It was as if waiting an eternity through the raging fires of hell could not have prepared her for the anticipation that burnt inside of her when he finally looked up and agreed that yes, yes, there had been something between the two of them. That declaration, after the long pause that it had come, had her spirits soaring, her every glistening pillar of hope towering once more. He'd felt something, he'd felt what she had - that had to have meant something, didn't it?

Finding her gaze drawn to his instinctively, uncontrollably when his fingers brushed back some of her loose strands from her face, Anjali felt the herself wanting to more than anything to confess herself to him. That sudden, unequivocal desire to shed every facade she had ever carried and reval her true colors to him was short-lived though, dashed at his next words along with the hopes he'd ignited mere seconds before.

"But it's still - it's still just one moment, can't you see that?"

Just?, her heart echoed faintly, her expression falling when she watched him with a dark curtain falling in her eyes. There had been no just about it when he'd responded to her, there had been no just about it even when he'd eased away from her, nothing, her mind screamed desperately, had been just anything. She'd flown, she'd fallen, she'd crawled, she'd sunk into him, and yet, yet he could think only of it being one moment. It mattered not, it seemed, that in that moment she'd felt existence on another plane, a profound knowledge that her life wouldn't be as miserable as she'd feared the nights before - it mattered only to him, that among many, it had been but one moment.

Oh, how she wished she could hate him and rid herself of the sudden misery that plagued her features, her conscience, her being; indifference was an emotion she had until then never desired so greatly-

"One moment, Anjali," he said, surprised at how easily the word came to his tongue now, "and they expect us to build a life together."

That she understood. The fear of it, the frustration, the lack of control- that she could understand. It had terrified her, it still did, for that matter, there was nothing more wretched than a situation that one had no hold over, no control of what direction it was steered. However, she wanted to make it work. She wanted desperately, as naive as it may have sounded, to make things somehow work between them.

Didn't the kiss prove that there was something there that could be salvaged?

"One moment, and we have to build a life. Is this how you want to start it all?"

"I don't know," she whispered with a confused shake of her head, her frustration audible in her voice when she drew her hand gently out from his grasp. There was such a genuine feeling of tiredness laced in her voice that when she repeated herself once more, she could barely keep herself from trembling.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Kabir, how can I?" she asked softly with a strained swallow, her eyes lifting to his with all the trepidation that had existed before she'd felt some reason for hope. "I've never had to sort my feelings about someone who I have no choice but to be with, someone I don't even think has actual feelings towards me."

"Don't, please, let me finish," she pleaded softly, lifting a hand to silence him before he could refute her if he had a mind to. She felt her throat tighten as she felt herself finally at the brink of her composure, and dropping her hand to rest it against his chest, just a little left of his heart, she struggled with the words that fell slowly from her lips.

"I don't know how to go about this the right way. I don't know whether I should sit down and talk to you all proper about my family or my uprbringing or even my thoughts on the crisis between the muggle world and ours, or whether I should try and get to know you where it actually matters."

"I thought that if I kissed you, if I felt you, that is," she whispered, pausing as her eyes flew up to lock on his his, her voice becoming softer when she edged on, "Then I would know at least if there could be anything here. Between us."

Pushing her other hand into her hair and biting the inside of her cheek as she looked away from him, she added faintly, "I thought there had been, I didn't know it wasn't enough."