(A/N: No more author's notes from me, read my profile page for my out-of-fic thoughts updated every weekend please.)
Today is June 24th, and I can't seem to function properly. He wasn't visibly frustrated when he leaves for work, but the door slams he exists and I know why. He just doesn't seem to understand why moving on has been impossible for me. Even ten years later, I'm mourning for him every time this day comes around, and not carrying on for my family's sake. Ten solid years.
It's not that I don't love my husband. I wouldn't have married, nor had two blessed and beautiful children with him if I didn't truly love him. He knows this, but I can tell by the look in his dark brown eyes, so very different from steely grey, that he just wants to blurt out and ask me, "Why?".
Why I still have nightmares some nights.
Why I still wear the tarnished bracelet that miraculously has kept its engraving.
Why I asked Harry Potter to share a memory with me years after it happened.
Why I can't just move on.
Truth is, I don't think I could have gotten any closer to moving on unless I had known what exactly happened to my dear friend, my boyfriend… at the time of course. I thanked Harry endlessly when he let me slip into the stone pensieve and watch as the focus of my nightmares was tortured by the Cruciatus Curse, then as he and Harry bravely fought off an Acromantula. The childish debate on who should take the cup, Harry being helped to the trophy as both their hands clasped the handles, and finally, Cedric Diggory's body falling dead to the ground by the force of Avada Kedavra. I didn't cry after I was spat out of the pensieve, and I didn't cry when I said goodbye to Harry.
I apparated home, took my wand to my temple, and sobbed.
Later, with the cloud of memories that explained every "why" swirling calmly in the shallow basin on the dinning room table, I called my husband into the room. The sun was getting ready to set and I had promised to myself that after this, I would try to live the 24th of June as normally as I possibly could. When he walked into the room I pushed the basin towards him and nodded.
"This is why."
With an anxious look in his eyes, he dipped forward knowingly and somehow I knew that things would be different when he was done. He would know how I could still love a dead man after all these years.