Disclaimer: Mandatory Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter, including the characters and settings do not belong to me, rather to the wonderful JK Rowling and her affiliates. Nor do I own anything by Snow Patrol.



He might be happy. I really hope he is. I’m not; I’m miserable. Actually, I’m dying inside, but I’ll never let him know. I can’t let him know, because I was the one who let him go. I might have broken his heart, might have fazed him in some way. I might have hurt him, but I know I hurt myself. I told him to leave, that I hated him, that I never wanted to see him again. I was lying through my teeth. I don’t think I’ve ever lied so much to someone I love. I even lied to him about that. I screamed at him, telling him that I didn’t love him. It was the greatest lie of all.


Of course he tried to be the strong one. He tried to tell me I was wrong. He told me I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, that I’d given him a heart and shown him what it meant to love. He thinks I taught him how; I think he always knew. Deep down inside of him, underneath all that hostility and all the cold smirks, I think he always knew how to love. It was just easier for him not to.


But oh, he scares me. He scares me when he leaves the apartment to do God knows what. I know he wants nothing to do with that ugly tattoo on his forearm, but he has to pretend. He’s working as a spy, and that means playing the part. It means killing innocent people. I can see the regret in his eyes, swimming in dark pools, glittering like metal blades behind pale lids and impossibly long eyelashes. I swear he was carved by God himself: tall, lean, chiseled to perfection. He looks like an angel. But he’s the Angel of Death. I try not to think about it when he’s got his arms wrapped around me and we’re lying in bed, but sometimes the thoughts still come.


I’ve been strong enough to overlook that, or at least accept it. He’s trying his hardest to make sure the bad guys don’t win this time. But it isn’t just that. It’s not only because he wears a Death Eater’s mask and cowl. He scares me for another reason, too. He scares me because I’m crazy about him. He’s a drug I’m terrified to overdose on. It would be so easy to just love him and let him love me, but I’ve never felt like this before. Maybe I’m the one who needs to learn to love? Everyone thinks I’m the angel, the sweet beautiful girl with the heart of gold. Why can’t I be the one afraid to give my heart? Why is it so wrong that I might not be able to love him the way he loves me?


He might be happy now. I really hope he is. I know he wasn’t happy when I sent him away. He tried to be the strong one until I made it clear he would have to go. That’s when he closed down. He locked himself up inside, becoming the monster I’m afraid of. The one with the cold eyes and biting tongue. Maybe I’ve killed him, but I really hope he’s happy.


It’s so hard living here now, when everything still smells like him. And by everything, I mean it. I’ve washed the sheets a hundred times and they still smell like him. I can’t make myself throw his clothes – they’re still hanging in the closet. I want to, though. I want to get rid of every trace of him, because maybe if I do, I can stop my heart from beating, or at least bleeding, every time I see something that was once his. His books are scattered around the apartment, great classics that I’ve never read, and New Age works that I’m afraid to touch.


I know now that I miss him, that I need him, but my pride makes it impossible for me to tell him that. Well, that and the fact that I have no idea where he is. No one knows. I wish now that I could take back every lie I told him, especially the part about not loving him.


I hope he’s happy now, doing whatever it is he wants to do without me there to hold him back. I know I held him back from so much. There were so many things I was afraid to do, like get married. We’d been dating for two and a half years, and he asked me to marry him. I told him I couldn’t, not with the war still going on. That’s when the fighting started. He never started the fights though; I did. He was content with my answer, not happy, but he didn’t push me. He never pushed me to do anything, had never pushed me, ever, but I knew it hurt him that I wouldn’t even wear the ring he’d bought me. I’d made something up about it being dangerous: for him, for me, for his cover. But he hadn’t cared about that, he’d just shrugged and went out to buy me a necklace to hang the diamond ring off of. I’d worn that, always afraid that someone would find it and start asking too many questions.


I wish I had it now; it used to make me stronger when I was fighting. Or actually, it made me feel like I had something to fight for. Now I have nothing. I threw it at him when I kicked him out. He’d picked it up indifferently and placed it in his shirt pocket, telling me that one day I might want to wear it again. That was before my yelling and screaming had turned him cold and uncaring.


Now, every Death Eater I face reminds me of him. I’m always scared for the briefest of moments that it might actually be him. But then I get caught up in the moment. Inevitably at some point during the battle, I feel his eyes on me and I pray he’ll keep his cover, or kill me. Sometimes I wish for both.


I know I’ve made a horrible mess of everything. I just wish that somehow there was a way for me to tell him how very sorry I am. How much I love him, how much I want that ring back, and on my finger.


I wish that he was happy now, but I know he’s not. I know he’ll forgive me, if only I could find the time and the courage to beg him to come back. I know he could be happy, and so could I, just lying in each other’s arms, away from all the fighting and death. I wish that we could just be normal twenty and twenty-one year olds in love.


But here on the battlefield there is no time for me to think like that. I know he’s here – I’ve felt his eyes. I know he’s secretly protecting me, like he always does, like he always has.




"You Could Be Happy" – Snow Patrol

You could be happy and I won't know
But you weren't happy the day I watched you go

And all the things that I wished I had not said
Are played in loops 'till it's madness in my head

Is it too late to remind you how we were
But not our last days of silence, screaming, blur

Most of what I remember makes me sure
I should have stopped you from walking out the door

You could be happy, I hope you are
You made me happier than I'd been by far

Somehow everything I own smells of you
And for the tiniest moment it's all not true

Do the things that you always wanted to
Without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do

More than anything I want to see you go
Take a glorious bite out of the whole world