Disclaimer:  Anything you recognize belongs to the goddess, JKR.  Finally, I have decided to begin a full length Severus/Hermione story.  I just love the two of them together…I can't even begin to explain why.  Dedicated to Tony, Mel, Lynn and Marek.  Also dedicated to my parents, for giving me the writing bug in the first place, and my children who are starting to pick up the same bug.  Special thanks to Anne, Sharte and Heather!

Prologue

Excerpt from the private journal of Hermione Granger, Auror:

It has been the same every night for the past several  weeks.  He never comes home and I am always alone.  Does he even remember that he has a fiancée and does he realize that I miss him?  I know I am being selfish.  He has the most important role among the Aurors and I could hardly ask him to set aside saving the world in order to spend some time with me.  But, sometimes, I feel that I am constantly slipping in his list of priorities.

It wasn't always this way.  It used to be that we would spend all our evenings together.  Taking walks.  Talking in front of the fireplace.  Midnight rides on his broomstick; which took my breath away. 

I just want to feel that he still loves me.

Again, I am struck with the painful realization that I am putting my own needs in front of those of the world at large but I cannot help it.  I am lonely.  I miss him.  I love him.  Even I am allowed to wallow in self-pity from time to time.

What I would not give to feel his arms around me at night…feel his breathing tickle past my forehead.

Is it so awful for me to want him with me?

I will try to be strong for him and not show him how much I am aching inside.  It won't help to accuse him of neglecting me…it might only push him farther away. 

I just want him to love me as he used to.  Perhaps I want to love him as I used to.  Blindly.  Faithfully.  Truly.  Do I still feel these things?

Does he?

Only one other knows how I feel and his encouragement is all I have to feed my fading hopes.

I just want to be loved.

Anything is better than this awful loneliness.

Anything.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Excerpt from the private journal of Severus Snape, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House, Hogwarts:

Why I continue in this charade puzzles me.  Wearing this ghastly mask and pretending loyalty to a fiend I can scarcely stomach…all a puzzle.  It would be so much easier to simply take a sip of Reductus poison and watch as my life slips away…unmourned.  Simpler, yes, but cowardly and, although I have been many dark and terrible things in my life…I have never been a coward.  No, despite the fact that I am hated and looked on with suspicion on all fronts, I will not take the easy way out.  I will not give Albus a reason to ever regret giving me a second chance.  I owe him that much…and so much more.  I wonder if he realizes that he saves my life every night when I look at my cabinet of poisons and debate whether or not to end it all.

But you and I both know that he is not the only reason.  There is another reason; which I am even fearful to ascribe to paper.  As long as it is in my mind, it is mine and mine alone…my futile hopes and dreams for a future which is not so lonely…not so painful.  I suppose I fear that, once written in the black and white of ink and parchment, I will fully realize the extent to which I have deluded myself over the past few years.

But it is such sweet bliss…and even I am allowed to dream now and again.

I will never speak of it to another living being despite the fact that perhaps, in this one instance, I am being a coward after all.  But…perhaps writing it might exorcise me from this feeling I have been fighting.  Perhaps it will bring my heart back to its bleak reality and allow me to continue functioning as the cold, emotionless automaton I was before…before she came back into my life.

Perhaps it will stop the feeling I get whenever she is near me.  There is such warmth in her smile…I do not believe that anyone appreciates that as much as I do…she is the only beautiful thing in my life even though she knows it not.  I should be content to be thought of in the context of a friend…a close confidant…keeper of the secrets that are hurting her so badly…but, you and I both know that it does not suffice…not one whit.

I love her.

There.  I have written it and, as I look on the words plainly scripted in black ink, I realize that this has not liberated me.  This has not changed me in any way at all.

Merlin help me…for I realize now that I am truly lost.