Secret Love
The journey to Hogwarts was quite difficult. Hippocrates was afraid that using the Floo or Apparating would be too stressful. So he chose Portkey, which wasn’t all that good either.
They left the Portkey and arrived right in front of the castle gates, panting and breathing heavily, with Severus in a stretcher. Then Minerva unlocked the gates using her wand and proceeded to levitate him up and into the Hospital Ward.
They finally got to the Infirmary, where Dahlia set up a comfy bed for him and pulled the curtains around the bed. Minerva set Severus down, and Hippocrates immediately shoved potions down his throat.
“Thanks, Hippo,” Dahlia said gratefully as Severus’s breathing grew slightly steadier.
“It’s my job.” He sent her a warm smile, shook Minerva’s hand, and left.
Right after he left, Dahlia slumped onto a chair next to Severus’s bed, looking at him with a defeated, wistful expression.
“You were hoping for it, weren’t you?” Minerva asked wisely. Dahlia flushed scarlet.
“Not this way,” she answered. “Hopefully he wakes up tomorrow,”
“You have to tell him for him to know,” Minerva said, her eyes narrowed. “You won’t ever be able to go back to the relationship you had with him before the Battle if you don’t tell him that you still love him.”
“Minerva, it’s still too early! He’s still in a coma, for Merlin’s sake. He can’t just wake up to me saying, ‘Oh, hey, Severus, haven’t told you this, but I still love you even though I haven’t seen you in three years!’ That’s just absurd. Even when we were dating he never…”
She broke off awkwardly.
“Anyway, Minerva, goodnight.”
The motherly headmistress shook her head fondly at Dahlia and gave her a hug.
“I’ll see both of you tomorrow, then.”
Dahlia watched her go and then turned to face Severus.
She’d loved him the summer before he killed Albus. They dated. Ate meals together. Slept together. Ran alongside beach shores together. She’d watched him laugh, cry, sneer, and smile. Sirius had always said that Severus was ugly. Now, looking at his ruined face, with the uneven skin on his right cheek and the jagged, terrifying scar running down from his lips to the base of his neck, Severus looked horrible.
But it didn't matter what he looked like. Dahlia didn't care whether he looked ugly or pretty. She only cared about him as a person.
(She was quite pretty herself, but at least, if people found out that she liked Severus, they couldn't say that it was for his looks).
She cried every summer on May 2nd, watching tiny snippets of photos of his face projected on a wall at Hogwarts, honoring the fallen in the Battle of Hogwarts.
They’d been really close. She finally broke past that mask of his. But he wasn’t allowed to love her back, he told her. Because Albus Dumbledore needed Severus to love Lily Potter until the end so that his patronus stayed a doe, so Harry would understand. It broke Severus, but he honored the man’s wishes.
Dahlia knew he loved her, deep down, but had to hide those emotions. She knew he was misunderstood, that he was only “evil” because it was part of the bigger picture. But when he killed Albus, she felt betrayed. Yet the more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that he only killed Albus for…other reasons.
And when he died, Dahlia cried for weeks.
She believed in him until the end. And she still loved him. Desperately.
When she got the message that he was alive, she didn’t believe it until she saw him. But he wasn’t the man he was, not really. She could only hope that he got better.