Author's Note: First let me thank everyone who had reviewed, alerted, or put this story on their favorites it means a lot to me. So I have a question, I have been going back and forth on how Severus should approach Hermione. My question is this, do you all think he should write to her or show up at her door? Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Do I really need to say that I don't own them? I'm just playing with someone else's toys and do return them in the same shape I have found them (well that may not always be the case).
Hermione stood in the kitchen of her childhood home waiting for the water to boil. A year ago today she signed the paper that Severus had given her then walked out the door, she still didn't believe the lie she told him. Try as she might she couldn't make herself believe that she never loved him, she had and lying to herself didn't change the fact.
The only contact she has had with the wizarding world since that day are with Harry, Neville, and at times Luna who is married Neville a few months ago. She started taking courses at a local school in any number of things that caught her attention, the first she took was a cooking class. After five years of being told that her cooking was only passable to uneatable it was the first one that caught her attention. Though she didn't understand her need to better herself in those areas, he wasn't around to care any if she could cook now or not.
She worked as a waitress at a café down the street, it was enough for her. Her wand was packed away in the attic along with everything else she kept from the magical world. She had tried for years to fit into that world, it never happen. Then the day he finally broke her she gave up on it, there was nothing there for her nor would there ever be. All that world was to her was heartache and disappointment, she lost too many things to a world she loved. Things she'll never get back again, her parents, friends, her childhood, everything that mattered.
Now she lived a solitary life, the few dates she had went on in the last year trying to reclaim something of a normal life didn't do anything except reinforce her belief that men were mean to the point of being cruel to any woman. The only one that she went on more than a few dates with she kicked out of her house when he said something one night about a news story that sounded so much like Severus that she lost it. He never called or came around again.
She was better off alone, she knew that. She couldn't see past the first man she ever loved more than life and knew that she never would. She had learned to live with the fact that she loved someone who was not good for her, that she would never want anyone but him. When she accepted that fact she found that she could deal with some of the emotional baggage that came from the five years they were together better.
She sat at the table with her tea, a letter from Harry asking her to lunch next week. She'd go as it had been a month since they met, but she hated the looks he always gave her it bordered on pity and at times she wanted to scream at him that he needed to direct that look elsewhere. He had told her every time that they were together that she looked like hell, suggesting that maybe she should talk to Severus.
No she didn't want to talk to that man, she was trying to live without him. It had taken her months to not cry herself to sleep at night, or tear up when she thought about him. No she would never talk to him again it was just too hard to even think about him. Hell she moved back into the muggle world to be damn sure that she never ran into him again in her life.
She wrote a short note to Harry knowing that his owl had waited for her outside in a tree. Once she tied the note to his leg sending him on his way she turned on the radio before sitting with a book on the sofa, not half way down the page tears came unbidden and she angrily swiped at them before throwing the book on the coffee table. She stared into the cold fire place as she thought of the big failure she had, she couldn't make a marriage work. Damn she had tried, she had done all the things she had seen her mother do growing up, it still wasn't enough for him. She had given him the whore he wanted and it still wasn't enough for him, she had lost herself in what he wanted and still at the first chance he got she was gone.
Why had he asked her that last question? In over five years he didn't care if she even liked him let alone loved him, then all of a sudden it was the most important question. She should have returned the question to him but by that time he had made his feelings clear and she had lost so much of herself that she couldn't bring herself to give voice to the question. Maybe the answer would have scared her, she didn't know now.
In the deepest, darkest reaches of her heart she wished they were still living together. She still loved him above all else, it was not healthy she knew. The way he treated her through the whole of their marriage was wrong, but she still couldn't help how she felt.
She remembered all the far off looks he got when he didn't know she was watching, how when in his unguarded moments she saw someone so different than who he presented to the world. She knew he was a very broken man, she had silenced her room, he never did his own. He talked when he dreamed, the first time she heard his inner dialog about how he didn't want to follow through with killing the headmaster she had cried the rest of the night. In time she knew the two nightmares that woke him the most; killing Dumbledore and Nagini. Though she never asked him about them.
She finally laid down on the sofa, she was tired. It seemed that every time her mind went round and round about him she found herself almost unable to keep her eyes open. She pulled the throw pillow under her head as her eyes closed knowing that more than likely she would dream about him while she slept.
Author's Note: Comments really do make me smile and brighten my day. Also I wanted to let you know that I have a couple of Severus/Hermione videos on youtube, the link is in my profile.