Before Us

"You loved him, didn't you?" She heard him say as he looked out the window, eyes void of emotion, but she wouldn't just cave.

"He's my best friend, of course I loved him," she heard herself telling him, as honest as she could.

There was a pregnant pause then, "Bullshit" he called out, "I hear the way you talk about him, see the way your eyes glaze at the mention of him - hell, I even notice how strangely you look at the boy right now, as if you want him to look at you and recognize you," he spat before he turned and she looked away, shame filling her and coming out from every single pore of her skin.

He knew.

No, they probably knew, 'this whole time,' she thought distractedly as she felt something wet trickle down the side of her face and brushed it and stared at it for a while.

Tears.

'I have tears,' she thought absentmindedly, not noticing a figure staring at her sadly from where he stood, with dead resignation in his eyes.

"He won't come back you know," she heard him say after a while, "You being here already changed a lot of things," he continued as she took a sharp intake of breath, "Even if things play out exactly as it happened then, you know that that boy won't grow up to be your Harry," he ended as he slowly walked towards her.

Until the moment he held her, she hadn't realized that she was full on crying - and shaking, he said she was shaking.

They stayed like that for a while, with him holding her and shushing her as he rocked her body side to side slowly and in a soothing manner told her that everything is going to be alright.

"You consciously travelled back in time for the boy that you loved to have love, and even if the boy here now isn't and wouldn't be the boy that you loved, you would know that the boy that you did love is looking at you now from wherever he was with pride because the girl that loved him so much assured that there would be more love on earth than what it probably deserved," she heard him say as she continued to sob.

"He loved you too," she heard him say when she finally started calming down.

"How would you know?" she asked him, voice still filled with bitter resigned heat.

"Because I know," he said as if that made sense.

She looked up to him then, eyes disbelieving, she saw him smirk and he continued, "Because you're here," and raised a hand to her lips effectively killing her retort.

"I saw your memories in the pensieve when you passed out the other day from destroying the horcrux," She caught her breath in her throat, because surely hedidn't mean - her thoughts were cut off though when she felt his grip on her tighten, she felt faint.

"I apologize," he said after another breath, "Peter was the one that dragged us in - said you looked like you were holding back too much information and we needed to know everything,"

He must've seen the darkness that clouded her vision eyes at the mention of the rat because again, as she felt his grip on her waist tighten before she heard him continue, "We saw the troll, the three-headed dog and the basilisk," he stopped after that and for a while she wondered if he'd continue, those were her memories, she knows what's in there.