Not So Mundane
All of these mundane things others take for granted were suddenly on the glass of his microscope.
The way she got out of bed.
The way she made his toast just a little too burned, exactly how he liked it.
The way she sat at the corner desk to write to their son, who was in his third year at Hogwart’s.
The way she put on a brave face every time her friends showed up.
She didn’t want anyone else to know, she’d said.
She couldn’t stand the looks of pity, she’d said.
All the while he wanted to scream.
oOoOoO
There was comfort in normalcy, she said.
She had brought the first sense of it to him.
Something he never expected.
That had been her gift.
Her love, she said, was hers to bestow, and he thought it was a gift to him, but she said with the sweetest smile that it was much more a gift to her, to be allowed to love him.
He knew exactly what he meant the moment he realized he loved her back.
Now she was fighting.
Hours spent searching ancient tomes.
Days spent over the cauldron.
The Potion’s Master could not save her.
oOoOoO
The last of the snow had melted.
Tender green shoots were poking up through the awakening earth.
He felt dead to the world.
Had it been days, or months?
Time had lost all meaning.
He laid on the young grass, his head where he imagined hers was six feet down.
To go on, he needed…
Her.
Hermione.
Without her, he was incomplete.
Breathing too difficult a task.
Remember the mundane, she’d said to him towards the end.
He thought the vicious disease had at last rattled her mind.
Severus should have known better.
Her last words were still a gift.
oOoOoO
Everything within him cried out for her, but he wanted to honor her.
In the only way he knew how.
He rose from the dead.
His burned toast sat on the breakfast table.
Somehow, he managed to take a bite.
He wrote their son his own letter.
Three tries later, he managed one without any tear drops smudging up the ink.
Her love had been a gift.
It would always be his.
She was not in that cold, dark ground.
She was inside of him.
She would be waiting for him.
Many, many years from now, he would join her.