Of Things Spoken and Unspoken, Harry Potter, Z/D
Title: Of Things Spoken and Unspoken
Pairing: Zacharias Smith/Daphne Greengrass
Summary: A look at things spoken and unspoken between Zacharias and Daphne in a style different from my usual.
Rating: Restricted. Adult themes.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Channeling a bit of Z/D in celebration of _____faith’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Faith!
Of Things Spoken and Unspoken
"Zach!" A voice bellowed up the staircase. "Zach, someone's here to see you!"
He groaned, rolled out of bed, threw on his bathrobe and shuffled down the stairs. Squinting into the early morning sunlight, he peered out the front door, rubbed his eyes and looked again. She was still standing there in her winter cloak, suitcase in hand.
"Daphne?"
"Hullo, Zach."
"What are you doing here?" His eyes finally rose from her suitcase to her eyes.
"You told me if I ever needed anything..."
He scratched his head. "Daphne, that was three years ago."
She bit her lower lip and nodded. "Right. Sorry I bothered you." When she withdrew her wand, he didn't hesitate. He lunged for the thing and plucked it out of her hand.
"I didn't say you weren't welcome. I just said it's been awhile." He reached for her suitcase and kicked the door open wide. "Come on in. My room's up the stairs and to the left."
She took off her hood and started up the flight of stairs as he followed in slow pursuit, wondering what she needed this time. It was always something. For as long as he'd known her, she was forever coming to him to help bail her out of difficult situations - a failed relationship, an overdue essay for class, a spat with her father, a loan she would never repay. What now?
Daphne looked around his bedroom as he set her suitcase down. Then he excused himself and went to the loo to clean up and contemplate the situation further.
Three years prior, he had declared his undying love for her. In retrospect, he should have known better than to bare his heart to a woman who was either blind to his feelings or unwilling to acknowledge them for fear they would interfere with the relationship she needed between them, one that held a nothing more than a supporting role for him. But he decided one couldn't live with an unspoken love forever, so he spoke his love loud and clear and never saw or heard from her again, until today.
When he re-entered the room, she was standing by his foggy window, looking out at the busy London street scene. "How've you been, Zach?"
He sighed and crawled back into bed, sitting up and encasing his cold feet and his cold legs in the bedcovers. "About the same. What's going on, Daphne?"
She refused to turn around and look at him. "I need a place to crash for a week or two, until I can find my own place."
"Who kicked you out this time?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Who kicked you out this time?" he repeated.
"He's a nobody, Zach. A zero. A minus, if that's possible. I don't know why I moved in with him." Then she turned around and stared at him. "Do you hate me?"
"A part of me isn't too happy with you."
She nodded. "I'm sorry, Zach."
She was always sorry. She was forever sorry. He had never met a witch who was more sorry about everything.
When he opened his arms, she fell into them crying, "Oh Zach, I've missed you so much." That was the other thing. She always missed him horribly, but she could never stand to be with him for any period of time.
"Shhh...” he soothed. "It's okay. Everything's going to be okay." She buried her face in his chest, knocking them both over and onto the bed in her need to be surrounded by him, to feel the safety of his existence and the stability of his world.
"I was so afraid, Zach. I was afraid it was too late; that you wouldn't let me in again, that you had found someone - a girlfriend or a wife. You haven't, have you?"
Of course, he had a girlfriend. What did she expect? That he would live the remainder of his life cloistered in solitude, waiting for her to show up and break his heart a second time?
"I have a girlfriend, Daphne," he said softly, not lessening his hold on her, but he felt her stiffen. "It's okay. We'll go to my parents' estate. You'll stay there for as long as you need."
"No, Zach," she protested, pushing away from him.
"It's okay, Daphne. Come on. I'll get dressed, and we'll go together. It'll be fine."
Thus reassured, Daphne settled into Zacharias' bed while he packed a few things.
"Come, Daphne," he said, taking her hand.
"Thank you, Zach."
"Of course," he said, smiling at her. A moment later, they Disapparated to his parents’ country home where he would owl Elisabeth and explain the situation.
----- ----- -----
"Zach?"
He rolled over and squinted at her figure outline against the dim torchlight in the hallway. "What's wrong, Daphne?"
She took this as permission to step inside his bedroom and close the door. He sighed and threw down the bedcovers for her. Daphne hurried across the room, crawled inside his bed and snatched the extra pillow, fluffing it up and settling next to Zacharias with her body facing his.
"Out with it," he said.
She sighed and shook her head.
