This was meant to be an Angie/Fred ficlet, but it turned out a lot more personal than I meant for it to be. Thanks to Rhianna for beta-ing. I don't own HP.

.x. Impressionism .x.

Things aren't the same without him. Sometimes she feels like she's drowning in the loneliness, but it's different than the quiet desperation she'd read in books. It's been long enough that the angst and tears have long since passed; they've been replaced by a steady, dull aching in the spot that will always be reserved for him.

Sometimes at night, when she misses him most of all, she piles pillows beside her and lays a blanket across her waist. But it hasn't the weight of flesh and bone; the warmth nor the tenderness of his touch.

She keeps the ring he gave her in a box on her dresser, dusted over to mark the passage of time. She's removed the pictures from their frames, but she keeps them to look back on; to stare at his eyes and his cheeks and the curve of his lips and to try to remember the last time he smiled at her.

She can't bring herself to leave him in the past. There are times, when she lingers between living and sleeping, when she swears she can feel the phantom of his lips against her collarbone; the lingering sensation of his body brushing ever so slightly against hers as they danced all those years ago. And every so often, when she lets her guard down, she can hear the faintest echo of his laugh.