Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PART ONE

KEEPING IN TOUCH

The first of September dawned grey and damp, as it often did in Cokeworth, but I barely noticed the weather anymore.

I stood in the cramped kitchen of Spinner’s End, steam curling from the lip of my cauldron, a faint tang of crushed valerian root hanging in the air. A second kettle hissed from the hob, this one for tea. I’d already labelled five phials before breakfast. The sixth was cooling on the windowsill, pale violet and precise.

There were no bells. No owls hooting. No Headmistress' voice floating through the corridors announcing the arrival of students. No noise. Just the familiar ticking of the mantle clock, the occasional creak of the floorboards as the house adjusted to autumn.

And that was it.

Peace.

I leaned against the counter, tea in hand, and let myself breathe.

I wasn’t at Hogwarts.

For the first time in over two decades, I wasn’t bracing myself for a storm of adolescent shrieking, exploding inkpots, or the inevitable cries of “but Professor, it wasn’t my fault—he jinxed my cauldron!”

No Sorting Ceremony. No speeches. No gaudy banners or house cheers echoing off enchanted stone.

Just steam and the faint rustle of parchment as my latest order list fluttered in the breeze from the cracked window.

I was busy. Already. Word had spread faster than I’d anticipated.

Some were former clients from the Order. A handful were hospitals. A few were private collectors or niche suppliers who had somehow managed to unearth my name from the swirl of post-war myth. Others had simply heard the phrase “Snape takes commissions now” and sent owls begging for Wolfsbane, Skel-Gro, and Pepper-Up in bulk.

Half the time, I considered vanishing completely. Change my name. Relocate to Siberia. However, the truth was that I liked the work. The precision. The solitude. The knowledge that I owed nothing to anyone anymore.

No master. No headmaster. No boy with a scar. No vow.

I was free.

It was a concept so alien I still caught myself glancing at the mantel for alerts or letters I no longer expected. Waiting for Albus’ handwriting. Waiting for the Dark Mark to burn. Waiting for Potter to stagger through my office half-conscious and full of righteous idiocy.

But none of that came.

Because I was free.

I’d survived the war. And somehow—utterly inexplicably—I had been allowed to remain.

Not only that, but I'd been cleared, thanked, decorated. Decorated. A ridiculous Order of Merlin sat in its box in the drawer beside my teaspoons. I used it occasionally to prop open old recipe books.

I sipped my tea and eyed the draft of my newest catalogue—neatly printed, carefully worded, already requested in six countries.

It was surreal.

Here I was. Severus Snape. Once spy, once killer, once professor. Now—potioneer. Full stop.

No children screeching through the halls. No Flitwick chattering at breakfast. No Sprout bringing in leaves on her robes or Trelawney weeping into her sherry. No one plotting chaos. No House Cup. No Head of House meetings. No Albus.

Just… me.

And the quiet.

The house was still dark, the sun filtered through ash-coloured clouds, but I didn’t mind. It suited me. I didn’t need the warmth of the castle anymore. I had my own now, in glass jars and boiling flasks.

I glanced at the clock again. In a few hours, the train would arrive at Hogsmeade Station. The Sorting Hat would sing. The feast would be served. Someone would knock over the pumpkin juice. And I wouldn’t be there.

And strangely, I didn’t feel regret. Or sadness. Just… stillness.

I set my cup down and turned back to my bench. The draft for a new batch of Blood-Replenishing tonic was already laid out beside a bundle of dried rosehips. Orders were waiting.

And for once in my life, I had the freedom to say yes, or no, or not today.

Freedom.

It had a taste, I realised.

Steam. Silence. And a hint of something sweet.

Maybe lemon. Or maybe, impossibly—hope.

The cauldron was at a simmer, the tincture darkening exactly as intended, when I heard it—the scratch of claws on slate and the creaking of old wings folding against the windowsill.

I paused, flask still in hand.

Only one owl in Britain made that particular wheezing rattle when it landed.

I turned, and sure enough, there he was.

The owl—undoubtedly ancient, his left eye clouded, one tail feather perpetually askew—was already dozing off where he’d landed. His claws dug slightly into the ledge, and his head drooped forward with the heavy drama of a narcoleptic actor.

“Of course,” I muttered, setting the flask down and striding over.

The parchment tied to his leg was tightly wound, the knot too neat to be anyone else’s. Green ink. Ron’s. I untied it carefully, sparing a glance at the bird.

“You may rest as long as you like,” I murmured. “Just try not to die on my sill.”

The owl wheezed in response and slumped further.

I opened the letter.

Dear Mr Potioneer,

Feels weird not boarding the train today. First time in years I haven’t had to wear a tie or break up a fight in the corridor by ten past eleven. Honestly not sure what to do with the peace and quiet.

Hope you’re not too bored without hundreds of dunderheads to terrify into silence. Who’s going to flinch at your footsteps now? Must be dreadful, poor thing.

Anyway, just thought I’d say hello.

R.

I stared at the parchment for longer than necessary.

It wasn’t long. It wasn’t profound. And yet I felt a peculiar tightness in my chest, as though something had briefly settled there.

It was him. Entirely, unmistakably him. The sardonic humour. The casual fondness beneath the jokes. The steady rhythm of someone who knew I didn’t need flattery or fluff—just a line of ink, a nudge of presence, a reminder.

He remembered.

Of course he did.

I refolded the letter with care and set it on the desk, beside the cooled flask. The old owl snored faintly behind me, wind rustling through the crack in the window.

I would not respond immediately. I refused to be so predictable.

…Perhaps tomorrow.

I returned to my bench, but the work felt different now. Lighter, somehow. Less empty.

The silence of Spinner’s End no longer pressed in.

It waited. Quiet, companionable.

And I did not feel alone.

It had been just over one month since the first of September.

The castle would be in full swing by now—homework piling up, Quidditch tryouts underway, first-years learning which staircases to avoid if they didn’t want to arrive late and upside-down. I imagined the sound of it, distantly. The scrape of benches in the Great Hall, the crackle of goblets refilling, the drone of Flitwick’s lectures rising through the floorboards.

But here, in Spinner’s End, the world was still.

No bells. No chaos.

Just the hum of my workbench and the occasional hoot of a passing owl.

It arrived just after dusk, wings stirring the heavy air above the alleyway, and landed with a huff against my window.

The same decrepit owl. Ron’s. Still alive. Miraculously.

I opened the pane without a word. The creature blinked once, gave a low, offended hoot, and stuck out its leg with the air of a civil servant who had tried retirement and found it beneath him.

The letter was tied with the same precise knot as always, green ink already visible through the parchment. I untied it carefully and set a saucer of water on the sill. The owl ignored it and began preening with arthritic dignity.

I returned to my armchair with the letter in hand. The lamp beside me flickered gently, casting long shadows across the stacks of phials and paper cluttering the room. The fire had burnt low. I didn’t stoke it.

Instead, I unfolded the letter.

Dear Mr Potioneer,

You’d like the new Ashwinder. Absolutely furious at everything. Tried to set my boots on fire (twice) and I wasn’t even doing anything, I swear. One of the older keepers says it’s a sign of good temperament, which sounds like bollocks, but she’s been doing this longer than me, so I just smiled and nodded and put the damn thing back in her nesting mound.

Also, we had a Norwegian Ridgeback come in yesterday. Young, underfed. You’d hate the Ministry paperwork it triggered. But you should’ve seen her. Scales like dark copper. Eyes like smoke. Honestly kind of beautiful.

Hope your clients aren’t sending you half-digested feathers again. Do you ever miss having people to shout at?

R.

I read it twice.

Not because I hadn’t absorbed it the first time—Ron’s handwriting was as consistent as his wit—but because something about the cadence, the rhythm, settled under my skin like warmth in the bones. Familiar. Steady.

He’d written six times since leaving Hogwarts. Six.

Each letter slightly longer than the last. Each filled with stories, observations, dry humour tucked between casual updates. He never asked for anything. Never demanded. Simply… shared.

There was one, from mid-September, describing the sanctuary’s attempt to herd an invisible herd of mooncalves using glow paint and a broken flute. Another contained a sketch of a knarl with the caption: reminds me of you before tea. I still hadn’t binned that one.

I stared down at the parchment now, my thumb pressed to the fold where the ink still smudged faintly.

I had not answered the last letter. Nor the one before it. Not with anything resembling a proper reply. I had sent a brief note three weeks ago—three lines, at most—correcting one of his brewing observations and warning him not to use doxy venom to soothe burns. That was all.

Yet he kept writing.

I hadn’t expected it.

When he’d asked if he could visit, I had said yes. At the time, I thought it a kindness, or perhaps a weakness. I had assumed he would forget. That time, distance, and his irrepressible warmth would dissolve the connection.

People always left. Or they grew up. Or they realised that what they thought they saw in me was a projection, a momentary need. Something temporary.

Ron had not.

He wrote about dragons, about burn salves and mislabelled crates, about feeling sore from carrying boxes and triumphant when a hippogriff let him scratch its beak. He wrote as if I were someone who mattered. Someone who should know.

And Merlin help me—I read every word.

I told myself it was curiosity, politeness, boredom. I told myself it was indulgence.

But the truth was: I looked forward to them.

Not because the parchment smelled faintly of pine resin. Not because he always used my preferred ink, without ever having asked.

But because in the world Ron inhabited, I still existed.

He remembered me.

He thought of me.

And he wanted me to know.

I refolded the letter with care and slipped it into the drawer beside my chair. The seventh one now. I’d pretend I wasn’t saving them. That they merely hadn’t been discarded yet.

The owl gave a snore from the sill.

I rose and closed the window, letting the firelight stretch across the room again. The quiet pressed in, as it always did. But it no longer felt so complete.

I had lived a life full of endings. But this—whatever this was—felt stubbornly like a beginning.

And I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Not yet.

Early December frost rimed the windows at Spinner’s End each morning, and the river behind the house had begun to freeze in slow, stubborn sheets.

Ron’s owl had become a familiar fixture.

He arrived with the steadiness of moonrise, wings creaking, eyes half-closed, always just on the edge of collapse. He slept through most of his visits now. Occasionally, I offered him a strip of smoked herring, which he ignored with dignity. We had reached an understanding.

Today, he arrived just after tea, landing with a familiar thud on the sill. He stuck out his leg with theatrical suffering, then promptly tucked his head under his wing and began to snore.

I smirked despite myself and untied the letter.

It was folded the same way as always—neat, square, faintly creased from Ron’s pocket. Green ink. Slightly rushed strokes, as though written between tasks. The familiar scent of dragon balm and something vaguely lemony lingered on the parchment.

He’d written twice this week already. I hadn’t expected him to keep up the habit so consistently. And yet—he had. Without fail.

I opened it, anticipating the usual ramblings about blasted creatures, failed Ministry forms, or what ridiculous tea Luna had convinced him to try.

Dear Mr Potioneer,

Figured it’s about time we catch up properly. Not over parchment for once. I’ve just moved into a new flat, tiny, but it’s mine. Good light, awful plumbing, and a kettle that works if I shout at it hard enough.

You should come round for lunch. I’ll cook. I promise not to poison you, though I’m not ruling out dessert as blackmail.

You can scowl at my curtain choices and judge my spice rack and pretend it’s not nice to be out of that dungeon of yours for a bit.

No pressure, of course. But I’d really like to see you.

Let me know when you’re free.

R.

I stared at the page.

Not long. Not dramatic. Just warm. Just Ron.

There was no hesitation in his handwriting. No awkwardness, no tentative apology for inviting me into his life. Just… a door, held open.

I folded the letter slowly, precisely, and set it beside the others in the stack I hadn’t yet filed away. I told myself I would. Eventually.

Ron had never stopped writing. That was what undid me, in the quiet.

Week after week, his letters arrived. Some short, some almost absurdly long. One had included a napkin with a sauce stain and a note that read “don’t ask, just know it was a disaster.” Another had diagrams. One had a poem about a manticore that scanned, somehow, to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs.”

Each one had his voice in it. Each one arrived as if to say: Still here. Still thinking of you.

And now, he wanted to see me. In person. To cook for me.

To feed me.

It was a gesture I hadn’t received from anyone since… well. Since before the war. Since before my war.

No one invited Severus Snape to lunch.

Except Ron.

The idea of being in his space—his flat, his kitchen, his world—was unsettling in the way tenderness always is. But beneath the instinctive bracing of my ribs, beneath the learned suspicion, I found something quieter, more honest.

I wanted to go.

I wanted to see him. His face. The way he moved when he wasn’t holding a wand. The way he smiled when he wasn’t trying to hide it. I wanted to see what kind of curtains he thought were a good idea, what spice rack he owned, what mismatched mugs he’d collected from wherever he’d been. I wanted all of it.

Not because I needed anything from him.

But because it would be him.

I reached for a clean sheet of parchment and set it on the desk. My quill hesitated over the inkpot.

Then, firmly, I wrote:

Lunch would be acceptable.

I am available Friday or Sunday, between twelve and two.

S.S.

I sealed the letter. Tied it gently to the owl’s leg. He didn’t stir.

I stood for a long time by the window after I sent him off, the cold December air curling around my collar.

It was absurd. It was impossible.

It was happening.

I stood before the door longer than necessary.

The building was unremarkable—a narrow brick structure tucked between a green-grocer’s and a café that smelled like burnt espresso. The stairwell leading up to Ron’s flat had been recently swept, though a stray leaflet still clung to the bannister. The door itself was painted dark green, the number charm slightly faded. Nothing about it gave anything away.

Except that I was holding a plant.

A potted sweetroot—slow-growing, resilient, and notoriously hard to kill. Ideal for potioncraft, even for someone with Ron’s historically adversarial relationship with Herbology. It had taken me half a week to decide. I’d told myself it was a practical gift. That it wasn’t sentimental.

It was.

I raised a hand to knock, then paused.

Absurd how a man could face down warlords and traitors and still hesitate at the threshold of a friend’s home. But this—this—was not an execution. It was an invitation.

And I was terrified.

Of what, precisely, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps the way his face might have changed. Perhaps the way mine hadn’t. Perhaps how it might feel to be inside a world Ron had built without me.

I knocked. Three short raps.

It was only seconds before the latch turned, but it stretched impossibly long—my heart ticking louder than I liked, the plant suddenly heavy in my hands.

And then the door opened.

There he was.

Ron.

His fringe was slightly longer, brushing over one eyebrow, and his hair was tied back in a lazy ponytail that had clearly been done with his fingers and no mirror. A streak of flour ran along one cheekbone. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and he was grinning—wide and warm, not mischievous, not teasing. Not yet.

Just earnest.

Painfully so.

And as always, I was left utterly defenceless in the face of it.

He looked at me as if seeing me was the best part of his day.

“Hi,” he said simply, like it hadn’t been half a year since I last stood this close to him.

He stepped aside immediately, no hesitation, like he hadn’t had to make room for me, like the space was already there, waiting.

“I brought something,” I said, holding out the plant. My voice was dry. My pulse was ridiculous.

Ron’s eyes lit with amused delight. 

“You brought me homework.”

“It’s difficult to kill,” I said, handing it over. “Though I expect you’ll manage.”

He laughed and took it gently, as if it were a gift and not a challenge. 

“Cheers. It’s going in the kitchen—closest to running water, less chance I forget it needs some from time to time.”

He gestured me in, and I stepped into the warmth of his flat.

It smelled good. Whatever he’d cooked, it wasn’t the smell of disaster. Something with garlic and herbs and slow-cooked comfort. I remembered, quite suddenly, the lemon biscuits he’d baked for me months ago, when I’d been released from the hospital wing. I hadn’t expected much. I’d been wrong. Clearly, the talent had a foundation.

“Let me just check the oven hasn’t mutinied,” he said, disappearing briefly into the kitchen. “Coq au vin is a fussy bastard.”

I stood by the entry, removing my cloak. Ron reappeared just long enough to take it from my hands without asking and hang it on a peg—his peg, next to a navy one that likely belonged to Granger, judging by the ribbon tied to it.

And I looked around.

If I hadn’t known he’d just moved in, I wouldn’t have guessed. The flat was small but full of life—books stacked along one wall, a charmed photograph of the twins mid-prank frozen in time on the mantel. A battered settee with an overwashed quilt. A side table piled with parchment, quills, and a half-melted candle. There were plants on the windowsill, mugs on coasters, and shoes kicked off by the door.

It felt lived in. Not chaotic—settled.

I followed the sounds of him in the kitchen, the space bright with a single enchanted skylight. The sweetroot was already placed on a shelf between a chipped jar of cinnamon sticks and a small dragon figurine.

He turned back to me, flushed from the oven’s heat, eyes bright. 

“Food’s just about ready. You alright with wine?”

“I’m not here to drink,” I said dryly.

“Yeah, but I am,” he replied, already pouring two glasses. “Don’t worry, it’s not terrible.”

We sat at a small round table set for two. The plates were plain, but the food—Merlin. Tender chicken in a deep, rich sauce. Roast vegetables perfectly crisp. There was even warm bread wrapped in a cloth, and the butter had been left out just long enough to spread.

I took a bite. Paused. Took another.

“This is… annoyingly impressive,” I said.

Ron beamed, then ducked his head, cheeks blooming red. 

“Mum taught me properly. Would be shameful that I could brew Felix Felicis but not make a bloody stew.” He grinned again. “Not that you’d ever let me touch your cauldron.”

“You’ve confused that with self-preservation.”

He laughed, bright and unguarded, and it settled something in my chest.

The meal passed more easily than I’d prepared for. We spoke of neutral things—of the sanctuary, of the owl’s (Errol was his name, apparently) continued survival, of a mishap with a graphorn calf and someone’s missing trousers. I said little, but Ron never pushed.

When I was silent, he let it be.

When I was sarcastic, he smirked or lobbed something back with equal sharpness.

And when I found myself smiling—genuinely, unthinkingly—he didn’t comment. He just smiled back.

It was… easy. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that.

Not tolerated. Not humoured.

Wanted.

The thought struck me with quiet force.

Ron didn’t invite me here out of politeness. He wasn’t maintaining contact out of nostalgia or obligation.

He had made a place and left space in it. And I was welcome in that space.

When he cleared the plates, I stood, unsure if it was time to go. But he returned with a tray—tea already poured, one cup exactly as I liked it. A saucer of homemade biscuits.

I stared down at the cup for a long moment. The scent was perfect. The brew exact.

He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t needed to.

Ron sat back down and nudged the plate toward me. 

“Still like the lemon ones?”

I nodded.

And thought—I want this again.

I didn’t say it. Of course I didn’t.

But I hoped. Merlin help me, I hoped.

The fire had burned low. The dishes sat empty on the sideboard. The tea had gone cold in the pot, though mine—miraculously—remained half full and still exactly as I liked it. The biscuits were gone. I hadn’t noticed I’d eaten the last one.

Ron stretched slightly in his chair, the movement lazy and satisfied, his limbs unfolding like a cat’s after a nap. He looked content. At home. As though this wasn’t strange at all—that having me here, in his space, was as natural as breathing.

And then he said it.

“We should do this more often.”

Just that. Plain. Simple.

And it brought me undone.

Not with a flourish. Not even with surprise. But with a strange, slow warmth that spread through my chest and left me startled in its wake. A thing I hadn’t allowed myself to name took root there, stubborn and quiet, like the very plant I’d brought to him.

We.

Not “you should come again”. Not “this was fun, sometime maybe…”

We should.

Like it was a given.

“I—” I cleared my throat. “Yes. I suppose we should.”

A grin broke across his face, pleased and sunny and entirely unguarded. It made something flutter in my chest like nerves or longing, or something far more foolish.

When the moment finally came to leave, he walked me to the door, just as he had welcomed me in—like it was always meant to be his hands taking my cloak, his space making room for mine. He opened the door but didn’t rush me. There was no awkwardness, no need to explain what the afternoon had been or hadn’t been.

Just him. Standing there. Looking at me like I was wanted.

“I’ll write to you,” he said, as if he hadn’t stopped.

I nodded, fingers curling around the fabric of my cloak. 

“I’ll… look forward to it.”

He smiled again—less of a grin now, more gentle. And then he stepped back, letting me go.

The corridor outside was dim and cool in contrast. I heard the door shut softly behind me as I descended the stairs, and the noise of the city returned, just enough to remind me I was no longer inside his warmth.

And still, I carried it with me.

That impossible, golden thing.

We should do this more often.

Yes.

Perhaps we should.

Chapter Text

PART TWO

TESTING THE WATERS

I had told myself I would not go.

I told Kingsley I had no interest in posturing beside those who had crawled out from under their desks only once the war had turned in our favour. I told Minerva that no number of unflattering photographs beside ornamental punch bowls would soften my reputation. I told myself it was ridiculous—indulgent—to believe Ronald Weasley had truly meant it when he asked me to come.

But I remembered the letter. His handwriting tight with frustration, amused despite himself.
“They’re dragging out all the war heroes. Guess who counts now? Please don’t make me deal with this circus alone, or I’ll be forced to hex someone and pretend it was an accident.”

Only one of them had swayed me. Of course, it was him.

And so I stood in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, surrounded by ornate banners and floating candles, in dress robes a shade darker than black, wishing for the comfort of a back wall and a stronger drink.

At first, it was tolerable.

The press—clustered like jackals by the fountain—watched me, but none moved. Perhaps they remembered what happened to the last one who tried. Or perhaps, for a moment, I had the aura of something still too volatile to provoke.

That peace shattered the moment I heard the simpering voice:

“Well, well. If it isn’t Professor Snape.”

I turned. Slowly. Already preparing the verbal evisceration.

Rita Skeeter.

Her smile was taut with venom, her eyes gleaming behind dragonfly spectacles. She had written three particularly odious columns about me four months prior, dredging up half-truths and invented betrayals, and now she fluttered her lashes as though we were old friends.

I drew breath, intending to shred her into so many metaphoric pieces that no Quick-Quotes Quill could assemble them, when a hand clamped firmly on my elbow.

“Not now, Severus,” Minerva murmured, voice clipped. “Come along.”

I allowed myself to be herded away, seething.

After she released me with a parting comment about “avoiding lawsuits before Christmas, thank you very much,” I was immediately accosted by Kingsley, then Rathbone, then Percy Weasley, who looked suspiciously like he wanted to present me with a clipboard and a mission statement.

I responded with the appropriate blend of monosyllables and loathing.

But all the while, I was scanning the room. Not for threat. For him.

And then I saw him.

Ron was near the far side of the ballroom, deep in conversation—if one could call it that—with a knot of Ministry sycophants. He stood out as he always did, even in deep navy robes: tall, freckled, with his unmistakable long locks of red hair carefully coiffed for once. A few strands escaped to frame his face, glowing copper under the candlelight. The same colour as the whiskey in my glass.

He was smiling.

But it wasn’t real.

I recognised the slight rigidity in his shoulders, the tautness of his jaw. It was a curated expression, forced into place. One of the witches had her hand on his arm, laughing too hard at something he likely hadn’t said. He gave her the kind of smile people give when they’re trying to be polite but internally searching for the nearest exit.

I should have known.

He had always hated this sort of attention—being fussed over, lionised, pinned down by labels he never asked for. I, of all people, should have remembered that. How many years had he worked to protect his anonymity, even while achieving heroic feats?

I stepped forward, intending to intercept. Perhaps there was something dry and scathing I could say to peel the barnacles from him.

But then I faltered.

He might not want me to interfere. He might not want me there at all.

And just as that doubt took root, he turned.

His eyes found mine.

And the moment our gazes met, his entire face transformed.

Gone was the stiff, awkward mask. What replaced it was something incandescent. Open. Unselfconscious.

He smiled—genuinely, fully—and I felt the air shift.

A blazing, earnest joy, aimed directly at me. Because of me.

I had done nothing to deserve it.

But there it was.

A ray of sunshine personified.

Before I could recover from the blow, he had muttered an apology to his hangers-on and was already making his way toward me, slipping between guests with the ease of a ghost on a mission.

He reached me in less than a minute, bright-eyed and still grinning.

“Well,” he chirped, eyes twinkling with mischief, “if it isn’t my knight in slightly sinister armour. Here to rescue me from death by flattery and finger food.”

I blinked.

Of all the things I had expected, that was not among them.

I managed, at last, to find my voice.

“Next time,” I said dryly, “I shall let the vultures pick your bones clean.”

He laughed. A real one.

And I—Merlin help me—I almost smiled.

Almost.

We migrated, somehow, toward a quiet table near the refreshment line, a mutual agreement unspoken, as most of our agreements had always been. Ron sipped his punch and eyed the room over the rim of his glass like a predator in velvet robes. I let myself relax a fraction.

“I see Rathbone’s finally tired of hearing his own voice,” he murmured.

“Unlikely,” I replied. “He’s merely taken a break so someone else can praise him.”

Ron snorted, then nodded toward a different corner of the room. 

“How long do you think Bones is going to keep pretending she doesn’t see that spill on her hem?”

I followed his gaze. 

“Until someone else points it out, and she can feign the high road while cursing them under her breath.”

He laughed outright. 

“That’s cold.”

“I wasn’t criticising,” I said smoothly. “Just admiring the commitment.”

Ron grinned, and I looked away, not trusting myself. This wasn’t safe. I didn’t mean the function. I meant this. His presence. The way it always cracked through the armour I spent decades perfecting.

I didn’t realise someone had approached until Ron stiffened at my side.

“Professor Snape,” a thin, reedy voice said with theatrical pleasantness. “Or ex-Professor now, I suppose. Funny, isn’t it? All these accolades, and still most people wouldn’t let you near their children.”

I turned.

The man was in his late forties. A junior advisor from the Department of Magical Education, if memory served. I had once corrected a report he’d published on curriculum changes. Brutally. Publicly.

I arched a brow. 

“Mr Cleaver. Still breathing, I see.”

He smiled, oily and false. 

“Just an observation. War heroes come in all shapes, after all. Even the… controversial ones.”

Ron’s smile disappeared.

It wasn’t dramatic. No shouting. No wand drawn. He simply turned his body slightly to face the man, expression schooled into politeness, but the kind of politeness that made one want to apologise.

“I’m sorry,” Ron said, “are you implying that the man who saved my life, Harry Potter’s life, and the lives of more students than I can count—doesn’t deserve to be here?”

Cleaver’s smile twitched. 

“Mr Weasley, I didn’t mean—”

“Because if that’s what you meant,” Ron continued mildly, “then I’d suggest you take it up with the Minister. Or with me. Directly.”

“I assure you, I—”

“But do let me know next time you risk your life by facing Voldemort just to keep the rest of us breathing. I’ll make sure you get an award, too.”

Cleaver paled, then muttered something about refreshments and fled.

Ron didn’t watch him go. He just turned back to me and said, 

“Some people are unbelievable,” and took another sip of punch.

I stared at him.

He’d done it again.

It wasn’t the first time, of course. I still remembered the memory I’d seen during one of our Occlumency lessons. He’d been fifteen, maybe, shouting at his mother—his mother—because she’d repeated some unfounded rumour about me. I’d seen him defend me to Potter, to Granger, to Black of all people. Not just once. Not just out of politeness. But over and over again, even when there was nothing to gain. Especially when there was nothing to gain.

I had never expected it. I still didn’t know how to receive it.

The years hadn’t dulled my disbelief. They’d only deepened the ache that came with hearing it now, live and unrehearsed, standing beside him in the middle of a gilded room where we didn’t belong, but were wanted anyway.

Ron glanced at me sidelong.

“You okay?”

I inclined my head. 

“Perfectly.”

And somehow… I almost was.

The evening dragged. Kingsley gave a speech—tasteful, short, efficient—which, for him, amounted to something of a miracle. It earned a round of applause and a few glistening eyes, and then we were devoured by the current of people who had waited for a safe moment to descend upon “the two war heroes.”

I loathed it.

Ron, however, made it bearable. He had a talent for redirecting conversation, for injecting humour just before the dullness set in, for lifting his brow in my direction in a silent plea for rescue when someone waxed too long about the symbolism of the Order of Merlin’s goldwork. He was, in many ways, better at this than I was. And yet, somehow, still visibly miserable when no one was looking.

Every time I thought I’d grown accustomed to him, he found some new way to unsettle me. I knew people who’d spent a decade mastering social camouflage. Ron had never needed to. He was too honest to be good at lying. But he was good at caring.

He made these people feel seen. And yet, when he looked at me—only at me—it was like no one else existed.

Eventually, the music changed. Someone dimmed the lights. The crowd reshuffled itself into pairs. Soft waltz floated over the floor, and I found myself calculating the nearest route to the exit.

And then Ron turned to me, hand half-extended, eyes gleaming with familiar mischief.

“Fancy a dance, Mister Potioneer?”

I gave him a withering look. 

“Absolutely not.”

He laughed. Not at me. Not really. Just that same warm, foxlike sound, all grin and spark and play.

“Had to try,” he said, drawing his hand back with a little shrug that didn’t sting.

His hair caught the candlelight. That unruly hair, the red a little too bright to be polite. The fringe still refused to stay where he wanted it. His eyes, dark blue in this light, were sharp and amused.

He was a fox. I couldn’t unsee it now. Something sleek and clever and endlessly curious. 

And I… felt fond.

It was a quiet, creeping thing. Dangerous.

Then a man approached us. Trim, sharp-featured, with too much confidence in his stride. I braced for dullness.

But he didn’t even glance my way.

“Mr Weasley,” he said, all polished charm, “would you honour me with a dance?”

Ron looked genuinely startled.

I didn’t understand how he could be. Had he seen himself?

Still, he blinked. Then smiled, polite and apologetic.

“Oh. Um—sorry. I’ve already got a partner.”

The man looked past him. 

“I don’t see—”

Ron cut in smoothly, still pleasant. 

“He doesn’t dance.”

The man’s brows rose a fraction. He looked at me then, finally, with that flicker of assessment I’d grown used to. I held his gaze coldly, and he retreated with a nod, muttering something like another time, then before vanishing into the crowd.

Ron turned back to me, utterly unruffled, and sipped his drink as if nothing had happened.

He hadn’t named me.

He hadn’t needed to.

But he’d turned someone down—politely, cleanly—not to spare himself, but to stay beside me. As if there’d never been a question. As if I were the only choice.

I shouldn’t have felt anything.

But I did.

The flicker of something dangerously close to warmth. To… significance.

I was no one’s chosen. Not in the way people meant. Not in the way the world turned. But here, tonight, he had chosen to stay.

And I was not certain I could ever forget the way that felt.

Eventually, the night waned, thank Merlin.

People trickled out of the ballroom in clusters of laughter and weariness, all glittering cloaks and last sips of champagne. The orchestra played a final subdued waltz, and the lights dimmed just slightly enough to signal the end without saying it outright.

Ron and I made our way slowly toward the designated Floo area at the edge of the main hall. A few familiar faces nodded in our direction. Most, thankfully, left us alone.

He walked beside me with the easy, loping gait I’d come to know well. The tie of his dress robes had come slightly undone, and he no longer bothered to push his fringe aside. He looked every bit like someone who’d survived something far more exhausting than war.

We reached the edge of the hearth.

Ron glanced at me and said, softly, 

“Thanks for coming.”

I tilted my head. 

“Kingsley threatened. McGonagall blackmailed.”

He smiled, but didn’t laugh. 

“Yeah, but you only listened to me.”

I said nothing. I didn’t need to.

He shifted on his feet and added, 

“I’m not sure I could’ve done this on my own. I’m still figuring out what kind of public life this is… and having you here made it feel less like drowning.”

His voice wasn’t dramatic. He didn’t say it like a grand confession. He said it like a fact. Like truth.

I swallowed.

Being needed was a dangerous thing. It clouded judgment. Bent loyalties. I had lived long enough knowing the weight of obligation. But this was different. This wasn’t duty.

This was… trust.

He trusted me. Enough to need me—not as protection, not as an obligation—but as someone to lean on.

And I…

I wanted to be that person. I already was.

He gave a huff, quiet and amused, and nudged my elbow with his fingers, warm, brief, casual, and somehow intimate.

“Don’t get used to me being this sappy,” he said, smirking. “But maybe next time you’ll let me drag you onto the dancefloor.”

“Unlikely,” I replied, dry as ash, but my voice had gone traitorously soft.

He gave me that look again. All freckled sincerity and glinting mischief. I could barely remember what it felt like not to know him.

And then, because there was no other option, I stepped into the green flame and spoke my destination.

When the spinning stopped, I was standing in my parlour. The fire crackled softly. My coat smelled faintly of Ron—of raspberries and polished wood and something citrus I hadn’t placed. His scent still clung to my sleeve where he’d touched me.

The silence pressed in. But it wasn’t cold.

His presence lingered—bright, disordered, alive. The image of his crooked tie, the warmth of his laugh, the ghost of his hand at my arm.

He fit in my world now. Somehow.

And I—

I was not ready to let go of that.

Not tonight. Not ever, if I could help it.

The owl came early.

Not absurdly so, just earlier than post usually arrived. I was at my workbench, halfway through decanting a viscid nightshade extract, when I heard the soft, distinct rap of talons against the windowpane. I didn’t need to look. I recognised the sound by now. That ancient owl—Errol, I reminded myself—had a scrape to its rhythm.

I set down the dropper carefully, removed my gloves, and crossed to the window. Errol was already nodding off on the sill, feathers ruffled by the January wind. I opened the latch and let him in.

He flopped to the side and presented his leg with the long-suffering air of a pensioner asked to dance. A small envelope was tied there, the parchment thicker than usual.

The handwriting on the front was Ron’s. Neat, slightly right-leaning, written with a fountain quill in his preferred shade of green ink.

Severus.

Just the name. No “Professor”. No “Mr Potioneer”. I stared at it for a moment longer than necessary before untying the letter.

The sight of it—my name, in his handwriting—should not have made my breath catch. And yet it did.

He had never used it before. Not in person. Not in ink. Never said it, never written it. And now… here it was. No title. No shield. Just me.

There was no arrogance in it, no presumptuousness. If it had come from anyone else, I might have flinched. But Ron wrote it as if it were natural. Like it was already true.

Not a challenge. Not a test.

A kindness.

And a choice.

The sort of familiarity that is not taken, but offered—held out like a hand across a bridge, waiting.

I did not smile. But I let my fingers rest against the curve of the “S” before I opened the letter.

Inside, it was short. It always was.

Dear Severus,

I know you don’t celebrate your birthday. Or rather, I suspect you don’t. But I thought you might be convinced to accept a good lunch instead, with decent company (me), on the day in question.

No pressure, obviously. But I’ll cook, and there will be no hats or singing or anything ridiculous. Just food. And you. And me.

Let me know. But I’ll keep the day clear either way.

Warmly,
Ron

I stood at the window far too long after I’d finished reading it. Errol gave a faint snore.

I didn’t celebrate my birthday. That much was true. It had never been a date I welcomed. Not in childhood, not as a Death Eater, and certainly not under Dumbledore’s thumb. It had always been a reminder of how many years had passed, and how few of them I’d lived with anything resembling peace.

But Ron—

He didn’t say “celebrate”, not really. He said lunch.

And you and me.

My first instinct, as ever, was caution. Why would he want to? What did he think this would accomplish? Had he invited others? Did he expect me to bring something?

But no. That wasn’t Ron. I knew that by now. If he wanted a crowd, he would have said so. If he wanted a party, he would’ve never sent the letter at all. And the idea of him keeping the day clear regardless—

I felt it in my chest. That strange weight. That quiet ache.

I ran a finger down the edge of the parchment. There was no pressure, he’d said. And yet I felt it. Not obligation. Something quieter. Desire, perhaps. Not for celebration. For him.

I wanted to go.

I folded the letter neatly and set it on my writing desk. I would reply this evening. But I already knew the answer.

Yes. Of course, I would come.

Ron opened the door with the same unstudied ease as before—hair tied back loosely, a streak of something floury on his jumper, and the expression of someone genuinely glad to see me. It still caught me off guard.

“Happy birthday, Mister Potioneer,” he said with a grin, stepping aside to let me in.

“I’m beginning to suspect that’s my permanent title.”

“Well, I have another title in mind, but it feels a bit daring, you know. Might use it later if you behave.”

And here was his mischievous grin again.

I didn’t respond. Not aloud, at least.

I raised an eyebrow. Just enough to acknowledge the comment without offering interpretation. My silence could be read a dozen ways. It usually was. I preferred it that way.

But inside…
Inside, I reeled.

Another title in mind.
If you behave.
Said with that look—impish, delighted, almost… flirtatious. Was it? Wasn’t it?
Gods, I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t used to being the target of such expressions, least of all from someone who had seen me at my worst, and still looked at me like that.

And perhaps that was the problem.

Ron had a way of saying things that teetered on the edge of innuendo and sincerity, all dressed up in warmth and ease. I never knew which side of the line he meant to land on. But it struck something low in my chest—something too close to hope for comfort.

I was not a man inclined to hope.

So I made the only move I could trust.

I reached and picked up the small pot I’d brought.
“Here,” I said, holding it out to him. “A gift. I thought it might be useful, considering your habit of letting things bite or burn you.”

It was a modest aloe vera plant—sturdy, medicinal, and nearly impossible to kill. A practical choice. Carefully chosen. I’d spent longer deciding on it than I cared to admit.

Ron’s grin widened as he took the pot, then looked down at it, amused.
“Hard to kill, I suppose?” he said, clearly suppressing a laugh.

“Unlike you, apparently,” I replied dryly, eyeing the visible white gauze around his hand. “Again?”

He gave a sheepish chuckle and raised the bandaged hand in surrender.
“A kelpie foal this time. Nipped me. I startled her. She was very apologetic.”

“Mmm,” I said, unimpressed. “Pity the plant can’t lecture you.”

Ron tilted his head with that same unrepentant smile. 

“That’s your job.”

I shook my head but said nothing. I watched as he turned the pot over in his hands, gently, as though it were more than just a practical gift. He set it on the kitchen shelf beside a small ceramic dragon and a framed photograph of the Weasley siblings. Then he glanced back at me, a little quieter now. Still smiling.

There were moments—small, ordinary moments—when he looked at me like I was welcome. Not tolerated. Not respected, even. Welcome.

And in those moments, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

So I folded my hands neatly and waited for him to serve the tea. He did, with a level of care I tried not to read into.

But Merlin help me—I still heard his voice in my head:
Might use it later if you behave.

What on earth was I supposed to make of that?

The flat was already warm from the oven, the air fragrant with herbs and roasting vegetables. He’d gone to the trouble again. Napkins folded, tea steeping in its pot, a tart cooling on the counter. 