"No?"
She shook her head again. "Can I stay here tonight? With you?"
"Is that all?"
She nodded again, and he laughed that gentle, quiet laugh of his.
"Alright."
Daphne snuggled into Zacharias and felt his warmth wrap around her.
"Daph, you know I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on?” She nodded against his chest. "Let's get some sleep. It's late, and you know how grumpy you get when you don’t get enough sleep." He felt the warm exhalation of her breath against the exposed skin on his chest, that wonderful tickling.
And she listened to the steady, rhythmic beating of his heart until she fell into a blissful, dreamless sleep, one that had eluded her for weeks.
----- ----- -----
"What do you mean you're not in the mood? You're always in the mood," Zacharias said, staring at her.
"Some other time. Not today." She turned away from him and stared out the window at the rolling pastures and the black lake and the dissipating storm clouds.
"Don't be ridiculous, Daphne," he said, grabbing her hand and tugging.
She snatched her hand out of his. "Not today, Zach."
"Are you feeling okay?" Since when did she not want to go riding? She loved horses and was a fantastic rider. They had ridden together since they were kids.
"I need to go to London today, to look for a flat." She turned, rushed up the staircase and slammed her bedroom door shut. When she emerged half an hour later, he was waiting.
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"What about your work?"
He laughed. "Work? What work?"
"Zacharias, you’re horrible!" she chided while straightening his robes and brushing the stray locks out of his eyes. "And you need a haircut."
He rolled his eyes. "You need a lot of things, Daphne. Do you hear me reciting them to you?"
She kissed his cheek and dropped her eyes from his. "Tell me about this girlfriend of yours," she said, picking up her cloak.
"Elisabeth?"
"Yes, Elisabeth."
"What do you want to know?"
"Are you going to marry her?"
He threw on his cloak. "Don't know."
"So you're thinking about it?"
"I think about those things. You know that."
"I thought I was your one true love."
He didn't answer that. She was at it again, digging at him to find answers she didn't want.
"Shall we?" he asked, holding out his hand for her.
----- ----- -----
As they searched the wizarding flats available, Zacharias discovered that Daphne had been working for Fraser & Fraser, initially as an entry level associate then as part of their elite textile design team, and doing quite well. Then, in typical Daphne fashion, she quit abruptly, claiming she was tired of the stress and being creative on someone else’s deadline.
She said nothing about her recent, failed relationship - no name or occupation or favourite Quidditch team. Of course, this meant that they had worked together, and when the relationship went sour, work went sour and she left. She never had much sense where wizards were concerned.
"Daphne?"
"Hmm?" she said, looking in the window of a muggle department store.
"What is it this time, really?"
"What?" she said, turning to look up at him.
"What do you need? You don't need a place to crash. Well, you might need that, but that's not why you came by. What is it?"
She shook her head and laughed. "Look at that coat, Zach. I think it’s fabulous. What do you think?"
He shook his head. "I don't want a muggle coat. They're bloody useless and can't hold a warming charm."
"Come on, let's try it on,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the store while he protested.
Thirty minutes later, he was wearing the bloody muggle coat, and they were strolling down another street.
"I missed you, Zach," she said, reaching for his hand.
"I know, Daphne."
"You do?"
"You always miss me."
She looked up him, surprised, before nodding. "I do, don't I?"
Yes, she was about as daft as they came when it concerned her own heart, at least that's what Zacharias had always told himself. Did this explain her blinding rejection of him three years ago? He wasn't sure.
"Do you love your Elisabeth?" she asked, looking inside a window filled with handbags- velvet and diamond kissed bags, large and small bags, black and white bags, and her hand remained nicely tucked in his.
"Of course, I love Elisabeth." There was love and there was love, and Zacharias had no intention of discussing the finer points of those two emotions with Daphne.
Daphne's brow furrowed, and she looked away from the display of handbags. "Does she return this love you have for her?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "We've never discussed it."
"Oh."
And why should they have? Zacharias never had that conversation again, with any woman, after the disastrous fall out from his heart-wrenching confession to Daphne, the one that crash landed his life and crushed his heart and spoiled his tender dreams, dreams that young men have only once in their life.
"That's a beautiful dress, don't you think?" she said, pointing to a black chiffon shift in a window display. "Those shoes are ghastly, but the dress is ... well, it's marvellous."
"Would you like to go and try it on?" he asked.
"No, I'm on a bit of a budget right now."
That's right. She had quit her job, dumped her boyfriend and needed a new flat and Galleons down for it.
