Dogs and Dreams
What we are now versus what we thought we could be.
It was what they had always dreamed of.
It was a house on a beautiful street. The picket fence was white, of course, and occasionally there was a splotch of flowers that couldn't quite stay behind their boundaries, having to reach out and say a greeting to the dogs being walked happily on the sparkling sidewalk.
It was a comfortable relationship that stretched into the morning, where they could sit with their knees pressed together, their coffee cups overflowing and clinking whenever the moments stretched into silence.
It was the breathy sighs each evening, the casualty of two bodies so close that shared breaths were easy and calm. Where the television was lowered so that the news was a gentle hum as they kissed and slept and dreamed and loved.
The animals that were treated like children. The baby that would be on its way, a nursery already painted and decorated. The holidays shared and loved.
But it was strange, empty.
The lack of war almost haunted them, forced them to refocus on the smaller pictures. Voldemort was no longer threatening their very existence. No, now it was paying bills, settling down. It was strange.
One could almost crave it. The war.
Rust clawing up your nose, claiming victims with its red seeping image. The carnage and anxiety, the adrenaline that shoved its way into your sight at each aching moment. Running and racing and rushing into the fire, strategy and venom and heat and hate and love all the same, every moment the last and your lips say he words that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
It was the uneasy darkness that settled over the night. The fact that you knew the battle was never really over, that it could start up at any second and consume each little thing that you craved and loved.
It was the fear that shadowed the morning, where you huddled over your food and wondered if it would be your last taste of home. When you had a brief moment of relaxation that could only last so long.
It was the danger that was cradled in the nighttime. The dog at the end of the chain. The knife in your back.
They had what they had always dreamed of, but was it even worth it anymore?