“I must have misstepped somewhere; this feels dangerously close to being well cared for,” I said, glancing over the table.

“Well,” he said, waving a spoon vaguely, “it’s your fault for letting me feed you once. You made the mistake of enjoying it.”

He winked.

Lunch was—unsurprisingly—excellent. Something with roast squash and spiced lentils, topped with yoghurt and fresh mint. I hadn’t meant to eat as much as I did, but he wasn’t smug about it, only quietly pleased.

When he returned from fetching the tart, he dropped a small jar in front of me—a soft clink on the wood.

“Here is something for you. I heard that a potioneer would appreciate it.”

Inside were pale silver strands glinting faintly, soft as smoke and just as elusive.

Kelpie whiskers.

My fingers stilled. I blinked, once, twice, then looked up at him sharply.

“Where did you get this?”

He held up both hands, as if I might accuse him of poaching. 

“Sanctuary kelpie. Shed naturally. I got clearance. I promise.”

I looked back down at the vial, still stunned.

Kelpie whiskers—fresh, intact, and unspoiled by amateur preservation. Rare as truth from a politician. Their magical properties were notoriously temperamental, and gathering them safely, let alone legally, was no small feat.

“You do realise,” I said, still staring, “that this is extraordinarily difficult to acquire.”

Ron shrugged with mock nonchalance. 

“Yeah, but you’re worth the paperwork.”

The corners of my mouth threatened to betray me. I suppressed it ruthlessly and returned my gaze to the vial, because I didn’t trust myself to look at him just yet.

“Thank you,” I said at last, quietly. And I meant it. Not just for the ingredient. For the thought. The effort. The fact that he had gone to this much trouble for me.

We ate the tart in companionable silence until conversation drifted back to brewing—work, clients, suppliers—and somewhere in the middle of discussing clumsy formulations and idiotic marketing trends, he leaned back and said:

“Sometimes I still hear your voice in my head when I’m brewing. Makes things turn out better, usually.”

It was said lightly, casually, like the sort of thing one says while pouring tea. But he winked after. And when I looked up, he was already blushing. His ears always gave him away.

The comment alone—perhaps—could have passed for banter. Perhaps. But it didn’t stand alone.

Not anymore.

Not after “I have another title in mind.” Not after the grin that followed it, the tone that had been far too close to flirtation for comfort—or perhaps for honesty.

Two remarks. Seemingly playful. But both of them intentional, and neither easily dismissed.

Was this how it started? Not with declarations or obvious advances, but with small barbs of suggestion—mischief layered beneath affection, humour masking something more fragile? I had no frame of reference for this. Certainly not when it came to him.

I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to. I didn’t yet know whether I was imagining this, or—if not—what he meant by it. How far he meant it to go. Or what he expected me to do in response.

And so I said nothing.

But inside… I was rattled.

Not displeased.

But entirely, terribly unsure.

And perhaps—for the first time in years—curious.

Perhaps I was reading too much into it. Perhaps not.

We lingered after the plates were cleared, sipping the last of the tea in the low winter light. I found myself watching the curve of his mouth when he laughed, the way his fingers moved when he spoke, animated. I kept those details quietly to myself.

When it was time to leave, he didn’t make a show of it. Just walked me to the door, helped me on with my cloak, and said, 

“Thanks for coming. I know birthdays aren’t really your thing.”

“They’re not,” I admitted.

“But you came. And that means a lot.” He smiled again, smaller this time, more sincere. “You made it a good one.”

I nodded. Couldn’t find words.

When I turned to leave, he touched my elbow. Lightly. Just a brief pressure of fingers against wool.

I left.

When I arrived back at Spinner’s End, the flat was silent. Dimmer, colder.

But his presence lingered. The scent of spice still in my clothes. The echo of his laughter. The ghost of warmth where his hand had been.

It had been a better birthday than I’d had in years.

And that, perhaps, was what unsettled me most of all.

Chapter Text

PART THREE

IN NEED OF QUIET

The morning of the anniversary began like most others, with the quiet hiss of the kettle and the creak of floorboards that only ever sounded beneath my own feet. No students chattering in corridors. No echoing clang of the bell tower. Just the soft drip of rain against the glass and the quiet rasp of flame beneath my cauldron.

I brewed. Not because I needed the result—though I would bottle it and send it to the apothecary in Cardiff—but because the ritual was steadier than breath, more grounding than any wandwork. Chop, crush, stir. Count, wait, exhale.

It was better than thinking.

One year. The world had spun through one entire year since the Dark Lord fell.

I remembered little of the end itself. Pain. Fire. Ron's silhouette outlined in the blast. And a stillness that had come not with peace, but with the bewildering absence of chaos.

It wasn’t that I forgot. I simply preferred not to remember.

They would all be at the Ministry today. Kingsley had made that abundantly clear in his florid letter of obligation. McGonagall had followed up with a note so sharp and unsubtle that even I couldn’t pretend to miss the veiled threat beneath it. I could have ignored them both.

But then Ron had written. “It’s not just for the public. It’s for everyone who survived. Please don’t make me sit through it without you.”

And that—damn him—that had worked. Again.

So I brewed. Because the quiet would not last. I’d have to dress in robes fit for spectacle, and endure far too many eyes. I’d have to stand next to people who remembered me as both traitor and saviour. I’d have to listen to Kingsley eulogise the cost of peace and pretend not to flinch when names I knew by heart were read aloud.

But worse still—

I’d have to stand beside Ron. Again.

And try not to look like it meant something. Try not to show that it had always meant something.

I ladled the completed potion into its vials, sealed them, and placed them in their crate. My hands moved with the efficiency of long habit, but my mind—

My mind was already in that over-lit atrium, with the weight of a war draped across my shoulders like a second cloak.

There was no running from it today.

Only dressing for it.

I was prepared for the crowd this time.

Prepared, but no less irritated by it.

The atrium of the Ministry had been transfigured into something meant to suggest reverence—tall silver banners, white lilies charmed not to wilt, floating lanterns with soft golden light. It felt like a staged funeral, or a wedding without joy.

At least the press hadn’t pounced the moment I arrived. They lingered at a distance, watching me like a creature behind glass, unsure whether to tap the pane. I preferred it that way.

I had no intention of lingering in the open. I slipped along the edge of the crowd, already scanning for Ron—

“Severus Snape.” A voice like curdled syrup. “What a surprise to see you again, looking so well-preserved.”

I turned sharply, unsurprised to find Rita Skeeter. Peacock feathers, acid smile, Quick-Quotes Quill hovering already above her shoulder.

“I heard they almost gave you your own chocolate frog card,” she said brightly. “Tell me, does the world really need a portrait of your brooding glower in every child’s sweets collection?”

I didn’t stop walking. 

“You’ll be pleased to hear they declined. Apparently, the frogs objected.”

Her laugh was brittle. 

“Still bitter about your past being dragged into the light, I see.”

I gave her a thin smile. 

“And you, still angry I exposed your illegal animagus registration. The years have been kind to your pettiness.”

She flinched, but before she could reply, I was gone.

The crowd was thick with red hair. The Weasleys were assembled en masse, orbiting one another like stars pulled into quiet grief. I counted them instinctively—Fred and George, one burned, the other not, Bill with an arm around his visibly pregnant wife, Charlie beside him, Percy speaking with Kingsley. Molly’s hair had greyed since the war, but her expression as she looked at Fleur was soft and full of peace.

Ron stood in the middle, dark blue dress robes pressed and neat, hair tied back. He looked older today. Not in his face—still all freckles and easy lines—but in the shoulders, the stillness of his jaw. Today was heavy for all of us. He had faced Voldemort and survived. He had lost his father. And now he stood in the very place where they meant to honour that pain with speeches and politics.

I hesitated to approach. He was surrounded. Too many people. And I—

But then his eyes found mine.

He didn’t beam this time. It wasn’t Christmas. There was no sunshine in his grin. But his smile was there, quiet, real. A flicker of warmth in a heavy place.

He broke from the group and walked toward me. No hesitation.

“I’m glad you came,” he said softly. And then, he touched my elbow. “Come on. Might as well suffer through it together.”

I let him steer me.

Within moments, we were in the heart of the Weasley constellation. Molly nodded to me with unexpected fondness. Fleur gave a small, elegant smile, her hands resting over the curve of her belly. Granger was perched on Fred Weasley’s arm, of all things, and Potter stood beside her, Ginny close by. They greeted me in turn. No bitterness. No awkwardness. Just polite, tired warmth. It was disorienting.

I saw Black, standing further off with Moody and Diggle. His eyes were on the floor. Lupin. The anniversary must’ve been biting at his heels all day. He hadn’t noticed me yet.

The speeches began soon after. Kingsley took the stage first, solemn but steady, his voice rippling out to the gathered crowd like something trustworthy. McGonagall followed, and I braced myself—but no, I was spared. She hadn’t added me to the roster.

I caught Ron’s eye. He looked exactly as relieved as I felt.

But relief was short-lived. McGonagall made her way down the platform steps and toward us.

“Kingsley wants photos,” she said briskly. “For the Prophet. You two are in the centre with me and Moody.”

Ron groaned under his breath. I didn’t blame him.

We stood beneath the banners, flashbulbs popping, the familiar prickle of irritation crawling up my spine. It was like the Order of Merlin ceremony all over again, but dulled. The press was less ravenous now. Still annoying, still desperate for angles and drama, but the air wasn’t blood-scented this time.

It helped that Ron stood beside me. Misery loves company.

When it was finally done, some of the press circled in again. This time, they wanted quotes.

Ron obliged. His words were short, honest—something about remembrance, about honouring loss, about building forward with care. His voice was calm. Clear.

They turned to me next.

I said nothing.

Ron’s hand found my sleeve, and he pulled me away before they could insist. I let him.

We ducked behind the wall of red hair and greying heads. The safety of the Order.

“There’s lunch after this,” he murmured. “Mum insisted. For all the Order. You’ll come?”

I met his eyes. 

“Yes.”

He smiled again. Not brightly, but with something sure. 

“Good.”

I said nothing more. There was no need to.

But something inside me unclenched.

He hadn’t asked out of politeness. He wanted me there. In that house. At his table.

And I found myself wanting to go.

Not to honour the dead. Not to ease my guilt. But because Ron would be there. Because he asked.

Because he meant it.

The Burrow had changed.

But it still leaned slightly to the left, like the whole thing had been charmed together out of stubbornness and love. Smoke curled from the chimney despite the mild weather, and the garden was a tangle of green and life. There were gnome tracks through the tall grass, some overgrown vegetables, and a faint crackle of enchantments on the perimeter fence.

I stood just outside the boundary line, unsure for a moment what to do with myself.

I hadn’t been back here since… I didn’t even remember.

“Snape!”

George—the unscarred twin—grinned from the open door. 

“You’re not gonna hover there like a cursed doll, are you?”

I raised an eyebrow and stepped inside.

The interior was warm. Too warm. The hearth roared with celebratory excess, and someone had filled the place with the smell of slow-cooked lamb and treacle tart. I could hear Molly laughing in the kitchen. Fleur was seated by the fire, looking far too elegant for the mismatched armchair she occupied, hands resting gently on her stomach as Charlie crouched beside her with a joke. Moody sat at the table, muttering to Doge about the seating charms, and Diggle had already spilt something on his robes.

It was, unmistakably, a family home.

And then Ron appeared.

Still in his Ministry robes, though he’d shed the formal cloak and loosened the high collar. A faint red flush across his cheeks betrayed the heat of the hearth—or perhaps the fact he’d helped carry in tables from the shed, judging by the leaves in his hair.

“Glad you came,” he said, grinning. This one was real. Not the tired smile from earlier. “Mum made enough food to feed the Order twice over. You're sitting next to me, by the way. Non-negotiable.”

I nodded. 

“I’d be concerned if I were given options.”

“Too right.”

And just like that, I was drawn in.

Ron steered me toward the long table Molly had somehow extended into the living room. Place settings shimmered slightly with a preservation charm, and there was already butterbeer and pumpkin juice waiting. As the others filtered in, the seats filled with Weasleys, friends, war heroes, and ghosts in the corners of the room no one mentioned aloud.

Tonks and Lupin’s absence gnawed at the air. Black was quieter than usual, his fork dragging across his plate without much interest. Molly kept glancing at the empty seat across from her. No one had said Arthur’s name aloud, but it sat with us like an honoured guest.

And yet, Fleur’s laugh rang through the room like a wind chime. Ginny teased Potter over how many dinner rolls he could realistically consume. Granger and Fred argued about something—philosophical, political, perhaps both. And Ron…

Ron kept the room alive.

He passed plates, made jokes, redirected conversation when the mood dipped too low. And yet, he wasn’t performing. I’d seen that before—false brightness, brittle cheer. This wasn’t that. This was steadiness. Presence. Care.

And when he spoke to me, it wasn’t out of duty. He included me as easily as he included his siblings, catching me up on side conversations, pressing second helpings into my hand, refilling my drink without a word.

At one point, when Diggle started recounting some embellished version of a skirmish I knew for a fact he hadn’t participated in, Ron leaned close and muttered, 

“Should I start keeping a tally of his lies?”

I raised an eyebrow. 

“Do you have enough parchment?”

His eyes glinted with mischief. 

“Reckon I’ll have to nick some from Percy’s stash.”

And we laughed.

It was quiet, but it was real.

The meal went on for hours. There were toasts—short ones, mercifully. There was pie. There was Black eventually lifting a glass and murmuring something that could’ve been “to the fallen”—I didn’t ask. There were shared glances across the table that said I remember and I miss them and I’m still here.

When the sky outside the crooked windows began to dim, people started to stand. There were hugs. More food wrapped in enchanted parcels. The low hum of old pain and older love.

And then I was at the door, cloak in hand, ready to Apparate back to Spinner’s End, when Ron appeared beside me again.

“You’ll come again,” he said. Not a question.

I looked at him. At the quiet determination in his eyes. The faint dimple that appeared when he smiled—small, honest, tired.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good.” He stepped closer, and this time, he didn’t say anything else. He just… looked at me for a second longer than necessary.

Then he reached up and flicked a bit of leaf from my shoulder. 

“Stray bit from the garden,” he said casually, stepping back. “Can’t have you looking like a hedge.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped into the dark with the trace of his touch still warm on my shoulder.

The letter arrived late in the morning, later than usual. The owl—a small barn owl I didn’t recognise—perched on the windowsill with a shake of its feathers, dropping Ron’s familiar green envelope onto the table before dozing off in the patch of sun.

I opened it with my usual care, expecting another sardonic line about some absurd creature mishap or a less-than-legal potion request he’d overheard from a co-worker. But the tone shifted quickly after the first paragraph.

The articles had reached him. Of course, they had. There were dozens. Some well-meaning. Others... less so.

I didn’t expect it to feel like this, you know? 

They call it a victory, but it doesn’t feel like winning. 

I’m just tired.

Just tired.

He hadn’t used the word ‘alone’, not outright. But it was there, in the pauses between his sentences. There were no cheeky flourishes this time. No winks on the page. Just quiet honesty. Too quiet.

I stared at the letter for a long while after I finished reading it. Imagining him there—red hair tied back in the flat light of morning, shoulders curved inwards, no one nearby to see the weight pressing down on them. No audience, no mask. Just Ron. Tired. And trying not to be.

The kettle hissed behind me. I didn’t move to stop it. I simply let it scream.

There was little I could write that would shift the foundation of his grief or exhaustion. I didn’t deal in comfort easily; I was no stranger to the inadequacy of words. Still, I found myself taking up my quill.

You are not obligated to read what they write about you. You know the truth of what you’ve done, and so do those who matter. Let that be enough.
I imagine your creatures are oblivious to Ministry commentary, clever things, all of them.
As for weariness: take it seriously. Even dragons sleep.
And if I may speak frankly, I hope you’re eating properly. I trust your table sees more than biscuits when you're not trying to impress.

I paused there. It would’ve been enough. Should’ve been. But the image of him—tired and alone—lingered like a bruise I couldn't quite reach. I hesitated for a breath. Then dipped my pen one last time.

P.S. If you're in need of quiet, I find myself with a spare afternoon. You are welcome here, if you wish.

I dried the ink before I could think too hard about it.

Then I folded the parchment, sealed it, and gave it to the owl before I could change my mind.

Let him come or not. The invitation was real. And it was his.

It had rained that morning, a soft, indecisive drizzle that turned the windowpanes to watercolour. By the time the knock came at the door, the clouds had lifted, but the grey still lingered in the light. It seemed fitting.

I had not expected him to come.

Even after sending the letter, even after scrawling that single line, I’d half-expected silence in return. Or perhaps a politely worded refusal. The invitation had been impulsive, soft-hearted, and therefore deeply suspicious.

But then there he was. His silhouette in the glass. That damnable hair catching what little sunlight there was.

I opened the door without speaking.

Ron stood there in a plain dark jumper, damp at the shoulders from the walk, and his smile—if it could be called that—was a quiet one. No cheek, no wink. Just something worn and grateful and tired.

“Hi,” he said.

I stepped back to let him in.

He moved like someone walking uphill, even though the floor was level. His eyes were heavy-rimmed, and I could see the fatigue just under his skin. Not from sleeplessness. Not physical. Something older. Deeper.

“I didn’t bring anything,” he added, almost sheepish, as he unwound his scarf. “Didn’t feel like gifts were the right… tone.”

“You brought silence,” I said. “It’s a rare commodity.”

That earned me a small snort, at least.

I led him to the sitting room and let him settle where he liked. I asked if he wanted tea or something stronger. He asked for tea. I obliged.

By the time I returned with the tray, he was staring at the bookshelves, unfocused.

“Still alphabetised by subject,” he muttered, blinking as if just noticing.

“Unlike your notes,” I replied dryly.

This time, he smiled. Not brightly, but truly.

We drank quietly for a time. I could feel the tension in him beginning to unwind, inch by inch. A sigh here. A shift of the shoulders there. Still no winks, no teasing. Just peace. Or the closest facsimile available.

Eventually, he said, 

“I’ve been reading the articles.”

I didn’t have to ask which ones.

“They mean well, I suppose,” he said. “But they get everything wrong. Or twist it. Or trim it into something heroic and clean, and it wasn’t clean, Severus.”

It startled me, hearing my name like that.

“No,” I agreed. “It wasn’t.”

He stared into his cup. 

“One of them said I must have felt proud. Killing Voldemort. Ending the war. But I didn’t. I felt… I felt like I’d just destroyed something I couldn’t even look at. I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt hollow.”

I said nothing. There was nothing to correct.

“I keep remembering things from that night,” he continued. “And not just the duel. The moments in between. The screaming, the shouting. Your body hitting the ground.”

I glanced at him.

His voice went hoarse.

“When you collapsed—after the spell—I thought you were dead. I was so scared. I—Merlin, I thought I’d got you killed.”

“You didn’t.”

“I know that now. But I didn’t know it then.”

He swallowed. Looked away. The muscles in his jaw tensed, then eased.

“And still,” he added after a moment, “some article said I looked ‘resolute.’ Whatever that means.”

“It means they don’t know what to do with you,” I said quietly. “You survived. That doesn’t fit their narrative.”

His eyes flicked to mine, and something in his expression cracked. Not pain, exactly. Not grief. Something older. Recognition.

“I don’t want to be a symbol,” he murmured.

“No one sane does.”

There was another long silence. He let it happen, which I took as trust.

Eventually, the talk turned to safer things. A creature in his sanctuary who refused to stop eating other people’s lunch. A mishap with a new trainee who mixed doxy venom into a feeding tonic. The absurdity of dragons being easier to handle than Ministry officials.

He made me laugh. Twice.

At one point, I left to fetch more tea. When I returned, he was running his thumb along the windowsill, gazing out at the small garden. It was growing wild again. I didn’t have the energy to tame it.

“Your aloe’s doing well,” he said over his shoulder. “I used it yesterday, actually. Again.”

“Why am I not surprised.”

He turned and smiled. The kind I remembered. Not forced. Not performative. Just Ron.

Later, after we finished the second pot of tea, Ron stood up.

“I’m glad I came,” he said.

I nodded.

As I walked him to the door, I wondered if I should say something more. I didn’t. Words would’ve undone it all.

But as he stepped outside and turned back one last time, I saw it. That same look from the ceremony, softened now. Not strained. Not bright. Just steady.

Like I was something solid in a world still shifting beneath his feet.

He left. The door clicked shut behind him.

But his presence lingered—in the warm cup, in the faint scent of sandalwood and bergamot, in the memory of his voice trembling when he said he thought I’d died.

And I realised something then, sitting back down in the armchair he’d just vacated.

I didn’t want him to carry that alone.

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

PART FOUR

CONFESSION

The knock at the door came just as I’d finished washing the last of the cauldrons. Predictable timing. He always waited until after lunch—never too early, never too late. As if by now, he’d memorised my rhythms and chose not to disrupt them.

I opened the door and there he was, wind-flushed and grinning beneath that unruly fringe. His coat was dusted with frost. A rogue curl had escaped the ponytail, trailing across his freckled temple.

“Afternoon, Professor,” he said, with exaggerated formality and a wicked glint in his eye.

“You’re late,” I said.

“I brought bribes,” he replied, holding up a sealed jar of something dark and fibrous. “Dried Knarl spines. Donated legally. Fully documented.” His voice lowered in parody. “Ministry-approved, cross-referenced, registered, labelled, triple-signed, sealed in unicorn snot.”

I snorted. I never meant to. It just happened. He beamed like he’d scored points.

“You are insufferable.”

“And yet you let me in anyway.”

I stepped back, holding the door. 

“It’s too cold for you to stand there delivering bad jokes. Get inside.”

He peeled off his coat, set the jar on the worktable, then eyed the room. 

“Smells like a summer thunderstorm in here.”

“Mallowsweet infusion,” I said. “For a client who thinks it calms nerves. It doesn’t.”

“Maybe I should sniff some anyway.”

“Maybe you should stop being dramatic.”

“I’m not dramatic,” he said, sitting down. “I’m expressive.”

“You’re something, certainly.”

His laughter was quiet and low and—Merlin help me—pleasant.

He looked around with interest, eyes trailing over the organised shelves and drying racks. This place had never felt like home to me. It was too full of memory. And yet when he was in it, it felt... less empty. Less cold.

“Do you want tea?” I asked, already turning toward the stove.

“Always. Black, one sugar. You remember.”

“I’m cursed with an excellent memory.”

He leaned back in the chair, arms folded behind his head. 

“Might want to curse it harder. I do dumb things. Could be dangerous for your mental health, remembering it all.”

“Too late.”

He gave me that look again. That soft, amused one—fond and faintly exasperated. 

“I’m beginning to think I’m growing on you.”

I handed him his tea and didn’t dignify it with a reply. He grinned anyway, sipping.

We talked. About creatures—he was dealing with a territorial Ashwinder. About his supervisor, who apparently had the charm of a wet rag and the emotional range of a teaspoon. About potion requests. I liked how easily he shifted between topics, how unselfconscious he was.

Then—

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said, fiddling with the spoon, “if I’m your favourite redhead.”

I looked up. Slowly.

His smile was playful, but his eyes didn’t waver. 

“What? You’ve had a lot of Weasleys in your life. I think I’ve got a right to know where I rank.”

I stared at him. 

“You want a leaderboard?”

He shrugged. 

“Just curious.”

“I’d need criteria. Humour? Intelligence? Propensity to appear at my doorstep unannounced?”

“Definitely the last one,” he said. “I am very good at turning up where I’m not expected.”

A pause. Then, with the same casual tone:

“Don’t worry. I’m house-trained. You can keep me.”

The spoon clicked gently against his cup.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t, quite.

Because it sounded like flirtation. Not accidental, not teasing. Intentional. And… dangerous.

But when I looked again, his ears were a faint pink. His smile was steady, but his fingers had gone still.

He was waiting to see if I’d recoil. Or respond.

I did neither.

Instead, I stood and fetched a pot of calendula balm and handed it to him. 

“For your hands.”

He blinked, then took the jar without comment. There was something like disappointment in his expression, but it passed quickly. He unscrewed the lid and began applying the balm with quiet diligence.

He stayed another hour. We didn’t revisit the subject. Not directly. But his glances lingered. His jokes were softer.

And when he stood to leave, brushing a curl from his forehead and shrugging his coat back on, I realised I hadn’t checked the time once.

He paused at the door, hand on the knob. 

“Thanks for the tea, and the balm. I’ll try not to overstay my welcome next time.”

“You haven’t yet,” I said, before I could stop myself.

He looked over his shoulder. Just looked. No grin. No words.

Just a look. Warm. Quiet. And full of some unspoken thing I still didn’t dare name.

Then he left.

And the room felt colder for it.

The door had barely shut behind him when silence settled again over Spinner’s End. Not the bleak, sterile hush it used to carry, but a quieter kind of stillness, warm from the echo of footsteps and laughter and faint citrus-sandalwood cologne. The space Ron had occupied still held shape in the air.

I stood where he’d left me, as though he might turn back any moment.

Don’t worry. I’m house-trained. You can keep me.

The words had been tossed off lightly, as usual — his tone casual, posture easy, face flushed from the cold or perhaps the boldness of the line itself. I had arched an eyebrow, of course. That was safe. That was neutral. But the words still lingered like steam after a boil.

Keep him.

It was the kind of quip I might have brushed aside if it were anyone else. But Ron had been laying breadcrumbs for weeks now—winks, compliments, all those soft, maddening little smiles. The offhand remark about hearing my voice in his head while brewing. The blush that followed. The title he never revealed. The gaze that held longer than it should have. The warmth, the familiarity. And now—keep me.

It should have been absurd.

But the most absurd part was this: I wasn’t sure he didn’t mean it.

I moved slowly back to the chair, as if any sudden motion might dispel the phantom of him still in the room. His teacup sat on the low table, faint lip-print on the rim. He always forgot to clear it. Or maybe he didn’t.

I sat and exhaled.

I was no stranger to youthful affection. I’d seen it bloom and burn out a hundred times over in the corridors of Hogwarts. And I was no stranger to being its object, though rarely, and never kindly. Curiosity. Fixation. Defiance. Not love. Not even desire. Certainly not something like Ron.

And yet…

He never flinched when I said too little. He never looked away when I said too much. He laughed at my barbs and volleyed back with dry wit. He knew how I took my tea. He remembered that I preferred ginger biscuits over treacle. He brought me gifts. Useful ones. Thoughtful ones. He wrote.

And he looked at me like…

I scrubbed a hand over my face.

There were simpler explanations, surely. Gratitude, perhaps. Affection, certainly. A misguided sort of loyalty born of war and aftermath and shared scars. It didn’t have to be more.

But I was a Legilimens. I knew the layers of people. I’d read them like books, sliced them open like ingredients on a bench. And Ron… Ron was not trying to confuse me.

He was trying to be clear.

And I, in all my carefully cultivated cynicism, had no idea what to do with clarity.

I rose, restless now, and crossed to the window. The street outside was quiet, grey-lit, dusted faintly with sleet. He had his hood up as he walked away, but I could still tell it was him by the stride.

I watched until he turned the corner.

Then I returned to the empty kitchen. The leftover biscuits sat on the counter.

And I thought—not for the first time—that if this was a game, it was the most dangerous one I'd ever agreed to play.

Because if he meant it, if he truly meant even half of it, then I was already losing.

The Prophet lay folded on my table, the headline as inevitable as the date.

“Two Years On: Remembering Albus Dumbledore.”

I ought to have ignored the article. I had intended to. But the photograph — that same, maddeningly benevolent smile and twinkling eyes — caught me like a hook. I read. I always read. And every time, it was the same mixture of irritation and… something I had long since stopped naming.

Dumbledore. Genius, manipulator, visionary, liar. Friend? Perhaps. At times. More often, employer. Always, architect. And there were so many things—so many—he took to his grave rather than share with me. The war had been built on layers of secrecy, and I had been given just enough truth to play my part without asking the wrong questions.

I told myself I had accepted that. I told myself there was no point in dwelling.
It was almost true.

But there was one person who had known more. Someone Dumbledore had confided in, fully, or near enough. I’d known it during the war, seen the signs, felt the ways my own instructions skirted the edges of something larger. And when I realised it was Weasley — that Weasley — the irritation had been immediate and profound. Not because he was incapable. Because he was trusted with what I was not.

I had access to him now. He was hardly elusive. And while he had flatly refused to share a word of it with me then, perhaps now… There was no cause for secrecy. Not from me. Not if he trusted me as much as he claimed.

But perhaps he did not.

The thought sat heavier than I expected. It was a strange sort of ache, not for the knowledge itself, but for what its withholding might mean. I had grown accustomed to the idea, over the past year, that his trust was certain. That my own, uncharacteristic willingness to… remain in his company was not one-sided.

And yet, here I sat. Wondering.

I closed the paper and set it aside, irritation needling under my ribs. One way or another, I would know before the end of the day. Ron was coming this afternoon.

And I would ask.

Ron arrived at precisely the time he had said he would. I rose to open the door, already braced for that blinding grin of his, only to find it absent. Not replaced with anything grim or hollow, just… quieter. He must have read the article as well.

He held out a tin before I could say anything.
“Biscuits,” he said. “Thought you might like them.”

I stepped aside to let him in, and we settled in the living room. He placed the tin on the low table, then turned in his seat to look at me, head tilted slightly to the side, like a curious crup scenting something odd.

I could not read that expression. I didn’t know what he saw, but I knew he saw something. Years of private tutoring and Occlumency drills had given him a sharper perception of me than most could ever achieve. He had always been able to see past my curtain more easily than anyone else. It should no longer have startled me. But it did.

There was no point pretending. Not with him.

I leaned back in my armchair, let the weight of the question settle into my voice.
“Tell me,” I said, “about Dumbledore. About the secrets the two of you kept.”

He stilled. Not a flicker of movement. His eyes went distant in that way I knew too well — the far-off focus of someone checking their mental perimeter. Occlumency clouds. I felt a stab of disappointment, the cold certainty that he was battening down the hatches, preparing for me to try to prise the truth from him by force.

But then he blinked and came back into the room. His gaze locked on mine, sharp and steady.

“Do you know what a Horcrux is?” he asked.

The word froze me. Yes, I knew — in theory. You did not dabble in the Dark Arts without acquiring such knowledge. But hearing that word fall from his lips was like hearing blasphemy uttered in a church.

I could not answer.

He read my face anyway. Of course he did. And he spared me the explanation, turning his eyes away instead, his voice dropping into something far heavier.

“He made Horcruxes,” Ron said. “Seven of them.”

I felt… faint. Seven. The number rolled around in my skull like a loose stone, heavy and obscene.

Ron went on inexorably. 

“Dumbledore and I hunted them down. We destroyed some of them together… but he died before we could finish. There were three left. That was the final task he gave me on his deathbed — to find the rest and destroy them, so Voldemort could die for good this time.”

I felt faint.

That was the burden Albus had chosen to place on him? On a boy no more than sixteen? An insurmountable, soul-blackening task, and he had been left to bear it alone. To carry it, complete it, with no safety net, no shield but his own stubborn will.

And he had succeeded.

The truth hit like a blow. So this was what he had meant, all those years ago, when he’d told me there were seven steps before the war was over. I had thought, then, that it sounded too neat, too simple — seven steps, as if the end could be reached with the ease of crossing a staircase.

I saw now how much of a fool that thought had made me. That number had never meant simplicity. It had meant horror — distilled, counted, and faced down one by one.

“Why you?” I heard myself ask. “Why did Dumbledore choose you, rather than another? Why not Potter, the Chosen One? Why not an adult from the Order?”

He didn’t answer.

Ron stayed very still, eyes losing their focus again — that far-off look that always told me he was somewhere deep behind his Occlumency clouds.

This time, I didn’t think he was about to shut me out. He wasn’t hiding from me; he was bracing himself. Composing himself.

A minute passed. I kept my silence.

Then another.

By the third, I began to fear what it was he was weighing. He had told me about the Horcruxes almost without hesitation, delivering one of the foulest truths I had ever heard as if it were only the next stone in the path. If that had been the easy thing to say, what could possibly be worse?

My mind ran ahead of itself, conjuring possibilities — each more vile, more unforgivable than the last. None seemed adequate to merit this much pause, and yet each made me wish I had not asked at all.

At last, his mouth pulled downward, the smallest of movements but unmistakable: he did not want to tell me.

A faint coldness opened in my chest.

He opened his mouth once, then closed it again. His tongue passed over his lips. Another breath.

And then, he sighed. Soundlessly.

When he spoke, his voice was so quiet I almost had to lean forward to hear it. Not hesitant, exactly. More like a man bracing against an opened wound, ribs prised apart, holding back the flood with what strength he had left.

“I’ve only ever told the whole truth once in my life,” he said. “To one person. Exactly two years ago.”

It did not take long to make the connection. The date. The look on his face. The simple arithmetic of memory.

Albus.

I sat back, pulse tight at my temples. Of course, it had been him. The day of his death, the boy had been at his side until the end. But to think that it had been then that Ron had unburdened himself… I was not sure whether to envy or condemn Dumbledore for being the recipient of it.

If he told me now, if he trusted me with whatever truth he had guarded so fiercely, then I would be the only living soul to hold it. The sole keeper of something he had been willing to give to no one else in the past two years.

It was not a lightness to be coveted. It was a weight, one I could already feel pressing at the edge of my thoughts, heavy and irreversible.

“I know things,” he said at last. “Things I shouldn’t know. Things no one should know before they happen.”

The words landed like dropped stone. No elaboration, no explanation of how. Just the quiet, unflinching admission that he had carried foresight like contraband in his head for years, if not longer.

My mind rifled instinctively through possibilities. Divination? No — this was no Trelawneyesque fluke. Time-Turners? Prophecies? Ritual magic I had only ever seen in fragments? Each possibility was as absurd as the next, yet his tone allowed for no doubt. This was not speculation; it was certainty.

And if it were true —if he had known— then every decision, every calculated risk I had seen him take, every inexplicable instinct in the field… It would all slot into place with unnerving precision. It made his defiance less reckless in retrospect, but it also made my skin prickle. Such knowledge… in the hands of a boy. And not just any boy — this boy.

I opened my mouth, I’m not sure what for. To demand more? To warn him of the danger of carrying such things? To tell him what a fool he was to keep it from me for so long?

But before I could speak, he looked at me. Properly looked — eyes locking with mine in a way that made the air feel taut. His eyes were wet; not enough to spill, but enough that I saw the glint in the lamplight.

“Don’t ask more,” he said. A beat. “Not yet.”

The distinction was not lost on me. Not don’t ask. Not never.
Not yet.

It was a promise wrapped in caution, a hand held out without the full weight of trust. Not because he lacked it, I thought, but because whatever waited behind that door was something he still feared unleashing.

I sat back, letting the words settle between us like a fragile truce.

“Tell you what.” His gaze held mine, and the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth suggested amusement, but his tone did not. “If you ever decide you want the whole truth… marry me first.”

I stared at him.
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard him. Surely. But the look in his eyes was calm, unflinching — a shade too sober for humour, yet not entirely free of it. He gave me nothing else to go on. No wink, no grin, no rescue from the absurdity of the statement.

I had spent decades parsing the nuance in a person’s voice, the flicker of expression that told you if the blade was meant to cut or tease, and I couldn’t read him. Couldn’t decide if this was a shield, a provocation, or a truth dressed in enough oddity to pass unchallenged.

My mind, damn it, refused to let the words go. Marry me first.

It should have been simple to dismiss — a Weasley quip, delivered to lighten a moment gone too heavy. But it wasn’t. The weight lingered. The specificity lingered. And the part of me that had been counting every ambiguous smile and sidelong look over the past months shifted the tally higher.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The air between us was thick enough already, and I had no wish to puncture it and watch whatever fragile truth there was vanish.

So I simply inclined my head, as if he’d made a point, and let him take the conversation elsewhere.

But even as we moved on, I knew it would stay with me.
That ridiculous, impossible, possibly-not-a-joke condition.
That yet.

The house was silent when he left.
I didn’t bother with the lamps. The familiar dark pressed close, and I let it.

I dropped into the armchair, elbows on my knees, and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

Marry me first.

The words had no business echoing the way they did.
I’d endured stranger confessions, crueller demands, more brazen propositions. They usually slid off like water. But this… This had lodged somewhere deep, in that stubborn place where stray barbs and truths liked to embed themselves.

It wasn’t even the marriage itself. It was the way he’d said it, calm as you please, no smirk to soften it, no exaggerated jest to frame it as harmless banter. Just the line, steady and unflinching, as though it were a condition he’d considered before speaking it aloud.

It was not never.
It was yet.

Which meant that whatever truth he carried, he believed I might hear it one day. That he might choose to give it to me — if I crossed a threshold he just had named aloud.

I tried to dismiss it as bravado, some outlandish Weasley turn of phrase meant to distract. But I’d seen his eyes. Wet, earnest. The kind of look a man doesn’t fake if he’s lived through enough lies.

And damn him — the line had joined the others. The fox’s grin at Christmas. The “knight in shining armour” at the Ministry. The winks over tea, the blush at his own words, the quiet loyalty woven through every letter. One by one, they were becoming something I could no longer ignore or reduce to idle jest.

I sat there until the fire burned low, chasing the thought in circles, unable to stop imagining what it would mean if he’d meant it.

What it would mean if, Merlin help me, I didn’t find the idea as impossible as I once might have.

Chapter Text

PART FIVE

VALENTINE’S DAY

The whole day had been an exercise in self-control.
Since morning, owls had arrived in a steady, irritating stream, bearing order forms scrawled in sickly pink ink, all for the same foul request: love potions.
The season for coercion.

I burned each letter as it came, without opening it fully. The smell of scorched parchment clung to my office, a reminder of my disgust. I had never approved of such brews — too dangerous, too open to abuse — but my distaste had become personal last year, when Romilda Vane, with all the vapid cruelty of a spoiled child, dosed Ron.

Even now, the memory rankled: Granger arriving, pale and tight-lipped, to inform me of the problem and demand my help. Ron’s slack, charmed expression in the hospital wing — then the instant, gut-clenching horror in his eyes when the potion was neutralised. His voice, shaking with outrage, calling it what it was: coercion. Slavery. He’d spat the word like venom.

The anger I’d felt then had not dulled with time. If anything, this morning’s avalanche of requests had only sharpened it. The sheer presumption that I, of all people, would supply such poisons was enough to sour my stomach. I hated being asked to be complicit.

