4
He had thought he knew pain. He'd been on the receiving end of some pretty nasty curses and hexes, after all. He'd even been subject to the Cruciatus, part of Bellatrix's "training program". He thought he'd felt it all.
He never knew how much it would hurt to have your heart and soul shattered.
He'd thought he had known. Hadn't his heart shattered when he lost her?
He hadn't believed that something that was already shattered could completely shatter again. His heart had felt whole before this in comparison.
As he walked through the house, he could feel pieces of his heart shattering, grinding themselves up into miniscule, invisible pieces. He barely registered walking over Potter's body. It wasn't important enough. Not at a time like this. He'd seen enough death, enough cold, blank stares for this one to not even register.
Not when he had to find Lily.
Somehow, he knew where she was. He had no control over where he was walking. His feet just kept moving, taking him closer and closer to the spot where he inexplicably knew that she was.
He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it. All the rumors flying around, all the stories being told, they had to be just that- stories.
Because she couldn't be gone.
Not like this.
Not at all.
As he got closer and closer to the room, his sense of dread grew. The scene around him was terrible, the house destructed. His hopes and dreams started fraying slowly, then a little faster, then infinitely so. Yet, he still clung on to the pieces, like a drowning man clings on to a bit of driftwood.
Because that's what he was. Drowning. Because without Lily, how could he ever breathe?
His footsteps faltered right outside the room, right around the corner from where he would get all his answers. Right around the corner from what could be the happiest sight of his life. Right around the corner from what could be the worst.
It was too quite. That, alone, gave him a bit of motivation. If the stories were true, wouldn't Potter's son be crying with no one to comfort it? Lily, his precious Lily, must still be there, comforting the child.
That thought gave him the motivation to keep going, to turn that corner.
And then he shattered.
He'd thought he'd known pain.
But he'd never known this. This heart-wrenching agony that tore apart the entirety of his being, leaving only pain and the ability to feel it.
He thought he'd already lost her. Yet, as he approached her chilling body, he started to realize that he had, in fact, just lost her again.
That thought did nothing but make the pain worse. The mere thought that, despite the fact that he had already lost her, he had managed to be idiotic enough to lose her again only worked to make the pain unbearable.
He fell to his knees next to her, unable to stand the grief.
Somehow, without him registering it, she was in his arms. But she wasn't. It wasn't her. It couldn't be. This body, this shell of a person was not, could not, be Lily. She was completely there, yet there was something missing.
Some part of her greater than the sum of the parts of her.
She was gone.
He'd lost her.
No matter how hard he tried, he kept losing her.
He didn't know how long he stayed there. He might have never left.
The child startled him out of his reverie. The child, crying, seemingly realizing something was wrong.
It wouldn't do to be found a Death Eater at the scene of the crime.
Somehow, agonizingly, he let her body go. Somehow, he managed to Disapparate.
For the next three days, only one thought ran through his head.
I lost her.
A/N: So yeah, not really sure about this. But I promised I wouldn't take forever to post these, so here it is.
Sorry if it's terrible. I promise I'll return to my usual one-shots and stuff soon.