Disclaimer: I do not own any characters mentioned here or in any subsequent chapters. JK Rowling does. But I can't help if she created some wonderful characters…
Solitude
No matter how busy she was, she knew something was missing, but she could never place it.
It was like an itch one cannot scratch, irritating, but somehow comforting.
To fill the strange emptiness she was always busy, always pushing herself beyond all reason, always finding some less fortunate souls to help, until she was utterly spent. Then she would collapse into a soothing world of white, breathing, completely conscious but unable to respond. The medics always seemed worried for her, but she brushed their concerns away, dismissing any suggestions of treatment.
Where was he? Why had he gone? These questions always drove her to work harder, always forced her to exhaustion in the need to forget, always reverberated around her comatose days, making it all pointless.
She was once a home-bird, but she now travelled estensively, her previous powers forgotten, immersing herself in different cultures, moving further and further from her old life each day. People who met her knew that she had faced hard times and survived, knew there was more to her than met the eye, but few ever pressed her. Those that did urged her to tell never found out, and she was always gone the next morning.
Her rich red hair had grown long and ragged, and had lost its sheen. She hardly noticed and didn't care, just tied it back in one long braid that swung from side to side as she worked. Her clothes were shabby and few, they were plain but serviceable. She had no need for luxuries anymore, not when there were so many people in the world who needed help.
She never saw her family anymore, she always said she was too busy and neither of her parents ever pursued her excuses. Since the death, seeing them was hard – none of her family understood the effect the war had left on her, the effect it had left on her life.
Where was he? Why had he left her? Subconsciously, she always kept an eye out for him, but he never seemed to be around. She had long since given up on reading the papers. They barely seemed to notice he was missing. They had never pursued his withdrawal from the public eye. Even that nosey bitch who seemed to attract gossip never wrote of him.
Is this how a hero dies? By the wayside, alone and unloved?
Is this how the World's saviour ends his days? Ignored and forgotten by those who previously hounded and tormented him?
Somedays she missed him so much she could barely stand it. Those were the days when she gathered her young daughter into her arms and just sat and cried. Those were the days she found hardest and wondered what she was doing, where she was going. Soon her daughter would wonder why she didn't have the same hair as her mother. Every day that passed only made the questions pound more urgently than before: why had it ended this way? Why had the World forgotten him?
Why had he forgotten her?