"Don't be ridiculous. I'll get it for you if you fancy it."
She shook her head, not looking at him, still looking at that elusive dress in the window. "No, I didn't mean it that way, Zach. I didn't say it was beautiful so you would buy it for me. I only meant that it was beautiful, you know?"
So their day went, going from flat to flat, store front to store front, winding in and out of their past and present with no talk of the future, only this amorphous discussion about objects and things and their attachment to each other via their attachment to other people and things. And he let her play the game she always played.
----- ----- -----
"Zach?"
He looked over the spine of his book and saw her peering through the half-opened door to his room.
"Yes?"
She came in, blew out his bedside candles and held out her hand. He relinquished his book, and she tossed it onto the bedside table before settling in, lying side-by-side with him. And he took to watching the moonlit shadows dance on the ceiling while he waited for her to speak.
"You're right. I don't need a flat or a place to stay," she said. Why had it taken her ten days to make this confession?
He sighed, "I didn't think so."
Then she fell silent again, and the only sound heard was the gentle whisper of her breathing and his, not quite in rhythm with each other.
"I almost died two months ago."
"What?" He sat up and turn to her, staring at her expressionless face in the glaring moonlight.
"I should have died. I wanted to die, but I didn't."
"What are you talking about? What happened? And why didn't someone owl me?"
She continued to stare at the ceiling. "I was pregnant, Zach. I had a miscarriage, and the Healers couldn't stop the bleeding."
Pregnant? She was pregnant?
"Do you know what I thought while I was lying there bleeding to death? I thought that I deserved to die because I was planning on getting rid of the baby. I didn't want it, and maybe I killed it by thinking those horrible thoughts."
"No, Daphne, no..."
She put her hand on his to stay any further conversation or arguments. "And then I thought of you, Zach, and the last time we saw each other. And I thought how awful it would be if I died without seeing you again because you would never know how much I love you." She turned and looked at him.
"I know you love me, Daph."
She shook her head. "No, Zach, not love you but love you the way you loved me. I've always loved you."
"But you told me - "
"I was scared, Zacharias, scared."
"Scared? Of what?"
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. Of you and me. Of letting you see me, really see me. What if you didn't like what you saw? What would I have then?"
"Daphne," he admonished lightly, shaking his head. He saw through her multiple guises and neurotic insecurities long ago. Didn't she realize that?
"When I saw myself dying in St. Mungos after losing a baby I didn't want from a man I didn't love, I realized how mixed up it all was. And all I wanted was you, Zach."
He stared at her in the shattered moonlight before closing his eyes and trying to absorb the enormity of what she had dumped in his lap, the way she dumped everything in his lap. Only this time he wasn't sure he could fix everything and make it right again. In fact, he knew some things, once broken, could never be made whole again.
"I know your have your Elisabeth and your life, and I didn't come back to break that apart. Think what you like. I came back to tell you how I feel, that's all."
He opened his eyes and saw her crawling out of bed.
"If things change, if you want me back in your life, you know how to reach me."
He leaned forward and latched onto her with both hands. "Don't go, Daphne." She paused. "Give a wizard a bloody moment, will you?"
Zacharias pulled Daphne to him and wrapped his arms around her. Then he buried his pained face in the nape of her neck. She was his witch. She had always been his witch. There was no other for him, but the enormity of her revelations… Didn’t she realize his heart had limits as well?
"What am I to do with you Daphne Greengrass?" he muttered.
"Love me back, Zach. Love me the way you loved me years ago."
"It's not that simple anymore, Daphne."
He held her tight against his aching heart. This was the way it was meant to be between them but with no pregnancy, no other wizard and no miscarriage.
----- ----- -----
Six months later, Zacharias stood alone staring into the front window of Flourish & Blotts. The evening wind was kicking up and down the deserted alleyway, and he threw on the hood of his winter cloak, retreating further into his thoughts.
Elizabeth was gone, a victim of his lack of attachment to her in light of his overwhelming desire for that other witch, the one whose brush with death gave voice to the secrets of her heart. No matter how soiled her declaration of love, he would not allow her to slip away a second time.
"Zach," she whispered, throwing her arms around him from behind.
He turned a bit and saw her clinging to his back. And he turned a bit more, until she crawled into his waiting embrace.
"You're late," he admonished, gathering his bundle of witch close.
"Sorry," she mumbled reaching up to kiss him, just a quick kiss, another apology, but when he kissed her back in that ardent, insistent manner of his, she held tight to his strong figure. Yes, this was the way they were meant to be.
