It could be worse. This is her daily reminder to herself, something she repeats again and again as she completes tasks, runs errands, does readings, works. She knows it's true-she never forgets the horrors that are still being faced all around her while she lives this life of relative contentment-but there are days when her optimism fails her entirely and she retreats even more deeply into herself than she already is. It is not supposed to be this way. The war is over, they are victorious, they deserve to be happy now. They deserve to rest and recover. And yet, they are all still fighting battles, quiet, secret, personal battles.
Severus Snape is her battle. He has been her battle, in one way or another, since she was twelve years old, but now it is different. Heavier. He did not lose his life as he had been intended to do, as, perhaps, he had even wanted to do. Left alone, spilling his life onto a dirty floor while everyone else fought and no one gave him a second thought, and yet he somehow managed to survive. She does not know how, and she does not care. He is here. But although he has regained his life, he has refused to live it. He does not go out, he does not take an interest in anything around him, and he does not speak. Not to her, not to anyone. She wonders sometimes if he even wants her here, in this house that does not fit her and seems, in her more irrational moments, to be actively repelling her. She asks him, tells him she will be gone in a second if he only says the word, but he just turns his head away and closes his eyes. He is weary, she can see that. And it's no surprise, really, because he doesn't sleep. Theirs is not a bed for sleeping.
When it is dark and the world is still, everything holding its breath, he will touch her. He runs his hands over every inch of her flesh, nothing gentle or tender in his touch, only want, possession, and a quivering, tentative kind of need. His lips move against her and she can almost swear he is speaking, saying the things that are smothered and silenced by the daylight, but she never hears his voice. His body crashes against her, waves tossed by their own private storm, and on mornings after nights like these, she is always unsteady on her feet, the ground seeming to roll and sway beneath her.
She knows that she is not forced to stay with him. She came to him of her own free will after the battle, when the wounds were still gaping and raw and nothing in their world seemed as if it would ever be right again. She still does not know why she came, only that she wanted to see him with her own eyes, to assure herself that he was whole because maybe it would assuage the guilt she felt at not having been there to care for him. A ridiculous thought-Severus Snape had never been her responsibility and she was still only a child-but a persistent one, nonetheless. And maybe ... maybe she needs him as much as she knows he needs her. Ron could never understand her after the war. He wanted a sweet, young, schooltime romance, and she could never have given him that. She sees the darkness still, and feels it in herself, and she does not want to shy away from it or gloss over it and pretend it isn't there. It is there. She sees it in Harry's eyes, and in Ginny's, although they are as blissfully happy and inseparable as two people in love have ever been, and she feels it whenever she remembers the names of the dead. She does this often, a kind of penance for being one of those to survive.
Severus knows the darkness intimately, has embraced it all his life. It is his lover, more than she will ever be. It is evident in everything he does, from the tilt of his head to the impatient flick of his wrist, and it is unleashed at night when he touches her, in the bed that has become their sacred space. He shows her no more love than he ever showed her in the classroom and it is not love she wants from him. She wants his bruises, his marks, the scrape of his unshaven face against her tender skin and the force of his body as he claims her. She burns against him and that is what she wants, that fire consuming them both. This is how she proves to herself that she is alive, and that he is alive, even if he is not living.
There is plenty of time. They have years, decades. She is certain that one day he will speak again, that his mouth will open and he will pour vitriol upon her for all of her foolish actions while he has been unable to make his feelings known, and on that day she will weep with relief. She will no longer feel so lost, so shaken and unsteady and storm-tossed, and perhaps then there can be some tenderness. Something gentle. Perhaps then, they can both stop apologizing and begin living. And until then, it is enough that he touches her arm as she is on her way out of the house, looks at her with a distant softness in his eyes and nods. Such a mysterious gesture, that nod. So many possible meanings. That will be her first question to him when at last he speaks, she decides. She will ask him what his nod means and he will ask her how it feels to realize that she is not the know-it-all she strives to be and their life together will finally begin. She holds the promise of this day in her heart and in the meantime she smiles at him, cooks for him, brings home books that he refuses to read, and in the night they speak the fierce language of storms which she secretly hopes they will never give up.