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I’ve always thought that love was supposed to feel warm. Like a hearth on a winter night. Like the way Harry’s eyes used to find mine across the Burrow’s kitchen, quiet but sure.
But it’s not warm anymore.
It’s smoke.
It’s the sharp crackle of a matchstick just before the flame explodes.
“Just gonna stand there and watch me burn… but that’s alright, because I like the way it hurts…”
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Hermione was always there. Always beside him, in ways I couldn’t be. She knew every battle before I even read the headlines. She was stitched into his story like a name in a prophecy.
I told myself it was just friendship.
I told myself he loved me because he said he did.
But love doesn’t look like the way he watches her when she isn’t looking.
It doesn’t sound like my name echoing with hesitation.
And it doesn’t feel like this.
“You ever love somebody so much you can barely breathe when you’re with them?”
That’s how he used to be with me. Or maybe… maybe I just wanted to believe that.
We’re fighting again.
“Just gonna stand there and watch me cry, well that’s ok I love the way you lie.”
It’s like we can’t speak without some wound opening between us. The lies bleed through his voice when he says her name casually, as if it’s just another syllable—not a secret.
“Harry,” I say, too sharply, “just tell me.”
He doesn’t ask what I mean.
He knows.
“I love the way you lie”
His fingers clench, jaw working. He looks past me, toward the door. Or maybe he’s looking for her shadow.
“I love you,” he says.
But it doesn’t sound like a promise.
It sounds like a prison sentence.
“You ever love somebody, put ’em on a pedestal / And then destroy ’em?”
“How long?” I ask.
“Ginny—”
“How long have you been lying to me?”
There’s silence, but it’s screaming.
He rubs a hand over his face like he can scrub the truth off of it.
“Got that warm fuzzy feelin', yeah, them chills, used to get 'em
Now you're gettin' fuckin' sick of lookin' at 'em?”
“You don’t understand,” he finally says. “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“But it did, didn’t it?” I snap. “You love her.”
His lips part. He doesn’t say yes. But he doesn’t say no.
And that’s when it hits me.
I was never the fire in his chest.
Just the smoke he got lost in while trying not to burn.
“ So they say you're best to go your separate ways”
It feels like drowning in a house I built with someone else’s bricks.
It feels like watching him walk into battle for a girl he swore was just a friend.
Like loving a ghost of something that never really belonged to me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
And maybe he is.
But the truth is, he’ll run to her the moment I let him go.
And she’ll look at him with those wide brown eyes that have already forgiven him.
Because she was never the other woman.
I was.
“I guess that’s why they call it window pane…”
I don’t scream.
I don’t beg.
I just let the match drop.
“Just gonna stand there and hear me cry…
But that’s alright because I love the way you lie.”