- Fin -
Pairing: Zacharias Smith/Daphne Greengrass
Summary: A look at things spoken and unspoken between Zacharias and Daphne in a style different from my usual.
Rating: Restricted. Adult themes.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Channeling a bit of Z/D in celebration of _____faith’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Faith!
Of Things Spoken and Unspoken
"Zach!" A voice bellowed up the staircase. "Zach, someone's here to see you!"
He groaned, rolled out of bed, threw on his bathrobe and shuffled down the stairs. Squinting into the early morning sunlight, he peered out the front door, rubbed his eyes and looked again. She was still standing there in her winter cloak, suitcase in hand.
"Daphne?"
"Hullo, Zach."
"What are you doing here?" His eyes finally rose from her suitcase to her eyes.
"You told me if I ever needed anything..."
He scratched his head. "Daphne, that was three years ago."
She bit her lower lip and nodded. "Right. Sorry I bothered you." When she withdrew her wand, he didn't hesitate. He lunged for the thing and plucked it out of her hand.
"I didn't say you weren't welcome. I just said it's been awhile." He reached for her suitcase and kicked the door open wide. "Come on in. My room's up the stairs and to the left."
She took off her hood and started up the flight of stairs as he followed in slow pursuit, wondering what she needed this time. It was always something. For as long as he'd known her, she was forever coming to him to help bail her out of difficult situations - a failed relationship, an overdue essay for class, a spat with her father, a loan she would never repay. What now?
Daphne looked around his bedroom as he set her suitcase down. Then he excused himself and went to the loo to clean up and contemplate the situation further.
Three years prior, he had declared his undying love for her. In retrospect, he should have known better than to bare his heart to a woman who was either blind to his feelings or unwilling to acknowledge them for fear they would interfere with the relationship she needed between them, one that held a nothing more than a supporting role for him. But he decided one couldn't live with an unspoken love forever, so he spoke his love loud and clear and never saw or heard from her again, until today.
When he re-entered the room, she was standing by his foggy window, looking out at the busy London street scene. "How've you been, Zach?"
He sighed and crawled back into bed, sitting up and encasing his cold feet and his cold legs in the bedcovers. "About the same. What's going on, Daphne?"
She refused to turn around and look at him. "I need a place to crash for a week or two, until I can find my own place."
"Who kicked you out this time?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Who kicked you out this time?" he repeated.
"He's a nobody, Zach. A zero. A minus, if that's possible. I don't know why I moved in with him." Then she turned around and stared at him. "Do you hate me?"
"A part of me isn't too happy with you."
She nodded. "I'm sorry, Zach."
She was always sorry. She was forever sorry. He had never met a witch who was more sorry about everything.
When he opened his arms, she fell into them crying, "Oh Zach, I've missed you so much." That was the other thing. She always missed him horribly, but she could never stand to be with him for any period of time.
"Shhh...” he soothed. "It's okay. Everything's going to be okay." She buried her face in his chest, knocking them both over and onto the bed in her need to be surrounded by him, to feel the safety of his existence and the stability of his world.
"I was so afraid, Zach. I was afraid it was too late; that you wouldn't let me in again, that you had found someone - a girlfriend or a wife. You haven't, have you?"
Of course, he had a girlfriend. What did she expect? That he would live the remainder of his life cloistered in solitude, waiting for her to show up and break his heart a second time?
"I have a girlfriend, Daphne," he said softly, not lessening his hold on her, but he felt her stiffen. "It's okay. We'll go to my parents' estate. You'll stay there for as long as you need."
"No, Zach," she protested, pushing away from him.
"It's okay, Daphne. Come on. I'll get dressed, and we'll go together. It'll be fine."
Thus reassured, Daphne settled into Zacharias' bed while he packed a few things.
"Come, Daphne," he said, taking her hand.
"Thank you, Zach."
"Of course," he said, smiling at her. A moment later, they Disapparated to his parents’ country home where he would owl Elisabeth and explain the situation.
----- ----- -----
"Zach?"
He rolled over and squinted at her figure outline against the dim torchlight in the hallway. "What's wrong, Daphne?"
She took this as permission to step inside his bedroom and close the door. He sighed and threw down the bedcovers for her. Daphne hurried across the room, crawled inside his bed and snatched the extra pillow, fluffing it up and settling next to Zacharias with her body facing his.
"Out with it," he said.
She sighed and shook her head.
"No?"
She shook her head again. "Can I stay here tonight? With you?"
