Grandloves//Tomarry

22

Her eyes turn to him, so bright and wide. They consume everything: space, time, the gravity beneath them and between them. They will ruin him, he knows.

It is with no small amount of weariness that he takes this moment to privately admit to himself what he knew all along: he loves her. And what great, regrettable irony it is. He loves her as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, in the spaces between shadow and soul. She will ruin him. But undoubtedly he has already ruined her.

He should break his gaze away. But it is as if nothing in her is extinguished nor forgotten. Her expression is like night: calm, constellated. And yet, like always, when those luminescent eyes turn to him something endless draws in them.

She slips her hand into his. Small and warm.

She tugs—she is leading him somewhere. He should not follow, but he indulges her. His gaze is transfixed into the knit of their fingers. His, long and pale and skeletal; hers, small, trim, smudged slightly with both dirt and vitality alike. They look as if they have seen sunshine: grass, earth, and sky. Her fingertips are painted haphazardly in mismatched colors, as if she couldn't decide which she liked best and decided on them all.

They spill out into the yard, a white grayscale light burns the earth into complacency, and in the watery sunshine he cannot reconcile anything in his gaze from what he remembers. Nagini slithers between his feet and into the grass, making for the tall and overgrown rose bushes. It appears as if the contents of many people's gardens have found their way into the space behind the mansion—or, more likely, the stolen contents of other people's gardens. He tries to imagine Harry scampering around the yards of the muggle neighbors, pillaging potted pants and uprooting bushes as he tortures innocents in the mansion's hollowed halls.

He should steal his hand away once more. There are people to see, prisoners to torture, matters to attend to.

All of it seems so very insignificant when she turns to him, that unending look in her eyes.

"Isn't it beautiful?" She says, breathlessly, and he agrees, but he is not looking at the garden.

"You've kept yourself busy," he finds himself replying, though it is impossible not to give her every inch of his attention. She burns bright and ephemeral in the wintry light, every particle of sun and sound draws into her as if compelled by a foreign force: he is no exception.

She nods absently, moving further into the wonderland. "What do you know of flowers?" She asks, guiding him through the sweet efflorescence.

"Nothing remarkable," he answers, and continues to let her draw him into the garden.

"Oh," she looks unreasonably sad to know that there are, indeed, things on this earth of which he does not possess intimate knowledge of.

"Well," she begins again; her hand has not left his, and she swings them lightly, almost absentmindedly, as she wanders about the flowers. "I don't know much either... but I figured it's very hard to go wrong with flowers."

She stops quite suddenly. "You don't mind... Do you?" She asks, tentative, and her eyes are steadfastly fixed away from him.

"The Manor is yours to do what you wish," he answers at great length. All but the dungeons go unsaid. A conflicted look passes her face at the mention of the other parts of his life.

"Thank you," she replies, but it is distant and dispirited. He should not care so greatly about her viscous and ever-changing emotions—he finds himself disquieted anyway, displeased with the idea of somehow upsetting her.

Love, he thinks. It must be this: the knot in his chest, the awful feeling that grows and festers in his stomach. If he had known that Dumbledore's greatest weapon was more or less a stomach ulcer he would have invested less time in attempting to destroy the girl in front of him and more into a cure for a stomach ache.