I made tea, the one habit I’d found to help when my mind was too hot for brewing. Steam curled upward, and I breathed it in, forcing those memories into their proper corner. Not erased, never erased, but locked away enough to think again. I drank in slow, measured sips until the tightness in my chest loosened.

The knock at my window made me set the cup down. An owl.
I scowled, already feeling the tendrils of anger uncoiling again. Another request, no doubt, for some odious concoction. But when I looked closer, I noticed it carried not a scroll but a small, neatly wrapped package.

Suspicion replaced irritation.
I had not received a package from an unknown owl in a long while. Still, I opened the latch, and the bird stepped inside with the mild arrogance of one who knew its delivery would be accepted.

I took the parcel gingerly. Old habits die hard, and in my experience, packages from unvetted sources sometimes bit back. I levitated it to the kitchen table and ran through a sequence of detection charms, wand-tip precise, every syllable exact.
All came back clean.

Only then did I undo the string.

A box. Plain but solid. On top, a folded note.

I knew the handwriting at once.
Relief came first — ridiculous, given that I had not consciously feared danger from this package — followed swiftly by another realisation: the date. Fourteenth of February.

I forced myself not to think about what that might mean.
Not yet.

I opened the note. It was brief, almost austere, understated enough that I could pretend it was nothing, should I choose to do so.
But I was beginning to know better. Ron’s hand in this was not “just a gift.” Not after the past months. Not after the way he’d looked at me last time we met.

I lifted the lid of the box.

Chocolates. Homemade. The scent rose warm and faintly spiced, richer for their imperfection of shape. This was not the sleek, uniform work of Honeydukes, but something tempered by hand, one piece at a time.

I let the silence of the kitchen stretch, note still in my hand, and felt the steady shift in my own thoughts. I could still pretend this was nothing. That would be the safer choice. But in the pit of my chest, where my instincts rarely lied, I knew it for what it was: a line drawn with care, waiting for me to cross or not.

And Merlin help me — I was not sure I wanted to pretend anymore.

Four days later, an owl arrived mid-morning, tapping at the window like it had no patience for subtlety. I let it in, untied the letter, and watched it circle once before disappearing into the winter sky.

The handwriting was unmistakable.

Severus,

You’ve been subjected to my cooking twice now, and yet you still haven’t sworn off it. This seems like dangerous encouragement.

I thought we might try for a third go. Dinner at mine this Friday? I’ll even attempt a new dessert, so you may want to have a Bezoar handy, just in case.

Consider it a continuation of our ongoing experiment in “mutually tolerable company.”

Let me know if you can make it.

R.

I read it twice. Then a third time.
The tone was light, but I knew him well enough to hear the layers beneath it. The phrasing mutually tolerable company was pure misdirection — an excuse, if either of us wanted one. But wanted one was the key, wasn’t it?

My mind wandered, unhelpfully, to the box of chocolates now reduced to three survivors in the kitchen cupboard. The gift had been deliberate. This invitation, I suspected, was as well.

I told myself it was harmless to accept. That it would be foolish to read anything into it. That whatever flicker of anticipation curled in my chest was simply… appreciation for a well-cooked meal.

I told myself all of that, and still, when I set pen to paper, my answer was already yes.

I told myself, more than once that afternoon, that it was only dinner. Nothing to justify the faint, persistent coil of tension between my shoulders. I had been invited into private homes before —even into Ron’s— and yet, somehow, the thought of turning up tonight felt different.

The trouble was the damned gift. I refused to arrive empty-handed; that felt too much like taking, as though I were some stray turning up to be fed. Wine was perfunctory, a book risked seeming patronising, and anything rare from my stores would look like some merchant’s exchange.

In the end, I settled on a small, dark glass jar of salve. Not just any — a concentrated, slow-infused blend of comfrey, dittany, and silverleaf, meant for deep tissue healing. Potent, carefully brewed, and entirely practical. Ron collected burns and bites like other people collected anecdotes.

The clothes presented their own absurd problem. I was not the sort to “dress up,” and yet I found myself weighing the merits of the wool coat with the cleaner hem against the robes with the sharper fall of the sleeves. In the end, I chose the ones with the crispest seams and least frayed cuffs, though I told myself it was simply because they would withstand February wind better.

When I arrived, I paused at the door longer than necessary, gloved hand lifted but not yet knocking. There was a warm light under the door, the faint sound of movement, and an aroma — rich, savoury — already finding me through the wood.

I rapped my knuckles against the panel, once, twice.

The door opened.

And there he was.

Hair down tonight, long enough to brush past his shoulders in copper waves. It suited him. Unfairly.

The familiar warmth of his expression caught me — no beam, no grand gesture, just that open, unguarded smile that made the cold bite at my coat seem irrelevant.

“Evening,” he said, voice low and pleased. “Come in before you freeze.”

I stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind me. The warmth hit at once, scented with whatever he had been cooking. I held out the jar before I could think better of it.

“This is for you,” I said. “Before you add another burn scar to your collection.”

Ron’s mouth curved in amused self-deprecation as he waved his newly bandaged wrist under my gaze. 

“Already working on it, apparently.”

I did not roll my eyes, but it was a near thing.

“You’re impossible,” I muttered.

“Lucky for you, I’m also a decent cook. Come on.” He tilted his head toward the kitchen, hair shifting with the movement, and I followed, telling myself it was only because I was hungry — and not because the sight of him like this, at ease and at home, had lodged itself far too firmly in my mind.

The kitchen was warm in a way Spinner’s End never managed, no matter how high I turned the fire. Light pooled across the table, catching the deep brown glaze of the stew pot set in the centre, steam curling up to carry the scent of rosemary and pepper.

Ron ladled out generous portions, sliding one across to me before sitting down opposite. His hair — still down — fell forward slightly as he bent to take the first bite. I told myself I wasn’t staring.

“So,” he said after a moment, spoon tapping the rim of his bowl, “how many scandalised customers did you disappoint today?”

I arched an eyebrow. 

“If you mean how many orders for coercive poison I burned, the answer is twelve.”

He hummed low in his throat. 

“I’d have guessed more. You’re slipping.”

“I was efficient.”

His grin flickered, softer this time. 

“I was thinking about… Last April. You had that same look, like you were two seconds from hexing the next person who came too close.”

I gave him a long, thin look over the rim of my glass.
“That was different.”

His spoon paused mid-stir. 

“Was it?”

“Yes,” I said, tone clipped. “That was you. Not some vacuous stranger trying to purchase a diluted form of enslavement.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t amusement. 

“You were still ready to murder someone. I could tell.”

“I was,” I admitted. “It is… not my proudest memory.”

He set his spoon down with a quiet clink. 

“I’d never had someone that angry for me before.”

My throat felt strangely tight. 

“You make it sound like an uncommon occurrence.”

“It is.” His voice was steady, but softer now, as if the words were for me alone. “At least, the kind that matters.”

I looked away, into the steam curling from my bowl, unwilling to examine the sudden heat in my chest.

“It was the only rational course of action. I won’t be complicit in that kind of magic.”

“I know,” he said simply. “Doesn’t mean I’m not glad it was you who dealt with it.”

I let the silence linger, but it didn’t feel heavy. Just… there.

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out under the table until the toe of his sock brushed my boot. I doubted it was an accident, but I didn’t move.

“Next year,” he said, tone light again, “I’ll come over while you burn the letters. We can make a proper occasion of it. Bonfire and all.”

It was absurd. Entirely impractical. And yet, I could almost picture it—his grin bright in the flicker of flame, the sharp crackle of parchment curling in on itself. The thought was… not unpleasant. Disturbingly not unpleasant.

“I hardly require an audience,” I said.

“You’d have the best one.”

I shook my head, taking another spoonful if only to give my mouth something to do. 

“You are insufferable.”

His grin widened. 

“And yet, here you are, eating my food.”

“Reluctantly.”

He made a show of glancing at my empty bowl. 

“Reluctantly, sure.”

“You’re enjoying this far too much,” I said.

“Obviously,” he replied, leaning back in his chair. “Speaking of enjoying things—how were the chocolates?”

I gave him a long, noncommittal look.

“That bad?” His lips twitched.

“They were edible.”

“Edible?” He clutched his chest in mock injury. “Do you know how many hours I spent on those?”

“Too many, apparently.”

He snorted. 

“Fine, I’ll take that as ‘you liked them but you can’t bring yourself to admit it’.”

“Believe what you wish.”

His grin softened at the edges. 

“I will. Because if I’m wrong, you wouldn’t still be here.”

It was said lightly, but something in his eyes lingered—something that didn’t match the teasing tone. I found myself holding his gaze a fraction too long, aware of the sudden quiet between us.

His words hung there, light on the surface, but with a weight beneath that I couldn’t ignore.

It was the kind of thing he had no right to say so casually, because it was true. If I hadn’t wanted to be here, I wouldn’t be. I could have invented a dozen plausible excuses, crafted the perfect escape. I hadn’t.

I looked at him, at the way the lamplight caught in his hair where it had slipped forward, the faint curve of a smile he wasn’t quite letting settle. Mischief and something else—warmth, perhaps—threaded together in his expression.

He didn’t look away.

And I realised, with a quiet jolt, that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to steer the conversation back into safe waters or let it drift wherever he meant it to go. Because for all my reluctance to admit it—even to myself—there was something dangerously easy about sitting here, listening to him, watching him try to read me as if he could.

“You’re staring,” he murmured, not accusing—just observing.

“Am I?”

“You are.” His smile deepened, slow and knowing. “And I’m not going to tell you to stop.”

I should have. Instead, I reached for my glass, as if the action could shield me from what he might see in my own expression.

He didn’t push, not outright. He let the moment settle, then leaned back slightly, eyes still on me.

“You know,” he said, voice lower now, “I was thinking about something the other day. After… everything last year, with Romilda, and the war, and everything else—you’re one of the few people who’s ever made me feel… safe. Completely safe. Even when things were—” he broke off, searching for the right word, “—mad.”

It wasn’t a grand declaration. It was quieter than that. Which, somehow, made it worse.

I kept my gaze on him because I couldn’t quite look away, though I knew I should have. 

“You have an interesting way of defining ‘safe,’” I said at last.

He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. 

“Well. You never lied to me. You never looked at me like I was too much trouble, or like I was just some kid getting in the way.” His spoon tapped idly against his empty bowl. “You were always… there. Even when I didn’t make it easy.”

I couldn’t think of a single adequate response. Every instinct told me to deflect, to twist the conversation back toward something harmless. But there was nothing harmless in the way he was looking at me now.

And I realised—he meant for me to see it.

“Weasley—” I began, only to stop when his mouth curved in that same faint, maddening smile.

“Ron,” he corrected softly.

I let out a slow breath. 

“Ron,” I repeated, the name settling on my tongue in a way I hadn’t expected.

His expression eased, like I’d just passed some unspoken test. 

“That’s better.”

And for the rest of the meal, I found it strangely difficult to pretend that nothing had changed.

When the plates were cleared and the fire had burned low, I finally stood, taking my coat from where I’d draped it over the back of the chair.
Ron stepped forward before I could shrug it on properly, his hands catching the lapels to straighten them with unnecessary precision.

The faint brush of his knuckles against my chest was enough to draw the air a fraction tighter in my lungs. He didn’t look away, and for one reckless second, I wondered—almost believed—that he might lean in. That the space between us might close entirely.

But he didn’t. He simply let go, his hands falling back to his sides, that familiar half-smile tugging at his mouth.

“Safe journey,” he said lightly.

I inclined my head in silent reply, stepping past him to the door. I didn’t trust my voice not to betray something—hope, perhaps—that I had no business entertaining.

I Apparated back to Spinner’s End. But the warmth from his flat seemed to cling to me, an unwelcome passenger.

I hung my coat and stood in the stillness of my living room, letting the quiet press in. I should have been brewing, or reading, or doing anything but replaying every line, every look, every almost-touch of the evening.

Safe. He had said I made him feel safe. The word carried far more weight than I cared to admit, because his safety had never been an afterthought.

And the truth of it settled in my chest like a slow, uncoiling truth I hadn’t wanted to name: his definition of safe was dangerously close to being mutual.

It was, I later told myself, nothing more than a lapse.
An indulgence brought on by too much warmth, too much familiarity, and far too much time spent in the comfortable light of his kitchen. Anyone would be susceptible to sentiment under those conditions, especially after an evening untainted by politics, death, or demands.

Safe. The word still had the audacity to linger.
It did not belong in my personal lexicon—not in relation to another human being. Certainly not in relation to him.

I resolved to forget it.

And yet—

Over the following weeks, I found myself drafting letters with less care for the armour I usually wore. Small details slipped through my quill—complaints about an incompetent supplier, mild commentary on an ill-conceived brewing technique in Ars Alchemica, even the wry admission that I had burned through an entire morning trying to perfect a seasoning for onion soup. Trifles, all of them. Nothing of consequence. Nothing strategic.

But they were things I would never have chosen to share with anyone else.

Ron never remarked on the change directly. Instead, his replies folded those details back into the conversation without ceremony, as though it were perfectly natural for me to speak to him that way.

And, of course, he continued his infernal habit of threading remarks just ambiguous enough to make me wonder.
A line about how I must look “criminally good in a scowl” when dealing with bureaucrats.
A casual “If you keep writing to me this much, people will think I’m courting you.”
Another time, in response to a note about my workbench’s chaos during a particularly complex brew: “Good thing I’m not there, then. I’d only distract you—and we both know how that would end.”

It was never quite enough to be certain. Never anything I could confront without risking making a fool of myself. But every remark left the faintest curl of warmth under my ribs, the kind that persisted no matter how many times I told myself to dismiss it.

The lapse, it seemed, was refusing to stay contained.

The lapse grew legs.

One Thursday evening, I caught myself glancing toward the window before I had even lit the lamps, listening for the sound of wings.
Ridiculous.

It was not as though Ron wrote every day—nor did I. Our correspondence followed no particular rhythm beyond the slow pull of one reply to the next. Yet there I was, standing in my own sitting room like some halfwit in a romance serial, anticipating an owl that might not come.

When the flutter of wings finally reached my ears, I moved before I could scold myself for it. The letter was still warm from the bird’s feathers when I slit it open, my eyes scanning the lines too quickly, drinking them in before I had even registered the words.

And then I slowed. Read them again.
A report of a griffin foal’s progress in his care, a jab at my “fondness” for overcomplicated brewing methods, and—right at the end—a note in his looping hand: “Your turn to write. Don’t make me wait too long; I’ve gotten used to hearing from you.”

I set the letter down with care, as if it were made of glass.

Somewhere along the way, I had stopped thinking of his correspondence as an interruption and started treating it as a fixture in my days. I was waiting for them now, seeking them out, storing his words away as though they were ingredients in some private stock only I could brew from.

It was a dangerous realisation.
But I did not push it away. Not this time.

I told myself it was ridiculous.
Utterly, laughably ridiculous.

The letter had been short—four lines at most—written in Ron’s untidy hand. A passing remark about how he wasn’t “planning anything fancy” for his birthday, “just the usual” with family, maybe his friends. I should have read it, filed it away, and gone on with my day.

Instead, I found myself reading it again after lunch. And again before supper. And once more before bed, lingering over the way his last sentence slanted downward, as though it had been written without much thought for the pen’s angle, his mind already on something else. I told myself it was the war’s fault—that after too much time spent in the company of ghosts, the living seemed harder to ignore.

But that was a lie.
The truth was simpler: I wanted to see him.

It was the quiet I wanted. Not the raucous swarm of Weasleys. Not Harry Potter’s watchful gaze. I wanted Ron without the crowd, in a room where his voice wouldn’t be competing with half a dozen others.

So I did what I swore I wouldn’t. I wrote.

If you have the time, I have a bottle of decent wine and the makings of a meal.

There. Practical. Unsentimental. Safe.

I sent it before I could talk myself out of it.

The gift was harder. Birthdays demanded something personal, but not sentimental—not from me.
The answer came easily enough. I’d seen too many of his bandaged hands, the sting of burns, the reddened marks of creature bites.

A healing salve, then—but not the sort of thing one could buy. I brewed it strong enough to repair damage without leaving a trace, packed in a dark glass jar, hand-labelled. A gift he could use. Practical care disguised as utility. It was, in its own way, more revealing than anything wrapped in paper.

I dressed without ceremony—dark shirt, waistcoat, no teaching robes. The fire was lit, the table set, and the wine breathing on the sideboard. The house felt… prepared. That, in itself, disturbed me.

When his knock came, I felt an absurd twist low in my gut.

I opened the door. His hair was down. It suited him far too well.

“Happy birthday,” I said, stepping back. He held up a small paper bag.

“Trade?” he said, passing it over. Inside was a loaf from a bakery I knew to be excellent. “Figured you wouldn’t have had time to make bread too.”

The first minutes were easy enough—coat hung, bread set aside, wine poured. We began with safe talk: Ministry clients, brewing orders, some dry commentary on the latest Prophet absurdities. The food was simple but well-made; he said so with enough sincerity that I believed him.

When the plates were mostly clear, I rose, fetched the jar from the sideboard, and set it before him.
“You may as well have something fit for purpose,” I said. “Merlin knows what you’re using now.”

He took it, turned it in his hands. The label—neat but handwritten—caught the firelight.
“Thank you,” he said, and it wasn’t casual. “Last one saved me from quite a few scars.” He pushed back his sleeve, showing me the inside of his wrist—smooth, pale skin. “Not one trace of bite. Not bad, considering the thing that gave it to me.”

I let my gaze rest there a moment longer than was strictly necessary before meeting his eyes.
“You’re welcome,” I said, and it came out softer than I’d intended.

We drifted into deeper conversation, though never too far, skirting the edges of war stories, exchanging the kind of observations that only make sense to two people who have stood in the same dark places. Once or twice, he said something with the shape of flirtation in it, though not so overt I couldn’t pretend otherwise. I noticed and left it where it lay.

There was a moment—he leaned across to refill my glass—and for a second too long, the air between us changed. Not sharp. Not awkward. Simply aware.

I found myself thinking of it even as we moved to the sitting room for tea.

We lingered a little longer over tea, conversation ebbing into quieter currents until the clock reminded us of the late hour.

When Ron finally stood to go, I fetched his coat from the stand. He shrugged it on easily enough, then paused to smooth the lapels.

“Thank you,” he said, and it was not the light, glancing kind of thanks he sometimes used to brush away sentiment. It was weighted. “For the dinner. And the gift.”

I inclined my head. 

“You’re welcome.”

He hesitated for a beat, eyes on mine, and before I could wonder why, he leaned in. Warmth brushed my cheek — fleeting, precise — the briefest contact of lips, and yet my skin felt as if it had been marked.

“Goodnight.”

He smiled — small, almost shy — and then was gone, the latch clicking shut behind him.

I stood in the narrow hall for longer than necessary, fingertips grazing the place he had touched.

Back in the dim of the sitting room, I told myself it was nothing. That it was merely gratitude, nothing more. A momentary lapse of personal space. But the truth was more insidious: I wanted it not to be nothing. And that was the part I could not so easily put away.

I didn’t go straight to bed.
Instead, I prowled the sitting room with the lights low, fingers clasped behind my back, trying to walk the energy out of my system.

It was absurd — a single, perfectly decorous kiss on the cheek, and here I was, turning it over as if it were an encrypted message.

But I kept returning to the same problem: it hadn’t felt decorous. Not to me. Not with the deliberate way he’d met my eyes first. Not with the faint, lingering warmth that refused to leave my skin.

I told myself it was gratitude, as one might offer to a close friend or to family. But there had been nothing familial in his look just before he leaned in — that subtle narrowing of focus, the way his voice had softened on the words thank you.

The dangerous part was not the kiss itself. It was that I wanted to imagine what it might have been if he hadn’t pulled away so quickly.
It was that my mind — treacherous thing — kept replaying it, polishing each detail as if by repetition it might yield a different outcome.

And most damning of all, I realised that if I let myself think too long on it, I could almost see myself leaning forward to meet him halfway.

I stood there for a long time, staring into the dark window, the faint reflection of my own face watching me back.
It was too close to mutual. Far too close.

Chapter Text

PART SIX

INVESTMENT

The letter arrived late in the morning, the owl tapping smartly at the glass until I let it in. Ron’s handwriting was unmistakable—slanted, unpretentious, a little too quick in places.

I broke the seal.

You’re now corresponding with an uncle. 

Fleur had her baby this morning. Victoire Weasley. She’s perfect. Whole family’s a mess about it. Mum cried, Bill cried, even Percy got glassy-eyed. I didn’t, but I did buy her a ridiculous stuffed niffler. I’ll send a picture once I’ve convinced her parents I’m allowed near her without gloves on.

The tone was light, but I could see the pride bleeding through between the lines.

The next paragraph shifted without warning: 

What are you brewing at the moment? Anything complicated enough to make you swear at it? I miss the sound of you insulting your cauldrons when they misbehave.

I set the letter down. He had a knack for this—threading the personal into the conversational, making it impossible to respond with the perfunctory civility I gave everyone else.

Still, I intended to keep my reply short. Congratulations on your niece, answer his brewing question, close the letter. That was the plan.

What I actually wrote was two full pages. I congratulated him, of course, but found myself asking after Fleur’s recovery, after the general state of the family, and describing in more detail than was strictly necessary the properties of the tincture I’d been working on for the last week. I even admitted to having three failed attempts before the fourth batch behaved—an admission that would have horrified me in front of anyone else.

When I finished, I sat back and read it over. It was… more than I gave anyone else. Not just in length, but in tone. Unvarnished, uncalculated, unguarded.

And the strangest thing was—I didn’t mind.

Ron arrived just after three, hair slightly windblown and wearing the look of a man who’d been holding in a groan for several hours.

“I needed a break,” he said the moment I opened the door. “Fleur’s still at the Burrow, resting. Mum’s nesting harder than Fleur is. Everyone’s fussing over Victoire, and it’s brilliant, but…” He gestured vaguely. “It’s a lot. I thought I’d flee before someone tried to hand me the baby while also asking if I’ve thought about settling down.”

“Tea, then,” I said, stepping aside.

His relief was palpable.

We settled in the sitting room, cups warming our hands, steam clouding the air between us. He talked for a while about the baby—tiny fingers, the niffler toy, the endless cooing from his mother—and then, almost without warning, his tone softened.

“I’m not sure I could do it,” he said. “Have kids. I mean… I like them, sometimes. But the idea of being responsible for one? All the time? I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. And it feels… I don’t know, selfish? To even think about when the world’s still like this.”

I let the thought hang in the quiet, sipping my tea.

Then his eyes flicked to mine. 

“What about you?”

I considered lying. Or rather, I considered offering the sort of vague non-answer I gave to most people when they asked questions they had no right to. But this was Ron, and Ron had a way of looking at me as though he expected the truth.

“No,” I said. “I have never been interested in having children. My upbringing was hardly a model worth repeating, and my life remains… precarious. The past has a way of keeping its teeth in, and my political standing is hardly settled. I would not bring a child into that.”

He nodded slowly, gaze steady. I could have stopped there, but I found myself adding, 

“If I am to invest my time and care, I would rather give it to a partner—or to a protégé of my own choosing. Someone whose course I can help shape without risking another cycle of damage.”

Something in his expression shifted then, a subtle warm flicker that I couldn’t quite read. He didn’t press the point, but his eyes lingered on me as if filing the answer away.

Some time later, Ron drained the last of his tea, set the cup down, and leaned back with a sigh that seemed to unknot his shoulders.

“Thanks for the quiet,” he said. “Feels like I can think straight here. No one asking me to hold a baby or chop vegetables or ‘just pop to the shop’ for nappies.”

I inclined my head. 

“I imagine it will be some time before the chaos at the Burrow subsides.”

“Probably,” he said, rising. His hand lingered on the back of the chair, eyes flicking to mine again. “Still… nice to know I’ve got somewhere else to be. Especially if you’re in the mood to… invest.”

The word landed between us like a slow-burning match. His tone was light, almost throwaway, but there was that faint upturn at the corner of his mouth again.

I arched an eyebrow, unwilling to ask whether he meant protégé or partner. It was too easy to imagine either—and far too dangerous to assume.

“Walk carefully, Weasley,” I said instead.

His grin deepened by a fraction as he headed for the door. 

“Always.”

When the door closed behind him, the echo of his words—and the deliberate weight he’d put on invest—lingered in the air far longer than the steam from the tea.

Severus,

Fleur and the baby are doing fine, though I think Mum’s treating her like she’s made of spun glass. Which means Bill’s been roped into half the chores, so naturally I’m drafted into the other half.

I had to get away for a day, so I’m writing this from the orchard. It’s quiet enough out here that I can almost hear myself think, though not quite, because Fred and George have discovered the joy of projectile baby toys.

Anyway, I was thinking about what you said the other day. About investments.

You should know I’m very good at yielding returns.

R.

The opening lines were easy enough to absorb. Fleur, the baby, Molly’s smothering tendencies… all banal, all predictable. But then—

About investments.

My eyes lingered on the words longer than I intended.

And then came the last line.

You should know I’m very good at yielding returns.

A pulse of heat, unwanted and entirely disproportionate, curled in my chest. It was infuriating how few words it took him. Infuriating that I couldn’t quite determine whether this was mere verbal fencing — or whether he was pushing the same boundary he’d been nudging for weeks. I could still hear his voice saying it, low and certain, the same way he had delivered Don’t worry. I’m house-trained. You can keep me.

I set the letter down, pressing my fingertips together until the urge to smirk passed. Whatever he was doing, it was deliberate. And perhaps I was a fool, but I found I did not want him to stop.

When I took up my own quill, the first sentences came out sharper than I’d planned — a reflexive jab about his deadlines. But I left them in; Ron expected me to parry.

Still, when I reached the end, my hand hesitated. My next words… I could easily have dismissed his remark, closed the door. Instead, I left it ajar.

Be aware that I have high expectations for anything in which I choose to invest.

If it was a game, I had just made my move. If it wasn’t… then I had just as much to lose as he did.

The post arrived late that morning; the sky outside was thick with the kind of damp, grey that made the room feel smaller. I slit the envelope open without ceremony—until I saw the handwriting.

No greeting. No preamble. Just Ron’s words, concise as a knife:

I think I could meet your high expectations. But you’ll have to let me try.

A single line’s space, then:

Come to dinner on Thursday. I’ll start then.

That was all.

I stared at the page longer than I should have. The challenge in it was unmistakable—there was a bite in the phrasing, the deliberate lack of cushioning. Not defensive, not tentative. Confident.

I felt it—an uninvited pull low in my chest, the satisfaction of watching someone rise to a bar I’d set high on purpose. I had expected deflection. Perhaps humour. But this was neither. This was intent.

And yet, beneath the satisfaction, there was the faintest thrum of unease. Because it wasn’t only that he’d accepted the dare—it was that he seemed to know exactly what game he was playing.

I folded the letter once, twice, precisely, before setting it aside. The clock in the corner ticked louder than usual.

Dinner on Thursday.

I would go.

Of course I would go.

Thursday crept toward me with an irritating sort of inevitability.
I told myself there was no reason to dwell on it—yet found myself doing precisely that.

I debated the time I should arrive. Whether it was more appropriate to be punctual, or to leave the fashionably late gap I preferred in most social encounters. I thought about the wine I might bring, then discarded the idea—Ron would probably serve some swill he liked, and I could grit my teeth through it. Then I reconsidered. Wine was safe. Wine was neutral. Wine did not feel… personal.

But nothing about this evening was neutral.

I chose my coat with the same attention I’d once given to selecting the right antidote in a duel. The black one, tailored just enough to flatter without appearing as though I was trying. A clean shirt, no fraying at the cuffs. Hair tied back—less severe than my usual working knot, but still controlled. I eyed myself in the glass above the mantel and felt that familiar flicker of contempt. Lines. Scars. An economy of expression carved by years of keeping my thoughts locked behind my teeth.

Ron, by contrast, was… all warmth. Smiles that reached his eyes, hands that moved when he spoke, a voice that didn’t ration its inflection. Twenty years younger. Whole.

The smirk I’d worn when I’d issued that challenge—let’s see if you can meet my expectations—felt almost laughable now. I had been so certain of my footing then. Now, with Thursday less than a day away, I found myself circling the truth like a wary animal: this no longer felt like polite friendship. This was…

Merlin help me. This was a date.

The word made something coil in my gut—not quite dread, not quite anticipation. I had not been on a date in years. Decades, even. And now, the idea came wrapped in Ron’s particular brand of disarming persistence: an invitation framed as a test, a promise to start then.

What would a date with him even be?
Would it be laughter over something absurd, the sly curve of his mouth when he delivered one of those ambiguous lines? Or would it be more serious—his intent gaze, the way he sometimes spoke as though he’d decided, in that moment, to hand me a truth he wouldn’t offer anyone else?

I didn’t know.
But I was curious. And more than that, I was acutely aware that I was being courted. Not pursued for information, or influence, or advantage. Courted. For there was no other word for it.

And I found I didn’t want to turn it away.

The door opened almost before I’d lowered my hand from knocking.

Ron stood there, hair tied back loosely, a collared shirt rolled to the elbows, the faint scent of something savoury curling out from the room beyond. It was disarming—he looked like he’d stepped straight out of one of those infuriatingly wholesome domestic photographs the Prophet prints in the lifestyle section, except that no one in those photographs ever looked directly at you like that.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside. His voice was light enough, but there was a thread of intent there. Deliberate.

The table had been set with an attention to symmetry that would have put some apothecaries to shame—cloth napkins, proper cutlery, candles trimmed low enough that their light softened rather than glared. A bottle of wine rested on the table in a cradle, label turned precisely toward the chairs.

“I asked the merchant for something you might actually drink without complaining,” Ron said, catching me looking. “If it’s swill, it’s his fault, not mine.”

A credible start.

The first course arrived before I could reply: French onion soup, dark and fragrant, the crouton melting into the broth beneath a crust of perfectly browned cheese. It was done exactly as it should be—no shortcuts.

“I assume you’re keeping a silent score,” he said as he poured the wine. “Going to hold it up at the end of the night like a duelling competition.”

“Would it matter if I were?”

His grin flickered. 

“If I fail, you’ll know I gave it my best round.”

The conversation over the first course drifted from his latest rescue at work—a young curse-breaker who’d got into trouble with a volatile restorative—to an old story from Hogwarts. He told it without embellishment, but the punchline landed in my favour, and he didn’t pretend otherwise.

The main course… I had expected competence. What I received was precision. Duck breast, seared so the skin crackled under the knife, with a sauce reduced to a gloss-dark ribbon that carried a subtle heat—cinnamon, pepper, perhaps a whisper of something rarer. The vegetables were roasted until their edges caramelised, sweet and sharp against the richness.

“Preparation or improvisation?” he asked at one point, leaning back as if conducting an interview.

“Depends on the stakes.”

He nodded as though filing away the answer. 

“I like both. But… tonight was all preparation.”

“And what exactly were the stakes?”

The smirk he gave me could have been a dozen things. 

“You tell me.”

The wine was good. The food was better. I found myself… reluctant for it to end.

He’d let the conversation drift for a while—lighter topics, a ridiculous story about his monthly Divination Club with four other Hogwarts alumni—before steering it back with that deceptively casual tone he uses when something matters to him.

“What about you?” he asked, swirling what was left in his glass. “What qualities do you value most in someone you trust?”

I gave him a long look. 

“You assume I trust anyone.”

“You do,” he said, without hesitation. “Or at least… You have.”

I considered deflecting, but he was watching me with the kind of attention that leaves no room for evasions. I set down my fork, buying a few seconds to decide how honest I wanted to be.

“Loyalty,” I said at last. “Not the blind kind. The sort that survives knowing the worst.”

He nodded slowly, gaze steady. 

“That makes sense.”

“And discretion,” I added. “The ability to keep what needs keeping—without the constant urge to parade it about.”

His mouth twitched faintly, as if suppressing a smile. 

“Alright. Loyalty and discretion. Anything else?”

I hesitated, then let the last slip out. 

“Competence. I have no patience for those who mean well but cannot deliver.”

Ron’s smile was small but certain, as if some internal ledger had been updated in his favour. 

“Got it.”

He didn’t say more, but he didn’t need to. The weight of his attention lingered, and I had the distinct impression that he wasn’t just collecting my answers—he was measuring himself against them.

“For what it’s worth… you’ve been right more often than you’ve been wrong. About the things that mattered. Not many people can say that.”

My instinct was to wave it off. 

“A statistical inevitability. I make my assessments carefully.”

“No,” he said, with the same stubborn tone I’d heard a hundred times in my classroom. “You see things other people miss. Even when they don’t want to see them. That’s… rare.”

There was no tease in it. No careful attempt to flatter. Just conviction, plain and steady, as if he’d decided that was the one thing I needed to hear tonight.

I found, annoyingly, that I didn’t want to argue.

The dessert, when it came, was absurdly ambitious: a chocolate soufflé that rose without a single crack, dusted lightly with sugar. 

“If this doesn’t win you over, I’m sending you home with the rest of the wine and never speaking to you again,” he said, but the glance he gave me after was quieter. Watching.

It was excellent. Annoyingly so.

Ron, in his maddeningly casual way, recounted a recent shift at work, regarding a run-in with a badly injured Hebridean Black, and how he had to brew a stabilising draught on the spot from whatever ingredients the farm could offer.

It was an efficient story—no embellishment, but with enough detail that I could see the work clearly in my mind, the deft hands and cool head.

When the conversation drifted back to brewing in general, he leaned back slightly and said, with that same steady tone, 

“I found one of your old textbooks in sixth year, you know. Still have it. All those notes you crammed into the margins—they’ve saved me more times than I can count. The way you rewrote the Shrivelfig preparation alone? Brilliant. I still use some of those adjustments whenever I brew at work.”

The words landed harder than they should have. For a moment, I could only think of the sort of things I’d scrawled into my school copies—spellwork I wouldn’t trust in the hands of most adults, much less a student. My first reaction was a tight flicker of wariness.

But then I reminded myself—Ron had always been infuriatingly careful. Cautious to a fault, especially where dangerous magic was concerned. And clearly, he hadn’t blown himself—or anyone else—into oblivion. The results, by his own account, had been nothing but successful.

I let the tension ease from my shoulders and, instead, felt a streak of undeniable pride stir. That battered old book had been my private work, years of experimentation distilled into cramped handwriting—and to hear it described as “brilliant,” and by him of all people, was… gratifying in a way I wasn’t prepared to admit aloud.

“You might,” I said at last, allowing only the faintest dryness to edge my voice, “exercise caution with what’s written in it.”

Something in his eyes flickered—amusement, though I couldn’t guess why.

“You’d know I’m always prudent with strange notebooks,” he said.

It puzzled me until the memory surfaced—an old, cursed diary, a too-clever boy dragging it to my desk in grim determination, before his sister could vanish entirely into it. I remembered his expression that day: hard, protective, certain.

“…Yes,” I said quietly. “I suppose I do know.”

When it was finally time to leave, he walked me to the door, coat in hand. 

“So,” he said, looking up at me from too short a distance, “did I pass?”

I let the question hang. 

“I’ve yet to decide.”

That should have been the end of it, but of course, he never leaves well enough alone.

“You know,” he said, leaning back slightly but keeping his eyes fixed on mine, “proving myself isn’t a one-evening task.” His tone was mild, almost casual, but there was a quiet assurance underneath it. “Might take a while. I’m patient.”

The implication lingered in the air, as deliberate as the rest of this infernal challenge.

When he held my coat out, I slid my arms into the sleeves, aware of him standing just a fraction too close—close enough that the warmth of him bled through the wool. He straightened the lapels with quick, sure fingers, a touch more careful than necessary.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, voice low enough to make it sound like more than mere politeness.

I inclined my head, unwilling to trust my voice.

He opened the door for me, and the cold night air swept in. For an absurd moment, I thought he might say something else—another teasing promise, another piece of bait—but he only gave me that maddening, quiet smile.

I stepped out into the street, and the door closed softly behind me.

The walk home was longer than it needed to be. Not in distance, but in the way my mind insisted on replaying the evening, his remarks, the damned way his fingers had brushed my collar.

He said he was patient.
I was beginning to wonder whether I was.

By the time I reached Spinner’s End, the air had numbed my hands, but it had done nothing to dull the noise in my head.

I hung my coat with unnecessary precision, set my gloves beside it, and lingered there longer than the action required—as if the stillness might order my thoughts. It didn’t.

The challenge. My challenge. I had tossed it across the board with the same detached confidence I’d used in a hundred verbal sparrings. I hadn’t expected… this.

He’d met my bar tonight—there was no sense denying it. The meal, the conversation, the small but deliberate gestures… none of it careless, none of it luck. Everything about the evening had been chosen, arranged. Directed at me.

It was… irritating. And unnerving. And—damn it—effective.

I poured myself a drink and sat in the dim light of my front room, letting the memory spool out. The moments when I’d almost forgotten to keep my guard up. The way he’d folded sincerity into the humour without losing either. The way that parting touch had seemed casual until I was out the door, and then it echoed like the last note of a song I couldn’t quite name.

Proving himself, he’d said, wasn’t a one-evening task.

I found I was curious—dangerously so—about what the next proof would be.

Curious enough that I wasn’t sure whether I was still playing a game… or if I’d already started answering his challenge without meaning to.

Chapter Text

PART 7

SOMETHING SCANDALOUS

The envelope was thicker than usual. That, in itself, was enough to set my guard humming — Ron never padded his letters with excess parchment.

The first sheet was businesslike, in his way:

Dear Mr Potionner,

My trainer thinks it’s time I get more familiar with apothecary auctions. One coming up next Saturday in Diagon Alley is apparently “worth my while” (their words, not mine) and I thought of you. It’s mostly potion ingredients, some rare, some not. But I figure if you came along, you could give me a few tips on how to dazzle the sellers into letting me walk away with a bargain.

Figure it’s only right my first time be with you.

Ron

The last line sat there on the page, as if he’d planted it like a cursed rune and was waiting for me to trip. I read it twice, then a third time, in case repetition made it less suggestive. It did not.

Infuriating boy.
No—infuriating man, fully aware of how that would read, and just enough of a menace to put it in writing.
I could hear the unrepentant lilt in his voice, see the mock-innocent look he’d aim at me if I called him on it.

It would be the sensible thing to ignore it entirely in my reply.
It would be the safest thing, certainly.

