A/N: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters
This is for the 30 Days of Music challenge, prompt: 30. "I'm just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle" ~ The Show – Lenka
word count: 365
Riddles, he was good at riddles, figuring out what made people tick, think, act. She was the only one he couldn't figure out. He thought he'd gotten it, thought he knew why she was waving her hand in the air, wanting attention, but no, she didn't care about the attention, didn't care about being noticed. She wanted to be right, to show off that she belonged here with these magical people. There, he'd done it, figured her out. She was looking to belong, looking for an acceptance that her own housemates didn't seem to want to give.
He had been there, alone, wanting to belong. He'd done horrible things trying to find his place, trying to impress those that he should have never cared about. She grew, connections forming, a maze of emotions, of who did what, who was mad at whom. She was always in the middle, he noticed. She was a third wheel although she didn't see it yet. He could see what was building, see how things were going to start playing out. He finally did the unthinkable, offering her his help, if she should ever need it. She laughed, smiling at him, but not a pitying smile, but one of confusion, why would she need his help. He didn't tell her what he knew, what he'd seen. She would come to him at some point, he knew that though.
It took years for her to accept things weren't as they seemed, to accept the boy she thought she loved didn't love her the same way, but had fallen for his best friend. Severus had seen the signs, and when she tumbled through his floo in tears, in pain, in confusion at how she'd been led on, how she's thought... He was there to hold her, to give her a shoulder to cry on. Yes, he was good at riddles, she was one of them, a riddle he'd never truly solve, but he had all the time in the world to spend with her, all the time in the world to put the pieces of her heart and his heart together to form something completely different, to form something complete and whole.