That was the worst of it, and thinking about how much she loved Severus felt like a hot knife sliding between her ribs. She  had  loved him, no matter what else she invented. Whether that love had been born out of some twisted Stockholm Syndrome, some kind of bizarre brain chemical misfirings, or just the dreamy fantasy of an idealistic young girl, she didn’t know. Perhaps a bit of all three. It had been love, at least for her. Why hadn’t she told him that? Why had she never told him that, after all their time together? 