A/N: This "story" is going to be a collection of drabbles and one-shots; some may be connected, most will not. I hope you enjoy them! -slbb
"What Your Heart Holds" (Severus Snape/Hermione Granger)
The first time you see him after the day you left him to die, he is stoically sitting in a wheelchair. He is being presented with an accolade that has the sole purpose of assuaging the guilt of those who did not believe.
You see him and instead, your heart is strangled by your own guilt, yet you are drawn to him, inexplicably, and decide to visit him while he rebuilds his mind, his body, his spirit. You go each day and sit in his room as you both read.
You return every day because your heart tells you it is where you belong.
It takes him three months to acknowledge you are there.
It takes another year for you to realize that you love him. You love him madly and deeply and wildly, but you keep your feelings from this man who has no experience with those things.
The first time he goes to St Mungo's, he takes you with him and you watch, curious, as he sits in the room Alice and Frank share, as they circle him in ever-narrowing orbits. His face is contorted in regret, but he remains there, silent and waiting. When Alice tentatively reaches for his hand, you feel as though your heart has shattered and your love for him will bleed all over the room, but you keep your eyes steady, because he has brought you with him for your strength, and not your weakness.
You ask him to come live with you because you spend every moment together anyway. A man like him needs a home, and you can give him that. But you don't say it, and you don't tell him that it's also because your heart is lost whenever he is not by your side.
You suspect he feels the same.
You wait.
It takes six years—six years—for him to touch you. The first time, it is a whisper, a suggestion that may or may not have been intentional, and you freeze because you are afraid that the response that swells in your heart will overpower you and overwhelm him.
Months later, when he eventually makes love to you, you find you can do no more than brush the hair from his face before he looks away, yet you find his arms are enough.
You discover he is a gentle man.
He tells you he loves you in many silent ways, and you listen with your entire soul, without trying to figure out the best words to say in response because he needs to be heard. And believed. And trusted. That's all.
When he disappears through the Floo without a word, you pace the room while cold fear drowns your heart, the mantra Worry is a Waste of Imagination on your lips hundreds, if not thousands of times, as if it were the antidote to the ice in your chest. And when he returns, after long hours away, he says nothing. Instead, he slides to one knee before you and produces a velvet box, placing it in your hand.
Your heart sings as you accept, but you keep your song to yourself. Not yet, you tell yourself.
His dark eyes smile as he places the bond-ring on your finger. Almost, your heart says.
Then one day, you feel it: a subtlety that you cannot name, a change in him that you can hardly articulate.
He kisses you without a trace of fear.
Now, your heart whispers, because you know, you know, at last you can share everything your heart has held these long years.
This drabble was alpha read by oblivionbaby. All mistakes that remain are my own!
It goes without saying that all things Harry Potter belong to J K Rowling.