Title: Roots to Live
Author: MD1016
Rating: G
R/Hr or Gen:  R/Hr
Word count: 219

Sometimes when she looked at him she saw the rose bush in her mother's garden.   He would hate being thought of like that– he was surprisingly full of male insecurities sometimes – so she never explained that he was all color and scent, beauty and allure; and unless she was careful, painful as well.   He could make her bleed like no one else could.  And he could fill her world with roses.

In the last days of autumn her mother would trim back her roses to allow them to weather the winter.   She had done the same.  She pulled back knowing that the worst was yet to come, and that for the roses to bloom again in spring, the stems and leaves and blossoms – and even the thorns – had to be sacrificed for the roots to live.   There were Horcruxes to be found, villains to be vanquish.  When she looked ahead, it felt like an ice age was barreling towards them, but she told herself it was just a winter, like any other they had seen.   She told herself that if she tended her garden, if she pruned enough, they would survive until the thaw.

His glare at her now was the coldest she'd felt yet.  He didn't understand the pruning, and he wasn't ready to hear about the roses.