him were tainted by that terrifying, entrancing expression on his face as he died? Anger flared again. He had no right, no right to leave me like that. He had no right to deny me the chance to know... know if it ever would have been...

Although wasn't that what he had wanted to know? Hadn't I denied him the answer to the same unbearable uncertainty? But I hadn't known the answer; not then, not now. How could I have given him one I knew might not be true? Inside my head I was screaming, even as tears rolled silently down my pale, tired cheeks. I couldn't have lied to him as he died.

It might have granted him happiness for his last moments, my treacherous thoughts hissed. Wouldn't I have wanted him to die happy? No, not at that price. Misery based on reality is more of a comfort than happiness founded on a lie. Neville would have wanted to know the truth. It was important to him that I finally knew the truth, that he had finally said it, regardless of any answer I might've given.

But was no answer worse than any I could have given him? Didn't it just prolong for eternity the agony of uncertainty, that same uncertainty which was tearing me apart now? But however much I had wanted to give him an end to the gnawing what ifs, I hadn't known the answer then and still didn't. He... he was always just Neville, he was... he was...

He was sweet, he was kind, he was innocent. He didn't deserve to die, not then. Fate took him and used him and then threw him away. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair on either of us! I didn't deserve this either! This uncertainty, this haunting question for which I would never have an answer. I would never know what might have been, whether I would have loved him back if he'd only asked me before. Whether I would have seen in him everything he saw in me, everything I could see in his memory now. Whether we could have found in each other the things we lacked on our own.

I couldn't waste my time on what might have been, though. Wasn't the important question whether I loved him now? Would I love him for always? Would I ever escape this numbness, this feeling that half of me had disappeared that day and would never return? This feeling that my heart had been split in two, torn apart by the war, by the battles, by the smoking shadow of the Dark Mark over so many houses. Torn apart by the darkness which had tainted everything during those dire days and which even now haunted my soul. Torn apart by the memory of his face, his eyes turned towards mine, unseeing but full of emotion as he gave me his heart, his soul, his everything.

My breathing slowed. I raised my head as the tears cleared from my eyes, and I saw the glow of the sunset shimmering red on the lake. Finally my heart calmed, it no longer felt as if each beat was powerful enough to tear my soul apart. I closed my eyes firmly and when I opened them I was looking back at the lake, but not seeing it. I could only see that clearing, the moonlight filtering through the trees. I saw myself sitting there, holding him to me after the emotion in his eyes disappeared, after he spoke his last words. I'd wept and dug my hands into his back, clutching him to me as if to stop him from leaving me, even though he already had. Remembered sitting there for what felt like forever, not daring to let go, because then it would be real, he would be gone, and I would be left there alone. I sat there until the others arrived, and still I wouldn't let go, and the tears, so static as he was speaking, kept pouring from my eyes and down my face, down my neck, and I wouldn't, couldn't let him go.

They had spelled me to sleep in the end, because I couldn't understand the words they were saying, couldn't hear anything except the wailing inside my head. When I awoke, the next day, they were all there, my brother, his friends. But he wasn't, he was missing, as conspicuously so as anything you take for granted is after its departure. He was gone, and with him a part of me.

But I didn't cry, I didn't scream. Part of my mind had shut off, and I only heard its screams and cruel questions when it was quiet. So I kept busy, kept so busy that I could almost forget why my heart was screaming... Until now.

I stood up and turned my back on the lake. I turned my back on the sunset glow; turned my back on the Thestrals still wheeling over the forest. I could never know what might have been. Right now, I wasn't even sure what would be. But I knew one thing, and that was that here, now, I loved Neville Longbottom. It might be too late, but it was true. And that would have to be enough.