AN: Just felt compelled to write a one shot. I know I haven't worked on any of my other stories in forever, but military duty took over and so did the writer's block. Some day maybe I'll finish but until then I just wanted to write this short one-shot. Takes place years in the future and can be compatible with all books actually. As usual don't own anything but rather just am borrowing some amazing characters from Rowling. Enjoy

The Simple Life

"Do I still love you? Absolutely. There is not a doubt in my mind. Through all my mind, my ego…I was always faithful in my love for you. That I made you doubt it, that is the great mistake of a life full of mistakes. The truth doesn't set us free, Robin. I can tell you I love you as many times as you can stand to hear it and all that does, the only thing, is remind us…that love is not enough. Not even close."

~George: "Life as a House"

"You know. I've had a great life," the old woman started to say. Her once untamable brown hair had turned white over the years. The lines on her war drawn face have increased since those stress filled youthful days. She felt as though she had lived a thousand years and yet could not be considered old in wizarding years. They could live decades longer than average humans, some hundreds. They had potions that could re-grow bones, heal deep wounds and salvage bodies ravaged by deadly poisons. But only those who lived exclusively in that secret society were saved from the troubles that their Muggle loving neighbors could endure. Potions and spells cannot heal all wounds.

"I married a great man, my best friend. I had two very special and surprisingly gifted children. Someday soon I may live to see my first grandchild enter the world…" The old woman smiled as she thought about her oldest, her little girl, finally tying the knot with her former enemy's progeny. The woman, aged too far beyond her years, continued her story avoiding the eyes of the portrait before her. She had waited decades to tell this story to this person, ashamed by her actions even when she knew if she had to redo it all over again she would choose the same path. Her husband, the loving man that he has been ever since she met him that first year of school, the man who should have known everything there was about the love of his life, had never suspected that his wife had loved another, and had kept his memory close to her heart even after all these years. The man in the portrait's eyes followed the slight form of the woman who stood before him, not speaking. She had visited him every year on this day, but neither spoke, neither knew what could possibly be said.

The woman hesitated; she took a deep breath as another bout of pain racked her small frame. For all the cures her world had to offer, it was no surprise that both worlds still could not help her. She knew her time was short, in both senses, someone would come along eventually and wonder about the gray haired war hero talking to a painting.

"I never forget the day I ran to you, when he left me, when he chose someone else that year. I had plans, for our future, I had everything planned out from when we would start dating to the kids we'd have, the wedding, the careers. We were polar opposites in everything, with only a single goal in common, to keep our mutual friend Harry alive to fight Voldemort. But along the way you start to see your best friend as the guy you should end up with, no matter your differences, and that's how it was for me. I was hurt, devastated, that he would change the plan on me, though I know I never told him my feelings at that point." Another spasm hit her body and she had to pause and breath through the pain. Her head was starting to ache, and she knew her heart was pumping faster than it should have been, but she wasn't finished, not even close.

"I needed a sympathetic ear…all my friends tried to cheer me up but that was not enough. I needed the truth, however painful, I needed someone who wouldn't lie to me, coddle me, or comfort me like a child and in that I found myself a kindred spirit. A soulmate. Life, love, fairy tales, and bad movies all tell us that in the end we find our soulmate and life goes on as "happily-ever-after". But that would never be the case with us. We began our affairs in secret, lies, and with the knowledge that there was no possible way we could finish the war both alive. We didn't need words of false promises, hopes for happiness in the future, somehow we both knew that I would in the end go back to him someday and you would die, a hero, fighting to rectify the past. And even when I left to go off with him, I knew that part of me would always be missing, that a piece of me would stay here, with you and could never belong to him. I left your rooms that morning knowing that you would have to fulfill your destiny and murder your mentor and I would have to fulfill mine by disappearing with Harry." More pain; her vision started to double.

"I never told you that I loved you that morning. I never told you I forgave you for the pain you caused us in making us believe you weren't on our side. I never told you that even though Lily would always remain in your heart that I had hoped that a part of me would also be there, next to her, but not outshining her. And I never told you…" She glanced up then, she looked into his dark eyes knowing that this wasn't completely the same man as the one who once stood before her in flesh and blood, but was merely a poor man's substitute.

"…If I could have, if I knew it would have changed everything, I would have gone back for you that night. I would have saved you. Even if I still chose the same path, knowing you were alive, somewhere, thinking of me and the bond we shared would have been enough. I should have told you that night, even with the boys standing there in pain and torment from your violent end, I should have announced to the world that I loved you, that I never would forget you, or what we had. That a piece of me died that night you were taken away even though I knew that there was no way both of us could survive…together. I have loved you from the moment you touched my hand in friendship to the moment I closed your eyes in death." Tears began to flow silently down her face and she knew she couldn't hold on much longer, the medicine she took only guaranteed her a short amount of time, and she knew she had already spent most of it on her explanation. Death would come quickly if she didn't hold out a few moments longer.

He had never spoken to her. Part of her always wondered if he resented her decision to return to Ron and chose a mediocre life with him over the possibilities that she could have had with him. They were the perfect match on some many planes, on so many levels, kindred spirits, soulmates, lovers, and friends and no one in either of her worlds would ever have understood that had they known, and somehow they both knew it.

"I never doubted your love for a moment." He finally responded after a long pause. He glanced down from his painting into the prematurely aged face of the young woman he once fell in love with. It was true what she said, they would never had had an easy life if she chose to remain with him, she was always destined to go back to the redhead as much as it had pained him. But knowing this, feeling her words touched him as much now through this portrait as it would have through flesh and blood had he survived. He knew her time was near, it read clearly on her face the amount of pain she was in. A pity with all the medicine in his world and hers that no one could as of yet cure cancer. He knew the potion she took, it gave her enough time to sneak in here and say her goodbyes. It humbled him to know that she would end her life here, beside the shadow of his once former self than rather with her husband and family. He watched as a smile crept across her face, the lines around her eyes faded and she looked as though she was dreaming of a peaceful time. He watched as her heart began to slow, and her breath began to labor, and at last when her lips spoke for the last time.

She said his name.

"Severus…"

That night Hermione Jean Granger Weasley passed away in the office of the Headmistresses at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry beside the painting of her once friend, lover, and teacher, Severus Snape.

"Did you say it? I love you. I don't ever want to live without you. You changed my life. Did you say it? Make a plan. Set a goal. Walk towards it. But every now and then, look around. Drink it in. Cause this is it. It may all be gone tomorrow."

~~Meredith "Grey's Anatomy"

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