Shame
He never actually saw her, really.
He rarely went out except to work anymore, a job that undoubtedly had nothing in common with hers, and naturally they didn't really show at the same gatherings.
Whenever he did go out, he never looked up to see if she was there, even though the odds were so small and the streets so crowded that he could easily ignore any crown of blond hair or any face resembling her the slightest.
As if not looking was supposed to make a difference at all.
As if he didn't see her face everywhere anyway.
It was there in the way his mother looked worriedly at the circles beneath his eyes and argued passionately with her father when she thought he didn't hear.
In the faces of every painting in their house.
In his reflection in the bathroom tiles, in the sound the floor made when it gave under his feet, out of thin air the first time he saw his mother silently doing the dishes on her own, in the clenched jaw of his father on the day of his trial, whenever the distant sound of Bellatrix' laughter woke him up at night, in the stench of sweat following his nightmares, in the clean sweat of something much more endurable, in Pansy's eyes when her frown occasionally vanished. But more vividly than anywhere, on the door of the basement stairwell, smiling, smiling back at him.
He would then glance quickly at his hands, because if only for a moment, he could swear he felt blood soaking his sleeves, dripping from his hands. The kind of blood that came with infinite shame and regret.
He avoided that basement entirely now.
He would have burned the entire house down if he could.