There was an intercepted message, you see.

There was an intercepted message, and it was intercepted on my end, and that makes it my fault. So if anything should happen to her as a result of it…

My fault… my fault… my fault…

Merlin, it's replaced let her be all right as my new mantra.

And FUCK it's cold out here!

We've been meeting like this, in deserted locations all over Great Britain, for the better part of three years; I've been passing her information about the Death Eaters. I started after my mother's… accident. It wasn't a member of the Order that put her into this permanent catatonic state, see? It was one of the Death Eaters.

One of us.

It was an accident, sure – I can accept that it was an accident; I watched it happen, after all. Just a misfired spell in the midst of a rather heated scrimmage. Just a misfired spell, but still, her life ended in that moment – in any meaningful sense, at least, it ended – and there should have been some sort of consequence for the person responsible.

There never was, though. The person responsible was one of our most valuable combatants, and my mother hadn't been participating at all, not in the fighting; she was just there on the sidelines as always, quietly tending to the injured and the fallen.

Nothing. Not even a slap on the wrist, not even a harsh word. And no real show of remorse, either; that's what really shocked me to the core. That's what rocked my world right down to its foundation. No, things more or less just went on as usual… except for my mother, of course.

And for me.

That day changed everything for me.

In a very real sense I lost both my parents that day. I haven't had much to say to my father since his misguided spell took my mother's sanity, after all. And what did he have to say about it, to me, her only son? Just some trite, defensive bollocks about how any great cause demands great sacrifice.

When I really understood that no action would be taken, that no apology was forthcoming, not even just a private one to me…

That was when I sought out the Order.

It was Snape who smoothed the way for me, helped me edge in. But Granger…

Granger was the one appointed to be my contact, because she was the only one who agreed to put up with me.

So they said.

And so our clandestine meetings began.

Forests, moors, deserted stretches of rugged coastline, ancient Muggle ruins… we've seen it all.

I can't tell you just when I began to actually live for these meetings… but it was over two years ago, anyway. And it wasn't long afterward that she began to prey on my mind even when there was no meeting scheduled for the immediate future.

I began to worry about her constantly; what was the Order up to now, and was she okay? Where was she, what was she doing, was she on some ugly assignment, was she in danger? We're all in danger all the time, of course – this is a war, after all. But it was – and it is – Granger who's been occupying my thoughts almost exclusively for… for quite some time now.

Let her be all right. God… Merlin… whoever's listening… just let her be all right.

And then the dreams started. Why didn't I see the connection before? Of course I was reaching for her. I've always been reaching for her.

Ever since that first rather awkward introduction to the Order, when she was the only one – the only one – who reached out a hand to me.

Another shout is trying to sneak past me. I strangle it in my throat.

Our meetings have always been like this; no exact coordinates. Just a general location, an area… say, a half-mile radius. It takes longer to find each other this way, but it's meant to give us a fighting chance in case one of our messages should ever be intercepted.

That was the rationale, at any rate.

I suppose that today I'll find out if it's worked.

_-_-_-_

It's her hand I see first.

And oddly enough, it's always been her hands I've loved the most.

I noticed them even back in school… most notably that time third year when she slapped me hard in the face.

Her hands are so small… but strong. Take it from me, I learned that day.

They're quick too, and clever, and capable, and nearly always stained with ink.

And they're kind. I mean, yes, the first contact I ever had with them was that slap back in school, but in retrospect I may even have deserved that. A little.

But the slap was more than compensated for, anyway, when she reached out to me the day I approached the Order. My mind was still reeling from my mother's incident and my subsequent decision to defect, and there I was standing in the midst of what was clearly hostile territory – they were willing to hear me out, sure, but only because they were desperate for information – otherwise any one of them would have been more than happy to hex me into oblivion right on the spot; it was written all over their faces.

All except for her. She listened carefully, and apparently without prejudice, and then she held out her hand.

I love those hands.

I love her hair, too. The same hair I used to mock and ridicule… I guess that just proves how much I've changed, because it hasn't changed at all.

Remember what I said about snow blanketing all imperfections, imposing order on the landscape? Order is perfection – that's what I was taught from a very early age. That's why I couldn't stand her hair in school; it was the perfect antithesis of everything I had been taught to value, to believe in.

Well, it was more than the hair – she was the perfect antithesis of everything I had been taught to believe in. A Muggleborn witch – a Mudblood – who wasn't dull and stupid and useless as I'd been told they were, but was brilliant, and spirited, and consistently outperformed the purebloods, myself included.

That was a hard pill to swallow for the little boy I was.

And that wild, dark, untamed hair was the physical embodiment of it all.

That hair is her trademark. Ask anyone to describe her, anyone – whether friend or foe – and you will unfailingly hear about that hair first.

How I hated it then… and how I love it now.

Her eyes too; they are simply amazing. Of course, I never appreciated that in school either. Brown; such a plain, common color. Brown; appropriate for a Mudblood, my father would say.

My father, as it turns out, has been wrong about a lot of things. I wish I had seen it before. But no matter; I'm trying to make up for lost time now. Trying hard.

I'd never noticed before, before we began these weekly rendezvous, what a warm color brown can be. So full of intelligence, so full of wit, so full of…

Life.

Bursting with life. That's how they'd always been. It just took me a while to notice, that's all.

And now I'm praying, praying with everything I've got, that the next time I see those eyes, they'll still be full of life.

I'm not usually a praying man, either. But we all make exceptions sometimes.

And to see those eyes any other way… it would be the death of me.

But I digress. It's her hand I see first.