The characters in my head never shut up

She pulls a long silver strand of memory from her temple and drops it into the pensieve. Memory-Harry revolves slowly on the spot, screaming. “Never the whole truth! Never!”

Both of them stare, transfixed, as the memory-Harry revolves slowly in the pensieve.

“I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn't love, this mess he's left me in." 

The fact remains that she is miserable and he is empty and there is nothing left to lose.

I kept thinking about this fic recently, with our, um, current political situation. It creeped me out in 2004 and it creeps me out worse now. But I could never find the link until today, when I stumbled upon it looking for something else. 

Strikethrough2.0 is making me miss LJ before it mostly died, so have an old school LJ fic rec. 

“It was the first of November, and Severus was in his office. His face was drawn, his eyes sunken, as if drained--as if he’d cried until there were no tears left--and his whole posture collapsed in defeat. He looked, in other words, like any other young man who had discovered grief, who thought that this loss, his first great loss, was greater and more terrible than any other in the history of humankind.

If asked about it later, Albus would have said that Aberforth's punch did more for him than weeks of sympathetic words, but the truth was he was angry. Angry at James and Lily--and himself--for trusting Sirius. Angry at Severus for believing that one could join a movement that demanded the destruction of Muggle-borns while believing, stupidly, that the one Muggle-born who mattered to him might survive it. Angry at Tom for his selfishness and his cruelty, his refusal to listen, his refusal to be cowed. Angry at himself for not taking action earlier, when there was still a chance to contain him--angry at himself for borrowing the Invisibility Cloak, the Hallow that could have hidden the Potters from Death itself--

Harry looks at Hermione, and he is sure in that moment that they are both remembering the same lonely forest, the same book cast aside in anger and hurt, half-buried in snow.

I don’t know who he loved Hermione, but it was never me.