"Is that all?"
She nodded again, and he laughed that gentle, quiet laugh of his.
"Alright."
Daphne snuggled into Zacharias and felt his warmth wrap around her.
"Daph, you know I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on?” She nodded against his chest. "Let's get some sleep. It's late, and you know how grumpy you get when you don’t get enough sleep." He felt the warm exhalation of her breath against the exposed skin on his chest, that wonderful tickling.
And she listened to the steady, rhythmic beating of his heart until she fell into a blissful, dreamless sleep, one that had eluded her for weeks.
----- ----- -----
"What do you mean you're not in the mood? You're always in the mood," Zacharias said, staring at her.
"Some other time. Not today." She turned away from him and stared out the window at the rolling pastures and the black lake and the dissipating storm clouds.
"Don't be ridiculous, Daphne," he said, grabbing her hand and tugging.
She snatched her hand out of his. "Not today, Zach."
"Are you feeling okay?" Since when did she not want to go riding? She loved horses and was a fantastic rider. They had ridden together since they were kids.
"I need to go to London today, to look for a flat." She turned, rushed up the staircase and slammed her bedroom door shut. When she emerged half an hour later, he was waiting.
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"What about your work?"
He laughed. "Work? What work?"
"Zacharias, you’re horrible!" she chided while straightening his robes and brushing the stray locks out of his eyes. "And you need a haircut."
He rolled his eyes. "You need a lot of things, Daphne. Do you hear me reciting them to you?"
She kissed his cheek and dropped her eyes from his. "Tell me about this girlfriend of yours," she said, picking up her cloak.
"Elisabeth?"
"Yes, Elisabeth."
"What do you want to know?"
"Are you going to marry her?"
He threw on his cloak. "Don't know."
"So you're thinking about it?"
"I think about those things. You know that."
"I thought I was your one true love."
He didn't answer that. She was at it again, digging at him to find answers she didn't want.
"Shall we?" he asked, holding out his hand for her.
----- ----- -----
As they searched the wizarding flats available, Zacharias discovered that Daphne had been working for Fraser & Fraser, initially as an entry level associate then as part of their elite textile design team, and doing quite well. Then, in typical Daphne fashion, she quit abruptly, claiming she was tired of the stress and being creative on someone else’s deadline.
She said nothing about her recent, failed relationship - no name or occupation or favourite Quidditch team. Of course, this meant that they had worked together, and when the relationship went sour, work went sour and she left. She never had much sense where wizards were concerned.
"Daphne?"
"Hmm?" she said, looking in the window of a muggle department store.
"What is it this time, really?"
"What?" she said, turning to look up at him.
"What do you need? You don't need a place to crash. Well, you might need that, but that's not why you came by. What is it?"
She shook her head and laughed. "Look at that coat, Zach. I think it’s fabulous. What do you think?"
He shook his head. "I don't want a muggle coat. They're bloody useless and can't hold a warming charm."
"Come on, let's try it on,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the store while he protested.
Thirty minutes later, he was wearing the bloody muggle coat, and they were strolling down another street.
"I missed you, Zach," she said, reaching for his hand.
"I know, Daphne."
"You do?"
"You always miss me."
She looked up him, surprised, before nodding. "I do, don't I?"
Yes, she was about as daft as they came when it concerned her own heart, at least that's what Zacharias had always told himself. Did this explain her blinding rejection of him three years ago? He wasn't sure.
"Do you love your Elisabeth?" she asked, looking inside a window filled with handbags- velvet and diamond kissed bags, large and small bags, black and white bags, and her hand remained nicely tucked in his.
"Of course, I love Elisabeth." There was love and there was love, and Zacharias had no intention of discussing the finer points of those two emotions with Daphne.
Daphne's brow furrowed, and she looked away from the display of handbags. "Does she return this love you have for her?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "We've never discussed it."
"Oh."
And why should they have? Zacharias never had that conversation again, with any woman, after the disastrous fall out from his heart-wrenching confession to Daphne, the one that crash landed his life and crushed his heart and spoiled his tender dreams, dreams that young men have only once in their life.
"That's a beautiful dress, don't you think?" she said, pointing to a black chiffon shift in a window display. "Those shoes are ghastly, but the dress is ... well, it's marvellous."
"Would you like to go and try it on?" he asked.
"No, I'm on a bit of a budget right now."
That's right. She had quit her job, dumped her boyfriend and needed a new flat and Galleons down for it.
"Don't be ridiculous. I'll get it for you if you fancy it."
