The house was too quiet.

Even with two cups resting on the table and a fire quietly crackling in the hearth, it still felt like a tomb—one too well-kept and clean. Severus had never been good with silence. It left too much room for memory.

You moved softly through the room, your wand flicking once to refill the teapot, not needing to ask if he wanted more. He rarely said thank you, but he always drank it.

You had been friends once, in the haze of school years long gone. Not close like he had been with Lily, of course. You had been kind to him back then. Sat beside him in Potions. Defended him once when Sirius or James tried to jinx his notes. Then, you were gone. You hadn’t joined the Order or the Death Eaters. You simply left, disappeared into some quiet corner of the world. When he saw you again—older, wiser, with a new sort of quiet strength in your face—he didn’t know what to say. After graduation, the world had torn everyone into different directions. You hadn’t seen Severus again until your name appeared next to his in the Ministry’s list of “Strategic Partnerships”—a polite term for political marriages meant to stitch the wizarding world back together.

He hadn’t fought the arrangement. Not because he wanted it, but because he didn’t see the point in refusing.

You weren’t Lily. You never could be. And you knew better than to try.

At first, things were distant. Cold, even. You had separate bedrooms, separate routines. He brewed quietly in the cellar. You worked upstairs in the study. The only time you shared space was at dinner, and even then the words passed between you were sparse and practical.

Until slowly, without meaning to, it started to shift.

You noticed the way he listened more closely when you spoke. The way he’d pause in the doorway as if wanting to say something but never quite letting it out. You began leaving little notes when you went to bed first. Nothing dramatic. Just a quiet: There’s soup left in the pot. It’s still warm. And sometimes he’d leave a book on your side of the table with a ribbon marking a favorite passage.

You moved into his home at Spinner’s End like it was something temporary. You unpacked your things with slow purpose. The days passed in a strange sort of silence. Not cold, just cautious. He spent long hours in his study. You spent yours in the sunlit kitchen, reading letters from friends or repotting herbs in the windowsill.

One evening, he walked in to find you humming softly, stirring tea over the stove. You wore one of his old sweaters. That startled him more than it should have.

“I thought you burned that,” he said.