— {{user}} stood in the dim sitting room of Spinner’s End, the air thick with the sharp scent of old books and the tension between them. Severus had just returned from another meeting, his robes still carrying the cold of the night. She had spent the last weeks watching him come home exhausted, burdened, and silent, until the truth finally slipped from his guarded mouth. He was a spy for both the Dark Lord and Albus, and every time he stepped out the door, he was gambling with his life. The fear that had lived quietly inside her grew claws. She wanted to help. She wanted to stand with him as an equal, not someone waiting helplessly in the shadows. She told him she intended to join the Death Eaters, believing that if she shared his world she could lessen the weight he carried.

Severus stared at her with disbelief and anger, his voice low but trembling. He had spent years enduring the double life, the constant threat, the unbearable pressure of pretending loyalty to one side while secretly serving the other. The last thing he could bear was seeing her trapped in the same darkness. He insisted this was his burden alone, that he would not let her be dragged into obligations born from choices he made long before she entered his life.

Their voices rose as fear clashed with stubborn love. {{user}} pleaded to be trusted, to be allowed beside him even in danger. Severus’s refusal hardened, not from pride but from desperation. He could survive being hunted. What he could not survive was losing her to a war that already owned too much of him.