If Only

A/N: Yes, I know this song is old news. But I've always liked it and I wanted to do a songfic about it. So I did. Sue me. Wait a minute, better not. Perhaps you could just not read it if you don't like it?

Disclaimer: Other than all the usual Harry Potter stuff, If She Only Knew is property of 98 Degrees and whoever wrote it. But, Uric, Morgana, and Circe, as well as the plot, are mine, Kiri and Cassiopeia belong to Kysmet, and Stormy belongs to Eternal Sailor Chibi. Oh, and Silas Atalasa belongs to himself.

If Only
A Songfic Based on If She Only Knew

Uric remembered every detail of that night. A slow dance began to play. They'd already been on the floor for over an hour without rest, but he looked up and saw the game expression in her eyes. Maybe they would sit out the next song. But now... now belonged to the music and the two of them.

And as the song started in earnest, his hands tingled on her waist, as if with an electric charge. He sneaked a glance at her face, but she had also gambled. Their eyes met and locked, two brown gazes, each fascinated with the other. At that moment there was no one else in the entire world. Just Uric and Morgana, caught up in a magic they could never be taught at Hogwarts.

But a few seconds and both had looked away, embarrassed.

That Yule Ball had been the true beginning of an experience that would both send him to dizzying heights and leave him desolate for a lifetime...

If she only knew
What I knew but couldn't say
If she could just see
The part of me that I hid away
If I could just hold her in my arms again
And just say I love you
But she's gone away, maybe she'd stay
If she only knew

He hadn't told her that he loved her.

You didn't know, a part of him protested.

But he had.

One could argue that, at the beginning, it had not been true love. They would be wrong. Yet, it had lacked that dimension before, that scope and magnitude. In that one moment on the dance floor, she had changed his life forever... for the first time.

If she could just feel
What I feel here in my heart
She'd know it was real
Pure and true, right from the start
But I'm just a man who didn't understand
What she was going through
She's gone away, maybe she'd stay
If she only knew

He disassembled every memory of her he had, from elementary school on, trying to find out if she had shared his love.

When you were kids, you were nothing to her, a nasty voice always cut in. She even told you. You could still have been nothing as a fourth year. She only accepted going to the Ball with you because she had no other choice. You were just her Muggle-born plaything.

No! he screamed, silently, yet in no way without anguish.

But the worst thing was that he would never know. He'd never get to say those three words. "I love you." He'd never know what she would have said.

If she had replied, "I love you too, Uric," what would have happened... he could only fantasize. Even... even if she had rejected him, it would be better than this endless not knowing, constantly reliving all his missed chances.

Because she was gone for good.

Morgana was dead.

And how, how did I let her get away?
'Cause love, love is so easy to feel
But the hardest thing to say

Oh... that night when they had flown.

She was the Griffinqueen, the one and only who could change at will to an enormous half-eagle, half-lion, all predator creature. And could she fly...

He loved everything about her, but most of all he loved that one night. They'd bumped into each other... neither had been able to sleep... and she'd asked him to come.

He knew that there was no sensation that came close to the pure exhilaration of soaring on her back in the moonlit night, each of them totally aware of the other. What could come between them?

But of course something had.

When they landed again... they had almost kissed. Just the stroke of a clock, tolling the late hour, had parted them.

They'd never kissed... Before Morgana, he would have never believed he could love someone this much and yet never have kissed her. But it was true. He loved her so much that he could never love another. That was why he lived as a hermit, not even forty but his life forever ruined.

His life began and ended when he was fourteen years old.

If she could just see
What I see when I close my eyes
All that I dream
Surely she would realize
But like a fool I waited much too long
To let her know the truth
She's gone away, maybe she'd stay
If she only knew

But time had been so short...

As Griffinqueen she was sworn to protect freedom and life. Not that she'd ever had a choice. That Easter, she learned of a man named Silas Atalasa, a known cobra Animagus bent on destroying all life. And maybe he would have done it. But Morgana had to step in.

She'd taken him on, in single Animagus combat. To the death. At least they, Uric and her other friends Circe, Stormy, Kiri, and Cassiopeia, had been there. They knew exactly what had happened.

And knowing, Uric had come to feel so well, was always better than not.

Tell me, tell me how
How did I let her get away?
'Cause I guess that love
Love is so easy to feel
But the hardest thing to say

Both combatants had died that night.

Through ingenuity and acting and knowing when the prideful course was not the best course, all of them together had killed Silas.

But it was too late for Morgana.

She had the cobra venom in her veins. Incurable by any magical or medical means known to man, the poison had killed so young one who had seemed so invulnerable.

And maybe, if, even as she lay dying, he could have told her he loved her and heard her response, maybe he might have felt closure. Might have lived a normal life.

If only... If only she had known...

He didn't know why he didn't just commit suicide, to be with her again in death. But he knew that, as his (maybe, achingly maybe) lover and his friend, she would not have wanted it. In a way, he was failing her now, for though he was living his life, he was not living the life he might have if they had never met. If he still did not love her. For though she herself was past tense, his love for her would never be.

All he had left to do was wait and wish for when they could be together again.

If she only knew
What I knew but could not say
If she could just see
The part of me that I hid away
If I could just hold her in my arms again
And just say I love you
She's gone away, maybe she'd stay
If she only knew

And maybe... just maybe if he'd told her, she might have found another way. A way that she could do her duty and yet live. Such a selfish thought. That she might have lived for him. But now he would never know.

Never...

If she only knew...