I love you, Hermione.

Three years, seven months, and sixteen days since he had said those three little words that coupled with her beautiful name.

Three years in which everything had changed, including the people, including himself.

But not including her.

And ever since that day, he'd waited for her to reply in kind, to tell him what she truly felt, if she did.

Even now, in this barren loneliness, he hoped. It was the few, the only, thing that he would allow himself.

He knew it was foolish, but even though his eyes and his body felt a thousand years too old, his heart still belonged in one place, never really changing.

And, honestly, what else could you hold onto when everything was gone?

He was going mental, of that he was sure; tortured by everything, by nothing, by everyone, by no one, by himself, by her.

When the sweat, the blood, the tears, and the pain faded, he found both solace and torment in his memory. Spiders could no longer frighten him, with their hairy legs and menacing pincers.

No, it was something else that haunted his dreams and every waking moment, it was a single image that he had memorized: slender legs, hazel hair, and caramel eyes that were supposed to glow with loveliness but only darkened with screams and a shattering green light.

That memory, and every other, was forever emblazoned, engraved, on his soul.

Had he been less of a coward, of an irrational git, she might have survived. But while Gryffindor courage had burned for her in the end, it had failed him.

Love, even though it had escaped him, was his only comfort.

But, honestly, what use was love when you had lost the only person you'd ever wanted to share it with?

He would tell you, harshly, bitterly, and in denial, that there wasn't. Maybe it's not. Not for him, at least. Oh, yes, he's learned his lesson, but in reality he's only lost faith.

When he lost her, he lost a piece of himself. It had been ripped from his heart and thrown against a wall, leaving him the mere shell of what he had been.

The gaping hole it left behind had never, would never, heal with time. The pain, the throbbing, the bleeding only grew worse each moment that didn't include her.

Hadn't they lied, in all the fairy tales? Hadn't Dumbledore lied, because love simply couldn't surpass death?

He would cry yes, scream it at you, hurl at you what love has done to him, how it's lied, and how, despite the way he wishes it to be gone, clings to him.

In a way, he might be wrong. He's lost everything, but in a small space of time, he'd had everything he had ever needed. In innocence and simplicity and, yes, love, he'd had it all.

On the cold gritty floor stained with anything and everything imaginable, but mostly with himself, tears were falling before he could stop them. He pounded against his prison, just wanting a way out, to escape, to forget.

Yet he couldn't forget her, could he?

No. No, because in a small corner of this cage he had made, there was a glimmer of naivety, of hope, of love.

Would she ever answer?

He didn't think so. But he hoped for the best, hoped that in his delusions maybe, maybe, she might come, talk a little while, and tell him that which she never had before.

Then he thought, possibly, that she hadn't said it, because it didn't need to be said. That with the expressiveness of her lively, rapturous, eyes, it could simply be seen.

Collapsing in a heap, as he often did, he dreamt of her again.

I love you, Hermione.