The end
I hate you, I told Granger when she was waiting for me outside my appeal hearing, fresh from the Wizamagot floor where she’d barely gotten the reform legislation through. It was a shallow hate. Skin deep. Unable to settle into my core. Unable to overshadow all the other feelings I didn’t know how to name.
Fuck off, I told Weasley, when he said there’d always be a place for me at the DMLE, in fact he had a special assistant position open right now and there was no one better for the job. As if I needed the money after his wife made the DMLE shell out ten years of back pay.
It’s not like you’ll never see me again, I told Ajax as I packed up the belongings I’d somehow collected, photos with our team, nicknacks and thank you notes from the trainees who credited me with making it through the year. I made myself believe him when Ajax said he wanted to see me, like I was a person good people could want.
I wasn’t actually going to do it, I told Trix, who was the first to discover my ruined plans to send myself to Azkaban for all eternity. You better not, they yelled at me. They yelled and yelled until I promised them things I probably didn’t mean. Like I’d finally let Weasley find me help before I spiraled back into depression and found a new, idiotic way to self harm.
I think I love you, I told Potter, wrapped up in his arms, still in bed with him the morning after I’d left the ministry for the first time of my own accord. It was stupid to say. Beyond foolish. But my skin tingled where his fingers brushed idly over me and I didn’t want him to let go. And I had decided, hadn’t I, that life was worth the risk.
I love you, he said, like love was simple. Like love was abundant. Like he’d give it to me as long as I was there to take it. Like we had our entire, long lives ahead of us.
The important thing to understand is that I hate myself, but maybe not forever. I cuddled back into Potter’s arms and allowed myself to believe one day I could think like him. That I could let myself have something more.