She shook her head, not looking at him, still looking at that elusive dress in the window. "No, I didn't mean it that way, Zach. I didn't say it was beautiful so you would buy it for me. I only meant that it was beautiful, you know?"
So their day went, going from flat to flat, store front to store front, winding in and out of their past and present with no talk of the future, only this amorphous discussion about objects and things and their attachment to each other via their attachment to other people and things. And he let her play the game she always played.
----- ----- -----
"Zach?"
He looked over the spine of his book and saw her peering through the half-opened door to his room.
"Yes?"
She came in, blew out his bedside candles and held out her hand. He relinquished his book, and she tossed it onto the bedside table before settling in, lying side-by-side with him. And he took to watching the moonlit shadows dance on the ceiling while he waited for her to speak.
"You're right. I don't need a flat or a place to stay," she said. Why had it taken her ten days to make this confession?
He sighed, "I didn't think so."
Then she fell silent again, and the only sound heard was the gentle whisper of her breathing and his, not quite in rhythm with each other.
"I almost died two months ago."
"What?" He sat up and turn to her, staring at her expressionless face in the glaring moonlight.
"I should have died. I wanted to die, but I didn't."
"What are you talking about? What happened? And why didn't someone owl me?"
She continued to stare at the ceiling. "I was pregnant, Zach. I had a miscarriage, and the Healers couldn't stop the bleeding."
Pregnant? She was pregnant?
"Do you know what I thought while I was lying there bleeding to death? I thought that I deserved to die because I was planning on getting rid of the baby. I didn't want it, and maybe I killed it by thinking those horrible thoughts."
"No, Daphne, no..."
She put her hand on his to stay any further conversation or arguments. "And then I thought of you, Zach, and the last time we saw each other. And I thought how awful it would be if I died without seeing you again because you would never know how much I love you." She turned and looked at him.
"I know you love me, Daph."
She shook her head. "No, Zach, not love you but love you the way you loved me. I've always loved you."
"But you told me - "
"I was scared, Zacharias, scared."
"Scared? Of what?"
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. Of you and me. Of letting you see me, really see me. What if you didn't like what you saw? What would I have then?"
"Daphne," he admonished lightly, shaking his head. He saw through her multiple guises and neurotic insecurities long ago. Didn't she realize that?
"When I saw myself dying in St. Mungos after losing a baby I didn't want from a man I didn't love, I realized how mixed up it all was. And all I wanted was you, Zach."
He stared at her in the shattered moonlight before closing his eyes and trying to absorb the enormity of what she had dumped in his lap, the way she dumped everything in his lap. Only this time he wasn't sure he could fix everything and make it right again. In fact, he knew some things, once broken, could never be made whole again.
"I know your have your Elisabeth and your life, and I didn't come back to break that apart. Think what you like. I came back to tell you how I feel, that's all."
He opened his eyes and saw her crawling out of bed.
"If things change, if you want me back in your life, you know how to reach me."
He leaned forward and latched onto her with both hands. "Don't go, Daphne." She paused. "Give a wizard a bloody moment, will you?"
Zacharias pulled Daphne to him and wrapped his arms around her. Then he buried his pained face in the nape of her neck. She was his witch. She had always been his witch. There was no other for him, but the enormity of her revelations… Didn’t she realize his heart had limits as well?
"What am I to do with you Daphne Greengrass?" he muttered.
"Love me back, Zach. Love me the way you loved me years ago."
"It's not that simple anymore, Daphne."
He held her tight against his aching heart. This was the way it was meant to be between them but with no pregnancy, no other wizard and no miscarriage.
----- ----- -----
Six months later, Zacharias stood alone staring into the front window of Flourish & Blotts. The evening wind was kicking up and down the deserted alleyway, and he threw on the hood of his winter cloak, retreating further into his thoughts.
Elizabeth was gone, a victim of his lack of attachment to her in light of his overwhelming desire for that other witch, the one whose brush with death gave voice to the secrets of her heart. No matter how soiled her declaration of love, he would not allow her to slip away a second time.
"Zach," she whispered, throwing her arms around him from behind.
He turned a bit and saw her clinging to his back. And he turned a bit more, until she crawled into his waiting embrace.
"You're late," he admonished, gathering his bundle of witch close.
"Sorry," she mumbled reaching up to kiss him, just a quick kiss, another apology, but when he kissed her back in that ardent, insistent manner of his, she held tight to his strong figure. Yes, this was the way they were meant to be.
- Fin -