Disclaimer: never did and never will own it. J.K. Rowling does.
Spoilers: Order of the Phoenix


~ The End of the World ~


Story based on Silene's picture The End of the World.


Something, somewhere, is not fair. I have given them seventeen years of my life, all for nothing. The only light in my life is no more and it was a green light that sent me back in the dark. Fate has a twisted sense of humour.

~*~

I didn't want any reward; I had everything I wanted. Had I looked in the Mirror of Erised, I would have seen nothing different from what a Muggle mirror would have shown me. I was happy. But I obviously had no right to happiness, so they destroyed it.

They could have killed me, if they really had wanted to punish me for what I did before I came to work for them. Or they could have sent me to Azkaban. Anything to end the pain I'm in now. But it would have hurt her and I can't bear her tears. So fate found another way to punish me. They took her from me.

~*~

Seventeen years of good and loyal services and two months of happiness. Then that fateful day of the last battle. She was in the middle of it, or rather, in the front lines, even more ahead than Potter. She was by my side and I can still remember her voice in the darkness of our room when she told me she feared nothing as long as she was by my side. She feared nothing, not even death. Yet death found her.

It was not even Voldemort, though I could see our very existences irked him to no end. Gryffindor and Slytherin, Muggle-born witch and pure-blood wizard. Everything he hated, yet he didn't even have his chance against us. Death came from that pitiful excuse for a human being called Peter Pettigrew. Wormtail. What an appropriate nickname. I couldn't believe it when his curse hit her. It should have been me.

She collapsed against me without a word, the last light in her eyes telling me of her love for me. Her love, her sweet, redeeming love for me, that I never understood, but that I accepted nonetheless. Wrenching pain filled me and then I existed only for the hatred running in my veins.

I hunted down Wormtail; I didn't even kill him right now and then. I brought him back to Lupin, who had as much desire to kill him as I had. Azkaban was heaven compared to what we did to make him pay. But no matter how sweet revenge was, it still left a bitter taste. It didn't bring her back to me.

~*~

I don't know how to deal with pain. Usually I conceal it with anger or sarcasm. But today, I'm so engulfed in sorrow that I can't lash at anyone. I just want to lie here and die. I'm still holding her in my arms, her body so cold, half-hoping I could give her some warmth, that she would open her eyes and smile at me.

Two months. I had this beautiful angel to me for two months. Two months since we shared that breathtaking, mind-blowing kiss that started it all. One week after and she was mine, my bride, my loving bride. She gave me her love unconditionally, though I was awkward expressing mine. Two months filled with more happiness than I had felt in my whole life, two months during which she made me feel alive.

She was my life. My life, my love, my wife. And now, I'm on the verge of tears, nuzzling her neck, begging her to come back. But she won't come back, ever. For most people, she's just a casualty of the war. It infuriates me even more than it infuriates Potter. For once, we both agree on something. But it hit me deeper. He lost a friend. I lost everything. For me, the death of my Hermione is the end of the world.