She found him in the garden, his back against the cool stone wall, his head slumped towards the brick. She couldn't see his face but she knew the eyes were closed and his hand would be strained in a tight fist. From the doorway she could see his whole figure and again, as of lately, she felt herself resigned to the way the shoulder hung like a torn limb. When she caught him in these moments she looked for as long as possible before he felt her gaze – he always did – and turned around, lost for only a moment, hiding it as he rubbed his long nose. He would take her hand gently, a gesture she still wasn't quite used to, and squeeze it.
Today he did not look up, though she looked at him with wider eyes than she'd regarded the first swish of her wand, long ago. The moment passed, the one where he felt her familiar, scrutinizing look like a bee sting and came back to himself, recalling the living scent of dusty, thick books.
She moved toward him and saw the closed eyes, the tight hand. She saw the twisted mouth and taught eyebrows. Soft eyebrows that had always wobbled and scowled at her in frequent, exasperated delight. They were jagged now, she thought, the word cutting into her heart like a knife. A silence seemed to fill him up and his eyelids flickered as if trying to remember, or forget. Still he did not sense her. She knelt next to him, her book falling into the warm, wet earth.
In her thoughts she said his name. I'm still here. We are still here. Look at me.
When she took his hand he startled. She pressed her hands to his – a hard squeeze. He stared at her with clear eyes, and then he picked her book out of the mud and placed it on the bench. She tried to talk but her voice was shrill and broken. All she could do was hold his hand. Touching her hair, her frizzy hair, he pulled her face to his so their foreheads met. In his face she searched for an answer but found none; all he could give was the faithful brush of his lips. Their eyes closed together. The sky had deepened into ashen grey, but in the garden, where smiling ghosts danced behind their eyes in an eternal repose, the world still blazed in scarlet and gold.