He had returned that summer. Hurt and bloodied. He had helped to capture his father and Aunt and watched his mother die. His life becoming more and more brutal as the years went on. He was no longer the horrible, ignorant boy he had been. But sometimes he wished he could roll back time and allow those days to return.
He had hurt so many in the last year and could find no way to make up for it. No one was forgiving him. But he didn't think he deserved their forgiveness either. Ignored and thought to still be un-trust worthy no one talked to him. Two thirds of the golden trio still giving him glares. The other locked in her room at Grimauld place.
He could not figure out why she never said a word any more. The smart know it all had become reserved and quiet. She came down for meals and went to the library. She immersed herself in book after book. He followed her and watched her as she cried.
She didn't know he watched. She didn't know anyone did. Her tears were never ceasing and her hurt and pain seemed to only be increasing. Her parents were dead. Killed by order of Voldemort. Not many knew, it seemed to have been kept hush, hush for the moment being.
She had been there to see it. Being held back in a closet by Professor Lupin. She watched through a cracked door as her parents fell limp to the ground. Her life becoming more and more brutal has the days went on. She could not slow it down and wished to rewind.
She didn't know he followed her in wonder, as tears constantly ran down her face in desperate need to escape the emotion inside her.
It had come to be an obsession with him. Why did she cry? Why did she seclude herself? He wanted to ask, to know. But the past wouldn't allow him to talk. He knew he had no right to know. No right to be in her very presence. But curiosity tugged at his heart. Curiosity kept him awake at night and thankfully away from his nightmares.
Silently he sat in the empty library one day. Knowing she would be there. He picked up a book off the table and began to skim it over. He heard the creaking of a door and slow steps in to the room. They stopped and he continued to drift his eyes over the page. She didn't move. He let his eyes lift up to where she stood. She had been crying. The wet streaks told him so along with the red in her eyes. She went to turn, to leave.
"Wait." He whispered. She stopped. He didn't know what to say at this. He had started the conversation he needed to say something else. He searched his mind, but the only questions he could think of were the ones that plagued his mind. "Why do you cry?" His question came out before his brain could stop him. He couldn't say another word, so silence came over the room. She slowly turned around and faced him once more. She tilted her head and looked straight through his eyes. It seemed to be hours of her searching his soul before she spoke.
"Why do you care?" She came back with not an answer, but a question. He couldn't look at her. It seemed she didn't expect him to answer and for this very reason he did.
"I've changed." He said quietly. Only loud enough to let her know he was speaking.
"Does change let people care?" He wasn't sure if this was a question for him to answer, but he did with a nod. "Tragedies make people care?" He looked up into her eyes at this question and saw the tears coming down once more. "Does hurt make people care?" She asked again her words tight from the tears. "Am I still suppose to care?" Her final question puzzled him and the feeling showed on his face.
"Why are you hurting?" He asked praying his words were right. It was her turn to look towards the floor.
"Does the caring you have fall into trusting too?" He nodded.
"They're dead." She said simply.
"Who?"
"My parents. They are gone. They were taken from me as I stood and watched." He sat in shock. His own pain still fresh and to find someone who would understand was comforting and upsetting at once. She shook from her tears and her pain, but did he even have the right to comfort her. Would the past allow him that? When she fell to the ground in sobs he knew it would be taken well. He got up and met her on the ground. She looked at him questions held in her eyes. So much pain in them, to much for one person to live with. He placed a hand on her shoulder and she fell into him.
She had already lost in this war and to loose again was breaking her. Her first love was gone. Something she had been so happy to finally have was ripped from her. A few friends gone too. Many didn't know how she stood on her feet anymore and as of this moment she wasn't. He comforted her. A man who was taught to hate had learned to care. In the hardest way a person could, it seemed he learned a little of love.
He held her as she shook with sobs. Her pain and anguish soaking into his shirt. He didn't seem to mind. He stroked her back to ease the pain.
She pulled back when the tears dissipated. She looked into his eyes. Eyes of the very boy she used to hate. To loath as they threw insults to each other. But this boy was no longer in these eyes. These were the eyes of a man with sympathy. A man who knew and understood the pain she went through each day. She could get use to eyes such as these. She could get use to the comfort they brought her knowing that someone else felt how she felt. But would the past allow these eyes to remain? Would the past come in a vengeance and cause the boy to return to these eyes? She pulled back from him incase the boy had only gone or a moment yet would return. She stood unsteady and walked from the library leaving the man on the floor staring at her retreating body.
He knew he had done something wrong. Knew things would never change the past that lingered with him each day. But something had been accomplished even if she did not see it herself. She had let someone comfort her and hold her. Let her see her tears as they were, and not just a reminder of what everyone was going through.
An accomplishment had been made for him as well. He in that moment had learned a meaning of comfort he had never learned. A meaning of comfort that intertwined with love something he himself had never understood.
Days went by and she had let him stay in the same room with her. The only one she let do so. No form of touch was given again.
She was scared, it was true. The touch of someone had let her feel safe and warm inside once more. But this person was the same who, past had shown, had a cold heart. He had been through much causing his heart to warm. And that warmth, it seemed, was now directed towards her. She wasn't suppose to feel safe and warm. Her world was being destroyed bit by bit. Pain was suppose to envelope her. She wouldn't allow herself happiness anymore.
But, the comfort he provided was something she couldn't shake. The feeling of having hope once more was too enticing for her to stay away. She let herself sit in rooms with him. Allowed the presence of him to be the only comfort she received. But soon that too was not enough. Every day her heart remembered the comfort of his touch. The understanding in his arms. Her heart cried out for that comfort knowing it was there, but knowing she stopped herself from having it.
Her nightmares pushed her. Night after night she woke up in a cold sweat. Night after night she wished for those arms of understanding as she cried. Not allowing herself the hope her heart craved, she was slowly killing herself inside and she knew it.
He was afraid for her. He heard her cries at night. Heard her whimpers of tears in the mornings. He watched as she pretended to read each book, eyes glazed over in pain.
His heart ached for her. Ached to let her know, he knew her pain. But he didn't comforted her again. With every cry he heard he remembered the past and knew she did too. It was not his place to comfort her. He knew a better candidate should step up. Many tried to comfort her nightly cries. He had heard the rushing of feet to her room for a while and her screams for them to leave. Pain would ache through his heart as she refused comfort and love from those she had loved for so long.
The night came when he heard her cries, but no footsteps had come. Sleep still claimed her and wouldn't let her awake grasping her in pain. When the screams became louder he left his room behind to go to hers. He stood in the door way watching her twist and turn. Watch as the sleeping tears slid down her face. Heard the whimpering and the pleading. His heart was breaking and the past still hovering in his mind. But a thought clouded out the past. 'I am worse of a person now to not comfort her in this pain, than I was then to have caused the pain.' His thoughts lead his feet to her bed and sat down next to her. He wiped away the sweat and stroked her hair. Still crying she opened her eyes. They shimmered and danced in the tears as she stared into his own. She buried her head into his chest and cried. She cried howling pain letting every bit of the comfort he gave encase her.