I found myself not doing that.
Instead, I laid the letter aside, fingers lingering on the paper longer than they should have, considering whether he meant it purely as provocation or whether there was actual intent there.

Fond exasperation. That was the problem. That’s what it had become.
The man had gone from a tolerable distraction to a deliberate hazard, and I was letting him.

We shall see whether you still consider this a suitable “outing” once you realise how tedious most of these events can be. Auctions, however specialised, are not social affairs.

That said, I will attend. If it is indeed your first, then I expect you to pay close attention while I show you how it’s done.

There are particular strategies worth employing when bidding for rare ingredients; I will outline a few when we meet.

I sealed the envelope before I could second-guess myself.

The words had been entirely literal, of course. Entirely. There was nothing in them that could not be taken at face value by any sensible reader. And yet, I could already see the smirk Ron would wear when he read them. He’d pounce on the phrasing like a kneazle on a bowtruckle, stretching it into something else entirely, and the worst part was…I had left him the space to do it.

It wasn’t accidental.

I set the letter aside for the owl, but didn’t move away from the desk. My fingertips lingered on the sealed paper, feeling the faint press of my own handwriting through it. “Show you how it’s done.” I’d meant the auction. The auction. And yet, the moment the words had formed, they’d carried that shadow of something more—something he would notice.

I ought to have chosen a blander phrase. Safer. But no, I’d let it stand.

It was reckless. And it was deliberate.

Severus,

Got your reply this morning. You know, for someone who claims to be a master of precision, you do choose your words… interestingly. I’ll try to behave myself and take them in the most innocent way possible.

(You can imagine how well that’s going.)

Looking forward to Saturday. I’ll be ready to learn exactly how it’s done. And for the record, I take instructions very well.

Ron

P.S. Don’t be late. Wouldn’t want to keep me waiting on my first time.

The first two lines were harmless enough until I reached the parenthetical. I could almost hear him, that unrepentant amusement in his voice, the way his mouth curved when he thought he’d scored a point.

And then the P.S.

I sat back, letter between my fingers, and told myself—firmly—that I would not rise to the bait. That his phrasing was deliberate, calculated to earn exactly the flicker of heat low in my spine that it did. That engaging with such provocation would only encourage him.

…And yet.

The corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it. He was enjoying himself far too much. And, worse, I was letting him.

I folded the letter with care, set it aside, and told myself again that I would maintain my composure on Saturday.
Of course, I’d already begun wondering exactly what he’d wear.

The apothecary auction was being held in a converted warehouse along the river—bare brick walls, rows of long trestle tables covered in glass cases, and the faint smell of dust, dried herbs, and competition.

Ron was waiting outside when I arrived, hands in his pockets, hair catching in the damp wind off the water. He straightened when he saw me, that grin of his brightening in a way I resolutely ignored.

“Glad you made it,” he said, falling into step beside me as we went in. “Figured you’d have the edge here.”
“I should hope so,” I replied dryly. “You are about to witness a masterclass in discernment and restraint.”
Ron glanced sideways at me, eyes glinting. 

“I’ll try not to get in the way of your… demonstration.”

Inside, the auctioneer’s voice droned over the low murmur of bidders examining lots. Some were labelled clearly—bundles of sopophorous beans, jars of crystallised moondew—others were simply sealed boxes with handwritten notes, tempting the risk-takers.

Ron lingered by a case containing a deep green root suspended in viscous fluid. 

“Venomous Tentacula heartroot,” he murmured, reading the tag. “Didn’t think they sold these outside restricted suppliers.”
“They don’t,” I said. “This is… a grey-area transaction. Which means you either know the seller’s reputation—or you get swindled.”

We moved together down the row, stopping when I lifted a small wooden box and tilted it toward the light. 

“Pale fire petals,” I said, indicating the faint shimmer along the edges. “Genuine. But they’ll start wilting within the month unless stored in triple-enchanted glass.”
Ron leaned in, shoulder brushing mine, and peered into the box. 

“You’re telling me that just so I don’t waste my galleons… or so you can outbid me later?”
I allowed the faintest smirk. 

“Both.”

We made our way through the lots, and—damn him—he listened. Asked questions with the focus of someone who intended to remember the answers. When the bidding began, I hung back for the first few items, letting him get a feel for the rhythm. Then, when a rare vial of mooncalf silver came up, I inclined my head toward him.
“Your turn. Lot twelve.”

His brows rose. 

“Going to let me drive on my first time?”
“I believe you said you wanted me there for it,” I said smoothly. “Consider this a supervised lesson.”

He bid—confidently, but not recklessly—and won it without overpaying. The small victorious smile he shot me afterwards made something tighten low in my chest.

By the time the last lot was sold, he’d secured three high-quality ingredients and avoided every obvious trap. As we stepped back into the cool evening air, his fingers brushed mine briefly when I passed him the wrapped parcels.

“So,” he said, as we reached the corner where we’d part ways, “how’d I do, professor?”
I let the pause stretch, enjoying the way he waited for it. 

“Better than I expected.”
“That sounds like a pass.”
“It sounds,” I said, “like you’ve proven yourself capable of learning quickly.”
His grin sharpened just slightly. 

“Good. Means I’m ready for the advanced lessons.”

He shifted the parcels to one arm, free hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
“You’ve got time for tea?” he asked, tone deliberately casual, but his eyes steady on mine. “There’s a place just round the corner—does a decent pot and the best ginger biscuits I’ve had outside Mum’s kitchen.”

I hesitated, running a mental tally of the work waiting at home. None of it outweighed the curiosity—or the quiet pull—of seeing what he thought this invitation was.
“I suppose,” I said at last. “Provided this ‘best’ claim holds up to scrutiny.”

The tea shop was narrow, all polished wood and shelves crammed with mismatched teapots. We took a small table by the window, the warmth from the interior cutting the April damp. Ron ordered for both of us without asking, and I was prepared to correct him—until the tray arrived, fragrant steam curling from the spout of a black cast-iron pot.

He poured with a steadiness that surprised me, sliding the cup toward me before breaking one of the biscuits in half and eating it without ceremony. “So,” he said, leaning back, “what’s your verdict on my first auction?”

I took a measured sip before answering. 

“Competent. You listened, you observed, and you refrained from making an idiot of yourself in front of the more experienced bidders.”
His grin curved slowly. 

“I’ll take that as high praise, coming from you.”

We spoke easily after that—about the lots that had been obvious frauds, about the particular brand of arrogance found in wealthy collectors, about how certain ingredients had been handled better than others. He asked about preservation charms, about market shifts, about the most valuable thing I’d ever bought at auction. I gave him answers I would have considered too much information for anyone else.

At one point, he reached across to tap the rim of my cup. 

“And here I thought you’d be the type to make me work for every scrap. This is practically generous.”
“You’re not everyone else,” I said before thinking, and his gaze caught mine in a way that made the room feel just a touch too warm.

When we finally stood to leave, he insisted on paying—something about it being “part of the outing” he’d planned—and we stepped out into the cool air, the warmth of the tea still lingering in my chest. Ron had the wrapped package from the auction tucked under his arm, and I’d been prepared to walk with him until the street turned toward my route home.

We didn’t get that far.

“Oi—Weasley!”

The voice came from the left—too bright, too eager—and belonged to a sharp-eyed young man I half-recognised from the Prophet’s society column. His quill hand was already twitching. 

“And… Merlin, it’s you, isn’t it? Professor Snape—”

Ron’s smile thinned into something politely bland. 

“Afternoon,” he said, not breaking stride.

But the man fell in beside us, still talking. 

“Haven’t seen the two of you out together before. Is this—what is this, then?” His eyes darted between us in a way I found instantly irritating. “Mind if I get a quick picture—”

“No,” I said flatly.

Ron’s hand brushed my sleeve—barely there, but purposeful. 

“Come on,” he murmured, steering me down a narrow side street before our would-be chronicler could get his camera out. “Shortcut.”

We cut through an alley that smelt faintly of rain on stone, Ron leading with brisk confidence. The sound of the man’s voice faded behind us until it was just the two of us and the muffled clink of glass inside Ron’s package.

When we emerged on the other side, into a quieter street lined with bookshops and shuttered cafes, Ron finally glanced over at me. 

“Sorry about that.”

I shook my head. 

“I’m used to worse.”

“Still. Not exactly the sort of afternoon you want immortalised in print.” His mouth quirked. “Unless you do want people to think you spend your free time escorting me to fancy auctions and tea shops.”

I gave him a sidelong look. 

“If they did, I doubt it would be the most scandalous thing they’ve imagined about me.”

That earned a quiet laugh, warm and brief. For the rest of the walk, we kept to the smaller lanes, speaking only now and then—more by choice than necessity. There was a comfort in the quiet, in the sense of moving through the city with no eyes on us but each other’s.

By the time the streets widened again and I could see the corner where our paths would part, I was reluctant to stop. Ron, it seemed, was too—he slowed his steps, as if measuring the moment.

“Thanks for today,” he said finally. “Not just the tips—though I’ll admit, watching you charm that seller was worth the trip alone.”

“Consider it an investment,” I replied.

He smiled at that—genuine, almost boyish—and then nodded toward the road ahead. 

“I’ll walk you to your turn-off.”

And we did, side by side, the silence between us now holding something… companionable. As though, without quite saying it, we’d agreed the afternoon had been ours alone—untouched by anyone else’s eyes or questions.

The house felt colder than it had when I’d left it that morning. I lit the fire more out of habit than necessity, shrugging off my coat and setting the small bundle from the auction on the side table.

I should have been replaying the day’s transactions—evaluating the prices, noting the quality of the lots, mentally filing away which sellers might be useful in the future. Instead, what I saw when I closed my eyes was a flash of red hair in the late afternoon light, the set of Ron’s jaw when he steered me away from that leech with a quill.

He hadn’t hesitated. No awkward glance for permission, no fumbling excuse—just his hand on my sleeve, decisive and sure. I’d followed without thought. Not because I needed rescuing, and not because I feared the attention—I’ve survived far worse than a gossip column—but because in that instant, it seemed self-evident that we would leave together.

Our pace in that narrow alley, the sound of our steps in sync… It had been far too easy to imagine we’d done this before, would do it again. That we had the kind of quiet, wordless understanding that comes from long familiarity.

I sat down in my armchair and stared at the package of dried bloodroot I’d acquired, its paper wrapping rustling faintly as the fire shifted. I’d made any number of purchases in my life that were purely transactional—bargains struck, favours earned—but this had been something else.

I was not in the habit of claiming people as mine, and yet… when the Prophet’s parasite had turned his attention to Ron, I’d felt it—sharp, immediate, and entirely unhelpful. The simple fact of being us in that moment, pressed shoulder to shoulder against the outside world, had settled into my bones with a familiarity I hadn’t earned and wasn’t sure I should want.

And still, I did.

I leaned back, fingers steepled, letting the firelight soften the shadows in the room. It was… unsettling, how easily this had come. How quickly Ron had made me forget the space I usually kept between myself and anyone else.

Perhaps it was the aftertaste of his grin when we’d parted, or the faint pressure of his hand on my arm, but I found myself wondering—not for the first time—what would happen if I stopped holding him at the cautious distance I always maintained.

It was a question I didn’t yet have the answer to.

But tonight, for once, I didn’t mind the not knowing.

The paper slid onto the table with its usual muted thump, the owl having long since learned not to linger.
I unrolled it one-handed, the other curling around my tea, scanning the front page with disinterest. Politics. Quidditch. The usual insipid society puff pieces.

Then my eyes caught on a familiar profile.

The gossip column — buried, as ever, near the middle — had seen fit to feature a photograph of me. Not some grainy, distant courtroom shot, not the occasional Ministry award archive, but one captured through the mullioned window of a small teashop. My teashop.

Or rather, the one I’d been sitting in with Ron Weasley last week.

The headline was predictably asinine: War Heroes in Close Company – Private Alliance or Something More?

I could almost hear the simpering tone of the person who’d written it. The paragraph beneath was no better, a feigned-innocent musing on “unlikely but intriguing companionships” and “an hour’s conversation over what appeared to be a particularly intimate tea.” The photograph itself was cropped and angled to remove all other patrons, leaving only Ron and me leaning across the table, mid-conversation, heads inclined just enough to suggest…

I folded the paper once, sharply.

Irritation prickled first, at the gall, the intrusion, the wretched opportunism of such “journalists.” No doubt some parasite with a long lens and nothing better to do than stalk a public auction and tail its attendees to their next stop.

But the irritation did not entirely smother the other thought, more dangerous for being involuntary:
…yes, I could see why they’d think it looked like something more.

The image had caught him mid-smile, all warmth and ease, the sort of expression he reserved for moments when he was not guarded, not weighing his words. And I did not look scowling or stiff, but intent. Engaged. A man listening to someone worth listening to.

I set the paper aside, but it was too late; the image lingered. Not merely in my mind, but in the Prophet’s presses, in every breakfast table in the country this morning.

Would he have seen it yet? Of course, he would. Ron’s name had been tied to public curiosity since the end of the war; he had learned to scan for such mentions the way others checked the weather.

I told myself I would not be the one to raise the subject. To mention it would be to dignify it. Yet I could not quite decide which unsettled me more — the thought of him laughing it off entirely, or the possibility that he might… not.

And, damn the Prophet, I was already too aware of how little either outcome repelled me.

I had not intended to mention the article.
If he wished to address it, he would. If he didn’t, all the better.

But when Ron stepped into the parlour that afternoon, shaking the damp from his coat and grinning like he’d just caught the Snitch, I knew restraint would be a wasted effort.

“You’ve read it, then,” he said, not even pretending to play coy.

I poured the tea. 

“If you mean the odious little scrap of innuendo in the Prophet’s gossip section, then yes.”

Ron sat, accepted his cup, and leaned back like he owned the place. 

“Cosy, they called it.” His grin widened. “You and me, looking ‘cosy’.”

I sipped slowly. 

“A lamentable failure in descriptive accuracy. We were sitting at opposite sides of the table.”

“They can’t put that in print. Not half as interesting.” He took a generous swallow of his tea and then added, in the most deliberate drawl I’d yet heard from him, “Next time, we should give them something worth their while.”

I set my cup down, arching a brow. 

“What, precisely, would that entail?”

“Oh, you know. Something scandalous.” His tone was as airy as if we were discussing the weather, but his eyes were fixed on me with a glint I couldn’t quite name—challenge, perhaps, or promise. “Something to really get them talking.”

“And you believe public spectacle to be… advantageous?”

“I believe,” he said, tilting his head in that infuriatingly familiar way, “that if they’re going to make things up about me, I might as well enjoy myself.”

I let the silence stretch, not trusting myself to answer without revealing more than I intended. He only smiled into his tea, utterly at ease, as if planting a seed and walking away from it was the most natural thing in the world.

The moment the door closed behind him, the quiet rushed back in like a tide—familiar, heavy, and almost jarring after the hum of his presence.

I told myself I would return to my work. That the matter of certain rare infusions I’d been preparing was of far greater importance than whatever passing nonsense he’d chosen to utter over tea.

And yet…

“Something scandalous.”

It sat there in my mind like a spark refusing to die, flickering at the edges of thought until I was forced to acknowledge it. I replayed the scene with tiresome precision—the curve of his mouth around the words, the deliberate nonchalance in his voice, the sharpened focus in his eyes when he looked at me.

He had meant it to land.

And damn him, it had.

I told myself it was simply another of his calculated provocations, part of this… courtship—if I could bring myself to name it as such—that he seemed determined to draw me into. But even as I attempted to dismiss it, the notion lingered.

Scandalous.

Not the sort of word one invited into their life lightly, particularly not mine. Yet, against my better judgement, I found myself wondering—not if I would ever oblige him, but when.

And the thought was… not unwelcome.

The post arrived late that morning, the tawny owl rapping its beak against my study window with undue persistence. I opened it expecting another routine delivery—ingredient invoices, perhaps—but the handwriting on the envelope stopped me cold.

Ron.

The letter inside was short, and entirely too knowing:

Are you free Friday evening?
I think it’s time you collected on that investment you spoke about.
R.

I read it twice, then a third time, tracing the word investment. He remembered the conversation. He had remembered it well enough to fold it back on me.

An investment, indeed.

I told myself there was no subtext, that it was simply a meal to humour his ongoing game. Yet I found my quill replying in fewer words than his:

Friday, then.

And that was that.

Or should have been.

By the time Friday came, I had debated the matter into exhaustion. My wardrobe had been the first battlefield—settling finally on black, but a finer wool, and without the defensive bulk of my teaching robes. I brought with me a small jar of potent healing salve, compounded over the past week, the sort that would make short work of everything from brewing burns to hex scars.

The door swung open to reveal Ron with his hair down again—loose, unrestrained, and suiting him far too well. He knew it, too; I could tell by the flicker in his eyes when he saw me notice.

“Come in,” he said, stepping back.

I crossed the threshold, the familiar warmth of his flat enveloping me—along with the sight of a plaster just above the pale scar at the side of his throat.

“What happened this time?” I asked, already exasperated.

He looked amused, not contrite in the slightest. 

“Bottle-feeding a baby mooncalf at work. Hand slipped, it decided I looked like lunch.”

I handed him the jar of salve. 

“The beast clearly has no taste.”

Ron gasped in mock offence. 

“Don’t insult my poor baby! Giselle is perfect.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped fully inside, resisting the urge to lecture him on the obvious hazards of allowing his neck within range of anything with teeth.

The table was set for three courses, each clearly timed to perfection. We ate the first over a discussion of the auction, my wineglass kept steadily full.

“You were a good guide,” he said at one point, smiling faintly. “And I was thinking—we could go to the one next month. I can make a proper habit of dazzling sellers with my ‘knowledgeable companion.’”

“Flattery is a poor mask for manipulation,” I said, though the corner of my mouth twitched. “You are, however, improving.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The second course led us into more personal territory with a careful detour into the article.

“I don’t let many people into my space,” he said. “But you know that.”

I inclined my head. 

“And you keep inviting me regardless.”

“Should I stop?”

I met his eyes. 

“No.”

By dessert, the conversation had softened into a slower rhythm. We lingered afterwards in his sitting room, glasses in hand, talking of small things: brewing techniques, the peculiarities of auction etiquette, and what might tempt us to spend too much next time.

The fire had burned low, and at some point, he moved closer on the sofa.

“I keep thinking about next month,” he said. “Auctions, I mean.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Though… there’s a part of me that wonders if we should give the gossip columns something else to talk about before then.”

I didn’t move away. 

“And what exactly do you propose?”

His smile was slow, deliberate—the kind that uncoiled in the chest before you even realised you were leaning toward it.
“Would this be scandalous enough?”

I didn’t have time to demand clarification before his hand came up, fingers brushing lightly along my jaw. Not grabbing, not forcing—just the barest touch, enough to give me a choice. I could have stepped back. I didn’t.

His mouth met mine with an unhurried certainty, warm and sure, tasting faintly of tea and whatever spice lingered from dinner. His hair slid forward as he leaned in, the fine ends brushing against my cheek, unexpectedly soft. I caught the faint scent of something woodsy on him, a trace of smoke from his fireplace threaded through clean wool.

For a second—two, perhaps—I simply endured it, letting my mind scramble for its usual defences. But there was no intrusion here, no trap. Only the patient press of lips that knew exactly what they wanted, and the infuriating realisation that I wanted it too.

I moved, answering him, less from decision than from inevitability. His breath caught against my mouth, and the kiss deepened fractionally, enough to shift it from a question into an exchange. My hand found his shoulder without thought, the fabric warm under my palm, the man beneath steady and unflinching.

When he finally drew back, it wasn’t abrupt. He simply eased away, eyes still on mine, close enough that I could feel the ghost of his breath and smell the tea between us.

Yes. That, I thought distantly. That would be scandalous enough.

His expression was impossible to miss—like the cat who’d not only got the cream but had been praised for it by the entire village. Smug, yes, but not cruelly so; it was softened by a quiet, glowing satisfaction that made the corners of his mouth curve just so.

It should have been insufferable.
Instead, I found it—Merlin help me—incredibly charming.

I didn’t think about it. My hand was still on his shoulder from the first kiss, and it took only the smallest pressure to draw him forward again. His eyes lit with something that flickered between surprise and triumph before he closed the distance.

The second kiss was different. The first had been a declaration; this was a confirmation. Slower, with a deliberate care that allowed me to register every point of contact—the warmth blooming where our chests brushed, the way he tilted his head just enough to fit more perfectly against me.

He hummed low in his throat—pleasure, I realised, not impatience—and I caught myself memorising the sound. My fingers curled slightly against his shoulder, not to keep him there but simply because I could.

When we parted this time, it was on a shared breath. I felt mine catch in my lungs, felt his linger in the air between us, and for a moment I wondered if the gossip column would need to be updated by morning.

I stepped back first, or rather, I meant to. It turned into more of a reluctant lean, as though the air in the room had thickened and was unwilling to let me go.

Ron didn’t move away at all. He was still watching me, head slightly tilted, eyes steady in a way that made me suspect he was committing this moment to memory just as deliberately as I had been. His lips were still faintly parted, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at one corner like he knew precisely what I was thinking—and was smugly pleased about it.

I cleared my throat, a pointless attempt to shake the warmth still humming in my chest.
“I should—” My voice betrayed me by dipping lower than intended. “—be going.”

“Should you?” he asked, not unkindly, and I caught the dangerous glint of invitation behind the casual words.

“I should,” I repeated, with marginally more conviction than I felt.

He didn’t argue, only rose from the couch with that slow, unhurried way of his, as though he had all the time in the world to let me change my mind. I stood as well, following him toward the entryway. The short walk felt longer than it had any right to—our shoulders brushed once, twice, and neither of us shifted away. He only stepped back enough to give me space to reach for my coat. My hands, apparently still unaccustomed to functioning after prolonged contact with him, fumbled on the lapels.

Ron’s fingers joined mine, brushing them aside without comment as he straightened the fabric and smoothed it down. A simple, domestic gesture—too simple for the flare of heat it sent through me when his knuckles grazed my chest.

“There,” he murmured. “Wouldn’t want you leaving looking like you’ve been scandalously kissed.”

It took effort not to betray how close that landed to the truth. 

“Your concern for my reputation is touching.”

He grinned. 

“Oh, I’m not concerned. Just staking my claim.”

I left before my expression could give anything away—though Merlin knew he probably read it anyway.

The evening air outside was bracing, but it wasn’t enough to cool the sensation of his mouth on mine, the scent of whatever soap he used clinging faintly to my coat, the soft weight of his hair brushing against my jaw.

By the time I reached Spinner’s End, I’d abandoned any pretence of dismissing the kiss as some impulsive anomaly. This was a line crossed. One I’d permitted, reciprocated, and—if I were honest with myself—wanted to cross again.

For all my rules, all my high expectations, he had met them tonight. Surpassed them. And the thought lodged, insistent and impossible to shake: what would he do next?

Chapter Text

PART EIGHT

CAREGIVER

Don’t worry — I’m fine.

I might have had a small accident at work today. Nothing dramatic (unless you count the screaming, but that was mostly the creature and not me). One moment I was handing over a feed bottle, the next I was being introduced rather forcefully to a set of teeth. The healer said it looked worse than it was, which I think is the St Mungo’s version of “stop fussing.”

It’s just a bite, and I’ve still got all my fingers, so I don’t see the problem. They’ve insisted on keeping me overnight for observation. Standard procedure, apparently.

I’ll be home tomorrow or the next day, depending on whether they decide I’m sufficiently docile. (Don’t hold your breath.)

The letter was creased at the edges, as if hastily stuffed into the envelope, the ink blotched in two places where the nib had lingered too long.
I read the opening line twice — Don’t worry, I’m fine — and felt an entirely unwelcome tightening in my chest. It was the kind of reassurance people only offered when there was every reason to worry.

The further I read, the more my jaw set. Downplaying. Deflection. Humour, for Merlin’s sake. I’d heard the same tone from soldiers describing curse wounds as “scratches.” The very fact that he thought it necessary to write meant the incident had been serious enough to warrant concern, perhaps serious enough that someone had threatened to tell me if he hadn’t.

The mention of overnight observation in St Mungo’s pulled my thoughts taut. He made it sound routine, inconsequential, but if the healers insisted, they had reason.

By the time I folded the parchment, I’d already decided I was going. There was no point pretending it was idle curiosity. I wanted to see the truth for myself — and to make it abundantly clear to him, and to anyone else inclined to be careless in his vicinity, that I took such matters very seriously indeed.

The Dangerous Dai Llewellyn Ward: Series Bites was a low, echoing corridor lined with reinforced doors and a faint tang of antiseptic and singed fur in the air. I’d barely raised my hand to the latch when the door swung open from the other side.

Granger stepped through, brow drawn tight in irritation. At the sight of me, her expression softened — not much, but enough to register — and she let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief.

“Thank Merlin, you’re here,” she said without preamble. “You’re the only person he actually listens to. Please, sir, make him stay put. His ‘babies’ can wait a few days for him to recover.”

I opened my mouth, but she barrelled on, voice brisk and exasperated.

“And if he tells you he’s here only for overnight observation and nothing more, he’s lying. The healers say he needs at least two nights to make sure all the venom is out. Don’t let him get away with it. Not with his puppy eyes, not with anything.”

Her sigh this time was longer, edged with frustration, but there was relief beneath it — the air of someone passing the baton to the next sprinter.

“I will make certain,” I said, my tone as dry as the ward’s desert-sterile air, “that he does not get away with it.”

She studied my face for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly, then nodded once as if she’d found whatever confirmation she was looking for.

“Good,” she said simply. “I have to go — good luck, and… have a good day.”

Without waiting for an answer, she strode past me down the corridor, her quick, purposeful steps echoing until the ward door closed behind her.

I adjusted my grip on the latch, bracing myself for whatever scene lay beyond.

I went in and found Ron at the back of the ward.

He was half-sitting, half-lying against a mound of pillows, the stiff white sheets pulled haphazardly over his legs. My footsteps must have carried across the ward, because his head turned — and when his eyes found me, his face lit in a quick, unguarded beam.

Then it was gone. Wiped clean so abruptly it was almost jarring, replaced by a look I recognised all too well: a cornered animal braced for a trap. I couldn’t say what he’d seen in my expression to cause it, but whatever it was, he’d judged correctly.

I stopped at the foot of the bed, letting my gaze run the length of him. The hospital pyjama top hung loose and half-open, the gape exposing the thick, clean-white wrap of a bandage around his torso. It was the sort of sight that settled like lead in my stomach.

“Hello,” he said, his voice careful but tinged with guilt, as though he’d been caught out doing something more illicit than getting himself mauled.

“Mr Weasley,” I returned, my tone as dry as the ward’s recycled air.

Without waiting for permission, I reached for the chart clipped to the foot of the bed. His groan was immediate.

“Come on,” he said, a feeble attempt at protest. “You don’t have to—”

I ignored him, eyes moving over the healer’s neat hand: venom neutralisation, tissue regeneration, swelling reduction, a note in the margin about possible mild nerve impact if the swelling hadn’t eased by morning. Two nights’ observation minimum.

I replaced the chart with deliberate care and stepped to the side of the bed. The vacant chair there was stiff-backed and uncomfortable, but I sat anyway, folding my hands in my lap.

Ron eyed me warily, then tried a faint smile, the sort of peace offering that might have worked on someone else.

“Well?” I said at last.

“Well what?”

I fixed him with a look over steepled fingers.

He shifted under the thin blanket, eyes darting to the wall. 

“It’s nothing. Just—bit of a nip, really.”

I let my silence do the work, because it’s never failed me.

Ron glanced back, caught my expression, and visibly abandoned the act. 

“Fine,” he muttered. “Not a nip. More like a… thorough test of jaw strength.” He exhaled through his nose and leaned his head back against the pillows. “We were relocating a mother and her foal; she was stressed, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong second. Got between her and the crate. My fault.”

The matter-of-fact tone didn’t fool me. 

“And in this ‘wrong second,’ she decided to sink her teeth into your ribs hard enough to inject venom.”

He tilted a palm as if weighing the accuracy. 

“Well. Yeah.”

I felt the corner of my mouth pull tight. The image of him caught in that moment — teeth and venom sinking into him, ribs compressing under the bite — lodged unpleasantly in my mind. 

“You are not a chew toy,” I said flatly.

Ron’s lips twitched like he was tempted to laugh but thought better of it. 

“Depends who’s chewing.”

I ignored the feeble attempt at humour and flirtatiousness.

“And now you will do as you’re told and stay here until you’re cleared.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh. 

“You’ve been talking to Hermione.”

“She gave me the distinct impression that you are plotting an escape.”

Ron smirked faintly but didn’t deny it. 

“She’s a terrible snitch.”

“Be grateful,” I said, sharper than intended. “The venom may be neutralised, but an untreated infection in the muscle wall could cost you more than a few days’ rest.”

The smirk faded, replaced by something softer, more serious. 

“Yeah. I know.”

I leaned back in the chair, the hard wood digging into my shoulder blades, and let my eyes rest on him — pale under the hospital lighting, hair mussed, blanket haphazard. Concern and exasperation warred in me, neither winning.

He passed a weary hand through his hair, the gesture tugging a few strands loose from their already dishevelled state.
“I won’t escape, I promise,” he said at last, voice softer, as though the fight had gone out of it. “I’m not a fool. I’m just—” His mouth pressed flat for a moment before he went on. “I’m worried about my creatures. Some of my colleagues… they’re too rough. I don’t want to leave them without my supervision for too long.”

I stilled, because for all his easy grins and calculated irreverence, he rarely offered such unvarnished truth without prompting. It was not weakness; it was care. And the fact that he chose to share it with me—well, that was something I could not entirely disregard.

“You’re not a fool,” I said, letting the words carry the weight I intended. “Indeed. So prove it.” 

I let the silence sit for a moment before asking,
“How much pain?”

He exhaled slowly, tipping his head back against the pillow.
“Uncomfortable more than painful. They’ve been dosing me with enough pain-relieving potion to float a hippogriff. I’m a little high, to be honest.”

One corner of my mouth twitched despite myself.
“That explains the vacant grin.”

“Nah,” he said, tone almost lazy but too sharp to be drugged nonsense. “That’s not the potions. That’s just you walking in.”

The words landed with more weight than they had any right to.
I held his gaze for a beat too long, half-convinced I’d misheard him—but no. He was entirely conscious of what he’d said, and the small, knowing curl of his mouth confirmed it.

I felt my shoulders stiffen, as though that might shield me from the sudden, disconcerting warmth that settled low in my chest. It was absurd—he was sitting there in ridiculous striped pyjamas with his hair sticking up in seven different directions, half wrapped in gauze, and still managing to sound like he’d just… chosen to lay his cards face-up.

A foolish move in most cases.
Except that I didn’t want to punish him for it.

I looked away first, setting my expression into something drier than I felt. 

“Your grasp of appropriate bedside manner is questionable at best.”

He chuckled under his breath, head tipping back against the pillow, and I was absurdly aware that the heat in my chest hadn’t receded in the slightest.

The next day, I had almost taken my cloak from its hook before I caught myself.
Utterly ridiculous. The man was not dying.

The healers had insisted on keeping him for two nights; that alone meant his condition was stable. Any further appearance from me today would signal a level of concern I had no intention of making legible to the entire Dangerous Dai Llewellyn ward.

Still…

I sat at my desk and opened a sheet of parchment, letting my quill hover over it for longer than I cared to admit.

Weasley—
Too formal. I crossed it out.

Ron—
Too casual, too revealing, too soon. Crossed out again.

In the end, I settled for no greeting at all:

I trust you have not attempted to abscond from your bed. If you have, return to it immediately. The healers will not thank you for undoing their work, and I will not thank you for confirming Miss Granger’s assessment of your judgment.

I have enclosed a book, pages 47 to 63 may serve to occupy that overactive mind of yours without inviting further injury.

In the unlikely event you are able to remain still for more than half an hour, the enclosed tin may assist. They are not from any disreputable vendor, nor do they contain love potion. Try to ration them.

S.

The “tin” was, in fact, a small assortment of shortbread biscuits from the bakery two streets away—a fact I chose not to explain.

I folded the note with deliberate precision, slid it and the book into a brown-paper parcel, and sealed it with wax before I could think better of it.

For a moment, I held it in my hands, weighing it as though its contents could betray me.
Then I summoned the owl.

The bird took off into the afternoon light, leaving me alone with the faintest, most infuriating thought:

I hoped he’d be pleased.

The owl came back the next morning with a scrap of parchment folded in a way that suggested someone had done it one-handed. The script inside was Ron’s usual—slanted, slightly impatient—but the ink had a faint wobble to it.

You’ll be relieved to hear I’m still here, firmly attached to the bed. The Healers say they’re letting me go tomorrow, but they said the same thing yesterday, so who knows.

Book’s brilliant—page 52 made me laugh loud enough to scare the old bloke in the next bed. I read the biscuit tin label three times before opening it, in case it was one of your traps. Not disappointed.

Hermione saw the owl and asked who else was wasting perfectly good parchment on me. Told her it was you, and I swear she looked like she’d just won a bet.

Thank you. For the biscuits, the book, and for not showing up to glare at me in person again today. I mean that sincerely. Mostly.

R.

I read it twice. The words themselves were simple—banal, even—but the effect they had was disproportionate. He had gone out of his way to assure me he was following orders, and then, maddeningly, to thank me for something as inconsequential as a tin of biscuits.

The part about Granger “looking like she’d just won a bet” tugged at something I wasn’t prepared to examine.

I set the letter aside, intending to get back to my work. Yet it sat at the edge of my desk for the rest of the day, my eyes drawn to it more often than I cared to admit.

And when I left my study that night, I didn’t put it away. I let it remain where it was—visible, within reach.

A foolish thing to keep, but I kept it all the same.

I told myself I was only stopping by to verify that he hadn’t immediately undone the Healers’ work by charging off to whatever pit or paddock his “babies” inhabited.
That was the sensible justification.

When he answered the door, barefoot and in a jumper that was two sizes too big, it felt like I’d stepped directly into the private world he inhabited when no one was looking.
The flat smelled faintly of tea and something warm—bread, perhaps—and there was a blanket half-folded over the arm of the settee.

“You’re early,” he said, as if I were a regular guest with a usual time.
I raised an eyebrow. 

“You’re upright.”

“I’m fine,” he replied, with the infuriating grin of a man who had said the same thing twenty times and expected me to believe it on the twenty-first. He stepped aside to let me in, and I noted the deliberate slowness of his movements.

The place was clean but looked more cluttered than usual, scattered with little signs of life—a stack of books by the window, a mug with what looked like three spoons inside, parchment tucked half-under a cushion.
He moved toward the kitchen. 

“Tea? Or I’ve got coffee, if you need the hard stuff.”

“Tea will suffice,” I said, hanging my coat over the back of a chair.

We sat at his small table, steam curling from our cups. I asked, without preamble, 

“Have you been to work?”

He had the gall to look faintly offended. 

“No. I promised you and the Healers I’d take it easy.” Then, after a pause, “Might check on them tomorrow, though.”

I gave him a look sharp enough to pin a doxy to the wall. 

“Your creatures will survive twenty-four more hours without your supervision.”

“They’re used to me,” he said mildly, fingers curling around his cup. “Some of my colleagues mean well, but… they don’t always notice when one of the smaller ones is off. And it’s not like they can tell you what’s wrong.”

His voice had softened, a rare unguarded note threading through it. I simply watched him—saw the way he spoke of them, as if they were worth more than any of us.
“Still,” I said, my tone quieter now. “Let yourself heal properly.”

He huffed a faint laugh, meeting my gaze. 

“And if I do, will that earn me more biscuits?”

“Possibly.”

We ate the bread—fresh, as I’d suspected—over the remains of the tea. At some point, he slouched back against the settee, and I took the armchair. The conversation drifted—the latest absurdity in the Prophet, the fact that the whole Weasley brood had apparently taken it upon themselves to keep his fridge stocked while he was in hospital.

It was only when a gust of wind rattled the window that I realised how late it had grown. He glanced toward the clock and said, almost casually, 

“It’s chucking it down out there. You could stay. The pull-out sofa is great.”

I hesitated. 

“This isn’t—”

“—an imposition?” he finished for me. “It’s not. And you’d be saving yourself a cold walk home. Practical, really.”

I considered pointing out that I had survived worse weather. Instead, I found myself saying, 

“Very well.”

He beamed, and it was entirely too satisfying to have been the cause of it.

The casserole was still warm enough after a quick heating charm, and it was—unsurprisingly—better than anything I’d eaten all week. Ron sat across from me at the small kitchen table, still in his pyjama bottoms and a loose shirt, looking far more comfortable than any man who had been in hospital the previous morning had a right to.

Somewhere between the second helping and the bottom of the wine bottle, he glanced up at me with a faintly amused expression.
“I know your hidden agenda for staying the night, you know.”

My fork paused midway to my mouth. Was he—? 

“Oh?”

“You just want to make sure I don’t leave for work in the morning.”

For an absurd moment, I had thought he was implying—
His grin turned mischievous. 

“You thought I was going to say something different, didn’t you?”

I set my fork down with deliberate care. 

“If you are determined to bait me, you’ll need to try harder than that.”

His grin widened, but he let the subject drop, and the rest of the evening passed in that rarest of things—comfortable quiet.

When it came time to set up the pull-out sofa, he moved to do it himself, and I all but herded him away from it.
“Sit down before you undo every stitch of healing you’ve managed,” I said, opening the frame and shaking out the mattress.

He returned a few minutes later with a pillow and sheets, fussing over them as though I were some convalescent. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he handed me a spare toothbrush.
I caught his eye, brows arching. 

“Prepared, are we?”

He merely shrugged, humming noncommittally before leaving me to the bathroom. I was left with the faintest suspicion that his preparedness was not coincidental.

By the time most of the lights were off, he appeared in the narrow space between the sofa and the coffee table. His voice was quieter now, almost tentative.
“Can I kiss you goodnight?”

There was a flicker—unexpectedly sharp—low in my chest. Softness, and something perilously close to longing. I inclined my head. 

“Yes.”

It was almost chaste, over before I could draw a proper breath, the brief press of his lips warm and steady.
“Goodnight,” he said, and retreated toward his bedroom without another word.

I stood for a moment in the dim room, pulse annoyingly quick, before lowering myself to the sofa. The pillow was cool beneath my cheek. It smelled exactly like him.

