Well, this was actually written a while back. Like, three days after I finished reading DH. I'm not sure why I haven't put it up before this - the only reason I'm putting it up now is because I'm leaving in two days for a somewhat forced sabbatical from and I feel the need to put up as many new little fics as possible. Don't know why. Anyway! I guess this was kind of my own personal backlash at the epilogue in DH. I hadn't really counted on there being an epilogue where she'd tell us who married who and had kids. I wasn't really happy with it. This is the result of that unhappiness. Forgive grammatical errors, please. Constructive criticism welcomed. Reviews are oxygen! Dizzy.
I can put on a good show. I should be an actress for all the acting that I've done these past eight years. God, how could it have been that long? How could it all fall apart? When did I stop loving my husband? How did I get to the point of only staying with him for the children? How did I even manage to have children? They were never really on my list. Well, at least I know the answer to that one, plain and simple. I'm an only child. He's got lots of siblings. Of course he'd want a big family. And I loved him enough back then to agree to it. Now though? I'm not sure I love him at all. He must feel the difference. He's got to. But then, he's always had the emotional range of a teaspoon.
I've had excuses, over the years, and now they've run out. I know it'll hurt him. I know it'll be painful. I can't bear the truth – that this will tear my family apart. Not just my children, but the rest of his family, too. The family that has become my own. But my children are all at Hogwarts now. They are growing up. And I hate to cause them pain, hate to rip their lives in two, but I find more and more, as if I feel I have to. Without the smallest one here to brighten my life, it's become so dull. So meager, so bleak. So not me. I could've done great things. I still can, but it's not the same. I'll always wonder what my life would've been like, had I not had children. If I'd accepted that job at Hogwarts. If I had the summers off to just research and spend in the libraries, working on my theories and practices, making new spells and potions. Just doing what I do best. But instead, I've spent my years caring for children I wasn't sure I wanted.
Don't get me wrong, I love them all to death. I would do anything for them. Even stay married to a man I don't love anymore, their father. I would do anything. But they are growing up now, and I've run out of excuses. They don't need me as much as they used to. And I don't have them here as a distraction anymore.
When did it happen? When did I start brushing off my own husband, and when did he stop asking? We don't even sleep in the same bed anymore. The children hardly ever come home for the holidays now, and when they do, they're much to busy to notice Mum and Dad don't share a room. When did we start making plans without the other? When did we start to make friends without each other? When did it become okay to go a few days without even so much as kiss? When did this become my life?
I don't know. It's not a precise moment. I can't pin it down. However, I do know when I first realized I was lying to myself. That was a precise moment. I can pin it down. My youngest asked me why she never saw Daddy and I kiss. I didn't know what to tell her. I still wouldn't. Maybe it was when we stopped making plans as a couple. Maybe it was when I looked into my future and saw nothing changing. Maybe it was when I realized he looks at me like he looks at every other woman. Maybe it was when I realized I'd put my dreams on hold for this man. Maybe it was when I realized I'd started to dream of another man.
No more. My dreams can wait no longer. My soul has to be free. There's a Hogwarts teaching position open, and Draco Malfoy's wife has been dead for a year. My dreams will not wait. My soul will be free.