All That is Unsaid
A/N: There are no OOTP spoilers. There is one teeny detail that could be seen that way; but I give another reason for it in the text, so if you've not read OOTP, you won't even notice.
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It could have happened like this.
He could have drawn her aside after their very last leaving feast, gripping her
hands with his bandaged ones as the school came and went around them, and told
her in a low voice that in the final fight he'd found himself regretting every
moment that hadn't been spent with her.
It could have, but it didn't. And being a practical sort of girl, she took it in
stride.
Or it could have happened later on, in her little London flat, late one rainy
night, maybe even New Year's Eve. He could have Apparated in suddenly, his hair
plastered to his head for once, and wrapped an arm around her with a fierce
possessiveness that she secretly enjoyed. And with water still trickling down
his cheek, perhaps from hours of walking the wet streets, he could have said
that he finally realized that his life was here.
But it happened like this.
It was a party, it was noisy, it was loud; and he had had no less than five
butterbeers in a short span of time. She knew; it was her job to keep up with
these things, it always had been.
He flopped down beside her on the couch, all knees and elbows and artless grace,
and somehow settled so that his head was very close to her own. And in a moment
that lasted a day, a year, a lifetime, he looked into her eyes, then nodded to
himself, once.
She was opening her mouth to ask What? when it was sealed for her in a
hot, beautiful instant.
He pulled away and she nodded back, once; he smiled, picked up her hand in his
still-scarred one, lacing his fingers through hers.
It happened, and it took no words at all.
