Notes: The title belongs to Spartan Fidelity.
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She sits alone on Christmas and watches the heavy flakes fall outside her window in spiraling drifts.
She tries not to think of him, because holidays aren�t supposed to be about pain, but she fails. Once, for just a brief second, she idly conjures a Patronus and watches it pad across her carpet, but the tears in her eyes distract her and it dissipates into nothing.
She doesn�t call one again.
�The new one looks weak,� Snape had said, and the words had cut her as if they were knives.
And maybe it was true. Maybe he was weak�maybe they both were.
She knows that she is, because a stronger person would have gotten over him, would have realized that there was no point to torturing herself like this, but she is not a stronger person, so she sits alone on Christmas and sees him in every shadow outside.
For a few moments, she imagines being where he is, in Molly�s warm and hectic kitchen, and she wonders briefly why she didn�t accept the invitation. But it�s better this way, because he knows now, and she can see it in his eyes every time he looks at her. She can�t bear to see that sadness, that pity, because his pity is not what she wants. In a perfect world, she would want his love, but this is not a perfect world, so she finds herself longing only for the days of his ignorance.
She could not rightly say what had compelled her into the room that night, but in the end she couldn�t really bring herself to care, because the words that had spilled from her mouth had changed everything, and the reasons behind them no longer mattered.
The meeting had ended and she had gone upstairs looking for Molly for some reason or another, and instead she had found him. He was slouched down in a ragged old armchair, watching the flames flicker in the fireplace before him, and she knew he was thinking of Sirius. He blamed himself, she knew�they all did, to some extent, and she had come to recognize that look of pain and anger that flickered across his face every so often when he thought no one was looking.
She hadn�t meant to startle him, but she had leaned against a table by the door and it had wobbled slowly before toppling and sending the statue atop it scattering under the rug in a million pieces. He jumped in his seat and turned to her with wild eyes, made more eerie by the shadows cast by the fire. He relaxed a little upon seeing her, and she could feel her cheeks burn as she waved her wand quickly at the mess, muttering �reparo� under her breath. She debated just turning and leaving, but there was something in his face that made her think that he didn�t really want to be alone, so she crossed the room and settled down on the couch across from him.
He didn�t say anything for a long while, and they just sat there as she wondered what she had been thinking by intruding on him like that. But then his gaze turned from the fire to the window, and she followed his eyes to the moon, nearly full, hanging there in its orbit as if to taunt him. He noticed her looking in the same direction, and smiled wanly when she turned back to him. She asked him if it hurt, transforming, and he replied obliquely that he had learned to live with pain. That brought his gaze back to the fire, and she knew he was once again thinking of Sirius.
She wished there were words that she could say to relieve him of the tremendous burden of guilt that had settled on his shoulders, but words had never been her strong suit, so she stayed quiet and watched him watching the flames as the moon filtered in through the window and cast uneasy shadows across them both.
Eventually the silence became oppressive and she started to talk. The words were mindless, and their meanings seemed to dissolve in the winding constructions she weaved them into, but he didn�t object to her talking, in fact he seemed to almost relax as he listened, so she kept going, and almost didn�t notice when she started talking about him. At first it was just a minor observation, a question, why was he sitting alone in this room? When he answered that it was just to think, she said that she wished there was something she could do to make him feel better about everything. He smiled a little lopsidedly, and thanked her for his concern, but really, he insisted, he was fine.
She shook her head and muttered, �It breaks my heart to see you like this.� When he lifted his head and raised an eyebrow at her, she could feel her face flush deep red, and she began to babble, talking herself in circles. He let her talk for a few minutes, digging her hole even deeper, until he finally seemed to decide that they had both been tortured enough by her clumsy declarations, and he cut her off by holding up a hand and shaking his head.
�Don�t�don�t do this,� he broke in, and she stopped talking abruptly. His eyes seemed to search hers, as if looking for something there, and she could swear that he seemed almost frightened by what he saw there. �Look, I�� he broke off and turned away from her, towards the fire. �I should go,� he muttered, barely louder than a whisper, and he stood and all but fled the room.
So tonight she sits alone on Christmas and watches the snow fall, because it is better than sitting in a crowded room with him and having their eyes meet awkwardly over the heads of the people between them. It�s better than watching him force himself through his first holiday season without his greatest friend, because if she was there she would want to help him, and her help was the last thing he probably wanted.
It�s better than trying to fall out of love with him.
There had been a time when love had been some kind of fairytale promise to her, something that would come to her one day and change her whole world for the better. Well, her world had been changed, all right, by her own careless words, and not even a fool could say that it had been for the better.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and closed her eyes, blocking out the falling snow, and the dim flickering shadows cast by the fire crackling in her fireplace. Alone in her own private darkness, she pushed all thought of him aside, and began to imagine an eternity of Christmases like this one, sitting alone by a window and watching the world slowly disappear behind a blanket of white.