I lay there longer than I should have, the faint lamplight from the kitchen painting the room in gold and shadow.

It was… disconcerting, how quickly the evening had settled into something domestic. Not the brittle politeness of a holiday meal, nor the strained civility of old colleagues forced into proximity. No—this had been warm in a way I could not quite bring myself to name.

The pillow still held the faint, clean scent of his shampoo, cut with something sharper—herbs, perhaps, lingering from his work. Each time I breathed it in, the kiss replayed itself in the back of my mind. Not its brevity, nor its almost chaste restraint, but the way he had asked for it. Quiet. Direct. As though my consent were a matter of course, not a concession.

It was infuriatingly easy to imagine this becoming… habit. A routine of shared meals, effortless conversation, and goodnight kisses. Too easy, and far too dangerous.

And yet—

I turned onto my side, the mattress creaking faintly. The scent clung to the fabric, warm and unyielding, and somewhere beneath my cynicism and well-practised caution, I found a small, undeniable truth.

I did not mind the danger half as much as I should have.

I woke early, as I always did, the faint grey light through the curtains enough to make further sleep impossible. The flat was quiet, but not silent; a low clink of crockery, the muted hum of a kettle in the kitchen. I could have dressed and slipped out without a sound—my boots were by the pull-out, my coat within reach—but the smell of tea was already drifting down the hallway. Something else too… bread, toasted, and the faint sizzle of something in a pan.

I told myself I was only going to thank him before I left. That was all.

When I stepped into the kitchen, Ron was barefoot, hair worse than it had been last night, in the middle of flipping something in a pan. He looked over his shoulder and grinned like I’d caught him doing something harmlessly illicit.

“Mornin’. Tea’s nearly done. Want some?”

It was absurdly easy, the way he asked it. No hesitation, no fuss—just as if this was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“…Yes,” I said, and took the chair nearest the wall.

He poured it without asking how I took it—correctly—and slid the mug toward me before turning back to his pan. Eggs, I realised. He plated them with toast and set the plate down in front of me without comment, then sat opposite with his own.

“You didn’t have to—”

“I know,” he said, grinning into his toast. “But you’d have just gone back to your potions without breakfast, and I’m not letting that happen after you spent the night making sure I didn’t sneak out.”

I drank my tea instead of answering. It was hot, rich, and entirely too easy to enjoy in his company.

We spoke of nothing of consequence—the weather, a minor scandal in the Prophet involving a Quidditch player and a stolen broom. He laughed easily, the sound warm against the quiet morning.

At one point, he leaned back in his chair, studied me for a beat, and said, 

“You know, you’re welcome here whenever. No accident required.”

I arched a brow at him over my mug. 

“That sounds dangerously like an invitation to drop by unannounced.”

He smirked. 

“Maybe it is. You’d have to decide if you’re brave enough.”

I didn’t answer. Not aloud.

Instead, I finished my tea, let the warmth of it linger, and allowed—for once—the moment to stretch, unhurried.

The quiet between us was not the brittle kind I had once associated with him, but the easy silence of two people who did not feel the need to fill it. When at last the cups stood empty, he rose without a word, and I followed.

We reached the front door in companionable silence, my coat draped over my arm.
Ron leaned lazily against the frame as I shrugged into it, fastening the buttons with the habitual precision of years. I’d almost reached for the handle when his voice stopped me.

“Say goodbye properly,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I arched an eyebrow at him, but stepped closer all the same. The kiss was brief—chaste enough to pass for something innocent, yet steady enough that I felt the faint warmth linger when we pulled apart.

I turned the knob. The door swung open—straight onto Potter.

For a heartbeat, the three of us simply stared. Potter blinked at me several times, as though running a mental checklist to ensure he hadn’t hallucinated. Then he recovered with almost irritating smoothness.

“Morning,” he said easily, to both of us. His gaze flicked to Ron. “Thanks for making sure he behaves. I’ll take over from here.”

As if my presence, in his oldest friend’s doorway at this hour, was entirely ordinary.

I inclined my head, studying him for any trace of judgment. There was none—only that infuriating directness, the same kind I had learned to tolerate in his… housemate.

Interesting.

“Potter,” I acknowledged, my voice neutral.

Ron was smirking faintly, like he’d been waiting for my reaction. I ignored him, pulling the door fully open and stepping into the crisp air.

I didn’t look back, but the awareness followed me down the path—Potter’s acceptance, Ron’s amused satisfaction, and the quiet, dangerous thought that perhaps this was no longer just between the two of us.

I adjusted my coat as I stepped onto the pavement, the faintest trace of Ron’s cologne still clinging to the fabric.

Potter’s reaction replayed itself, unbidden—no narrowing of the eyes, no suspicion in his voice, no attempt to interrogate me. Just a cordial greeting and a perfectly casual thanks, as if my presence there—at that hour—were nothing unusual.

It was… disarming.

I had expected, if not hostility, then at least a flicker of guardedness. Instead, there had been nothing but the easy acceptance of someone who already counted me as part of the equation. I was unsure whether that should alarm me or warm me.

The street stretched ahead, my footsteps measured against the rhythm of my thoughts. Years of keeping the world at arm’s length had made me adept at reading suspicion in every sideways glance. Now, finding none, I was left with the peculiar realisation that perhaps the acceptance had been there longer than I had noticed—and not only from Potter.

Chapter Text

PART NINE

FOR THE SAKE OF TRANSPARENCY

Two days later, I was still turning over that morning in my mind.

The walk from Ron’s flat back to Spinner’s End had not been long enough to untangle the question that had lodged there, and time had done nothing to loosen it. What, exactly, had he told Potter? Or Granger, for that matter?

Potter’s reaction to finding me at Ron’s door—at that hour—had been disconcertingly unremarkable. No startlement, no narrowing of the eyes. As though my presence were part of some unspoken rota.

Granger, too, at the hospital—her frown melting into visible relief when she saw me, her brisk instructions to keep Ron in bed offered with the ease of someone passing the task to a perfectly reliable deputy. As though it were the most natural thing in the world that I should be entrusted with him.

And his family… I couldn’t recall anything abnormal the last time I’d seen them. But then, that particular gathering at the Burrow had been far from a normal occasion. A muddle of grief, relief, and too many people to properly assess the undercurrents. I had been one more mouth at Molly Weasley’s overcrowded table, not the centre of anyone’s scrutiny. Still—had there been glances I’d missed? Comments that went unheard in the din?

It left me with the uneasy suspicion that Ron was not, in fact, keeping our… arrangement entirely to himself.

The thought was not without its sting. I had always guarded my privacy with near-paranoid vigilance, and the notion that my name—or worse, my presence—might be woven into his casual conversations unsettled me. And yet…

There was a peculiar satisfaction in the idea that I was not his dirty little secret. That he was neither ashamed nor hesitant to let those closest to him know that I existed in his life in some measure beyond the purely professional.

It was an indulgent thought, and I did not trust it.

Either way, the matter could not remain unaddressed. Sooner or later, we would have to speak of it—decide what was ours alone and what we were willing to let others see.

I considered letting the matter lie. It would have been easier—quieter—to allow the current arrangement to drift forward without prodding at the edges. But the idea festered.

By mid-afternoon, I had reached for parchment. The quill hovered for a moment before I committed myself to the first line.

Ron,
I find myself in need of a civilised cup of tea that does not taste as though it’s been steeped in floor sweepings. I am prepared to provide the venue, should you be available this week.

It was a deliberately dry beginning, the sort that would not raise an eyebrow in the unlikely event of a letter going astray. But I allowed myself a second line—short, but telling.

There are matters I wish to discuss with you directly.

That was all. No elaborate wording, no explanation. I sealed it before I could change my mind.

His reply arrived the next morning, a faint tea-ring in the corner of the parchment as though the letter had been read over breakfast.

Severus,
You only had to say you missed me. Thursday evening works. I’ll bring something decent to eat so we can both avoid your floor-sweeping tea trauma.

I felt my mouth twitch before I could stop it. He hadn’t questioned the second line, nor skirted it—merely accepted it with the same ease Potter and Granger had accepted me in his life.

That, of course, was exactly the reason I had written in the first place.

I’d been pacing for the better part of twenty minutes.
The rug had a faintly darker line worn into it now, looping between the desk and the hearth—pointless, silent motion to burn off the static bristling under my skin.

Every few circuits, I’d stop to adjust something—a stack of books already squared to the edge of the shelf, a quill aligned perfectly with its neighbours, the angle of the kettle on the trivet—before resuming the same path. My tea, poured too early, had gone cold. I hadn’t touched it.

The problem was not the meeting itself. It was this topic.

Privacy had never been a preference for me; it was armour. Every life I had lived—student, spy, professor—had been spent behind it. Allowing Ron into that space at all had been… unusual. A breach I’d told myself was controlled. Necessary.

And yet—recently—the breaches had multiplied.
Granger handing Ron over to me at St Mungo’s without a flicker of surprise.
Potter seeing me in Ron’s doorway the morning after and treating it as if it were no more than finding me in the staffroom.
All without Ron batting an eye.

Which meant he’d spoken about me. About us.

Part of me wanted to bristle—curl protectively around what was mine, mine to manage, mine to guard. But another part… an unhelpfully warm part… kept circling back to the same inconvenient truth: he hadn’t treated me like a dirty little secret.

The conflict made my steps sharper. I’d prepare to defend the principle—point out the dangers, the opportunists, the inevitable press vultures—and then find myself rehearsing compromises. Phrasing them so I wouldn’t sound like I was yielding, but still giving him space to be… himself.

I stopped again at the window, my hands braced on the sill. The light was shifting, faint and grey.
If I forced the issue to its most rigid conclusion, he’d adapt—he was pragmatic—but he’d also remember. Resentment could fester quietly for months before a man even realised he was choking on it.

I drew a slow breath, held it, released it.

No. I would not lose him over something that could be handled with maturity and strategy. This was not about capitulating—it was about keeping what mattered intact. And for all my arguments about protection and reputation… what mattered, more than either, was Ron still sitting across from me when this conversation ended.

I turned from the window and straightened the already-straight books on the desk. One more loop across the rug. Then I’d stop pacing.

The knock came sooner than I expected, sharp enough to jolt me out of my latest circuit.
I froze mid-step, spine stiff, and told myself it was only habit—not anticipation—that had me crossing the room faster than necessary.

When I opened the door, he was there, leaning one shoulder against the frame as if the trip here had been nothing more than a stroll. Ron stepped inside, shrugging off the April humidity as though it were nothing. His hair was damp from the fog outside, a touch darker than usual, and his eyes swept the room in a quick, assessing pass before settling on me.

“I can tell you’ve been pacing,” he said by way of greeting—light on the surface, but there was an edge in the set of his shoulders that didn’t match the casual words.

I stilled, aware that he was right, and that he’d noticed. More than that, I saw the seriousness in his face—subtle, but there. Apprehension, too. He might not know what I meant to discuss, but he suspected it was not inconsequential. The formality of my letter had done that.

We moved to the armchairs by the fire. He sat, but not with his usual ease—leaning back, yes, but hands clasped together loosely as if he could spring upright at a moment’s notice.

“We should talk,” I began, and at once the shift in him was visible. His jaw set, his eyes sharpened, and the faintest tension coiled through his frame.

“That sounds ominous,” he said. It was meant to be humour—his voice carried the right rhythm for it—but as I studied him, I understood it wasn’t there to lighten the atmosphere. It was armour. A shield against whatever he thought might follow.

The realisation sat uneasily in me. I had seen him use humour to deflect danger before, but never aimed at me. Not like this.

I settled into the armchair, watching him do the same opposite me. The fire cast enough light to make the faint line between his brows visible.

“This is about how public we are prepared to be,” I said.

His eyebrows climbed, the expression almost comical in its swiftness. He looked as though I’d asked his opinion on the nutritional merits of grindylow tentacles. Then his head tilted slightly to one side—just enough that the hair at his temple shifted—like a hound scenting the wind, attempting to catch some nuance I had not voiced aloud.

The effect was… disarming.

He didn’t answer. Just stared, a flicker of confusion in his gaze as though he wasn’t sure if we were speaking the same language.

Something in my chest tightened—not irritation, exactly, but a faint, unwanted ripple. I had braced for defensiveness, perhaps for a counterattack or for him to try to charm his way into steering the subject elsewhere. Instead, I found myself confronted with this open, unguarded search for understanding. As if he wanted to get it right, but hadn’t yet decided what “right” was.

It made me uncomfortably aware that he hadn’t come in here armed for battle, while I had.

He was still staring at me, head tipped slightly to the side, a crease forming between his brows.
It was an expression I’d seen before—usually when he was trying to decide whether I’d meant something as a provocation or a test.
This time, there was no certainty in his gaze, only a faintly baffled narrowing of the eyes, as if he were fitting together the pieces of a puzzle and finding one missing.

I let the silence stretch for a breath, two, then decided I had no patience for a guessing game.
“I would hear your view before I give mine,” I said, voice even.

Something flickered across his face—surprise, perhaps, or reluctance. He started slowly, as if still sorting the matter out in his head while speaking.
“I don’t want the public to know,” he said at last. “I mean, they already sort of… speculate, I guess. But obviously, we’re not going to give them proof.”
His brow furrowed, the crease deepening. 

“Is this about what I said the other time? You know—about giving them something scandalous? That was a joke. I hate being in the press. I’m not going to go out of my way to tell them all the details of my love life. As long as we don’t… do PDA,” he went on, gesturing vaguely between us, “there shouldn’t be any real risk of the press getting hold of the story.”

Then he hesitated. 

“Unless you want PDA?”
His expression wavered between confusion and something almost guilty.

Before I could interject, he added quickly, 

“If you want something official, I’ll do it. Of course.”

And then he stopped, looking at me with a kind of expectant patience—waiting, I realised, for me to tell him which way the scales should tilt.

His stance was almost defensive, though the words themselves were careful. No eagerness to feed the press, no desire to make a spectacle—at least that much was… reassuring. The absence of guile in his tone took some of the sting out of my wariness, though I could not help wondering if the avoidance was for my sake, or simply to sidestep his own discomfort at being a headline.

Still, he was speaking of reporters only. That was not the whole of it.

I opened my mouth to steer him toward the point, but caught on a word. 

“PDA?” I repeated, letting the syllables fall with a certain flat suspicion.

“Oh.” 

His expression shifted—recognition, then the faintest pink at his ears. 

“Public display of affection,” he said after a beat. “You know, kissing in public, that sort of thing.”

I felt my mouth flatten into something dangerously close to a smirk. 

“Yes. I imagine we can avoid… that,” I said dryly. “It would be neither dignified nor… strategically sound.”

The flicker of embarrassment in his face made me want, absurdly, to soften the remark—but I ignored the impulse.

“As for the rest of what you said,” I went on, “I am… relieved to hear we are of one mind regarding the press and the broader public. Discretion, in that arena, is prudent.”

He nodded then, shoulders easing, the line of tension across his brow smoothing just slightly. For a moment, it seemed the matter might be settled.

But I was not done.

“You are speaking of the press,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “That is not my sole concern.”

His eyes flicked to mine.

“When I say ‘public,’” I continued, “I mean… others. Not merely journalists. Friends. Family. Colleagues.” I let the list hang between us, deliberate. “I would know how you intend to treat that audience.”

Then I fell silent, waiting to see whether his answer would be instinctive or measured.

A spark of understanding lit in his eyes, quick and certain.

“Ah,” he said, leaning back slightly. “That’s what you meant.”

The small knot between my shoulders eased, almost in spite of myself. So he had not been avoiding the question out of caution or manipulation. He had simply misunderstood me. That, at least, I could forgive. My mind felt the difference immediately; there was no wariness in his voice, just the satisfaction of fitting the last piece of a puzzle into place.

He shrugged. 

“Colleagues are out of the equation for now. I like very few of them, and I definitely don’t have that kind of relationship with any of them to start sharing personal matters.” His mouth twisted faintly, the note of dismissal so perfectly Slytherin I almost smiled.

“As for friends and family…” He paused, the words edged with thought. “I want to keep it private a little longer. My family’s overbearing enough as it is—I don’t want them doing idiotic things like going to bother you for a shovel talk, or any such nonsense.”

There was a flicker of irritation in his eyes when he said “shovel talk,” the kind that hinted this was not hypothetical.

“Of course,” he went on, the irritation subsiding into something more deliberate, “they’ll have to know eventually. When we’re both ready for it. We can even set a deadline now, just so we’re on the same page. No more than two years, though—if you agree.”

As he spoke, the tension in my shoulders eased by increments.

His dismissal of his colleagues as irrelevant—delivered with casual disdain—was oddly reassuring. I would not need to fear idle chatter in the break room, or my name on the lips of those I neither trusted nor liked. The matter of his family was trickier; the irritation that tightened his mouth at the words “shovel talk” was genuine enough, and I found myself perversely satisfied by it. The last thing I required was a parade of overprotective siblings attempting to measure me for an early grave. That he intended to spare me such idiocy was… considerate.

More than that, he was not speaking about me to anyone without my knowledge. Not even to those closest to him. There was no careless gossip here, no casual mention over tea that could reach an unintended ear. He was, without prompting, guarding my privacy as fiercely as I guarded it myself.

And the most telling point—“of course, they will have to know eventually, when we’re both ready.” Not he was ready. Not I was ready. We. He had not made me say it, had not demanded agreement before speaking as though it were already understood between us. That… did not happen to me.

The proposed two-year limit was… generous. My instinct was to stretch it longer, to keep the walls high and the doors bolted for as long as possible. But I could see the logic in the number, and the offer itself—setting a boundary for himself while allowing me the larger share of time—was more than I might have expected.

No, this was not a man plotting to expose me at the first opportunity, nor one who thought me a shameful secret to be buried. This was… balance. Mutuality.

And that, I thought grimly, was rare enough to be worth guarding.

Granger and Potter had not been named. The omission needled.

“I take it Potter and Granger are included in this… delayed disclosure,” I said, watching his face. “Though their behaviour of late suggests they are already—shall we say—less surprised by my presence than most.”

He didn’t even blink at the directness. No shift of his eyes, no guarded pause — only the steady, open look that told me he was being honest.

“Well… the timing last time was a bit unfortunate,” he admitted, scratching at his jaw. “When Harry asked about your visit at home, I might’ve lied. A little. So now he thinks you only came for breakfast, and he believed me — even though, really—” He rolled his eyes. “—after all these years, he should know better. Harry’s well aware how good I am at lying when I want to keep my privacy. Or a secret.”

I arched a brow at that. He sounded faintly proud.

“As for Hermione—” he tilted his head, brow furrowing. “—what behaviour are you talking about?”

“At the hospital,” I said. “She emerged from your ward, saw me, and immediately looked… relieved. Relieved enough to hand you over to my keeping without a second thought.” I let the memory play in my tone, cool and deliberate. “She told me I was the only person you obeyed consistently. And then she gave me explicit instructions to keep you in bed — instructions she seemed certain I would enforce.”

My eyes narrowed faintly. 

“That does not sound like the reaction of someone entirely ignorant of our… connection.”

A beat of silence stretched, taut as wire.

He did not look away immediately, but when he did, it was with a thoughtful tilt of his head, his teeth catching faintly at his lower lip — a small, unguarded tic I had seen only rarely. The gesture struck me as calculated at first, but something in his manner… no. This was not performance.

He was weighing something.
I stayed silent. After his recent admission about lying with disarming ease to his friends, I knew better than to break his concentration now.

A sigh escaped him at last. His colour was high, not from temper but something else — discomfort, perhaps — blooming over his cheekbones and along the tops of his ears. The change was striking.

Shy.
Merlin, when had I last seen him look shy? Certainly not in my company; around me, he projected such steady confidence as though nothing I said could dislodge his footing.

And yet here it was — that flicker of something far younger, less sure, almost hesitant.
How much of his easy composure was armour?

He opened his mouth, shut it, then tried again.
“For the sake of transparency,” he said, the words deliberately chosen. “Since we’re having this conversation… there’s something you should know. It explains my friends’ reactions to you.”

He stopped there, gaze sliding away from mine entirely. His flush deepened until I could see it along his throat.

“My friends…” He faltered, swallowed, then pushed the words out in a rush. “They have… ah… they’ve known for years that I have feelings for you. So… yeah, Hermione, and the others — they know that if I’m to listen to someone, it would be you.”

For years.

The words lodged in my mind like a splinter, catching on every possible implication. Years meant… school years. Me at the staff table, him at the Slytherin one. Me drilling him through assignments, watching him scowl over essays, dragging him through Occlumency exercises that left him shaking and pale. And all the while—

I felt an instinctive jolt of caution, the kind that accompanied the faintest whiff of impropriety. The idea of grooming never once fit the reality of us — the notion was absurd — and yet I could not ignore the fact that he had been underage when this began for him.

But then… he had said nothing.
Not a word.

I thought of him now — adult, sharp-tongued, maddeningly independent — and the boy he had been: equally stubborn, equally difficult, but with a moral spine I had learned not to underestimate. If he had harboured feelings then and acted on them… That would have been a violation of every boundary. But he hadn’t.

I met his gaze at last.

“For years,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could manage.
He nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

“And yet you said nothing.”

His mouth quirked like he almost wanted to laugh, but it was the dry, humourless sort.

“It would’ve been incredibly inappropriate for a student to tell a teacher something like that,” he said, voice steady despite the faint flush creeping up his neck again. “I wasn’t going to put you in that position. And I wasn’t going to try anything while there was a power imbalance like that.”

He gave a small shrug, but it wasn’t careless. It was measured, deliberate.

“I wanted it to be… fair. On equal ground. That meant waiting.”

His eyes flicked up to meet mine, direct now, no trace of shyness in them — just a quiet conviction, as if he had rehearsed this in his head for years and was finally able to say it aloud.

It landed with more weight than I’d anticipated.

Not because I was unaccustomed to hearing Ron speak with conviction — Merlin knew he had no shortage of opinions — but because of the particular conviction here. The discipline it implied. The patience. And the fact that it had been applied to me.

The notion that an underage boy had looked at me — seen me as I was then, bitter, harsh, and hardly affable — and decided not to act on his feelings, not out of fear, but out of principle… it unsettled me.

Not in the way that made one look for cracks in a moral wall, but in the way that made you realise the wall was far sturdier than you’d assumed.

Restraint. Ethics. Boundaries he had respected without being told to. And all of it kept close to his chest for years without a single attempt to test the waters. That was not the behaviour of a reckless boy with a passing infatuation.

It was… infuriatingly respectable. And, if I were honest with myself, faintly humbling.

I found myself wondering — uncomfortably — whether I would have managed the same, in his place.

Ron shifted in his chair, cleared his throat, and asked, 

“So… that doesn’t make you rethink this, does it?”

I studied him — the faint crease between his brows, the stiffness in his posture, the subtle edge in his tone. Not fear, precisely. Not doubt, either. A wary sort of vigilance, as though he were bracing himself for a blow that might never come.

“It does not,” I said, and it was the truth.

His head tilted fractionally, suspicion flickering in his eyes like he expected a catch.
“What it does,” I went on, “is add a certain… dimension. But nothing you’ve said strikes me as cause to reconsider.”

The relief was there — swift, contained, but undeniable. I felt it in the air between us, even as he masked it with a brisk nod.
“Good,” he said, a shade too quickly, as if the word were holding back something heavier. “Just checking.”

It should have been a simple exchange. Instead, I found myself keenly aware that he had already — years before either of us had acknowledged this — granted me the respect and restraint I demanded in any relationship. And now that I knew, I would have to guard against letting that knowledge rewrite the past in my mind.

“I will admit,” I said after a measured pause, “I do not relish the notion of being the subject of your friends’ amusement, past or present.”

Ron gave a crooked half-smile. 

“Don’t worry, you’re not the butt of the joke. I am.”

I went still.
Something in the way he said it — light, almost dismissive — didn’t ring true. Too neat. Too polished. A ready-made line meant to skate past whatever truth lay underneath.

I felt a faint, unwelcome spike of irritation. Not at him — not exactly—but at the implication that he had been treated as fair game over something that involved me.

“I fail to see the humour in it,” I said, tone clipped.

His eyes flicked up, startled, before softening. 

“It’s fine. Really.”

“It is not fine,” I replied, quieter but no less firm. “You should not have been—” I cut myself off before the word mocked could escape. “—made the object of amusement over something so personal.”

He gave a small smile, that weary sort of grin that said he’d fought this battle with himself long before I was even aware of it. 

“It isn’t like that, not really. They aren’t cruel. Just… aware. And sometimes they nudge, but they’ve never crossed the line.”

I studied him, unwilling to concede just yet. 

“And you bore it without ever saying a word to me.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugged, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It wasn’t your problem to deal with. Besides, I was doing fine.”

Fine.
The word sat ill with me. I suspected his definition of fine was alarmingly flexible.

“Mm.” My doubt was deliberate. “Regardless, you have been… circumspect, and I will expect the same moving forward. Our personal history is not a currency to be spent lightly — not even in jest, and certainly not without my consent.”

He sobered at that, leaning forward a fraction. 

“Understood. And you can expect the same from me. No unilateral decisions, no ambushing each other with news, no… blindsiding.”

I inclined my head. 

“Then we are agreed.”

It was, in its way, a contract — unwritten but binding. He seemed to feel it too, because the tension in his shoulders eased and he sat back, gaze still steady on mine.

For the first time since the conversation began, I let myself relax enough to take in the quiet of the room, the fire’s warmth against the low hum of the evening. The matter was not merely resolved; it was laid on equal ground.

Later, the latch clicked softly behind him, leaving the room shrouded in the sort of quiet that only comes after a conversation balanced too neatly on its own edge. The fire still murmured in the grate, heat licking at the side of my face, but the chair beneath me felt suddenly colder.

I did not move.

We had reached an agreement. The terms were clear, mutually set, mutually binding. There was no reason to linger on it—yet my mind refused to let it go, circling the same points with the restless precision of a vulture.

They have known for years.
The words replayed, stubborn as a stain. Years. While he was still a student. While I still stood at the front of his classroom. He had been under my authority—under my scrutiny—and I had been wholly unaware. It was not… alarming, exactly. I believed him when he said he would never have acted on it then. But the knowledge bent the past into a new and unfamiliar shape, casting shadows across memories I had thought immutable.

And then—his friends. His decision to let their awareness sit unchallenged, to bear the brunt of their occasional jabs rather than risk turning their attention on me. He had not called it protection, but it was, and it was not the easy kind. It was the sort of protection that cost the giver more than it cost the kept. That stubborn willingness to take the strike himself… admirable, yes. Admirable, and troubling in equal measure.

Fine.
The word scratched against my thoughts, thin and dismissive. He was not fine. I recognised the tone—had heard it too often from those determined to weather more than they should. The flex in his definition of the word was too wide by far.

Still… there had been something in that final exchange—equal footing, mutual boundaries—that felt oddly rare. No surrender through exhaustion. No sharp edges left to fester. A line drawn, not as a wall, but as a marker: here we stand. Together.

The fire popped, a faint rush of embers shifting. My gaze lingered on the door instead, the space he had vacated.

What else have you not told me, Ron Weasley?
Not suspicion—curiosity. A sharper, hungrier curiosity than I was accustomed to indulging. For all my skill in extracting information, I found myself—for once—willing to wait for the answer.

I leaned back in the chair, the shadows curling long on the walls, and let the quiet settle.

Chapter Text

PART TEN

ABSENCE AND FONDER HEARTS

It was remarkable how quickly boundaries, once set, could become habit. In the weeks following our conversation, I found myself… settling. Not complacently, but with a certain cautious ease, as though we had agreed to a truce with the outside world — and, perhaps, with ourselves.

Our meetings remained deliberately unremarkable to the casual eye. A bookshop on a Saturday afternoon. Lunch in a quiet corner of a tea shop. A late walk along the Embankment after a Ministry errand. To anyone else, they were nothing more than “friend outings.” To me, each was an exercise in subterfuge and a quiet indulgence.

The private evenings were different. His home, or mine. The fire lit, the door shut, and the faint weight of a world left outside. It was there that the shape of our relationship sharpened, not in words, but in the small, unguarded things: the way he claimed my chair when he arrived first, the absent touch to my shoulder as he passed, the ease with which he filled silences that would have been oppressive from anyone else.

The first time he fell asleep on my sofa, it was entirely accidental. Or so I thought. We had been discussing — debating — the merits of a new defensive charm until the clock was indecently late. I offered the sofa. He accepted without hesitation. The next morning, he was still there, blanket tangled at his feet, hair standing at every angle imaginable. It was… not unpleasant.

We kept our kisses measured, though the restraint became harder to maintain with each one. What began as brief acknowledgements at parting grew longer, slower, the air between us warming before we broke apart. Once — only once, in those early weeks — he leaned in with a heat that startled us both. I stopped it. He did not seem offended, but there was a flicker in his eyes I could not name.

By the fourth week, proximity had become its own language. He no longer hesitated to stand close enough that I could feel the brush of his sleeve. He leaned against my desk while speaking, as if to test how much space I would allow him. More often than not, I let him stay. I found I disliked the absence when he stepped away.

There was one evening in particular — late May, perhaps — when I noticed the shift most acutely. We were in his kitchen, his hand lingering at my back as he passed me the tea. A brief touch, casual in intention, but my body betrayed me: a small, traitorous warmth settling in my chest. I found myself wondering when I had last been touched without it being either perfunctory or hostile.

By early June, the rhythm felt dangerously comfortable. Too comfortable, perhaps. I knew the danger of comfort; it eroded vigilance. Yet I caught myself anticipating our next meeting with something perilously close to… impatience.

We had not crossed certain thresholds. Not yet. But the thought that we might, that the trajectory was already there, was both unsettling and — though I loathe to admit it — quietly welcome.

It was the first warm evening of June, the kind where the air carried the faint scent of rain without committing to it. We were at his flat, a plate of lemon biscuits between us on the low table. He had made them “for testing purposes,” though I suspected the only test was whether I would eat more than one.

We had been talking — something about one of his colleagues and their appalling handling of a lethifold — when I realised I hadn’t actually heard the last half of his sentence. My attention had wandered, fixed instead on the faint crease at the corner of his mouth as he smiled, the easy way his hands moved when he spoke.

When I looked up, he was already watching me.

The air shifted.

I could have pretended to glance away, to reach for my tea, to disrupt whatever had begun to build between us. I did none of those things. He didn’t look away either. The silence grew heavy, charged, as though the room itself was holding its breath.

He leaned forward, slowly, his forearms resting on his knees. I felt the faint brush of his knee against mine — deliberate, not accidental.

“Severus,” he said quietly, almost testing the sound of my name in that register.

The space between us narrowed by degrees, until I could see the lighter flecks in his irises, could feel the faint warmth of his breath. He didn’t rush. He gave me every opportunity to step back, to turn this into a misunderstanding. I didn’t.

His gaze flicked to my mouth.

And then—

It was meant, I think, to be another of his maddeningly gentle gestures. But I did not step back this time.

Instead, I let it linger. My hand found his jaw, my thumb brushing the smooth skin, and something uncoiled in my chest — that same dangerous, taut thread I had been refusing to tug on for weeks.

He stilled for half a second, as if checking whether this was real, and then his mouth moved against mine with quiet, confident heat.

It was not hurried. It was deliberate. I felt the press of him, the steadying grip of his hand at my hip, and the warmth of his breath between slow, unbroken passes of our mouths. The world narrowed to the taste of him and the faint sound he made — surprised, pleased, or both.

When we finally parted, the space between us felt almost fragile, a thin veil that either of us could pierce with the smallest lean forward.

His eyes searched mine, a trace of breathlessness in his voice.
“...That was different.”

“Yes,” I said, keeping my tone steady even as my pulse betrayed me. “It was.”

The soft, steady hiss of the simmering cauldron was nearly meditative, and I had been deep in the rhythm of my work when the knock sounded.
Sharp. Unexpected. Irritating.

I do not care for unannounced visits at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. Whoever it was had chosen precisely the wrong moment — the infusion had reached a delicate stage, and my temper was as volatile as the brew itself.

Another knock. Louder.

I straightened, exhaling through my nose, and glanced at the clock.
The irritation faltered.
Nearly half past ten.

Ron should be at work.

The thought lodged uncomfortably beneath my ribs. A possibility I had not wanted to consider — injury, trouble, worse — curled in the back of my mind. With a muttered word, I put the potion into stasis and stripped the gloves from my hands, crossing the sitting room with brisk, clipped steps.

I opened the door.

It was Ron, of course — standing tense on the step, hair wind-ruffled, shoulders tight, an odd combination of hurry and hesitation about him.

“Severus,” he said in a rush, not even waiting for me to speak. “Sorry to drop in like this — I won’t stay even five minutes, promise.”

I stepped back regardless, holding the door.
“Inside.”

He obeyed, moving past me without pausing. Even before I closed the door, he was speaking again, words tripping over one another.

“Something’s come up at work,” he said quickly, turning towards me. “I’m going to be gone for the next month. Maybe longer. I didn’t want to just disappear on you — thought you should hear it from me, and—”

He broke off, the weight of his own words catching up to him.

A month. Possibly more.

It was absurd—illogical—but the announcement struck me harder than I expected. I had known, theoretically, that his job could require him to be sent abroad with little notice. Knowing was not the same as feeling the quiet jolt of now.

I studied him, noting the restless set of his hands, the faint tightness around his mouth. He was anxious. Rushed. And he had come here, of all places, to tell me before he left.

I inclined my head slowly.
“When?”

“The Portkey is tonight,” he said. “Didn’t want to spring it on you by owl.”

I folded my hands behind my back to keep them still. A month — perhaps longer — to consider what his absence would mean. To wonder where exactly he was and whether trouble might follow him home.

“I see,” I said quietly. “Then you were correct to come.”

I let the silence settle for a beat, measuring him the way one measures a flame before deciding whether to bank it or feed it. His gaze skittered once, then came back to mine, and I caught the faintest flicker of uncertainty beneath the briskness.

“Wherever they are sending you,” I said at last, my tone even but deliberate, “be prudent. Return in one piece. All of them, preferably.”

His shoulders loosened — subtly, but noticeably — as if the words had eased some knot I hadn’t known he was holding. A smile tugged at his mouth, slow and genuine.

He stepped closer, into the edges of my space, and reached for my sleeve, fingers brushing the cuff of my coat.

“That sounded almost like you care,” he murmured, a trace of amusement in his voice.

Before I could reply — or deny — he tilted his head, and I met him halfway. The kiss was unhurried, warmer than I meant it to be, a brief press of mouths that nevertheless carried more weight than I liked to admit.

He was the one to break it, his hand lingering on my arm for a moment longer.
“Goodbye, Severus.”

I inclined my head, resisting the temptation to answer in kind.
“Go.”

He smiled again — quick, bright — then turned for the door, opened it, and was gone.

The room felt larger, and markedly emptier, the moment it shut behind him.

The laboratory had always been silent.
It was one of the few things I valued about it — no intrusion, no chatter, no demands on my attention save for the measured timing of a brew. Yet that week, the quiet seemed… altered.
Hollow, somehow.

It was absurd, of course. I had endured far longer stretches without his presence; before all this, I’d gone months without a single exchange beyond the bare necessities. But those were different months. Now, the spaces between encounters had been filled, slowly, deliberately, with small, infuriating intrusions — a sarcastic remark over tea, an uninvited opinion about my book shelves, an entirely unsolicited casserole. And then, just as they had become a pattern, they were gone.

No letter had arrived — not that I expected one so soon. He had warned me that his departure was sudden and his work unpredictable. Still, the absence was more tangible than I’d anticipated.
In the evenings, I found myself listening for the telltale knock, the faintly uneven footfall in the corridor. Ridiculous. He was not coming.

By Wednesday, I had grown irritated with myself for even noticing.
If he wanted to vanish into some far-flung Ministry errand, that was his affair. I had work to do and I did it with more precision than usual, if only to prove a point to no one in particular.

But that first Saturday evening, as I sat down with a book and my tea, I caught myself glancing at the chair opposite. Empty, of course.
I drank the tea. I read the book. And I told myself the quiet was a gift.

It did not feel like one.

The second week was worse.

Not because anything particular had happened — nothing had. That was the problem. Eight days into his absence, I realised I had begun to count. Not days in the usual sense, but the lack of them — the days in which there was nothing. No letter. No owl. No word from his infernal circle of friends.

The monthly potion auction came and went on Thursday. I had intended to go; I had told myself, almost sternly, that there was no reason not to. Professional interest, the possibility of rare ingredients — it was an obligation of a sort.
And yet when the evening came, I found myself still in my laboratory, making excuses to myself as though I needed convincing.
The truth was simpler: I saw no point in standing in that stifling room if he was not there to materialise at my elbow with some wry comment about my “bidding face.”

Instead, I decanted a finished potion in silence, the rhythmic sound of glass on glass doing nothing to distract me.

By Friday night, irritation had curdled into something heavier. I disliked not knowing where he was. Not in the abstract sense — I had no right to his itinerary — but in the pragmatic one. Ron Weasley had a talent for stumbling into situations that no Ministry report would phrase as mildly inconvenient. It was… disquieting to think of those talents being exercised beyond my ability to intervene.

I told myself he would write when there was something to say.
I told myself that silence meant he was busy, not… otherwise engaged.
And I told myself, very firmly, that my sudden distaste for the auction was an isolated whim, not a symptom.

All perfectly reasonable. All perfectly hollow.

By Wednesday of the third week, the absence had gone from merely inconvenient to actively unwelcome. It sat in my day like a splinter, catching at small moments until irritation and… something else began to gather around it.

No letter. No word. No one claiming to know anything, though I had not stooped to asking.
I told myself it was premature to worry. I believed it — mostly. Worry was irrational until there was cause. But by midweek, I had to admit that the Ministry was precisely the sort of incompetent, security-leaking hive that could transform a perfectly controlled assignment into chaos with a single poor decision. My regard for their field operations had never been high; now, it was tinged with resentment. If this was their doing, I would find out.

The rap at the window startled me more than it should have. I turned, and there it was — the ancient, grey-feathered owl Ron had used at the very beginning of our correspondence, a creature so battered-looking I had privately questioned whether it could even manage the return journey.
It was unmistakable. My chest tightened before I could prevent it.

Errol deposited a thick envelope onto the sill. The handwriting on the outer fold was not his. That alone made my stomach cool. Still, I broke the seal.

