And she had never looked upon him with disgust. He remembers wondering in that moment whether it might actually hurt less than the tenderness with which she looked at him, then. In the same room that she would later drag his near-lifeless body to safety, while Albus’s corpse had scarcely grown cold, while Severus raged and screamed at her to forget all about him, a grim determination had settled across her features, searing away all gentleness and thinning her pouted lips seconds before she lunged toward him and threw her arms around his neck. He caught her as soon as her feet left the floor, squeezing her against him as a strange sound of despair burst from his chest.