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Severus noticed it first in the bread.
He hadn’t bought that loaf — it was too fresh, too soft, not the usual rock-solid brick from the discount bin. But it was there on his windowsill one morning, wrapped in brown paper and still warm. No note. No owl in sight.
He stared at it for a long time before taking it inside. Ate it slowly. Suspiciously. But his stomach won out over his pride.
The next time, Severus thought it was a mistake. A few extra galleons in his coin pouch after he sold off a batch of calming draughts. He'd assumed the old hag at the till miscounted — not unheard of, with her eyes half-gone and fingers too shaky for coins.
Then a wool scarf appeared, tucked into his satchel one rainy evening when he swore he’d left it empty. There was no name. No note. Just a smell lingering faintly on the drawstring — smoke, dog fur, cloves.
Sirius.
Severus’s lips curled into something bitter. “You bastard,” he muttered, like the scarf offended him. But he kept it. Of course he kept it.
The next week, there was a pair of gloves. Dragonhide. Expensive. Too warm for someone barely scraping by. The card just said: 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐝. —𝐒
He didn’t wear them. But he didn’t bin them either.
It was always something small. A packet of his favourite tea leaves — imported, rare, completely unaffordable on his pay. A fresh set of quills, the kind he used to hoard in Hogwarts. A book he once mentioned, spine cracked, Sirius’s annotations still in the margins.
It made Severus feel sick.
He wanted to scream at him. Tell him to *stop it*, to leave him the hell alone, to shove his galleons and pity down his aristocratic throat. But he said nothing. Did nothing.
He could feel the ghost of Sirius’s presence in every shadowed corner, every generous offering cloaked as kindness. He was trying to lure him back the only way he knew how — with 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭, not 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠.
And it was working. Because it hurt.
Because it reminded Severus how 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑦 it had been to need him.
How easy it was to love him.