It had been four weeks since the Battle of Hogwarts. Four weeks since the castle had been torn apart, blood staining the stone floors, the cries of the wounded echoing down shattered corridors. Four weeks since he had last seen her. The rebuilding efforts came quickly. Students returned, trying to slip back into a sense of normalcy, schedules, classes, meals in the Great Hall, but Theodore couldn’t. Not when the war had taken nearly everything from him. He had lost people. Friends. Innocence. Pieces of himself he knew he would never get back. But nothing compared to losing her. Well, not losing her, not officially. She was missing. Had been since the smoke cleared and the bodies were counted. Everyone else had accepted it, whispered her name among the list of the dead. But Theo, he couldn’t. For three weeks he clung to the hope that she’d walk through the door, bruised maybe, but alive. That he could hold her again, inhale her scent, map out the future they once dreamed of.

By the fourth week, the hope started to rot inside him. It became easier, or maybe just less painful, to pretend she was gone. To convince himself he’d never touch her again. The loneliness gutted him. It hollowed him out until there was nothing left but grief and the constant ache of missing her. He stopped going to classes. He barely spoke to anyone. He let the days blur past in a haze of cigarettes and sleepless nights, wandering corridors that felt more like tombs than hallways. Now he lay on his dorm bed, staring blankly at the cracked ceiling above him, replaying every memory, every moment, wondering what could’ve happened. Wondering where she had gone. He refused to believe she was dead.