Transitory

Everything is unfamiliar. The things we knew, the people we loved - it's all different now. We changed. At the end of it all I believed we'd find some peace. I thought that with the threat of darkness gone that maybe there might be some light; we deserve that much. But I was wrong. I was so wrong. The peace I thought we would find was plagued by nightmares. I sit up crying, trembling, cold. I remember life before it all. I remember life during. I remember the light in your eyes, and I wonder where that light has gone. I remember the sound of your laugh and I miss it. You don't smile and the sounds of your painful screams in the middle of the night tear me apart. I want to go to you, but I know that you find solace in nothing. There is no comfort to give you that could ever be enough. I realize I am helpless against time and what it has done to us. I want to turn it back. I want to go back to when I could have saved you. I want to freeze it there when I knew your smile and your eyes weren't haunted.

But this is all we have now. Silence. Our own darknesses. You can't fight your demons; I can't face mine. We don't talk like we used to because the memories of what we were just aren't enough. I try not to fall apart. You go in your room and close your door, and you think I don't hear you cry. I cry when I'm alone because it's easier to believe I'm not weak that way. Nothing takes away the powerlessness I feel when I know that we used to be better than this; we used to have more than this. We used to be more than empty. I remember when we lived.

I remember you when you still had dreams.

It wasn't always like this. You, me, him. There were more than silences and avoidance. I sit across from you at the table; Ron sits on the side, between us. There's a ghost of something in Ron's eyes; he's not the same. None of us are. It hurts to know we've been scarred so deeply that we can't even look at each other anymore without feeling guilt - guilt for not doing better, guilt for not making the outcome what we thought it would be, guilt for not saving each other from this. Ron finishes his coffee and leaves. The three of us don't have what we used to; I wonder where it went, everything we used to share, and I wonder why after all we've been through it had to go at all. There's a shadow in your eyes - you're so lost, and I don't know if it's somewhere in yourself or nowhere. I miss you. I miss what you used to be, what we used to be.

“Don't do this.”

I don't know what to say to you anymore. I watch you struggle so desperately every day just to breathe, just to break the surface of this. You think I don't notice when you hold the pictures of us back then, before we were so ruined; you think I don't notice the pain wash over your face. You think you can just hide it from me like you hide it from everyone else - you don't fool them, either. You move to leave.

“Don't, Hermione.” you say without the courtesy of looking at me.

“You're killing yourself like this.”

“Then nothing's changed.”

Some times I wonder if, maybe, you're right. That scares me. We used to have faith in each other, and I'm not sure we even have that now. “Stop. Just…stop doing this.” You look at me and I wish you hadn't. I see what I already knew, what I don't want to have to believe: you're the broken little boy you never got to be. I wonder if I could find the pieces of you, and if somehow I could put you back together.

“Stop trying to save me.”

“Don't you see what you're doing?” I stand up, knocking over my chair. “Why can't you just understand that killing yourself this way… can't you see you're killing me, too?” I didn't want to cry in front of you but I can't do this anymore.

You say “I'm sorry.”

You leave.

We always knew we couldn't win. It was just easier to fight and pretend that in the end we would have something left.