It had all worked out for the best in the end, hadn't it? She was a woman of the most grounded, sensible sort. Somewhat narrow-minded, some people would say; extremely intelligent in most ways but not all, and the only thing one could mention - just in passing, just a quick, swift dagger in the dark - was that she was too cooped up in her belief that everything worth knowing was written down. Just that.
Yet she was sensible and she knew when to release a dream (far more farfetched and imaginative and hopeful than anyone would ever have credited her with harbouring) and settle for what she had instead of reaching for what she wanted.
Besides, she told herself sensibly as she woke early in the mornings and dressed in the january darkness and slipped on her sensible shoes and made sure she had brought the lunchbox, sometimes what you wanted was not what you actually needed. Then she would press a soft, tender kiss on his forehead, his red hair with cowlicks flopping all over the place, inhaling the unwashed morning scent of his body that wasn't disgusting, just earthy and familiar and sometimes off-putting but sometimes comforting and then she went to work.
Besides, she told herself desperately under the spray of the shower when the tears ran freely and she blamed it on a cold and the window misted over because she stayed in there for so long, if you loved someone you were supposed to set them free. She'd read that, somewhere, sometime a long time ago. Years later, he'd refer in passing to that long miserable winter (but he never knew that) and how many colds she had had, and she'd smile, agree, and say that luckily she hadn't had a cold for a very long time now. He'd be contentedly moving on to another topic by then, the children, or food or his job.
At the wedding - back when they were all so young and although by no means old now it seemed a vastly insurmountable long time ago - Ron held a speech and she held a speech and several others as well, and Ginny and Harry looked both embarrassed and yet pleased somehow to be the centre of so much attention. Ginny, her complexion pinked with pleasure and Harry's constantly uncooperating hair sticking out over his sheepish grin.
She'd raised her glass then, made a toast, a toast in their honour and felt the vague, tugging sense of loss as that future drifted away from her forever. And she forced herself to think, it had all worked out for the best in the end, hadn't it?
