They always thought I'd never amount to anything. 'The little sister,' they always said. 'The youngest (and only) Weasley daughter.' Such was my fate, or so I thought in my years before Hogwarts. Then, I met him.
It all started innocently enough. A word here or there, an accidental brush of his hand against mine. It may have been innocent, but it drove me insane in a not-so-innocent way. Why couldn't he just come out and say it?
It was my fourth year before either of us acknowledged it out loud. I was in love with my professor, he with his student. It was the cliché of all clichés—forbidden lust, made ever so tempting by the fact it was unacceptable.
In my sixth year, we were uncontrollable. The heat of passion, the heat of war. We came together once, twice, thrice; countless times. It seemed as though our souls yearned for nothing but, as one by one once-loved pastimes fell away for a chance to be in another's embrace.
Seventh year. The war was over, but our hearts still beat together. It was not to be so. We cared too little; we cared too much. Suspicions grew, fueled by a deep-seated rage and a need for vengeance. We noticed naught but ourselves, surrounded only by the world we'd created in our hearts.
He died the morning of my graduation.
That is not to say he was killed. Rather, he saw what he had to do; wanted me to have something left after all of the carnage and fear. His desperation showed him but one option.
That fateful morning, I awoke alone in a cold, hard bed. I knew in the depths of my heart what he had done, what he would do; even as my feet carried me up one unfeeling staircase after another, I could not keep the tears, the fearful knowledge of my heart, from escaping.
I reached the top steps, panting with saline-blurred vision, to see him standing there framed by the window, the first light of the morning sun at his back. He looked so tall and proud, even then. A stray sunbeam illuminated hair as dark as the middle of a moonless night sky; a soul shone clearly through the eyes, tortured by mistrust and inky black deeds.
He saw me then, and lost his nerve. Jittery and jumpy after getting this far, his foot faltered on the worn sill of the window. He flailed, unable to stop the pull of the earth so far beneath him.
Falling through the sky, black-robed arms pinwheeling at his sides, he almost looked the bat he brought to mind at first glance. Except for the eyes. The eyes told the utter fear he felt deep in his bones at the thought of what came next.
They all celebrated, glad to be rid of him. All except me. They assumed it was from witnessing his descent from the astronomy tower; in part it was. More so, though, my sullen disposition was caused by they who were my allies, they and their unrelenting criticism of him for his past.
They didn't see his eyes.
They don't know I'm here today, at the stone that marks where my love now lays. Rest in peace…
…Severus Snape.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters—that privilege belongs to J.K. Rowling.
Author's note: I wrote this all in one sitting, so if anything seems odd, it's because it was all written rather quickly. I just kind of had a thought: "what if Ginny fell in love with Snape?" And everything grew from there.
This is my first foray into fan fiction, at least into writing it, after quite a long break, and about four years since I last posted anything, so I hope you liked it as much as I do.
Gwynevere