DISCLAIMER: Don't own it, just having a play, will return when finished. (Wish I did own it, then I could keep Snape :D) Don't own the song either. Anything recognizable belongs to JKR and 'Rise Against' (not sure who 'actually' owns it :S)

She was his savior.
He stood, motionless, the rain streaming down his face, disguising his tears.

It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgot
What the colour of her eyes were and her scars or how she got them

Twenty Years. Two words, two simple words and yet they held so much significance.
He was twenty years her senior. They had lived with and loved each other for twenty years. She had been gone from his life for twenty years.

As the telling signs of age rain down a single tear is dropping
Through the valleys of an aging face that this world has forgotten
There is no reconciliation that will put me in my place
And there is no time like the present to drink these draining seconds

They called themselves her friends, but they abandoned her when she allowed her feelings to come to the front.
"She chose me but I keep failing her." A whisper, spoken to the dying trees that surrounded him.

But seldom do these words ring true when I'm constantly failing you
Like walls that we just can't break through until we disappear

They had shunned her, believing her to hate him. He believed her to think him a charity case.
Someone to be saved. Someone who deserved to be saved.

That's when she said I don't hate you boy
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save

He wasn't a trusting man, being a slave to two masters does that to a man.
But there was something about her that made him trust her, and made him realise how much he cared about her.

That's when I told her I love you girl
But I'm not the answer for the questions that you still have

He had made mistakes, dark mistakes that set him apart from the rest of the Wizarding world.
Unconsciously he flexed his arm, the arm that bore the proof of his mistakes. The Dark Mark.

Bathed in flames we held the brand
Uncurled the fingers in your hand
Pressed into the flesh like sand
Now do you understand?

How could she not hate someone who bore that mark? The mark of the one who hated people of her birth. The mark of the one who hated everything she stood for.

That's when she said I don't hate you boy
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save

He didn't know how he survived without her. She was his heart, his everything. She was gone, and he was still alive.

That's when I told her I love you girl

It felt like a final 'fuck you' from the gods, taking away the one person he ever loved; who ever loved him.
She would have loved solving the puzzle of 'why her and not me?' She thought I was a puzzle to be solved.

But I'm not the answer for the questions that you still have

A brief thought of her so-called friends, who never even bothered to come to her funeral.

1000 miles away
There's nothing left to say

And yet, he couldn't bring himself to hate them as they hated her.

I don't hate you
I don't hate you, no

Until the day he died, he would wonder how she managed to crawl under the stone walls surrounding his heart; how he managed to love, true love this time. And if this isn't love, then he didn't want to know what was.

So tell me now
If this ain't love then how do we get out?
Because I don't know

And he would never understand how she couldn't hate him; wouldn't hate him, after everything he had done. He killed Albus Dumbledore, he watched her friends tortured at the hands of the Death Eaters and done nothing to stop it, and because of him her friends hated and rejected her. But she still loved him. She was too good for him, he didn't deserve to be loved by someone and kind and as caring as her.

That's when she said I don't hate you boy
I just want to save you while there's still something left to save
That's when I told her I love you girl

Worn and faded, words barely legible were carved into the rough granite of the tombstone:

'Hermione Jean Granger
September 19th 1979 - January 8th 2026
Loved by Severus Tobias Snape
But I'm not the answer for the questions that you still have'

The one question even Hermione Granger couldn't answer - Why don't you hate me?
All she ever did was smile and shake her head stating:

I don't hate you
I don't hate you, no