Author's Note: First let me thank everyone who had reviewed, alerted, or put this story on their favorites. It means a lot to me that someone is enjoying this tale as much as I am. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Do I really need to say that I don't own them? I'm just playing with someone else's toys and do return them in the same shape I have found them (well that may not always be the case).
He read about her hopes and dreams for them covering over the next several months until he reached a day in the journal that only read, Happy Birthday Hermione…. I miss my mum. He read the words several times before he closed the book, he hadn't even bothered or known until that moment when her birthday was. He never bothered to ask, she knew when his was though. Every year they had been married he found a card laying on his breakfast plate on his birthday. He couldn't be bothered to ask when hers was though.
Her entry on their anniversary, another day in which he ignored her and left before she woke and didn't return until the next day. She wrote about how she wondered what she was doing wrong, she listed all the things she had done to appease him. How she silenced her room when he complained about her breathing, how she wore the 'whore outfits' because he seemed to like them. How she tried to help him with research, only to be told that she wasn't needed.
The next entry that caught his attention was Christmas, she wrote how they had breakfast together before she went back to her room to prepare to go to visit her friends that day. To be fair she asked him to go and he gave her some excuse why he couldn't, now that he thought about it she asked him to join her every year and every year he made an excuse. The end of the entry talked about how she wondered if he liked the present she got him since he didn't say anything about it when she returned.
He sat the book down opening the drawer on his bedside table, in it was everything she had given him. Every birthday card, every Christmas present, every anniversary card. She had tried so hard to make the marriage work, at the time he didn't care. That wasn't true, if he didn't care he wouldn't have kept everything. He did care, but just didn't know how to tell her or show her that he did. The last time he let his true feelings slip he became a broken man for a very long time.
The next one that drew him into reading it was when she miscarried the first time. He had no idea how depressed she was after that or how much she wanted him to do nothing more than comfort her. She wrote He couldn't be bothered to stay, I only just lost his child and he had better things to do than sit with me. He hadn't stayed, he left the moment he knew she would be fine. Looking back on it he was cold toward her about it, he remembered saying something to the affect that it didn't matter to him. What really stabbed him was how dark her musings had become after that day for almost a year. She wrote about staying in her room for days, only coming out when she had to force herself to eat and the only time she saw him was when the ring tingled. He read about her blaming herself of it, if she had done something different maybe she wouldn't have lost the baby and he wouldn't be blaming her now.
He never realized how much time she had spent hold up in her room after her miscarriage, in truth he didn't stay around to find out. Her strength was what struck him, she pulled herself out of that alone.
He read the entries after she miscarried, how did he not notice that she was that depressed when she lived in the same house with him? No he knew that she was upset, he just didn't really pay attention if she spent all her time in her room. He would have had to been here to notice, but he was just grateful that their required encounters were on hold for a time.
The entry about the miscarriages that got to him was the first time they had to have sex after her third miscarriage, he knew she had cried the whole time. At the time he thought she was just still in pain from what happen, well in a way she was just not the type he thought. By her own hand he now knew that she was terrified of becoming pregnant again, she wrote how she didn't know if she could handle another loss like that alone.
He read the entry of the day he overheard Potter and her talking, it was the first time she ever wrote in the journal about loving him. She wrote that she had since they married, but she would never tell him because his heart was with someone else, she couldn't give him children. She wrote about how if they allowed divorced when they disbanded the marriage law she would sign the papers if he asked her to, hopeful in the act of setting him free from her that he would find someone he could love and care for.
The irony was that he gave her the divorce on that day because he thought he was setting her free, that she could find someone her own age that would be able to give her what he had not been able or willing to give to her.
He slammed the book closed, throwing it across the room. Why was it he found out a little too late that what he loved and cared for was her? Why did she have to be so much like Lily in that aspect, freeing him to find someone else? He hadn't even wanted the silly girl, until the day he heard her tell Potter that she loved him. Why was it that was all he had to hear to bring all of his feelings to the forefront, to chip away the walls he had built around himself was her declaration of love.
He tried after that day, it was in her journal. She wrote how he would carry on a conversation with her now, she speculated that maybe he finally realized that she wasn't going to betray him. Now that he thought about it, in the last six months of their marriage she spent more time out of her room than in it. In that time he didn't see the inside of her room, he wondered if the two were connected. He had contemplated in those six months getting her to tell him she loved him, but it didn't seem fair to make her admit it to him when he wasn't sure he could ever say the words to her.
He reached for the journal again as dawn started to break, giving the world outside the window a hue of reds and oranges.
He opened the journal to the last entry….
Author's Note: Comments really do make me smile and brighten my day. Also I wanted to let you know that I have a couple of Severus/Hermione videos on youtube, the link is in my profile.
