~Queenie~ Hear we go, another one shot. Please R&R, maybe do the same for some of my other work. Enjoy!

I am a coward, I've loved a woman for ten years, but never have I told her so. She still doesn't know. I wish I had the courage to tell her, but I don't. So I guess that makes me a coward, I can't even face up to telling my one true love that I love her.

I have loved Hermione ever since we were 16, and liked her for longer than that before hand. But I've never told her. I've never told her that every time I saw her with another man, it was like a knife was twisted in my guts and a fiery brand was being pressed in to my skin. I could never tell her. I never once told her, I never once asked her if she would like to go out on a date with me. I bottled it up inside, telling no one. I think Harry suspected, but I've never said anything to him. I guess I just don't have the guts to do it.

Hermione is one of the few people that has ever made me feel truly wanted. After all, look at my family, the last boy before a girl. After my parents got the daughter they wanted, they stopped. So what does that make me? The daughter I should have been, the unwanted boy that I really was. My brother's have always outshone me, being better at school, better at Quidditch than I ever could be, being more rambunctious and funny than was possible for me to achieve. They never gave me a chance to find a talent, they just snapped up all of them for themselves. And Ginny has achieved something I never will, not ever. Being a daughter.

So how was I meant to feel wanted in a family like that??

But Hermione, now Hermione has always been good to me. Even when I was being a real prat, she would tell me the truth about it when no one else was willing. And I have gravely mistreated her, never really affording her the respect she deserved. I wish that I could change the behaviour of my younger self, but I can't. No one may change the past without serious consequences.

As we have grown up, I saw Hermione for what she really was, a beautiful, intense, intelligent woman. And yet I never told her that. I never told her that in her eyes I saw the beginning of the universe in its explosion of life and colour, the birth of the stars with their silent beauty and grace, the great, vast solar system engaging in its cosmic dance. I saw my past, present and future. I saw myself as the child I was, the pride filled, arrogant young man I am, and the lonely withered person I would become without her. And still I do not tell her this, I do not yet have the courage.

Courage is a most difficult, twisty little snake. It is hard to pin down, near impossible to define, and is one of the most highly valued aspects in the dictionary of human emotion. Courage is the strength to act, or believe in something that you have no concrete proof of, like the blind man who can believe that sight exists, yet he has not experienced it. People might scoff at the idea of a Gryffindor lacking courage, and I do not say that I have no courage whatsoever, just that I am lacking the courage to believe that Hermione loves me. I am like a jigsaw puzzle that is missing a piece, I'll never be content until that space is filled. I am both lacking the love of Hermione, and the courage to believe in her love for me.

I have grown to be a philosopher, a past time I took up in order to justify my lack of courage in respect to Hermione's love, but philosophy soon grows tiring, and the longing for the woman I love becomes overwhelming. I find myself taking long walks at odd hours in the rain, and reading obscure books and memorizing quotes from them. But in no way will these activities replace Hermione's affections, they do not even come close. But apart from telling her and being done with it, I have no other option.

I find myself remembering a time in my life when I was not consumed with love for Hermione, a time when I was young and restless and my eye (and affections) roved. It was at Hogwarts, a time I look upon with much fondness. And then one day, it changed. I looked at Hermione and she was… different somehow. She seemed more attractive than your average witch, and kinder and sweeter too. But as teenage boys are wont to do, my reaction to this emotion was to become obnoxious. I learned to cope with this feeling of longing, of wanting, but it never went away. And just as suddenly as I had fallen in like with Hermione, I realized I was in love with her. It hit me like a tonne of bricks hitting a watermelon, I was swamped, and there was nothing I could do about it. I have never learned to cope with this feeling, it is ever present. And there is noting I can do about it.

Sometimes my life feels like a fairy tale, or a dream, and that one day I will come awake and it will not be there and that Hermione will be beside me in my bed to comfort me and reassure me. I often pray to whatever ultimate being there is for it to be so. But it will never happen. And I will long be consumed by my longing, lust and love.

Philosophy fills an empty space inside of me to a certain extent, and it lets me be with my Hermione. We have discussions and debates that can last for hours, yet seem to occur in a single second. Time does that when I am with Her, even though the logical part of my mind tells me that that is not possible.

But I begin to wonder, even in all these years, Hermione has never found one true person, one person to love for the rest of her life. I let myself wonder for but a second if I could be that one true love, but I hastily brush that thought away, I must not think those things. I must not. I will let that thought pass by the by. And yet, even still my mind turns that thought over, as you would tumble a handful of coins. It is a beautiful, shining thought among a vast field of emptiness and gray. It is like the first ray of sunshine on a springtime morn, and my heart clings to it with all of its might. I mull it over, and I realise that it must be true.

I remember all the moments we have shared, all the intimate secrets we have told. And I see for the first time the looks of wistfulness and longing in Hermione's eyes as she looked at me. I see the tiny sighs yearning, the hunger in her heart. And I hear the craving in her voice. I have realised that she loves me, and I know that I love her too. We have both been too stupid to act before this, but now I will. It is time for us to meet for lunch, and I know what the first words out of my mouth will be.

' Hello Hermione, I love you.'

~Queenie~ Thanks, I hope you enjoyed it.