A small slip of parchment slid free first — a note in Molly Weasley’s tidy script:

Ron said he could only afford one international owl, so he’s sent all his letters to me for distribution. Here is the one meant for you. I hope you are keeping well. 

Molly Weasley.

The words were cordial. Warm, even. She did not — could not — know about our relationship. Yet as I held the note, I found myself wondering, fleetingly, what she had thought when she saw my name on an envelope among those meant for family and friends.
I dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it came, in favour of opening the inner letter.

Severus,

Sorry for the delay. I’m fine, not hurt, not in trouble. Everything is going as planned, just slower than expected. I’m not allowed to share my location with anyone, so no one can write back. Orders, not mine.

I’ll give news as soon as I can. In the meantime, I hope you’re not incredibly bored without me.

Ron

I read it twice, unwilling to admit to the faint sense of anticlimax. It was not long, not detailed, but the admission — I’m fine — did something to the slow coil of tension I had been carrying. The irritation eased, replaced with something quieter.

He was alive. Uninjured. Still himself — that last line had his irreverence stamped all over it. And yet… there was no indication of when the next letter might come, or when this particular absence would end.

The parchment went into my desk drawer, carefully flattened. I told myself it was so it wouldn’t be misplaced. I did not dwell on why I found myself re-reading the final line a third time before closing the drawer.

The letter had been enough to loosen something in my chest, for a time.
Half a week passed in comparative ease. I found myself moving through tasks without the same taut undercurrent, the same reflexive prickle when the post arrived. It was… tolerable.

And then, quite without prompting, I remembered two things about Ron that rendered the reassurance paper-thin.

First: his definition of fine bore only the faintest resemblance to a sensible person’s. I had seen him emerge from situations covered in cuts, limping, bruised, or pale from blood loss, and still claim he was “fine.” The man could lose an arm and insist it was merely a scratch.

Second: he was a self-admitted, practised liar when it came to keeping his own affairs private. That admission had not been flippant; he meant it. Which meant that the same instinct which had led him to downplay a near-fatal work accident in his St Mungo’s letter could easily be at work here.

I thought of that hospital room — the half-open pyjama top, the thick bandaging across his ribs, his ridiculous attempt to distract me while I read his chart. I had to set the memory aside before it unspooled into irritation.

The possibilities began to mount in my mind without invitation.
Perhaps he was injured again, and “fine” was simply the most convenient lie to keep me from interference.
Perhaps he was ill — an infection from a wound, a reaction to some exotic creature’s venom, a fever ignored until it was too late to be easily treated.
Perhaps—

I cut the thought off with deliberate force.
Ronald Weasley was resourceful. He had a constitution that would make an auror jealous. He had survived encounters with the Dark Lord more than once, and done so intact enough to continue infuriating me without pause.

He would be fine.
I repeated it until the words took on a kind of rhythm in my mind, a mantra meant less to convince him than to keep myself from entertaining the endless, unhelpful possibilities.

Fine.

The word still sat ill with me.

By the time the fifth week began, Weasley’s “one month, maybe more” had shifted decisively into the more.
An unwelcome milestone.

I found myself checking the post twice a day, as if sheer frequency might coax an owl into existence. It never did. The Prophet became my morning and evening companion — read back to front, front to back, in search of any whisper of him. There was never anything.

Until Thursday.

Tucked in the lower right-hand corner of page three, dwarfed by articles on Quidditch scores and cauldron legislation, I found this:

Substantial Magical Incident Abroad
By Special Correspondent

The Department of International Magical Cooperation has confirmed that a “serious magical disturbance” occurred earlier this week in an undisclosed location outside the British Isles. Sources within the Ministry have stated that the incident resulted in property damage and the intervention of local magical authorities. No official report of casualties has been released.
However, it is understood that a “small number” of British citizens were involved. The Ministry has declined to provide names, citing ongoing diplomatic engagement and security considerations.

The not-knowing gnawed.

By late afternoon, Errol returned. I opened the window with something too close to hope, only to find a small envelope from Molly Weasley. Inside: a brief, warm line asking if I had received any news from Ron. No explanation, no detail — simply that question.

My anxiety ratcheted higher, cold and tight in the chest. I took out parchment and wrote back at once:

No, I have not.

Before I could think better of it, my quill added another line: 

If you hear anything, alert me immediately.

The words were on their way with the owl before the impulse could be recalled.

For the rest of the week, my mind circled back—again and again—to the last time I saw him. The way his goodbye had been rushed, almost breathless. The way his fingers had caught my cuff before leaning in. That kiss—brief, but more tender than I had been willing to name at the time—returned to me in inconvenient detail.

I hoped, in the quiet, private way that still felt dangerous, that he would come back soon. And whole.

The familiar, unhurried wingbeat came first, then the faint scrape of talons against the stone sill.
I looked up from the page in front of me, pulse quickening despite my best effort to keep my face neutral.

The owl was the same ancient, arthritic creature. Errol blinked at me, looking mildly affronted to be here at all, and extended one leg with deliberate ceremony. The envelope tied there was thick enough to make my hand tighten reflexively around it.

Molly Weasley’s handwriting. Again.

The smaller envelope inside was what mattered. Ron’s own scrawl. I ignored Molly’s note entirely, tore open the inner envelope, and unfolded the letter.

Whatever they told you at the Ministry, ignore it. They’ve exaggerated it six ways to Sunday. Only two of my colleagues are injured, and that’s because they’re a pair of fucking idiots who shouldn’t be allowed within twenty feet of a blasting curse.

I’m fine. Obviously. Because I’m not an absolute dunce. Not like some.

Made some new furry friends, I got pictures I’ll show you when I get back. Shouldn’t be much longer by the time you read this.

I miss you.

Ron

Relief came first, heavy enough to make my shoulders loosen before I’d consciously decided to unclench them. The gnawing tension of the last fortnight bled away, replaced by the grounded knowledge that he was alive, whole, and apparently still capable of insulting the competence of others with his usual flair.

The irritation in the first lines — pure Ron — was oddly reassuring. It was the sound of him in full health, quick-tongued and exasperated rather than cautious or weary.

But my eyes kept returning to the last line. Short. Deceptively simple.

I miss you.

It was not a phrase he had ever committed to paper before. Ron was direct, yes, but this was… unguarded. Not couched in humour or softened by the clumsy scaffolding of a joke.

I kept the letter in my hand as I crossed back to the desk, the edges softening slightly beneath my thumb where I’d been holding it too tightly. It should have gone into the drawer with the others — out of sight, out of mind. Instead, I set it down beside the inkwell, as though proximity alone could still the urge building in me.

It was a ridiculous, wholly impractical thought, but it refused to dissipate: to take up a quill, tear a sheet from the ledger, and write the words back to him. I miss you.

The act would be absurd for more reasons than I cared to list — the simplest being that he had made it perfectly clear that no one could write to him, that every letter risked interception, that Molly’s role as courier was an exception, not a precedent.

And yet…

I stared at the folded parchment, tracing the faint crease with my eyes, imagining the shape of the ink on his side of the page. It was not my habit to let words weigh on me, but these did. They pressed, persistent, pulling at the part of me that understood — too well — how rarely one was afforded the chance to speak such truths without consequence.

To write it would be to admit it.
To myself, if nothing else.

My hand hovered near the drawer where I kept my stationery, fingers brushing the handle. I could almost see the script in my mind, spare and exact, the sentence stark against the page.

I shut the drawer instead, the sound final in the quiet room.

It was pointless. He would not receive it. And if by some absurd chance he did, I would be giving away more than I was prepared to surrender to chance or to prying eyes.

Still, the words remained, unspent but lodged with stubborn weight in the back of my mind.

I miss you too.

They would wait. As I would.

It was one of those dreams that felt too real, where the edges blur between waking and sleeping, where your mind refuses to warn you that none of it is actually happening.
Ron’s mouth was warm against mine, insistent without being rough, and I could feel the flex of muscle under my hands — his back, his shoulders — as though I’d memorised them already.
The taste of him was sharp and sweet, the sound he made low in his throat reverberating in a way that curled low in my stomach. And then — hands at my jaw, tilting me to deepen the kiss — and I was no longer breathing properly.

When I startled awake, the room was still dark.

I lay there, trying to wrestle my mind back under control. Useless. The heat lingered; worse, the satisfaction lingered. I was… pleased. And it was infuriating.

It would be easier — and safer — to dismiss it as a trick of the mind, a product of deprivation. Six weeks without his voice, his presence, the ridiculous way he manages to take up space without asking. Of course, my mind would conjure something tactile, would seek to fill the absence.
But I knew better.

The dream wasn’t some formless, anonymous fantasy. It was him. The particular way he kisses when he decides I’m overthinking — just enough pressure to unseat me, without taking more than I’m willing to give. The cadence of his breath, the way he tastes faintly of tea. Those are not details a deprived mind invents.

I dragged a hand down my face. Merlin help me, I wanted it.
Not just the kiss — the heat of it, the way he leaned in, the quiet certainty that I would kiss him back. And I had.

It left me unsettled for the rest of the morning, and yet, beneath the irritation at my own lack of control, there was something else: the realisation that I had stopped thinking in terms of if. It was no longer a question of whether this would happen. It was simply a question of when.

And if — when — he came back and tried to kiss me like that, I could no longer honestly claim I would stop him.
I didn’t want to anymore.

The knock came while I was bent over the crate, arranging the final phials in their straw-lined compartment. It was a sound I rarely heard here — sharp, unhesitating — and it stopped me mid-motion.
No one came to Spinner’s End.

My pulse gave a traitorous jump, missing a beat before thudding harder. Only one person ever arrived without warning.
Only one I wanted to.

I set the stopper back into the phial, slid the crate lid over without bothering to seal it, and strode to the door. The distance felt longer than it should have — too much time for expectation to turn to foolish hope.

When I opened it, he was there.

Ron Weasley, tanned from weeks in the sun, freckles standing out like a map across his nose and cheeks. His hair was an untamed blaze, and his grin… wide, unguarded, radiant.

For a heartbeat, I simply stood there. Then I stepped back just enough to let him in, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. My eyes scanned automatically for injury: the set of his shoulders, the ease of his stance, any stiffness in his gait. Short sleeves revealed bare forearms, unmarked. No glimpse of bandage or bruise beneath the loose cotton.

“You can stop looking,” he said, amused, eyes dancing. “Told you I was fine. Wrote it, even.”

“I am aware of what you wrote,” I replied, my voice coming out lower than I intended. “I am also aware that your definition of ‘fine’ is suspect.”

His grin tilted into that infuriating hybrid — half smirk, half something warmer — and in that expression was every week I had missed, every letter that hadn’t come soon enough.

Before I could think better of it, I reached for him. My hand found the line of his jaw, roughened faintly from travel, and I drew him closer.

The kiss began chaste — the sort of kiss meant to reassure, to prove with touch what could not be conveyed with letters. But then he sighed against my mouth, and the sound slipped into me like a hook.

I didn’t stop.

The press of lips deepened, the angle shifted, and when his hands slid to my waist, pulling me closer until we were chest to chest, I let it happen. More — I leaned into it, relishing the heat, the solid warmth of him after too many weeks of absence.

He melted into me, and I into him, until there was no space left to miss him in.

The taste of him was sun-warmed and salt-sweet, the faint tang of travel still on his skin. He kissed like a man starved, though it was I who had gone hungriest.

His fingers curled in the fabric at my waist, then slid higher, bunching my shirt as if to hold me in place, not that I was going anywhere. My own hand moved from his jaw to the nape of his neck, feeling the heat there, the slight dampness where hair met skin. He leaned into the touch, almost a shiver in him.

The door at our backs was shut, but I still guided him further inside, unwilling to let the world stand so near. We ended up against the wall, the plaster cool against my shoulder as his mouth pressed harder to mine, tilting me into a kiss that was no longer careful, no longer meant to simply greet.

His teeth grazed my lower lip — not quite deliberate, but enough to drag a sound out of me I rarely allowed. I felt him pause at it, and then smile against my mouth before deepening the kiss again.

Seven weeks’ worth of restraint was gone.
And I had no interest in finding it.

When I finally broke for breath, we stayed close, foreheads touching, the sound of both our breathing sharp in the quiet. His eyes, when I met them, were bright — not the brightness of humour alone, but of something more intent.

“Hi,” he murmured, almost absurdly, as if we hadn’t just ruined the definition of a ‘proper’ greeting.

“Welcome home,” I returned, my voice rougher than I meant. My thumb brushed the edge of his cheekbone, and he didn’t move away.

If I didn’t put a stop to this soon, it would escalate — and for once, I found I did not care for stopping. Not yet.

We moved to the sitting room, Ron dropping onto the sofa with the comfortable sprawl of someone who had already decided he belonged there. I followed, sitting close — closer than I’d intended, though I did not move away. His shoulder brushed mine when he settled, and the faint warmth of it worked its way in as he began to talk.

He told me about the work — the “fucking idiots” who had got themselves injured, the spells gone awry, the unexpected challenges that he somehow made sound more like mischief than danger. There were new animals, he said, and his expression softened when he spoke of them; I could hear the fondness in his voice even before the grin touched his mouth.

And Merlin, that smile — so unguarded, so entirely his. It drew me as surely as if he had reached out and caught me by the collar.

He must have seen the shift in my face, because his words trailed off, the smile deepening into something quieter. Then he leaned in without hesitation, and his mouth found mine again.

I should have been irritated at myself — at the appallingly poor control, the ease with which he could disarm me. But he was here, and warm, and whole, and my restraint had already been pared to the bone by his absence. I wanted him. I wanted the taste of him again.

My hand slid into his hair, softer than memory had allowed, the strands slipping between my fingers as though I had been meant to touch them. My other hand found his waist, thumb fitting against the curve of it as I drew him closer. He came willingly, his chest pressing against mine, his breath quickening with mine.

He smelled of wind and sun and something sharper underneath, something that was only him. It was intoxicating, and I could not—would not—get enough.

Chapter Text

PART ELEVEN

FIRST OF MANY

It had been just over a fortnight since his return, and I had yet to decide whether I was more troubled by the shift in our dynamic or by how swiftly I had grown used to it.

Before, there had been a line — implicit, unspoken, but present all the same — drawn across each touch, each kiss. Now, the line had blurred, softened until I could no longer say precisely where it lay. His hand at the back of my neck might linger a fraction longer; my own would find his shoulder without the reflexive caution I once held.

It was not only in private. In public, where caution was habit, there were small betrayals of that restraint — the brush of his fingers against mine as we walked side by side, the way he would lean a fraction too close when making a dry remark, his voice pitched low so only I could hear. These moments did not last, but they left their weight behind, a faint hum that stayed with me far longer than I cared to admit.

He was… present, in a way he had not been before he left. There was an immediacy to him now, an ease born of surviving whatever the Ministry had sent him to do. I caught myself watching him too often — the quiet focus when he read, the curve of his mouth when he was about to contradict me, the infuriating half-smirk when he knew he’d won an argument.

I had missed him. I could admit that now, if only to myself. I had missed him, and the days since his return had been proof enough that the absence had been more than an inconvenience.

Which is how I found myself, this evening, expecting his knock — not merely tolerating the anticipation, but… waiting for it.

The knock came just past eight.
Predictable, though still enough to send a flicker of something sharp and warm through my chest.

I set my book aside — though I could not have recited a single sentence I had just read — and crossed to the door.

He was there, as I knew he would be. Hair still damp from a shower, shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, the faint scent of soap reaching me before he even spoke.

“Evening,” he said, smiling as though he’d been given something he hadn’t expected but very much wanted.

“Punctual,” I observed, standing aside.

He stepped inside without hesitation, brushing my arm lightly as he passed — a touch so casual and yet deliberate enough to leave my skin aware of its absence when he moved away.

We ended up in the sitting room as we so often did, a teapot cooling between us, conversation ebbing and flowing like a tide. He told me about some absurdity at work; I countered with a dry remark that made him laugh. That laugh was far too easy a weakness in me.

At some point, I realised I was no longer hearing the words so much as watching the shape of his mouth, the light shifting in his eyes when he laughed. He must have seen it — he often did — because his tone faltered, and for a heartbeat the air between us seemed to tighten.

He leaned in first. The kiss was slow, deliberate, but lacked the careful brakes we used to apply. My hand found the side of his neck, drawing him closer, and when his fingers slid into my hair, I did not stop him. The angle shifted, deepened, and the warmth of him pressed into me until there was no space left to measure.

It should have been the point where I pulled away, reclaimed the boundary. Instead, I let my hand drift down to his waist, holding him there when he moved to close the last fraction between us. His breath caught — barely audible — and something in me decided it was enough, that there was nothing to be gained from hesitation any longer.

When I finally broke the kiss, it was only to breathe, and I did not release him.

The kissing gave way to talking, and then, as had become inevitable, to kissing again. Slow at first, the kind born of proximity and silence too long held. We drifted back and forth between words and mouths, never lingering in one state for long — a story broken by a kiss, a kiss broken by another story.

It went on like that until the lamps burned low and the hour crept later than I usually allowed. His hair was mussed, his lips faintly swollen, his hand still splayed on my knee where it had rested in our last pause.

“Stay,” I said at last.

There was no question in it, no need for one. He nodded, cheeks pink, smile crooked.

The shift was subtle but absolute. We rose, and for the first time, I led him not to the door, nor did I bring blankets for him to sleep on the sofa. Instead, I led him up the narrow stairs and into my bedroom. He glanced around only once, as though taking in the space that until now had been forbidden territory.

It was a warm night, the air thick and close, and as our kisses deepened, one piece of clothing after another was shed. We slipped beneath the blanket, the sheets cool against heated skin, and for the first time, Ron lay in my bed.

The sight struck me harder than I expected: his hair fanned messily across my pillow, his long frame stretched against linen I had always kept for myself alone. The lamplight was low, soft enough to blur the sharpness of lines, yet not so dim that I could not commit every detail to memory.

For the first time, I let my hands roam freely, mapping the expanse of pale, smooth skin before me. His freckles were constellations beneath my fingers, scattered galaxies to be traced one by one. Each brush drew a reaction — the twitch of a muscle, a shiver, a soft intake of breath that told me how sensitive he was, how alive beneath my touch.

And then his hands returned the gesture. Hesitant at first, then bolder, he skimmed over my shoulders, my chest, my ribs, lingering where old scars broke the skin’s rhythm. He didn’t flinch from them. He charted them as though they were simply another pattern to learn, his touch reverent in a way I had never expected, never thought to allow.

It was not about going further, not tonight. But it was, undeniably, the most intimate moment I had ever known — lying there in the dim lamplight, our skin bare, our hands exploring, our breaths caught between laughter and silence. The sheer closeness of him, the weight of his presence against me, was overwhelming in its simplicity. For once, I did not feel examined or judged. I felt… seen.

Morning came muted, the light slipping in through the narrow gap in the curtains as though reluctant to disturb us.

Ron was still asleep, his breathing deep and even, one arm thrown over my middle in the same possessive sprawl he’d fallen into last night. I should have moved — there was always something to be done, something brewing that would not tend itself — but I found myself unwilling to shift and risk waking him.

It had been… years, perhaps decades, since I’d allowed someone to fall asleep beside me and stay there until morning. The domesticity of it was disarming. Alarming.

I told myself I was only studying him — that I wanted to commit to memory the unfamiliar sight of him at rest, hair flattened on one side, freckles brighter in the pale light. In truth, I was also counting the subtler things: the ease in his posture, the absence of that constant readiness for interruption he seemed to carry with him.

When he stirred, it was gradual, his arm tightening for a moment as though testing whether I was still there. His eyes opened, unfocused at first, then finding me. That smile — slow, unguarded — landed somewhere I wasn’t prepared for.

“Morning,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep.

I inclined my head, unable to summon anything so casual in reply without betraying myself. 

“Morning.”

He pushed himself up onto one elbow, studying me in turn, and I could feel the weight of his gaze. But he didn’t ask for assurances. He didn’t seem to need them. Instead, he leaned down, kissed me — brief, but warm — and said, “Tea?” as if it were the most natural continuation of the night before.

In the kitchen, he moved with an ease that was almost foreign to this place, opening cupboards as if he’d been here a hundred times before. I watched him from my chair at the table, half-wary, half-unwilling to admit that I did not mind the intrusion.

Breakfast was simple, unceremonious, and yet… I found myself prolonging it. Letting the conversation wind through inconsequential things, allowing the occasional brush of his hand against mine when he passed the sugar or the teapot.

When he finally stood, stretching in that unselfconscious way that made him seem far younger than his years, I felt the faint, unwelcome tug of reluctance.

At the door, he hesitated only long enough to meet my gaze. No words about last night, no demand to define anything. Just a kiss — softer than I expected — before he stepped out into the daylight and left me with a house that suddenly felt more empty than it had in weeks.

I stood there for some time after the door shut, wondering when exactly I had let it become our night, rather than merely a night.

The day passed in pieces, though I could not have accounted for where most of it went.

I brewed, of course — muscle memory saw to that — but more than once I realised I had been staring into a cauldron long after the stirring count had been reached. My mind kept circling back, not to the physical act of last night, but to the absence of hesitation.

I had anticipated it — thought that when the moment came, I would stop us. That I would default to caution, to restraint, to every tedious layer of self-preservation I’d spent years honing. Instead, I’d allowed myself to take the lead. I’d allowed myself to want him.

And in the quiet hours after, when there had been nothing left but his warmth against me, I had not felt regret.

It is one thing to indulge in a lapse; quite another to recognise that you do not wish to undo it.

The image of him in the morning — hair mussed, voice low, that infuriatingly easy smile — lingered with an insistence I resented. I am not in the habit of allowing anyone to leave an imprint here, in this house, in my routine. Yet every time I passed the kitchen, I could almost see him at the counter, barefoot and intent on the tea as though it were a delicate experiment.

I told myself I was merely cataloguing the facts: he had been comfortable here. He had not treated my space like a place to pass through, but as one he could inhabit.

And I… had let him.

Perhaps the most damning truth of all was this: when the door closed behind him this morning, I felt the shift in the air. The silence that followed was not the familiar quiet of my choosing, but an absence I did not care for.

I would not called it loneliness. That was far too dangerous a word to attach to him.

But I knew, with unpleasant clarity, that I would be measuring the days until he was here again.

It was three days before he appeared at my door again.

I heard the knock mid-evening, while I was still in my study with a book I hadn’t truly been reading. Something about the sound — the timing, the certainty of it — had my steps lengthening without conscious thought.

When I opened the door, he stood there with that infuriatingly unguarded grin, a paper bag dangling from one hand.

“Brought dinner,” he said, as if that were an adequate explanation. “You can’t live on tea and sarcasm alone.”

I made a noise that might have passed for amusement and stepped aside. He breezed past me like he belonged here, and perhaps — damn him — he did.

The bag held two containers of curry, still warm. He set them on the kitchen counter without asking where the plates were. He already knew.

We ate at the table, conversation meandering from inconsequential nonsense to a story about some Ministry misstep that had him snorting into his tea. I let him talk, content — more than content — to watch the ease in his shoulders, the way his hands moved when he spoke.

Later, in the sitting room, we ended up close. Not touching at first, but not far. The silence between us was not empty; it had weight, a pulse.

He glanced at me then — not the guarded look he wore when calculating, but something open, curious, almost… inviting.

By the time he leaned in, I was already moving to meet him.

The kiss was unhurried, without the urgency of the week’s absence. It deepened gradually, warmth layering over warmth until my hand was in his hair and his was against my chest. He pressed closer, and I let him, my restraint eroding in increments I could not — would not — reclaim.

When we finally parted, he smiled in that maddeningly genuine way, like the world outside this room did not exist.

And for a moment, I allowed myself to believe it.

He didn’t move away after the kiss — didn’t even shift back an inch.
Just sat there, watching me with that unreadable mix of fondness and challenge, like he knew exactly how little it would take to undo me.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked softly.

It was a ridiculous question. I didn’t bother answering it aloud, I simply drew him in again. This time, there was nothing tentative about the kiss. It was warm, deliberate, tasting of tea and spice and a week’s worth of things unsaid.

His hand found my jaw, thumb brushing lightly over skin, while mine slid from the back of his neck down to his shoulder, then lower, settling at his waist. He made a quiet sound into the kiss — not quite a sigh, not quite a hum — and it sent something low and sharp through me.

When he shifted closer, knees bumping mine, I let him. The distance between us collapsed until we were chest to chest again, heat leeching through every layer. My palm splayed at his hip, the other threading into his hair, angling his head just enough to deepen the kiss.

He melted into it.

It was startling, the way his entire frame seemed to ease against mine, like the only thing holding him up was me and he didn’t mind in the slightest. And I… didn’t mind being that, for him.

The air between kisses grew shorter, breaths unsteady. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice tried to tally the risks, the implications, the fact that this was not a night to be approached without thought. I ignored it.

When his hand brushed against my ribs, I caught it — not to stop him, but to steady my own reaction.

He drew back just enough to meet my eyes. 

“Sev,” he murmured, almost shy, but sure enough to be heard. “I want this.”

There was no misreading him. No mistaking the flush high on his cheeks or the steadiness in his gaze.

And perhaps I should have made him wait, should have been the one to enforce some measured, rational pacing. But I had been missing him in a way I did not fully understand until he was here again, whole and warm and willing — and I was done holding the distance between us like it was a virtue.

I kissed him again, harder this time, and felt him answer in kind. The decision was already made.

Tonight, there would be no stopping short.

We didn’t rush.

For all the heat between us, for all the pent-up wanting that had been wound tighter with every stolen moment since his return, there was an unspoken agreement to take this slowly — to map it out, to remember it.

I drew him to his feet without letting go of his hand, and he followed without hesitation. The firelight threw his freckles into sharp relief, scattered over the bridge of his nose and along his cheekbones like a constellation I’d only just learned to name.

In my bedroom, the world felt smaller, quieter. The air between us had a weight to it — not heavy, but deliberate, as though we both understood that crossing this threshold meant something we couldn’t take back.

He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him, and tilted his chin up.
“I’ve never done it,” He stopped, swallowed, started again. “You know that, yeah?”

“I do,” I said, and my voice came out lower than I intended. “And it changes nothing, except that I will not… rush you.”

That earned me one of those crooked half-smiles — the ones that looked like they belonged to a boy who had been through far too much, but had somehow kept the spark anyway.
“I’m not worried,” he said. “It’s you.”

The weight of that trust settled in my chest like something fragile and precious. I touched his jaw, tracing the line of it with my thumb, before leaning in to kiss him again, softer this time, lingering, tasting every second of it.

We undressed each other without spectacle, without hurry. It was not about haste; it was about learning. Every time his hands touched bare skin, my breath caught, not just from the sensation, but from the realisation that he wanted to touch me. Me.

When he lay back, looking up at me with that unguarded openness I’d never quite learned how to meet without faltering, I had to stop and just look at him.
“Tell me if anything feels wrong,” I said.

He nodded. 

“I will. But I don’t think it will.”

The night unfolded in slow, deliberate waves — touches becoming explorations, kisses deepening until they were almost overwhelming, breaths catching in unison. He moved with a mixture of curiosity and certainty, as though every reaction he pulled from me was something he wanted to memorise.

When it finally happened — when we crossed that final line — it was not with fire or frenzy, but with a steady, encompassing warmth. The kind that left no room for thought beyond this is him, this is real, and he chose me.

After, we stayed tangled together, the sheet warm over our shoulders. He had his head on my shoulder, one arm sprawled across my chest as though he had no intention of letting go.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured.

I glanced down at the mop of hair brushing my jaw. 

“Thinking.”

“About?”

“About the fact that you are here,” I said slowly, “and I have no desire to be anywhere else.”

He hummed, a pleased, tired sound, and pressed his face against my neck in a way that made my chest ache.
“Good,” he said. “Then we’re on the same page.”

The light woke me before he did.

It slipped through the thin curtains in narrow strips, warm against my face, and for a moment I lay still, my eyes closed, simply feeling the weight beside me.

Ron slept like someone who didn’t often get the chance — deeply, without tension. One hand was curled loosely against my ribs, his fingers brushing the edge of my shirt where it had twisted in the night. His hair was an untidy mess, falling over his eyes, and the faint rise and fall of his chest was a quiet, grounding rhythm.

I should have been restless. My mind was usually sharper in the mornings, inclined to fill the silence with the lists and obligations of the day. But instead, I found myself watching the way the light caught the freckles scattered over his shoulder, the faint curl of his mouth even in sleep.

Last night replayed itself in fragments — the heat of his mouth against mine, the unguarded sound he made when I touched him just so, the way his gaze never wavered from mine even at the most vulnerable moments.

And beneath all of that, the startling absence of regret. I had thought there might be — a sliver of it, at least, born from the knowledge of what this meant, what it risked. But there was none.

He shifted slightly, muttering something indistinct, and I felt his fingers curl more firmly against me. That small, unconscious act sent a warmth through me I was not prepared to admit, even to myself.

I must have been staring for too long, because eventually he stirred, blinking groggily up at me.
“Morning,” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

“Morning,” I returned.

His eyes flicked over my face as though to check something, then softened into that same half-smile I’d seen the night before.
“Still here, then?”

“As you see.”

“Good.” He let his head fall back to my shoulder, apparently content to drift again.

I should have moved — we had both places to be, things to do — but I stayed where I was. Just for a little longer. Long enough to take in the fact that the world hadn’t collapsed overnight, that what we’d shared had not burned out with the morning light.

If anything, it had settled in deeper.

Chapter Text

PART TWELVE

MARKING THE TERRITORY

The book was there when I came into the sitting room — heavy, hardback, and offensively purple, balanced precariously on the arm of my chair like it had been abandoned mid-thought.
Dreams and Their Hidden Portents.

I didn’t need to check the inside cover to know it was his. The frayed spine, the softening of the leather where careless fingers had prised it open again and again — it was pure Ron. I could picture him reading it, head tipped back, legs sprawled shamelessly across my furniture, eyes narrowed in that half-sceptical way of his whenever an author claimed to know exactly what the human mind was up to.

I moved the book onto the side table so I could sit, but didn’t carry it to the shelves where it belonged.

It irritated me, the way he cluttered my space without asking. The way his things could simply exist here without permission, without plan. And yet, absurdly, I didn’t throw it back into his hands the moment I saw him. I let it stay.

It was, I realised as I sat down, a subtle proof of his presence in my life — one that did not demand my immediate erasure.

The café was quiet for a summer evening, which was precisely why I’d chosen it. The windows stood open to let in the faint breeze from the narrow street, carrying with it the mingled scents of roasting coffee beans and warm stone. The fire in the grate was unlit, its space now stacked with potted herbs, and the low lighting gave the narrow room a shaded, cool reprieve from the heat outside. Ron sat opposite me, fingers curled around a tall glass beaded with condensation, the faint flush on his face from the sun still lingering.

We’d already compared our prizes — his with a boyish grin, mine with my usual restraint — and had moved on to the real entertainment: dissecting the evening’s more ridiculous moments.

“…that last guy,” Ron said, leaning in with an incredulous shake of his head, “he just kept bidding. Like the price wasn’t already double what it was worth.”

“Triple,” I corrected, lifting an eyebrow. “A fool and his galleons are easily parted, but in this case, I suspect the parting was aided by gross incompetence and an ego larger than his cranial capacity could sustain.”

Ron laughed. Not a polite chuckle, not an indulgent smile — a proper, unguarded laugh, warm and genuine. I had heard it countless times over the years, in classrooms, in my office, in shadowed corners where speculation could not follow us. Yet still… it caught me each time.

Most people met my dry assessments with discomfort, a grimace, or stilted agreement. The occasional bold Gryffindor might smirk. But Ron — Ron laughed, as though the words were meant for no one but him, as though my particular brand of disdain was something to savour.

I found myself adding, without conscious thought, 

“It is a miracle the man can dress himself without written instructions.”

There it was again — that laugh, quick and bright, changing his face entirely. His eyes glinted with the same sharp amusement that had met my private remarks for years, and I felt, absurdly, the urge to pull more of it from him. To earn it.

So I did, with another barb, tailored just enough to draw the sound out again. And it came, warm and full in the dim air between us, the sort of sound that lingered long after the words had faded.

I looked down into my cup as though uninterested, but inwardly, I stored the moment away.

It seemed I had developed a rather undignified fondness for that laugh — and the man who gave it so freely to me.

They were sitting innocently on the kitchen shelf, glinting in the afternoon light like some garish treasure: Ron’s absurd, bedazzled hair clips. The ones he claimed were purely practical for cooking, though I suspected the deliberate idiocy of their appearance amused him far too much. I knew precisely when I’d last seen them in use—pinned into his hair while he leaned over my stove, sleeves rolled up, humming some tuneless scrap of melody as though he owned the place.

I stood there longer than I ought, regarding the bright things. Another “forgotten” item. Or perhaps not forgotten at all. I couldn’t decide, and that uncertainty… lingered. I left them where they were, untouched.

For all their ridiculousness, I found I liked seeing them there. They were proof—subtle, tangible—that he felt at home here, comfortable enough to leave some part of himself in my space. And the reminder was not unwelcome: Ron in my kitchen, moving with easy assurance, the smells of garlic and rosemary curling through the air, that infuriating half-smile when he set a plate in front of me.

He always looked happy when he could feed me. Happier still when I let him. And I did let him—often.

It didn’t hurt that he was a great cook.

The Burrow was loud.

Not in the unrestrained, chaotic way it had been during the war, when the laughter was forced and the noise was meant to smother the silence between bad news. This was different—lighter somehow, the kind of clatter and overlapping voices that came from a gathering where no one feared what might happen tomorrow.

Ginny was the one who came to meet me when I Apparated to the edge of the wards. She looked precisely as she always did—composed, sharp-eyed, faintly amused at everything—and I found myself watching her closely for the smallest sign she knew anything she shouldn’t. I felt absurd for it, as though I were a schoolboy caught in some clandestine arrangement. The paranoia stayed with me through the walk to the house, my mind ticking through the angles and possibilities.

But the moment we stepped inside, I saw I’d been wasting my caution.

Ron was there, naturally, and the moment he caught sight of me, he greeted me with the same easy familiarity he’d always used when there were other eyes around. No shift, no slip. If anything, it was seamless—years of practice distilled into the span of a glance and a few words. It made sense, I realised. He’d hidden his feelings from me for years; of course, he could navigate this without a single ripple.

That understanding was… oddly reassuring. My shoulders unknotted a fraction, enough to let me focus on enduring the other irritations in the room—noise, the smell of too many overlapping dishes, and, of course, Moody and Black’s presence, both of which set my teeth on edge for entirely different reasons.

I let myself be drawn into conversation—Ron, Kingsley, and I—something about recent Ministry inefficiencies. I was about to interject when I caught sight of movement across the room.

Potter, Ginny, and Granger were clustered together, laughing. Their eyes were on Ron and me.

The flicker of unease was immediate.

My mind went to Ron’s words during our earlier discussion: Don’t worry, you’re not the butt of the joke, I am. That knowledge did nothing to lessen the sharp edge of protectiveness that rose in me now. My gaze sharpened, and I fixed it on the trio until Ginny, at least, had the sense to avert her eyes.

Then I turned back to the conversation at hand, my voice cool and even, though every sense remained aware of them in the background.

Ron didn’t seem to have noticed their attention—or perhaps he had and, true to form, decided it wasn’t worth giving away. Either way, I found myself more determined than ever to ensure that whatever passed between us would remain ours alone, not fodder for their amusement.

It was only when I reached for my own toothbrush that I noticed it.

Wedged neatly into the ceramic cup beside mine, bristles still faintly damp, was a garish green toothbrush that could not possibly be mistaken for mine. The handle had some ridiculous pattern of tiny, faded dragons along it — the sort of thing one might expect to find in a child’s bathroom, not here.

I stared at it longer than I should have.

On the surface, it could have been an accident. A moment’s carelessness on his part, nothing more. But the book, the hair clips… even I was not obtuse enough to miss the pattern.

I didn’t ask myself why it was here; the answer was obvious. What I questioned — for perhaps a fraction of a second — was whether I ought to remove it. The thought dissolved as soon as it came.

Because despite the absurdity of it — the juvenile design, the wholly uncoordinated clash with my own white-handled brush — there was something about its presence that was… grounding.

It was not a relic of some past visit. It was a promise of the next.

The sight of it made my house feel subtly altered. Not invaded, but shared. And for reasons I was not prepared to examine, that did not unsettle me nearly as much as it should have.

I replaced my own brush without touching his. And when I left the room, I found my mouth quirking in faint, unbidden amusement.

The blasted thing could stay.

The kitchen smelled of comfrey and burnt sugar — not an especially complementary combination, but not entirely unpleasant either. The comfrey was mine; the sugar, predictably, was his.

I stirred the ointment base in slow, precise arcs, waiting for the moment the powdered root would dissolve cleanly. Across the room, Ron was conducting some kind of grotesque surgery on a pumpkin, its innards spilling across the counter in stringy orange ropes. He was humming happily as though dissecting a gourd were a cheerful, companionable activity.

The ridiculous hair clips were in place, of course — gaudy little things with charms that caught the light like shards of glittering glass. They looked even more absurd against his hair, but they kept it out of his eyes while he worked, and he wore them with a complete lack of self-consciousness that was… irritatingly endearing.

The recipe book in front of him was ancient — so ancient I hadn’t realised I owned it until he dug it out from beneath a pile of dust-furred clutter on the bottom shelf. It was annotated, but not by me; the cramped handwriting in the margins belonged to a long-dead previous owner, whose culinary instincts I neither knew nor trusted. Ron, however, appeared to trust them implicitly, flipping between the faded ink and the original print as though both were equally authoritative. He glanced at it less and less as the process went on, choosing instead to improvise. The danger of this did not seem to trouble him in the least.

It should have annoyed me — the chaos, the haphazard technique, the unmeasured handful of spices he’d just tipped into his mixing bowl — and perhaps it would have, if he were anyone else. But the truth was, his cooking had yet to produce a result I found disappointing. Infuriating, yes, but not disappointing.

I tipped the powdered comfrey into the ointment base and watched the pale green threads dissolve, the sharp medicinal scent rising with the steam. Normally, I would have done this in complete silence, focusing on the rhythm of the process, each step fitting neatly into the one before. But now the quiet was broken by his muttering, little bursts of self-direction (“No, not that much,” and, “Where’s the bloody nutmeg gone—oh”) followed by that low, unconscious humming again.

