Chapter Two
"There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day"
As Albus stood there, still seemingly frozen, gazing down at her last resting place, he remembered her dying day as if it were yesterday. In fact, he mentally corrected his own thoughts, to him, that terrible day more than five decades earlier was just yesterday.
The strange, cruel twists time made didn't even surprise him anymore. They had become a steadying, almost soothing presence in whatever he had left of a life.
They didn't even hurt him anymore.
And yet, as he closed his eyes, he still cried in an endlessly lonely silence when, as if in a dream, he, again, knelt down beside her almost lifeless body. The pale face motionless and painful- the eternal fire in the fierce green eyes almost extinguished- the ever-energetic breath reduced to short, laborious pants as she looked up for one, one last time, straight into his teary blue eyes.
"A-Albus…"
And all of a sudden, as, amidst the smoke, the dust fell down on both their wet faces and her last, weak smile lit up the world for one final second, he opened his eyes and saw. Saw how the misty green of her eyes mirrored every feeling that had ever shone from his own, blue ones. Saw how her smile softened her sharp features- and how she only smiled for him. Saw in the way her trembling thumb softly caressed the back of his hand, saw in the way her hair flowed beside her face, that she loved him.
That he had been wrong all along.
