Her eyes were so hopeful, so shining every time she looked up at him, and he would do anything in the world to preserve that gleam. He knew all too well what the war did to them all, how it carved them hollow, as if the dementors sucked all happiness of them and never gave it back. Even now, Hogwarts was still grim and drowning in the shadows of the fallen despite all that combined effort to bring the colours back.