And somehow… the sound had worked its way into the background of my brewing, as natural as the pop of the simmer or the soft scrape of my pestle. Domesticity. I could feel it in the way he moved easily in my kitchen, in the absurd clips glittering under the light, in the knowledge that both my cauldron and his baking tray would produce something meant to tend and sustain him.

I stirred the ointment one final time, glanced at the recipe to confirm the next phase, and, against my better judgment, allowed myself to think that perhaps there were worse things than brewing to the sound of someone else’s happiness.

The pyjamas were sitting on the top of the dresser when I came into the bedroom, folded with a precision that was not mine.
Not my work. Not my garment.

Ron’s.

It could not possibly be an oversight — not when it was placed there so deliberately, the seams aligned, the sleeves tucked in. Forgotten clothing is rumpled, half-hidden behind a chair leg or abandoned in the laundry. This was… presented. Set down as though it belonged here, as though it would be waiting for him when he returned.

The thought drew something tight in my chest.

He was marking his territory. Nesting, like one of his more wilful creatures — the sort that drags leaves and twigs into its chosen corner until it feels settled. Ron had chosen this corner. My corner.

I should have been irritated.
I was not.

Instead, I found myself studying the fabric — dark cotton with faint red pinstripes — and thinking, absurdly, of how it might look on him here, in this room. Of the quiet, unhurried mornings where he would pull them on before making tea.

With a faint, exasperated breath, I reached for the top drawer. It was, as ever, in careful order — my order — but a small rearrangement opened a clear space at the front. The pyjamas went in, laid flat, and I left enough room beside them for another set. Or two.

Deliberate accommodation.

I closed the drawer, the faint scent of his laundry soap lingering in the air, and told myself that I was merely keeping the dresser tidy.
It was a poor lie, even to my own mind.

From the moment Ron led me towards the building with its garish lights and clashing neon signage, I suspected I had been manoeuvred into a trap.

A crowd milled about in restless clumps, chattering and jostling. The air was thick with the acrid-sweet scent of burnt sugar and something masquerading as butter. My lip curled before I could stop it.
“This,” I told him quietly, “had better be worth the probable hearing loss.”

He grinned the sort of grin that meant I was being teased without mercy and replied, 

“Trust me. It’ll become a classic.”

Inside was worse. The carpet was an eye-watering riot of colours and patterns, designed, it seemed, to disguise decades of spilt food. The counter hawked snacks at daylight robbery prices, and the queue shuffled forward with the mindless obedience of sheep.
I eyed the vats of lurid liquid with distaste.

“You’re supposed to enjoy this part,” he murmured as he accepted our tickets.

“Enjoy paying seven pounds for water flavoured with industrial syrup?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

We found our seats — dead centre, of course, because he refused to let me skulk at the periphery — and I folded my arms as the lights dimmed.

Fight Club.

It was loud, bloody, and far too enamoured of its own chaos. And yet… it was clever. The undercurrent of social commentary was sharper than expected. Halfway through, I realised the so-called twist well before the reveal, and was mildly impressed by how cleanly it was foreshadowed.

I found myself leaning forward despite myself, the characters’ descent into self-destruction rendered with unsettling familiarity.

When the lights came up and the audience filed out, I said nothing. Not until the cool evening air replaced the theatre’s cloying atmosphere.

“So?” he asked.

“For a medium notorious for pandering to the lowest common denominator,” I said, “it was… unexpectedly competent. A meditation on identity, social decay, and self-destruction, wrapped in an admittedly excessive display of fisticuffs.”

His grin widened. 

“That means you liked it.”

“It means,” I corrected, allowing the faintest curl of my mouth, “that it was not a complete waste of an evening.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets as we walked towards the Underground. 

“Next time, I’m picking something with explosions. You’ll love it.”

“Your definition of love,” I muttered, “remains questionable.”

The cupboard door swung open on its familiar row of sleek black mugs, each one polished to a muted sheen.
Except —

I stilled, eyes narrowing on the intruder.

Mint green.

Pastel.
A thing that all but glowed in its cheerfulness among the disciplined ranks of black.

Curiosity — reluctant, but present — made me reach for it. The porcelain was lighter than my own mugs, faintly glossy, and there, curling in garish pink script, was the declaration:

You’re brew-tiful.

I closed my eyes for a slow, measured breath.

Of course.
Of course this would be his choice in crockery.

I slid it back into its place among the dignified black, where it looked like a parrot dropped into a murder of crows, and reached instead for one of my own — solid, weighty, unembellished.

There was no practicality in bringing yet another mug into the house when I already had perfectly functional ones. No logic, no necessity. But apparently Ron’s idea of “nesting” required the deliberate insertion of this pastel absurdity into my morning routine.

I shook my head, though the corner of my mouth almost — almost — betrayed me.
Ridiculous as it was, the thing was his, and its presence was an undeniable reminder that he was, too.

He was sprawled on the sofa, legs far too long for the narrow length, idly turning pages of a flimsy, stapled booklet with a glossy cover. A Muggle crossword collection — I’d seen him with it before, though never here.

At some point, he set it down on the low table beside the sofa and rose, stretching as though he’d just remembered the hour. I watched him glance at it again — the flicker of hesitation too brief for anyone else to catch — before his hand bypassed it entirely. Instead, he crossed to the coat stand, pulling on his jacket while still talking about the “predictably tragic” result of a certain Quidditch match.

It was so deliberate I might have smirked, had I been inclined to encourage him. Instead, I only observed, schooling my expression into mild inattention.

At the door, I held it open without comment. 

“I’ll see you at the end of the week.”

“Yeah,” he said, with that infuriating half-smile that left too much unsaid. Then he was gone.

When I returned to the living room, the booklet sat precisely where he had left it — angled slightly toward my armchair, as though waiting to be picked up.

I let it stay.

Later, when I settled in with a book and a pot of tea, the glossy cover caught the lamplight from the corner of my eye. It was ridiculous, transparent, and entirely unnecessary. And yet, for reasons I would not examine too closely, I found the sight of it… satisfactory.

I had intended only to clear the top of the desk. Dust had gathered in the corners, and the detritus of brewing notes, quills, and a few unopened letters from the last fortnight had been steadily encroaching on my working space.

The trouble with cleaning — particularly in my own home — is that it forces one to look.

As I shifted a book to dust beneath it, I noticed it was not one of mine. Wedged against the spine of an Aramaic potions codex sat that purple-bound atrocity on dream interpretation — and beside it, two additional volumes I recognised from a shop window in Diagon Alley, both undoubtedly his. They had not been there last week.

In the kitchen, my intention was to return a misplaced vial to its shelf. Instead, my gaze snagged on the family cookbook wedged between two narrow jars of dried thyme and dittany, precisely at the same spot where those ludicrous, bedazzled hair clips still roosted like a pair of gaudy beetles.

By the bathroom sink, the ceramic cup that held my toothbrush had gained a companion: the little half-empty jar of burn and scratch ointment he insisted on making himself. A reminder of his endless capacity to collect minor injuries, and of the fact that he seemed to take for granted that the next batch would also be brewed here.

In the bedroom, the top dresser drawer revealed that the folded pyjamas I had discovered weeks ago had been joined by socks, undergarments, and — of course — a Weasley jumper.

And in the cupboard above the counter, the mint-green mug still lurked. Mercifully, it had acquired no matching sibling. I refused to imagine the shelf lined with pastel abominations.

I stood there for a long moment, taking in the sum of it.

What struck me was not the brazenness of the thing — though Merlin knows it was hardly subtle — but how utterly natural it all seemed. How I had ceased, somewhere along the way, to register each new arrival as an intrusion. The domesticity of it had become… expected. As ordinary as finding my own robes hung by the door, or my books on the shelf.

That realisation sat in my chest, unsettling in its weight. Months of quiet occupation, one “forgotten” item at a time, had turned my home into something that bore both our fingerprints. And somehow, I had not counted.

Or perhaps I had never wanted to.

It was bitter outside, the kind of cold that seeped through even the thickest wards and crept under clothing. I’d worn my oldest black wool scarf without thinking — a familiar, unremarkable thing, much like myself.

Ron’s flat was, as usual, warmer than strictly necessary. He claimed it was for the sake of his plants; I suspected it was for the sake of himself. We’d had tea. He’d made some abomination of an experimental pie that I grudgingly admitted was edible.

When I rose to leave, I knew precisely what I was doing when I left the scarf draped over the back of his dining chair. A subtle coil of black against the wood, harmless enough to be overlooked, but impossible for him not to notice once I was gone.

He didn’t mention it as I gathered my gloves and coat. He didn’t offer it back. His gaze flicked to it once — quick, sharp — and then away, the ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth before he schooled his face into something neutral.

We exchanged our usual goodbyes. I stepped out into the cold without the scarf, and for the first time in years, I didn’t mind the bite of the wind on my throat.

It was, after all, exactly where I intended it to be.

Chapter Text

PART THIRTEEN

DECLARATION

If the Ministry had an ounce of mercy, they would, by now, have stopped inviting me to these insipid Christmas functions.
They had not.
And this year — thanks to an ill-considered promise — I was attending.

It was Ron’s fault. The Ministry had insisted on his presence; I had insisted I would not let him endure it alone. That, apparently, was the sort of thing one says in a moment of misplaced loyalty and later regrets, yet still honours.

At least the evening began with a small consolation — my arrival drew not the faintest ripple of interest from the press corps. The photographers looked straight past me. No Rita Skeeter lurking at the edge of the crowd, no ridiculous questions about “where I’d been hiding myself.”
I allowed myself the faintest satisfaction at my anonymity.

I had only just secured a glass of wine and found a vantage point from which to suffer the evening when a voice, warm with familiarity, intercepted me.
“Severus. I had wondered if you would be here.”

“Headmistress.” My inclination to smile was nonexistent, but the inclination to mask it was well practised. “They’ve made it increasingly difficult to avoid.”

Minerva McGonagall looked very much as she always did — tartan, formidable, and incapable of small talk that didn’t at some point turn into something sharper. We had not had more than passing words since the Order gathering in summer, and she seemed intent on correcting that omission. The conversation flowed — or rather, she carried it and I deflected it — until a familiar voice broke in.

Ron joined us with that easy grin of his, sliding into the exchange without ceremony. 

“Professor. Good to see you,” he greeted McGonagall, and somehow managed to make it sound entirely genuine.

McGonagall’s expression softened — just slightly — as she replied, 

“The school’s been far less dramatic since the last Weasley left last June.”

Ron’s mouth quirked in amusement. 

“Beware. The next generation will grow quicker than you think.”

Her brow lifted. 

“Are you speaking about your brother… or about you?”

Ron blinked, then laughed. 

“Victoire, evidently. Not me.”

They moved on from there with casual ease, the kind of warmth that I have never been able to generate in public without effort. Then a Ministry functionary appeared to draw Ron aside for some bureaucratic purpose, leaving me with Minerva again.

She wasted no time. 

“Severus, you should consider coming back to teach. Surely you’ve had enough time for soul-searching by now.”

I let the silence draw out, a measured pause to cool the suggestion before it gathered heat. The temptation to answer sharply was there, but so was the weariness of explaining myself to those who would never quite understand.

“I am disinclined to accept,” I said at last, each word chosen for its finality.

Her head tilted, the faintest narrowing of her eyes telling me she was ready to mount a counterargument. Before she could, I cut across her in a quieter, more even tone.
“Hogwarts is not the place for me anymore.”

The truth of it sat heavily in my chest. The castle had been my prison, my stage, my battlefield. Its stones were etched with too many memories, most of them bitter. I had no desire to walk those corridors again, to feel the weight of a thousand unblinking eyes—students and staff alike—waiting for me to be the man I once was, or worse, the man they thought I had been.
And then there was Ron. The thought of the speculation, the whispers, the scrutiny if I stood at the head of a classroom while he was still so present in my life—it was intolerable. We had enough to navigate without the suffocating watch of Hogwarts’ rumour mill.

I did not look toward him now, though the pull was there, a quiet tether in the back of my mind. Instead, I held Minerva’s gaze.

At last, she inclined her head.
“Very well. I won’t press you.”

And just like that, the subject was closed—for now.

I didn’t need to look for Ron to know where he was in the room. The awareness was simply there, like the way you can feel the pull of a lodestone even when it isn’t in sight. Still, when I allowed my gaze to wander, I found him easily enough. Taller than most in the crowd, speaking to some Ministry functionary I didn’t recognise, head tilted slightly in that disarmingly attentive way of his.

It was enough to remind me—Hogwarts could offer nothing I wanted anymore. Not the echoing stone corridors, not the endless weight of expectation, not the pretence of a role I no longer needed to play. Here, now, my life was not defined by the castle or its ghosts. And I had no wish to entangle Ron in its politics, its prying eyes, its talent for turning private matters into public property.

The moment passed, and as if summoned by thought, he rejoined us. But something in him had shifted. His expression was… blank. Not neutral—blank, with that faint rigidity at the jaw I’d learned to recognise. It was the face he wore when he was Occluding. Ron didn’t use that skill lightly; it meant he was upset or hiding something he did not want bleeding into the surface.

An unpleasant prickle went down my spine. Why now?

I let my gaze flick discreetly toward the direction he’d come from, searching for the source—whoever had managed to unseat his mood so quickly. But the wizard was already gone into the tide of robes and chatter, vanishing before I could identify him.

When I looked back, Ron wasn’t meeting my eyes. He was staring somewhere past my shoulder, gaze fixed on nothing in particular. My jaw tightened. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like not knowing who had said what, or why it had left him guarded.

Before I could speak, a sonorous voice rolled over the crowd. Kingsley had taken the dais. The speech was long, overly ornamented, and perfectly engineered to drain the life from the room. I tuned it out almost instantly.

Instead, I let my attention shift back to Ron—subtly, of course. The blankness had faded, but only just; now there was a faint furrow between his brows, a tightness at the corners of his mouth. It was an expression he wore when something was too close to the bone to risk letting anyone see.

I did not like seeing it here. Not at all.

My eyes flicked briefly around the crowd again, looking for the wizard he’d been speaking to. Whoever it was had vanished, leaving nothing but the ripple of conversations resuming in their wake.

Ron didn’t notice my search; he was staring into the middle distance, his jaw set. I wanted to ask — to press — but Kingsley’s voice rose in emphasis and the polite applause began.

Ron clapped without looking particularly present.

We stayed. Of course we stayed. He was here in an official capacity, and I had given my word I would not abandon him to this circus. So I remained at his side as we made another circuit of the room, exchanging clipped pleasantries with people I barely tolerated.

All the while, I watched him from the corner of my eye, noting the small signs, the way his answers to casual questions were a beat slower, the rare moments his fingers tapped restlessly against his glass. The expression did not change.

We lingered another twenty minutes, long enough to be seen by those who would notice an early departure. When we finally made our exit, it was with the measured pace of people leaving because the evening was drawing to its natural close, not because I had been counting the minutes until I could demand an explanation.

By the time I emerged from the kitchen, the kettle cooling behind me, the bedroom door had already clicked shut.
Good. That gave me a moment to anticipate the conversation I suspected was coming and to prepare tea before he could begin it. Tea was, if nothing else, a distraction.

When I stepped into the living room with the tray, he was already sprawled on the sofa. The dress robes were gone, replaced by worn pyjamas and one of those infernal Weasley jumpers. His hair — meticulously coaxed into order for the evening — was now being pulled apart under his own absent fingers until it fell in the familiar, unruly waves.

He didn’t look upset anymore, not exactly. But neither was he fully present. His gaze was fixed somewhere far beyond the confines of the room, his expression the quiet, closed one I had recognised the moment he’d returned to McGonagall and me at the Ministry.

I set the tray down, took my seat beside him, and handed him a mug.
“What happened?”

He blinked, as if coming back from a long way off. 

“You caught that?”

“Hard not to,” I replied.

He gave a short, humourless huff of laughter. 

“Yeah. Of course it wouldn’t be hard for you.”
Then nothing. Just the faint clink of porcelain as he wrapped both hands around the mug and stared down into it.

I waited. Then I asked again.
“What happened?”

He didn’t look at me, but his shoulders dropped on a sigh. 

“I… found out there are rumours going around.” He hesitated, as if measuring the weight of the words. “That you killed Dumbledore.”

The words themselves were unsurprising — too neat a fiction for gossips to resist. That the war had been over for almost two years was irrelevant; the corpse of my reputation was always good for one more public autopsy.
Anger flickered, low and controlled, but not for the rumour. It was the nature of the thing, the inevitability, that stung faintly. This would not be the first, nor the last, and I had long ceased to expect that the truth would satisfy the public’s taste for scandal.

What caught deeper was that Ron was here, looking as though he’d swallowed broken glass, because of me.
It was unnecessary. Ill-advised. And yet it was… disquieting in a way I could not wholly resent. He was angry on my behalf, not his own. It was not an allegiance I had sought, but it had lodged itself in me all the same.

I took a sip of my tea before answering.
“It is hardly the most imaginative accusation I’ve endured.” 

My tone was deliberately flat, dismissive, but his frown deepened.

“It’s not right,” he muttered. “You shouldn’t have to—”

“Ronald,” I cut in, my voice low, even. “This is not your fight to pick.”

That, at least, made him glance at me. I met his gaze and held it. 

“The people who matter already know the truth. Let the rest of them rot in their ignorance.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue. Just took another drink of tea.

I let the silence stand after that. He had heard me, even if he hadn’t accepted it. And for now, that would have to be enough.

Ron kept his eyes on the steam curling from his mug, his jaw working faintly as if he were biting back words.
It was a look I knew.

Not the ordinary hesitation of someone weighing whether or not to be polite — Ron had never been especially burdened by that. This was deeper. Older. The particular stillness he took on when turning over a truth so heavy it had warped itself into secrecy.

I had seen it twice before.
The first, before he told me of the Horcruxes. The second, before he confessed the… unconventional source of his knowledge of the war. In both instances, the moment had stretched between us like a taut wire, vibrating with the tension of decision.

And now, here it was again.

Whatever this was, it went beyond the petty cruelty of rumourmongers. This was not merely about me. He was considering — I was certain — whether to turn over something older, more important, than I had first believed this conversation to warrant.

The knowledge coiled in my chest, not unpleasantly. Anticipation, edged with caution.
I did not push; I never did. To force his hand would mean he would shut it again. But I could watch, and wait, and hold my tongue until he came to whatever conclusion he needed.

I let the seconds spool out, sipping my tea, my eyes on him. The stillness between us thickened, the way it always did in these rare, consequential moments.

I was expectant, yes, but patient. If he was ready to hand me another truth, I would take it.
And if not… I would simply have to wait for the next time he wore that look.

Ron exhaled slowly, a measured breath that seemed to take effort.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this,” he began, his voice low, as though the walls might repeat it back to someone else. “But since the rumour came up… you deserve to know.”

I said nothing, only set my tea aside and gave him my full attention.

He glanced at me, then away. 

“Back in the middle of the war, Dumbledore wanted… well, he wanted you to kill him.” His mouth twisted, as if the words themselves tasted foul. “Said it would help you get Voldemort’s trust faster, give you a better position to pass information.”

My fingers tightened against my knee. I know, I almost said — but something in his tone stopped me.

“I told him no,” Ron continued, his voice rougher now. “Not just no — I pleaded with him not to put you in that position. I said he could find another way. I made him promise me. And he did. But…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how close he was to making it happen before I stepped in.”

For a long moment, I could only study him.
I had imagined, once or twice in darker hours, that Dumbledore had weighed such a choice — it was in his nature to sacrifice pawns when the board demanded it. But to hear that Ron had not only known, but argued against it…

It should have irritated me. An untested boy — younger than I had been when I took the Mark — telling Albus Dumbledore his business. Yet it didn’t. Instead, there was a slow, unfamiliar pull in my chest, as if some long-frozen muscle had flexed.

“You took it upon yourself,” I said finally, my tone deliberately flat, “to interfere in the strategy of the Headmaster of Hogwarts and the leader of the Order of the Phoenix.”

Ron gave a faint huff of laughter. 

“Yeah. Guess I did.”

“And,” I pressed, “you assumed that such interference was worth your credibility?”

His eyes flicked to mine then, steady. 

“Yes. Because you’re not just some chess piece to be moved around for convenience. You’re… you.”

There it was again: the reckless conviction, unvarnished and unashamed. I should have told him it was foolish. I should have reminded him that sentiment had no place in war.

But the truth—damn it all—was that I could not summon the words. I only looked at him, the weight of his admission settling in my chest. He had argued for my life, my agency, in a way no one else ever had.

“Then,” I said at last, my voice quieter than I intended, “I am… in your debt.”

Ron’s mouth curved into the faintest smile. 

“You’ve paid it back ten times over.”

And before I could answer, he took another sip of his tea as though he hadn’t just shifted the axis of the room between us.

Ron had curled himself into a tight ball beside me, buried deep in the duvet as though the December cold could not be trusted. I could feel the warmth of him radiating through the sheets, the steady rhythm of his breathing slow and even. Asleep. At peace.

I, of course, was not.

The revelation from earlier threaded itself through my thoughts like an insistent refrain. I had known Ron to be protective—possessively so, even—but tonight had carved a deeper notch into that understanding. Pleading with Dumbledore to spare me… me, of all people… That was no small thing. Not in the middle of a war where everyone was expected to bleed, to break, for the greater good.

It was not even the only example. I remembered, unbidden, the way he had handed me the truth about Regulus Black and the locket — without me asking, without leveraging it for advantage, without telling a soul — simply because it might save me from… well, from a situation that even now I had no wish to picture in detail.

And then I wondered — how many other such choices had he made? How many times had he intervened without me ever knowing, shielding me from a risk or a consequence, deciding — without announcement or ceremony — that my safety outweighed the supposed greater good?

The question tightened something low in my chest.

Ron had done these things without expectation of recognition, without seeking gratitude. The war had left us with so few people willing to spend their coin of loyalty on a single life. But he had, again and again, and never once asked me to know it.

I turned my head slightly, studying the pale spill of his hair against the pillow, the freckles scattered along the curve of his cheek. I thought of the stubborn tilt of his jaw when he was determined, of the unguarded warmth in his eyes when his guard slipped, of the way his presence had seeped into every corner of my home — and of my life — without resistance on my part.

And there, in the quiet, with the warmth of him pressed along my side, I understood something with a clarity that brooked no argument.

I loved him.

It was not the gradual accumulation of debts, nor the shared danger, nor even the rare gift of being seen without armour. It was him — absurd, reckless, loyal beyond all reason — and the fact that somewhere along the way, I had stopped imagining the world without him in it.

I closed my eyes, not to sleep, but to keep the thought close, private, for a little longer. He would not hear it tonight. But the truth of it was here now, solid and undeniable.

And it was mine.

The kettle still hissed softly on the hob, steam curling up toward the cracked ceiling paint. I sat at the kitchen table, tea cooling in its black porcelain cup, today’s Daily Prophet folded neatly beside it. Across the kitchen, Ron was humming—badly—under his breath, some saccharine Muggle Christmas song that had apparently lodged itself in his brain after last night’s wretched Ministry function. He moved between pan and counter with an absent ease, spatula in hand, wearing pyjama bottoms and the same Weasley jumper he’d worn the night before after abandoning his dress robes.

I reached for the paper, unfolding it to the front page, and felt my stomach sink.

“MINISTRY GOLDEN BOY TO WELCOME FIRST CHILD?”
Sources at last night’s Christmas Ball confirm that Ronald Weasley, noted war hero and Ministry liaison to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, is soon to become a father. While the identity of the mother remains a closely guarded secret, whispers suggest she is someone of “high social standing” whom Weasley has been romantically linked to for months. The source, overheard during a private conversation, claims the expectant father “looked radiant” and “couldn’t stop smiling.”

I stared at the blocky print, feeling the familiar cold, compressed irritation coil tight in my chest. Eavesdropping. Of course. If they were listening closely enough to spin this drivel into a headline, what else might they have overheard? And more importantly, who had been the indiscreet party? The ball had been thick with wandering ears, and it was entirely possible Ron’s name had been plucked from some unrelated sentence and pressed into this ludicrous shape for the sake of gossip.

It was laughable in its inaccuracy, but the repercussions would not be amusing. This was the kind of rumour that would dog him at the Ministry for weeks, if not longer. Colleagues would joke, superiors might question his focus, and strangers would feel entitled to dissect the private life of a man who had already been subjected to far too much public ownership. And should the speculation turn toward the truth, toward me—

The spatula clinked against a plate, and the smell of toast and eggs interrupted my train of thought. Ron set a plate before me, then his own, collapsing into the chair opposite with a yawn.

I slid the paper across the table without a word. His eyes flicked down to the headline, and the yawn froze halfway. Then, very slowly, he blinked.

A strange, flat sort of noise came out of him — halfway between a laugh and a cough.
“Oh. Brilliant,” he said, voice dry enough to strip paint. “Absolutely brilliant. I go to one Ministry ball, and suddenly I’m due in spring.”

He leaned back in his chair, the corner of his mouth twitching like he couldn’t quite decide between amusement and irritation. 

“Merlin, I don’t even want to know what they’ve come up with for the mystery mother. No, wait — yes I do, it’ll be hilarious. Is it someone famous? Someone from work? One of the Chudley Cannons cheer squad?”

He looked up at me with mock expectation, but there was a flicker underneath it, the sharp awareness that this could snowball into a nuisance.
“Bet you anything my mum’s already getting congratulatory letters from all of Ottery St Catchpole,” he muttered, stabbing at his toast. “And that’s before Percy finds a reason to send me a memo about the ‘public image of Ministry employees.’”

He tore off a piece of toast with his teeth, still shaking his head. 

“Next time you’re coming with me to these things, you’re going to hex anyone within ten feet who looks like they might be listening in.”

I took a measured sip of tea, letting his complaint run its course before I spoke.

“Judging by the phrasing,” I said, tapping the headline with one finger, “this wasn’t merely overheard — it was embellished. Which means someone was inclined to believe, or at least repeat, the idea in the first place.”

Ron rolled his eyes. 

“Well, that narrows it down to… everyone who’s ever been bored at a Ministry function.”

“It narrows it down,” I countered, “to whomever saw advantage in planting such a rumour. You work in an environment where perception is a weapon, and you are, despite your apparent disbelief, a figure of interest.”

He gave me a wry look. 

“You make it sound like I’m some political heavyweight instead of just… me.”

“Just you,” I said evenly, “has foiled the Dark Lord, and survived more political intrigue than most of your colleagues will in their lifetimes. Do not underestimate the appeal of undermining you with innuendo.”

Ron grimaced, picking at the edge of his plate. 

“So, you’re saying this could stick.”

“I am saying,” I replied, “that you should prepare for the possibility. And, should anyone seek clarification, tell them the truth — that there is no child. Do not attempt humour. It will be quoted out of context.”

That earned me a short laugh, but it faded quickly. 

“You think they’ll print a retraction?”

“They will not,” I said bluntly. “There is no profit in correcting a rumour more enticing than the truth.”

Ron sighed, then leaned back, eyeing me over his mug. 

“Then I guess I’ll just have to outlast it.”

“That,” I said, “is the only sensible course.”

He was quiet for a moment, then smirked faintly. 

“Unless you want to help me really confuse them.”

I arched a brow. 

“By doing what?”

His smirk widened. 

“Turning up to the next function with you and a pram.”

I set my teacup down with a deliberate click. 

“Finish your breakfast, Weasley.”

He simply laughed.

The fire had burned low, giving the room a softer glow, the kind that blurs the edges of things. Outside, Spinner’s End was muffled under a layer of snow, the streetlamps haloed in white.

Ron was slouched in the armchair opposite mine, one ankle hooked over his knee, sipping from a mug of mulled cider he’d insisted on making. The scent of cinnamon and cloves still hung in the air. He’d been talking — something about Fred and George’s new product line — but I’d lost the thread several sentences ago.

Not because I wasn’t listening. Because I was.

He could have been anywhere on a Christmas Eve. Surrounded by the chaos of the Burrow, drinking too much and laughing until his sides hurt. In London with friends, or with Potter and Granger. Instead, he’d brought himself here — to this narrow, draughty house in an industrial street that had nothing to recommend it.

The thought landed differently than it used to. Not as disbelief, but as fact.

He’d been back for months now, and my days no longer ran the same way they had before. The silence of my brewing was broken by the sound of his humming. There were books and absurd mugs and hair clips lying about in places I would never have tolerated from anyone else. And I had let them stay.

Worse, I had come to expect them.

He set his mug down and glanced over at me, catching me looking. I didn’t avert my eyes. Why should I? He already knew more of me than I’d ever meant anyone to know — the irritations, the pettiness, the grudges. He’d seen them, catalogued them, and come back anyway.

I thought of all the times he had returned—from foreign assignments, from long days at the Ministry, even from trips across the city—walking through my door as though there had never been a question of whether he would.

I had not intended to say anything tonight. But the words came anyway, unbidden and stubborn, cutting neatly through my reserve.

“I love you.”

For a second, he didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His hand stilled halfway to his mug. Then something flickered in his face — like he’d been struck by the impact of it — and his eyes went glassy. The effect was almost alarming; I felt a tight coil of concern, wondering if I’d misjudged, if I’d said too much too plainly.

But then he gave a small, uneven laugh, one that caught halfway. He looked away, trying for composure and failing spectacularly. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and a little rough.

“You have no idea… how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that.” His mouth curved, not in his usual easy smirk but something smaller, more fragile. “Merlin, I thought it’d never happen.”

I felt it then — not just the satisfaction of having given him something he clearly valued, but a faint, unexpected regret that I hadn’t done so sooner. And beneath it, that unsettling warmth again, the one that came from being wanted without condition.

He leaned forward, reaching across the space between us, and I took his hand without thinking.

“I love you too,” he said quietly. “More than you can imagine.”

We didn’t speak for a while after that. We didn’t need to.

It should have been impossible for me to believe that. Most days, I struggle to imagine anyone tolerating me, let alone loving me — and yet, in his voice, there was nothing to question. No flattery. No self-consciousness. No bargaining for a response. Just fact.

Something in my chest tightened, painfully, like a muscle forced to work after years of disuse. I had not the faintest idea what to do with this gift he was offering — this certainty.

Externally, I gave him nothing so dangerous as a smile. Instead, I reached across the table, taking his hand with deliberate care. My thumb brushed over his knuckles once, twice. I held his gaze — not to challenge him, but because looking away felt like a kind of cowardice.

Inside, though… inside I knew I was already lost. The idea that he might truly love me more than I could imagine was both a blade and a balm. Terrifying in its depth. Addictive in its warmth.

I inclined my head slightly — my own quiet acknowledgement — and felt his fingers curl around mine in answer.

It was enough. More than enough.

Chapter Text

PART FOURTEEN

WITH EYES WIDE OPEN

The evening was quiet, the sort of quiet I had come to value—wine in hand, book open, the low tick of the clock measuring the seconds between paragraphs. The fire was steady.

The sound of the door latch snapped the stillness. Ron stepped in, closing it behind him with less care than usual. He crossed the room without so much as a glance in my direction and let himself fall face-first onto the sofa. No coat removed, no greeting—just that graceless sprawl that was uniquely his when the day had been, in his own words, full of mean-spirited idiots rather than the genuine idiots variety.

I slid a finger into my book to mark the page and lowered it, watching the crown of his head press into the cushion. His shoulders rose and fell in a long sigh.

I waited a beat before speaking, voice low.
“What happened?”

Silence. He didn’t move. The only sign that he’d heard was the faintest shift of breath against the upholstery. I stayed still, letting the question hang.

A minute passed before he turned his head enough to breathe properly, enough that his voice wouldn’t be muffled when it came.

“This Christmas was awful,” he said flatly.

I said nothing, letting him set his own pace.

“First,” he began, “Mum decided to interrogate me about that bloody baby rumour, like she thought it might be true and I just didn’t want to confess I’d got some girl pregnant.” His mouth twisted, half grimace, half humourless smile. “Then all my siblings joined in—making jokes, over and over. Thought they were subtle, too, when they kept hinting I’d never get with a girl at all.”

His eyes flicked up at me briefly. 

“And that’s how I came out to my mum. At Christmas. With a full audience. She was hurt she was the last to know. Hurt I didn’t trust her. Then—because apparently this day needed more—my siblings started making fun of her for not knowing. Which just made her more upset.”

He let out a frustrated sigh and pressed his palm over his eyes. 

“When she’d finally calmed down, she blurted out she wanted more grandkids, and now she wouldn’t be getting any from me. Then she tried to patch it up—said I could adopt. But then I had to do that second coming-out thing—telling her I don’t want kids at all.”

His hand dropped away, and the glare he turned on the carpet was enough to scorch the fibres.
“She didn’t like that. Kept going on about it. Like what she wanted mattered more than what I want.” 

He inhaled sharply, still glaring. 

“And the rest of them—Merlin—they wouldn’t stop about you. About my crush. It’s always been a joke to them because they think it’s weird and ridiculous, and usually, I can laugh it off. But today? It wasn’t just one comment and done. It was everyone, all day, over and over, until I could barely stand it.”

When he finally stopped, his breathing was harder, his hands clenched, his focus still fixed on the carpet like it had personally wronged him. The anger radiated off him, but beneath it, I could see the exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders—the kind of bone-deep weariness that no sleep could fix.

I set the book aside entirely, closing it without marking the page. It didn’t matter.

There were few things I found more infuriating than watching him expend himself defending his dignity against people who claimed to care for him. Yes, the Weasleys had their brand of boisterous affection—endless teasing, unfiltered opinion—but there was a line where familiarity tipped into cruelty, and, by his account, they had crossed it repeatedly today.

The image of him standing alone in that cramped kitchen at the Burrow, a dozen voices circling him like jackals, made something in my chest go cold. He’d shielded me from that scene by not letting me anywhere near it—kept my name and our reality off their table. He’d done that for my sake. For me.

And they’d worn him down for the trouble.

The thought didn’t sit well. In truth, it didn’t sit at all—it prowled restlessly in the back of my mind, unsettling my usual defences. I had never much cared what Molly Weasley or her brood thought of me, but the idea of them turning on him in their clumsy, well-meaning way—and him bearing it in silence to protect my privacy—made me wonder how much longer I was willing to let him fight that battle alone.

I looked at him—slumped, hair mussed from dragging his fingers through it, that old Weasley jumper rumpled around his shoulders—and felt the familiar ache of wanting to make it stop for him. The Prophet’s gossip, his family’s careless words, the exhausting charade of pretending our lives didn’t bleed together—I wanted them gone.

It was the first moment I allowed myself to imagine telling them. Not for my sake, but because if they knew, they might stop tearing strips off him over something they believed was a joke.

The idea lingered. And with it, another—the thought of simply taking him away from all of it. Somewhere without the Prophet, without family drama, without the perpetual noise of others’ opinions. Somewhere we could simply be.

I crossed the room, the low creak of the floorboards marking each step. Ron didn’t lift his head when I came to stand beside the sofa, and for a moment I simply studied the line of his shoulders — hunched, tense, stubborn in their refusal to give in.

I lowered myself into the seat next to him. Without ceremony, I slid my fingers into his hair, combing slowly through the warm strands in the way I knew melted his defences. They caught once or twice on the mussed edges, and I smoothed them down, my touch deliberate, unhurried.

“Your family’s opinions,” I murmured, “are as fleeting as the Prophet’s headlines. They will find another subject to maul soon enough. And none of it… none of it alters who you are, or what you have made of yourself.”

A quiet huff left him, not quite a laugh, but some of the rigid tension in his back eased. I let my hand keep its steady rhythm.

“They will tire themselves out,” I continued, low and certain, “and you will still be the one who endured them. As you always do.”

Bit by bit, the fight drained from his frame. His shoulders lowered, the furrow in his brow softened. Finally, he exhaled, the sound softer this time — not fatigue, but release.

He shifted, turning his head, and without a word lowered it into my lap. I stilled for a heartbeat — not out of discomfort, but at the ease of it — then resumed carding my fingers gently through his hair. He hummed once, content, and stayed there.

I let him, watching the quiet rise and fall of his breathing, the sound of the wind at the windows the only other movement in the room. The thought came, unbidden but persistent: getting him away from all of this — away from their noise, their speculation, their tiresome jokes. I didn’t voice it. Not yet. But the idea rooted itself, steady as my hand in his hair.

The cold had driven us inside the first café we could find after the monthly auction, and for once, I didn’t care if it was a dive. The snow clung stubbornly to our cloaks, melting into little rivulets across the polished wooden floor, but the heat inside was almost decadent. It was blissfully quiet—too quiet, perhaps, because as we stepped in, the low murmur of conversation seemed to dip. The place wasn’t fashionable, and judging by the clientele, the average age in the room had halved when Ron and I sat down.

We found a table tucked into the corner, setting our prizes on the bench beside us. Ron shrugged out of his cloak and ran a hand through his hair, the picture of contentment, and for the first time that day, I allowed myself the smallest hint of ease.

The tenant came bustling over, notebook in hand—only to stop mid-sentence. Recognition flickered across her face, her eyes brightening.
“Oh—oh, Mr Weasley! I just wanted to say congratulations. Such wonderful news!”

I felt, rather than saw, the way Ron’s shoulders stiffened. Still, his voice stayed level.
“Thanks, but… that’s a mistake. Not true.”

She blinked, looking flustered. We ordered, and she muttered something about fetching it before hurrying away.

Ron exhaled slowly, looking down at the table. His earlier warmth was already draining away. I wanted to tell him to ignore it, but I knew as well as he did that ignoring it wouldn’t make it stop.

Before I could speak, the two witches at the next table leaned over, smiling as though sharing in some conspiratorial joy.
“We read about it in the Prophet,” one of them said. “You must be thrilled! First one’s always special.”

Ron’s jaw tightened; I could see the muscle ticking as he ground his teeth.
“Again,” he said curtly, though not unkindly, “you’ve been misinformed. There’s no baby. No mother. No story.”

They looked faintly taken aback, but before they could push the matter, I fixed them with a glare sharp enough to cut glass. It worked—they both shifted back toward their tea, murmuring to each other in lower voices.

I looked at Ron. The faint frown line between his brows hadn’t been there ten minutes ago. The easy grin from earlier, when we’d stepped in from the snow, was gone entirely. It was replaced with that closed-off expression I’d seen too often when the Prophet decided to make his life entertaining at his expense.

I hated seeing it. Hated the way it could sour an otherwise good day in seconds.

