Looking at him, Dora was suddenly completely certain that even if she had, somehow, ended up married, if her aunt had gotten her way or even if someone else had managed by some miracle to catch her eye – she knew that she’d really have still been Ewan’s. Though loyal to the core and always mindful of her promises, even the simple ones, she didn’t think anything could stop her from being with him in whatever way she could be. He’d be the only one able to sway her like that.
It wasn’t only that you never got completely over your first love. He was more than that. First implied there had been others who had had her heart, and no one had ever romantically found hers, the poor, oft maligned thing she was always making fun of. She had friends, but there was no one else who mattered on the same level he had in her life.
She supposed she should have seen it coming. But she was wrapped up in thinking of how she should apologize to him for those lost years, wondering how to make it up to him. For one irrational moment, she didn’t completely process what he said as he pulled away, and panic fluttered through her. He’d taken the rings, he wanted more. More what?
Her heart lodged somewhere in her throat as he knelt in front of her and took her hand, however, and she managed just barely to swallow and force her attention to his words. How many times had she wondered how he would propose, all those years ago? But those maybes were blown away by his precious, wonderful words. For a moment she could truly believe he didn’t care and not even the most wretched parts of her would scare him away.
Maybe she’d make him wait for the ceremony to make sure he knew how fucked up she was. But she wasn’t about to wait to say yes. She slipped into Scots without realizing it, clearly overwhelmed, so unusual for her. “Aye. I love you, Ewan-mine. If you can stand me forever, then ye have me that long and more.” For the first time in years she felt capable of actually casting a Patronus; not even her medals, works for so long and hard, made her happy like this man, with his earnest, gorgeous face, did. “I’ve been yours my entire life anyhow, even when I’ve not been near.” No amount of stupidities would ever change that, and he was right – they’d waited long enough.