By the time the tenant returned with our tea and scones, I’d already started considering it again—the thought that had been tugging at the edges of my mind since the Weasley Christmas debacle. Somewhere quiet. Far from Prophet headlines, and far from prying eyes with too many questions. A holiday. Just the two of us. Somewhere we could breathe without having to correct anyone’s delusions.

And perhaps, if I chose well, a place where I could see that easy smile again—and keep it there.

When I stepped into Ron’s kitchen, the air was warm with the scent of herbs and roast.
He was at the counter, bent over a serving dish, scattering a final handful of chopped parsley with the kind of focus that made the rest of the world invisible to him.

The rest of the world, however, had just taken on a far more perplexing shape for me.

Because there, draped over the back of the nearest chair—a chair clearly meant for me—was a tiny, pale-blue onesie.

I stopped mid-step.

The sight hit me in the ribs like a low blow: incongruous, absurd, and inexplicably alarming. My mind, in its usual efficient cruelty, flicked through several possibilities.

A Weasley sibling’s attempt at humour, no doubt in relation to the Prophet’s latest fiction. Or a Ministry colleague’s puerile prank, delivered with a smirk and a nudge. Or perhaps—less maliciously—something belonging to Fleur’s child, forgotten here after a visit.

None of them justified the fact that it was there, in his kitchen, at my place at the table.

I locked my face into neutrality, though my pulse had given a sharp, unwelcome jump. My eyes shifted to Ron.

He turned then, balancing two plates in his hands, and crossed the kitchen to the table. He set the plates down, glanced up—and his gaze caught mine.

I could almost hear the faint click of his mind shifting gears. His head tilted, that familiar angle he used when he was both curious and analysing. Then his gaze dropped, following the line of mine, and landed on the onesie.

Without a flicker of embarrassment, he plucked it from the chair and held it up.
“Don’t worry,” he said, deadpan, “it wasn’t a subtle way of telling you I’m pregnant.”

The absurdity of the line landed like a slap and an anchor all at once. 

“I should certainly hope not,” I said dryly. “That would constitute several miracles I have no wish to witness.”

He snorted. 

“Janet from the Office of Misinformation—funnily enough—gave it to me. Said it was to congratulate me on my ‘future baby.’”

My jaw tightened. The irony was almost too on the nose: an employee of the Office of Misinformation actively perpetuating the Prophet’s most asinine rumour. And congratulating him for it. The thought of Ron smiling politely through that exchange for the sake of civility was… aggravating.

I said nothing more, merely took my seat, but my eyes followed the offending garment. Ron tossed the onesie onto the counter with casual finality and reached for his own chair.
“I’ll ask Hagrid if he needs it,” he said, almost to himself. “Christine’s gonna have a baby soon.”

I froze with my hand halfway to the back of my own chair.

Christine?

For a fleeting, bewildering moment, I was certain I had missed something vital—some shocking development in Hagrid’s romantic life that had apparently escaped not only the Prophet but also every Order gossip channel. Had he been keeping a paramour under wraps all this time? And if so, why was Ron the one casually announcing the impending arrival of an offspring?

Ron, oblivious to my sudden and frankly disconcerting train of thought, carried on cheerfully.
“Her foal should be born by February, and who knows—maybe it’d need it to survive the low temperatures.”

The knot of bafflement loosened in an instant. Of course. Not a paramour. Not even human. Christine must be one of Hagrid’s creatures, and doubtless a massive, temperamental one at that.

I exhaled slowly, the absurdity of my earlier assumption pressing at the edges of my composure. 

“I see,” I said, schooling my voice into bland civility as I finally took my seat. “A… practical rehoming of the garment, then.”

Ron smirked faintly. 

“Better than it gathering dust here.”

Better, yes—but my appetite for dinner had not been improved by the circuitous route my mind had just taken.

Once the plates were cleared, and Ron had flopped into the armchair opposite mine with the contented sprawl of a man who’d eaten well and was determined to digest in peace.
I set my teacup down. I had been watching him for several minutes—not that he noticed, occupied as he was with lazily rubbing a thumb over the handle of his mug, eyes half-lidded.

The memory of his faintly pinched expression in the café earlier this week—after the well-meaning congratulations, after the endless polite teeth-grinding—kept replaying itself. Even now, I could still hear the brittle edge in his laugh when he’d told me the onesie’s origin.

“You are one comment away from hexing the next well-meaning imbecile who congratulates you,” I said.

That got his attention. His eyes cut to me, faintly amused. 

“You’ve noticed, huh?”

“Hard not to,” I replied. “Your jaw tightens every time someone mentions your ‘child’ as though you’re about to challenge them to a duel.”

He snorted, though there was no real humour in it. 

“Yeah, well, it’s getting old.”

“Which is why,” I said, leaning back as though considering something purely academic, “a strategic withdrawal is in order.”

His brow furrowed. 

“Strategic withdrawal?”

“Precisely. I see no compelling reason for either of us to remain here for the next week while the Prophet continues its smear campaign. A change of location would be… efficient.”

He blinked, clearly trying to decide whether I was joking. 

“You’re suggesting we leave? Like… a holiday?”

“I am suggesting,” I said slowly, “that we vacate the immediate vicinity of every gossip-monger in Britain until they find a new target.”

Ron’s mouth tugged into a grin, the kind that managed to be both warm and infuriatingly knowing. 

“You know, you could just say you want to take me away for a few days.”

I arched a brow. 

“If you require sentimental packaging to accept a perfectly rational proposal, then yes—consider yourself… taken away.”

His grin widened, and there was something almost boyish in the way his eyes lit. 

“Alright then. Where are we going?”

I allowed myself a sip of tea before answering. 

“Somewhere the Prophet won’t think to look. And somewhere without a single well-meaning idiot.”

“That’s a tall order,” he said, but the grin never left his face.

Two nights later, Ron was in my kitchen with the half-serious air of a man planning a bank heist—except his battlefield map was a dog-eared travel catalogue from a second-hand shop, and his “strategy markers” were crumbs from the biscuits he’d just devoured.

“Alright,” he said, tapping the glossy page in front of him, “I vote for somewhere with decent food, no gossip rags, and no chance of you being roped into a conversation with my mum.”

“An impossible trifecta,” I remarked.

“Not if we go abroad,” he countered, turning the page and pointing to a coastal village in Normandy. “Quiet fishing town. Lots of cheese. You’d hate the sea air, but you might like the wine. And before you say it—yes, I speak French fluently, so you don’t even have to open your mouth if you don’t want to.”

I raised an eyebrow. 

“Do I want to know when and how you acquired fluency?”

Ron made a peculiar face.

“No yet,” he said eventually. “Anyway, I could easily dazzle you with my competence.”

“Mm. I imagine you’d find endless opportunities in such a setting,” I said dryly.

He flicked another page. 

“Fine, if you don’t fancy the coast, what about somewhere with proper snow? The kind that makes you want to stay in by the fire.”

I reached over, pulling the catalogue toward me. 

“A cabin in the Alps, perhaps. Remote. Inconvenient for any unwanted visitors.”

Ron’s grin was immediate. 

“That’s the one. And if we get snowed in…” He let the sentence trail off with deliberate ambiguity.

I met his gaze for a long moment. 

“If we get snowed in, you will not spend the entire time attempting to perfect your hot chocolate recipe.”

He feigned offence. 

“I’d only spend most of the time doing that. And the rest…” 

He let the silence fill, the kind of silence thick with mutual implication.

The catalogue lay between us, forgotten. The decision, I suspected, was already made.

Snow clung to my boots in stubborn clumps by the time we reached the cabin door. The air was sharp enough to sting the lungs, but it was clean, untainted by London’s soot or the Ministry’s suffocating corridors. Ron’s cheeks were flushed from the wind, freckles stark against skin turned pink with cold. He looked infuriatingly alive, grinning as if hauling our luggage through half a mile of unploughed snow was a pleasant exercise.

“This is perfect,” he declared, kicking snow from his boots before unlocking the door.

The cabin’s interior was all honeyed wood and low beams, with a stone fireplace dominating the far wall. There was no sound but the settling creak of timber and the distant sigh of the wind. Ron dropped his bag unceremoniously, already gravitating toward the fireplace like it was an old friend.

I, meanwhile, set down my case with measured care, taking in the simplicity of the place: two armchairs, a small kitchen tucked under the loft, shelves lined with mismatched mugs and chipped crockery. No trace of the outside world.

Ron glanced over his shoulder. 

“You look like you’re calculating how to rearrange the place.”

“I was assessing its suitability,” I corrected. “It will do.”

He laughed, shaking snow from his hair. 

“That’s high praise from you.”

While he coaxed life into the fire, I hung our cloaks to dry. By the time I turned back, the hearth was crackling, casting gold and amber across his face. He was kneeling close, hands outstretched to the warmth, a picture of unstudied contentment.

The sight did something strange to me—an uncomfortable warmth curling under my ribs. Perhaps it was simply the fire’s reflection, or perhaps it was the fact that he looked exactly as I had imagined when I suggested we come here: far from anyone else, wholly at ease.

“Come on,” he said, patting the armchair beside him. “Let’s make it official. First holiday together.”

I sat, the chair’s cushions dipping under my weight, and let the heat seep in. Snow pressed against the windows, the wind hushed to a lull. Ron leaned back, stretching his legs toward the fire, and in the quiet, I found myself thinking that this—more than any rare potion ingredient or fine bottle of wine—was what I had wanted.

The fire in the small sitting room had burned down to a slow, rhythmic crackle. The wine in my glass was almost gone, though I wasn’t certain when I’d last tasted it. Ron was lounging on the opposite end of the sofa, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, leafing through the small Muggle travel guide he’d insisted on buying earlier.

We had been talking idly — nothing of consequence — when I let out a name I had never called in his presence.

I froze, the slip settling into my awareness like a pebble hitting still water. I hadn’t said her name aloud in years without purpose.

Ron’s eyes lifted from the page, sharp in their focus, though he schooled his expression quickly. 

“Lily?” he asked, mild enough to be casual, but missing it by an inch.

He wasn’t nearly as curious as he usually would in similar circumstances.

“A friend,” I said, watching him. “From school.”

I let the pause stretch, and then, with deliberate clarity: 

“Lily Evans.”

Ron’s face didn’t so much as twitch. His eyes stayed on mine, steady. No flash of recognition, no flicker of surprise — just a careful neutrality that confirmed my suspicion.

I set my glass down, the sound sharp in the quiet. 

“You don’t seem surprised.”

Ron shrugged lightly, too lightly. 

“Should I be?”

“How do you know her name?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow.

“It’s my friend’s mum. Of course I know her name.”

“Not like that.” My voice was quiet, but it cut between us all the same. “What exactly do you know about my connection to Potter’s mother?”

Something flickered in his eyes, weighing, measuring. He did it again; He went behind his Occlumency clouds, like he always did before divulging some life-changing secret.

“How much, Ronald?” I pressed, his name tasting deliberate in my mouth.

He didn’t answer immediately. And that was when I felt it — a sudden, cold pull in my chest. Because while he undoubtedly knew about the prophecy’s existence, there was no reason for him to know that it was I who carried those words to the Dark Lord. That I was the reason Lily died. The reason Harry Potter grew up an orphan.

He couldn’t know, and I couldn’t tell him, but he deserved the truth.

I sat back slowly, my gaze fixed on him but my thoughts turning inward, already drawing the old armour into place. I could feel the tightness in my jaw, the faint curl of my fingers against my knee.

It would not be the first time someone looked at me with disgust. Nor the first time I was abandoned for it.

But the idea of Ron — this Ron — turning away, shutting me out, no longer meeting my eyes… The thought felt sharper than I expected.

I wanted to believe he already knew the worst of me.
I wanted to believe it would make no difference.

I was not sure I did.

And then he looked at me — properly looked — and I knew he’d seen it. Of course he had. He always did.

“Sev,” he said, his voice quieter now. “I know.”

There was no hesitation in it. No softening for my sake. 

“I’ve always known. About the prophecy. About Lily. About… all of it.”

For a moment, I forgot to breathe. My mind raced ahead through every possible angle, every question I should demand, but before I could, he went on.

“I knew before I even knew you,” he said, steady as if he were telling me the time. “And it’s never changed what I think about you — not once.”

I narrowed my eyes, searching for the edge of the joke or the trap, but he didn’t flinch.

“I still respect you. I still trust you. And I still—” his voice gentled, “—love you. Not because you’re perfect. Because you’re you. Because I know the whole truth, and I still chose you.”

The words settled into the air like snowfall, silent, slow, impossible to ignore.

It was absurd. Impossible. Reckless.
And yet…
He knew. He had always known. And he was still here.

My mind wanted to dismantle it, to point out how foolish it was, to find the hidden flaw in his reasoning, but some other part of me, smaller and far more dangerous, just wanted to believe him.

Belief was dangerous. I knew that better than most.

So I said, coolly, 

“You know I am the reason Potter grew up an orphan. The reason his parents died. Your best friend’s parents.”

If that didn’t make him step back, nothing would.

But Ron didn’t even blink. He only leaned forward a fraction, elbows on his knees, looking at me with the same maddening patience he always reserved for my worst moods.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I know.”

“And you still—” I stopped myself before the word could sound too raw.

“Yes,” he said again, steady as a lighthouse. “Still. Always.”

It should have felt infuriating, that refusal to be driven away. Instead, it landed somewhere low in my chest, heavy and disarming.

I could have turned away. Could have buried the moment under some sharp remark or a retreat into my book. But I found myself still looking at him, and there was no mockery in his expression. No pity, either. Just that calm certainty, as though he’d known the worst of me all along, and decided it was never going to be enough to make him leave.

I hated how much I wanted to believe him.

Ron shifted closer, slow enough that I had time to pull away if I chose. I didn’t.

His hand came to rest over mine on the arm of the chair — warm and steady. No insistence, no attempt to force the moment anywhere I didn’t want it to go. Just there. Present.

“Ever since I met you,” he said quietly, “every interaction we’ve had, every bit of trust I’ve given, every word of respect — all of it’s been with my eyes wide open. Nothing you tell me now changes that.”

I could have reminded him that feelings were fickle, that admiration could sour when faced with the truth lived rather than imagined. But his thumb moved once against my skin, a small, grounding pressure, and the words wouldn’t come.

Instead, I let my shoulders ease fractionally, the iron clamp of my jaw loosening by a degree.

He didn’t push further. He never did, when it mattered. Just stayed there, his hand over mine, until the air between us felt less like a battlefield and more like a truce.

Ron had fallen asleep on his side, one arm stretched toward me, his breathing deep and even. The fire in the grate had burned low, casting long shadows across the bedroom walls. I lay beside him, my mind stubbornly awake.

My eyes wide open.

The words kept circling back, uninvited, weaving themselves into everything I knew — and didn’t know — about him. Not foreknowledge in the neat, contained sense I had once assumed. Not merely a glimpse ahead. No, it was wider, deeper. He had spoken of my past with the same certainty as the future, as if the entire span of my life — the moments I had buried in silence and the ones I had fought to forget — had already been unwrapped and examined in his mind.

And he’d stayed. Not despite those things, but with them in hand.

I thought of Lily, of the prophecy, of the moment I sealed the Potters’ fate. He hadn’t flinched. Merlin help me, he hadn’t blinked. If he knew that, then what else did he carry? How many other people’s worst acts, ugliest truths, did he walk around with in that calm, infuriatingly steady head of his? How many faces smiled at him daily, blissfully ignorant of what he knew?

Of course, I was curious—I am a man who has built his life on the acquisition of information—but curiosity was edged with something rarer, more dangerous: trust. Trust that he would keep such knowledge where it belonged, without using it as a weapon.

My thoughts drifted back to that night almost a year ago, after he first told me of his gift, when I’d asked — half out of academic interest, half because I could not leave the question unvoiced — if he would ever tell me everything. His mouth had curved, sly but warm.

If you ever decide you want the whole truth… marry me first.

Now, in the quiet, with his breathing anchoring the air between us, I could almost believe he’d meant it.

The memory sat with me, sharper now in the dark than it had been when he’d first said it. At the time, I’d dismissed it as a joke — an artful deflection from a man who could make humour into armour. But lying here, with his hand lax and warm against my hip, I couldn’t quite convince myself it was only that.

The notion of marriage had never appealed to me; it reeked of entanglement, of obligations that soured with time. But the promise embedded in his words was something else entirely — the idea of being trusted enough, wanted enough, to be given the whole truth. All of it, stripped bare, no veil of omission.

The dangerous thing was that I could feel the beginnings of wanting it.

Wanting to know every shadowed corner he’d seen, every unvarnished thing he knew of me and still decided to stay for. Wanting the proof, in his voice, that there was nothing — not even the worst of me — that could undo the ground we’d built between us.

It was not a comfortable thought. Desire rarely is, when it comes dressed as a possibility you’ve spent your life rejecting. But as I listened to the even cadence of his breath, I found I did not immediately push it away.

For now, it was enough to let it live there — small, and quiet, and dangerous.

I woke to the smell of toast and the muted clink of crockery from the kitchen. The space beside me was empty but still warm, the sheets faintly creased where he’d been.

Pulling on a dressing gown, I followed the sound, leaning on the doorway just in time to see him balancing two plates with the ease of someone who’d grown up navigating chaos. His hair was damp and curling at the ends, his sweater an ancient green thing that had lost its shape years ago.

He glanced up, caught me watching, and smiled in that unguarded way that seemed to undo more of me than I cared to admit.
“Morning,” he said. “Tea’s strong enough to wake the dead, unless you want coffee.”

I took the mug he offered and let my fingers brush his, just long enough to feel the faint hitch in his breath. A dangerous thought stirred — marry me first. The words echoed without invitation, curling into my mind like smoke. I drank to drown them, though the warmth in my chest was not entirely from the tea.

He carried on with an easy chatter about the weather, utterly unaware of the thread he’d tugged loose in me last night. Or perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing.

I didn’t ask. I only took the plate he handed me and sat opposite him, content — for now — to keep the thought locked where it was.

Chapter Text

PART FIFTEEN

QUIET CONVICTIONS

The door closed behind us with a soft click, and the familiar quiet of Spinner’s End settled over the house. After a week away, the place felt smaller, though perhaps that was only because Ron had been in my sight, within arm’s reach, for nearly every waking moment.

He set his bag down by the sofa with the casual ease of someone who belonged there, then stretched until his shoulders popped.

“Feels strange to be back,” he said, glancing around like he was re-mapping the space. “Quieter.”

That was one word for it. The cottage had its usual draught, its usual scent of parchment and herbs — but it lacked the background hum of him. A week of waking beside him, of hearing his laugh over dinner, of having his commentary on everything from the weather to the book I was reading… I had not expected to like the constant company. I had expected, in fact, to find it mildly claustrophobic. Instead, it had felt… natural.

Ron headed for the kitchen without asking, already pulling the kettle to the hob.

“I’ll make us tea before we unpack,” he called over his shoulder.

As I watched him moving about like this was his own home, I caught myself thinking — not for the first time — that perhaps it could be. That perhaps this past week had been proof enough that it would work.

I filed the thought away for later. For now, I joined him in the kitchen, letting the comfort of his presence settle back into the space as if it had never left.

The quill in my hand stilled halfway through a sentence.

“Ron—” I began, turning in my chair, only to face an empty doorway.

The silence pressed in at once, cool and matter-of-fact. Of course, he wasn’t here. He’d gone back to his flat tonight, something about sorting through post and making sure his plants hadn’t turned to compost in our absence. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly expected.

And yet…

I sat back, frowning faintly at my own lapse. How easily I’d begun speaking to him without checking he was within earshot. How quickly I’d grown accustomed to the easy, constant presence of him — to his voice answering from the next room, to his tendency to wander in with a mug of tea, to his absent-minded humming filling the corners of this house.

The absence was… inconvenient. Irritating, even. I wasn’t certain whether I missed his company or merely the predictability of it. Both, perhaps.

I picked up the quill again, but the thought lingered that this quiet was no longer the baseline, but the anomaly. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

It was just after seven when the faint pop of Apparition sounded outside the back door. A moment later, the latch clicked, and Ron stepped in with the cold still clinging to his hair and shoulders.

“You’re not supposed to be here until Saturday,” I said, watching as he shrugged out of his cloak.

He grinned, holding up a paper bag as though it explained everything. 

“And miss your birthday? Not likely.”

I gave him a look. 

“I don’t celebrate my birthday.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” he said, hanging his cloak on the hook — his hook, I realised with a start; I’d stopped thinking of it as mine. “That’s why I’m here. Someone has to.”

He crossed to the kitchen counter, unpacking the bag: a bottle of wine, a small chocolate cake, and a narrow box tied in deep green ribbon. The deliberate lack of fanfare was… appreciated.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A low-key celebration. You can relax. No one’s going to sing.” He slid the box toward me. “Go on, open it.”

I hesitated, then untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in black tissue, was a slim, leather-bound notebook — the kind with stitched binding, made to last decades. The cover was embossed, almost imperceptibly, with an intricate pattern of curling vines.

“You once said you prefer paper to any charmed record-keeping,” Ron said, watching me as though he couldn’t quite read my expression. “Figured you might as well have one worth using.”

It was… thoughtful. Entirely practical, yet personal in a way that caught me off guard. I closed the lid carefully. 

“Thank you.”

He smiled faintly and began cutting the cake, as though the moment required no more than that.

Later, after the plates were cleared and the wine poured, he settled on the sofa, curling one leg beneath himself. He looked as though he’d always belonged there, half in shadow, head tipped back against the cushions, relaxed in a way that made the room feel warmer.

It struck me then, not for the first time, how easily he fit into this house, into the small rhythms of my life. And how quickly I had come to expect him here, as if the space without him were lacking in some unnameable way.

The thought came unbidden, clear as any conclusion drawn from an experiment: I could live like this. Not just for a week’s holiday, not just for scattered nights, but permanently.

And for the first time, I found the idea… preferable.

It was late. Too late for work, too late for idle reading. The house was quiet — too quiet.

I sat at my desk with the half-finished draft of an article in front of me. The lamplight pooled gold across the parchment, but my attention kept drifting. I reached for my quill to make a note and heard myself say, without thinking, 

“Where did you put—”

The words stopped in my throat.

Ron wasn’t here tonight. He was at his flat, handling some Ministry paperwork he couldn’t ignore. And yet, I’d expected him to be. Again. I’d expected him to answer.

I leaned back, pressing my fingertips together, irritated at myself for the reflex. It wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that I’d turned to speak to him before realising the seat beside me was empty. His presence had become woven into the fabric of my days — meals taken together, the quiet interruptions of his mutterings, the sound of his laughter from the next room.

The house felt… diminished without him. Not just quieter, but stripped of some necessary warmth.

The conclusion was obvious. Unavoidable.

I didn’t want him here merely in passing, a few nights a week between our separate routines. I wanted him here — fully, permanently. I wanted to come back to the sight of his boots by the door and the scent of his ridiculous tea in the kitchen.

I wanted to stop wondering which nights would be empty.

I wanted him to move in.

The thought settled in with the finality of a decision already made.

The clock in the sitting room had just struck seven when the door opened. Cold air slipped in first, followed by Ron, his hair wind-ruffled, scarf askew, and wearing the expression of someone who’d just fought a minor war.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, voice carrying from the entryway as he wrestled his coat off. “Ginny and the twins dropped by my flat unannounced. Took me ages to shake them loose without being rude.”

I emerged from the kitchen, one brow raised. 

“Again?”

Ron hung the coat on the hook and gave a half-shrug. 

“Yeah. They were ‘just in the neighbourhood’ and decided to ‘check in.’ Which meant poking around, commenting on the state of my fridge, and making cryptic jokes until I told them I had somewhere to be.”

I made a low sound in my throat, somewhere between disapproval and understanding, and turned back toward the kitchen. 

“You managed to avoid them following you here, I take it?”

“Yeah,” Ron said, trailing after me. “But only because I told them I was meeting someone from work.”

It was meant as reassurance, but I felt my attention sharpen. It hadn’t escaped me that he’d had to invent an excuse, that if they’d been determined enough, they might have insisted on coming along anyway.

I poured the wine, listening to him ramble about the elaborate game of conversational misdirection he’d used to keep them from prying further. It was almost amusing — almost — but beneath it, a thought had begun to take root.

If he were to move in here, it wouldn’t be Ginny and the twins casually dropping by his flat anymore. It would be them turning up at Spinner’s End. They’d see his things here, the patterns of his presence, the unmistakable fact that he lived with me.

We could keep it quiet for a while, perhaps. But not forever.

And if — when — they discovered it on their own, without hearing it from him first, there would be… fallout. The sort of familial outrage that came as much from perceived secrecy as from the truth itself.

If we were to make this change, we’d have to tell them first.

I slid his glass across the table as he sat down, still speaking about Ginny’s latest bit of mischief. He didn’t notice the weight of my gaze, or the way I filed the decision away like a final step in a plan.

They would have to know, before anything else.

The Ministry’s Atrium gleamed like a jewel box again: banners in sombre blues and silvers hung from the high ceilings, lantern light glinting off polished marble floors. It was the same pomp as last year, the same polished veneer attempting to dress up grief.

The journalists didn’t so much as glance in my direction when I arrived. That suited me perfectly. No Skeeter lurking at the fringes with her Quick-Quotes Quill, no feigned smiles from people who would rather spit than shake my hand. I slipped into the crowd like smoke, unnoticed.

The Order was out in full force, as it always was for this event.

The Weasleys were gathered together near the front, a wall of red hair and sturdy shoulders. Their faces shifted in and out of shadow — subdued in moments, no doubt each remembering in their own way that this was also the anniversary of Arthur’s death. But the weight in their expressions lightened, sometimes vanishing entirely, whenever their eyes landed on the small bundle in Fleur’s or Bill’s arms. Victoire. A new life that seemed, simply by existing, to push back the ghosts.

I let my gaze linger on the way Molly’s face softened as she took the child from Bill, on the twins leaning in to coax a smile, on Ginny’s expression when she caught the baby’s tiny fingers in her own. It was impossible not to wonder — if they knew about Ron and me, would those expressions turn colder? Would the easy camaraderie vanish?

Molly, I suspected, would try for politeness, but the sting of surprise — and perhaps disappointment — would be there. The twins… I could not predict whether the mockery would mask acceptance or rejection. Ginny might be bristlingly protective of her brother or scathing. Percy would likely keep his thoughts to himself until they could be delivered in carefully chosen words.

My gaze drifted over the Order — McGonagall, Kingsley, Hagrid, Moody, Black — each of them a potential judge and jury. Their opinions were irrelevant to me… but not to Ron.

Movement in the corner of my eye drew my attention. Ron, craning his neck above the crowd, searching. He spotted me, his mouth curling into an easy smile, and beckoned. I crossed to him, greeted in the same calm, unremarkable way as if we hadn’t spent the night before doing things that would make Molly Weasley’s hair curl in outrage.

The other Weasleys nodded or murmured greetings. Members of the Order closest to their group offered the same. I returned each with minimal effort, polite without encouraging further conversation.

The speeches began as they always did: Kingsley first, then McGonagall. The same tone, the same sentiment. I wondered how many more years it would take before they began repeating them word for word.

I knew Ron had only narrowly escaped being conscripted into giving one himself. He’d begged, I’d heard, and barely won.

A Ministry staffer came to collect Ron, Moody, and myself for photographs. We lined up with McGonagall — the so-called four heroes of the war — a tableau to reassure the public. The camera flashed several times, and then we were released.

That was when the journalists descended.

They swarmed Ron instantly, calling his name, questions tumbling over one another. I hung back, watching the way his jaw tightened. The baby rumour was raised first — he cut it down curtly, his voice clipped. Questions about his love life followed, which he deflected more politely, but still with an edge.

Finally, he fixed them with a level look.
“Your questions are wildly inappropriate given the ceremony we’re here for,” he said, voice carrying just enough to reach the next knot of onlookers. “This is about commemorating those who died in the war. Not gossip.”

That silenced them. They stepped back, some muttering, others pretending to scribble notes as if they’d been about to ask something relevant.

Ron rejoined me without comment, and together we returned to the Weasley-Order enclave.

I caught, briefly, the faint shadow in his expression — irritation buried under composure. The journalists had not rattled him, not in any way they could see. But I knew better.

I could always tell when Molly Weasley had decided she disliked me less than usual — the air around her shifted from bristling mistrust to something warmer, if still guarded.
Today, there was something else in it too. A deliberate courtesy, a little over-brightness in her voice when she greeted me.

“Severus,” she said, as though she’d been expecting me. “So good of you to come.”
Her eyes slid briefly to Ron before she turned away, and I understood.
Ever since Christmas—since she’d been confronted with the truth about her youngest son’s preferences, and the unfortunate fact that I had been the object of his “long-standing crush”—she’d been attempting… what? Politeness? Acceptance?
It was hard to tell. But the change was there, and I noticed it.

I said nothing. The last thing I intended was to encourage conversation on the matter.

The lunch was typical of the Burrow on such occasions: loud, cramped, and radiating the kind of warmth that could smother if one lingered too long. I took my place at the far end of the table, opposite Ron, and set about ignoring the babble.

It didn’t take long for Molly to begin.

At first, it was subtle. A remark about Sirius’s “wonderful charm” and “adventurous spirit,” said with a sidelong glance at Ron. Then, a pointed comment about how “Sirius has been alone too long” and “needs someone who can keep up with him.”

I glanced at Ron. Had he noticed?
Possibly. Possibly not. There were times when his social instincts were razor-sharp — and times when the most obvious subtext sailed straight over his head.

It was difficult to tell today. He was engaged in eating and conversation, but his eyes were not narrowed in suspicion, nor was there the faint curl at the corner of his mouth he got when he was quietly enjoying watching people make fools of themselves.

Black, however, had absolutely noticed.

And he was enjoying himself far too much.

“Oh, Molly,” he said with mock modesty, “you’ll make me blush.”
Then he leaned in toward Ron and murmured something — too low for me to hear — near his ear. Ron gave a short laugh, apparently oblivious to the proximity.

I felt my jaw tighten.

When Black draped his arm over the back of Ron’s chair, I found my fingers curling against my glass stem without conscious thought. The picture it presented was calculated — casual to the point of insolence — and it was entirely for Molly’s benefit. She looked positively smug.

The twins, sitting across from them, had clearly caught on. Fred leaned toward George and muttered something; both grinned, then called across the table:
“Careful, Ron — you’ll give Mum ideas.”
“Too late for that,” George added with a wink.

Ginny sat two seats down, wearing a knowing grin that was half amusement, half challenge, while Granger — sandwiched between the twins — looked as if she’d been given an unwanted riddle to solve and was determined not to dignify it with an answer.

I caught Potter’s reaction the moment his dull brain caught up to reality. His gaze swung from his godfather to his best friend, lingered just long enough for the penny to drop, and his face contorted into a quiet panic. His horrified expression was, admittedly, almost worth the annoyance of watching Black drape himself over Ron like a mutt marking territory.
Potter, of course, took it seriously. The possibility that his best friend might be involved with his godfather clearly disturbed him.
Idiotic boy. It was painfully obvious Black wasn’t actually flirting — at least, not with intent — but Potter lacked the wit to see it.

And then there was Percy, seated further down the table. His posture was perfect, his expression composed, but I saw the way his eyes flicked to Molly. Disapproval, clean and sharp. He said nothing, but the message was clear enough: he didn’t condone her meddling.

Through it all, Ron remained as unbothered as if Sirius had been nothing more than a mildly talkative chair. If there was a flicker of awareness, it was hidden behind that easy, public composure of his.

I sat back, outwardly neutral, inwardly cataloguing each reaction, each player in this farce. I could endure it — for now. But the thought nagged at me: we could not keep this secret forever. And when it did come out, the fallout at this table would make today’s performance look positively civilised.

The door had barely shut behind us when Ron groaned like a man in mortal agony, tossed his scarf onto the nearest chair, and declared,
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry you had to witness… whatever the fuck that was. I can’t believe she would pull that shit again.”

I arched a brow, removing my gloves with deliberate precision.
“So you’re aware your mother attempted to throw you at Black like a bone to a dog?”

Ron snorted — inelegant but unrepentant.
“Hard not to notice. She’s as subtle as a… well, as a Weasley, if I’m being honest. She did the same with Bill and Tonks, because she didn’t like Fleur.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, already loosening the careful styling from the Ministry event.
“At least we know the age factor’s not a problem to her. That’s good to know. Even if I’m a little insulted she just chose the first guy who came along. She could’ve at least put some effort into it.”

I held his gaze for a moment, the corners of my mouth twitching before I mastered them.

The age factor. He said it with a dry sort of acceptance, as though our difference was a logistical detail rather than a potential scandal. My mind flickered briefly to the conversations we had yet to have with his family, the barbs about age and history I was certain would come, but apparently not from his mother, if she was willing to push him toward Black.

Insulted. That word lingered in a way I did not expect. Not because I thought he truly coveted her approval for a romantic match, but because beneath the sarcasm was a genuine sting that she’d made so little effort, that she had paired him off as if it were a perfunctory chore rather than something worth her consideration. I found myself oddly protective—irrationally so—over the idea that anyone could make Ron feel like an afterthought.

“Effort,” I said finally, removing my coat and hanging it by the door. “You are not an errand to be run, Weasley. Even by your mother.”

He looked faintly surprised at that, then gave a crooked smile before moving toward the kitchen.

I followed him into the kitchen, the sound of his boots thudding against the floorboards far more at home here than Black’s intrusive laughter had been at the Burrow. He’d already opened the icebox, scanning its contents as though deciding whether to bother with dinner or just make tea.

The “age factor” comment was still turning over in my mind.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Rationally, it did not matter — he had just dismissed it himself. But there was a quiet, irrational satisfaction in knowing it wasn’t a deterrent to him or, apparently, to his mother. Not that her approval was my ambition… but I had been prepared for age to be her first line of objection.

What caught me more was the possessive flare I hadn’t felt in years. Black’s arm slung carelessly along the back of Ron’s chair, his head tilted in just far enough to speak privately — it was theatre, I knew it, and so did the twins and half the Order — but even knowing it was mockery, my hands had itched. I had not realised how used I’d grown to Ron’s presence beside me, unshared, until I saw someone else — anyone else — occupying that space.

He shut the icebox, glancing over his shoulder. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, which was only half a lie. I stepped closer, into the warm light from the stove, and reached for the kettle. “Merely considering whether to poison Black.”

That earned me a quick knowing grin. He moved past me to fetch mugs, his arm brushing mine in passing, so casual it was almost an assertion. I let it stand, that small, unspoken claim. Black could keep his games.

Ron was here.

Later, we settled into the sofa, tea cooling on the low table and the faint ticking of the old clock filling the room between us. Ron had kicked off his boots the moment he’d sat down and now sat sideways, legs tucked up, leaning against the armrest.

I kept my book open for form’s sake, but the words blurred somewhere around the second paragraph. The aftertaste of the Burrow lingered — Black’s mock flirtation, Molly’s unsubtle nudges — and while Ron had laughed it off in the kitchen, his shoulders still carried the quiet tension of someone enduring too much noise in too little space.

“Still annoyed?” I asked finally.

“Not annoyed,” he said, swirling his tea. “Just… wrung out. I think that was the longest stretch I’ve been home without wanting to crawl into the garden shed just for some peace.”

I set the book down. 

“If it is any comfort, I did not take your mother’s matchmaking seriously.”

That coaxed a low chuckle. 

“Good. ’Cause I’d have to seriously question your judgement if you did.”

I shifted, closing the space between us until my knee brushed his thigh. 

“And Black?”

Ron glanced at me over the rim of his mug, smirking faintly. 

“Please. If he was actually trying to flirt with me, I’d have had to kick him just on principle. That was all for the audience.”

The tension I hadn’t realised I was holding eased a fraction. 

“Good.”

We sat there in companionable quiet, the weight of the day slowly loosening from him. Eventually, he slouched further, until his shoulder rested against my side. It was an unguarded lean, the kind born of trust rather than thought. My hand found its way to his hair, combing absently through the strands until his breathing settled into something slow and even.

Black could keep his games. Molly could keep her matchmaking.
Ron was here, and he had chosen to be.

Chapter Text

PART SIXTEEN

PARTNERS

The fire had burned low, its embers giving the room a copper glow. The hour was late enough that the usual noises from the street had gone silent, and the only sound was the faint clink of Ron’s spoon against his mug as he stirred the last dregs of his tea.

I set my book aside. Not because I had finished the chapter—quite the opposite. The words had blurred together half an hour ago, the moment I realised I would not be able to put this off any longer.

“Ron.” My tone was deliberately even, the sort I used when I wanted his full attention.

He looked up immediately, brow faintly furrowed, the spoon stilling. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I sat back in my chair, steepling my fingers briefly before letting them fall to the armrest. “I have come to a decision. One I expect will… affect you.”

That earned me a more cautious look. 

“Alright…”

“I am ready to tell your family about us.”

His reaction was not the wide-eyed disbelief I had expected—more a quiet blink, a flicker of surprise softened by something warmer. He set the spoon down, pushing the mug aside.

“You’re sure?” he asked, voice low.

“I would not have said it otherwise.” I kept my gaze steady on him, though my pulse had decided this was the perfect moment to betray me with its insistent hammering. “It is… not lost on me that you have shouldered the greater share of our secrecy. You’ve endured the charade in front of your family for my sake, and I am aware that asking you to continue would be selfish.”

He gave me a faint smile. 

“It’s not selfish to want privacy, you know.”

“It is,” I said quietly, “if it comes at the expense of your ease in your own family’s company.”

For a moment, he simply studied me, eyes bright but unreadable. Then he leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. 

“So… are you saying you want to do it now? Or are we talking about some hypothetical, one-day-down-the-line thing?”

“That,” I admitted, “is what I would like to discuss with you. If we are to tell them, we must agree on the timing. Whether it is now, or after… other changes.”

I did not say after you move in. The thought felt too significant to toss into the air so casually.

Ron’s lips quirked faintly. 

“Alright. Let’s talk about it.”

And just like that, the decision was no longer mine alone—it was ours.

Ron settled back in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck like he was loosening tension before a duel. 

“Okay. If we’re doing this… we need to figure out the least catastrophic way of doing it.”

“I expect there is no such thing,” I said dryly.

He huffed a laugh. 

“Fair, but there are levels of catastrophic. I’d rather not go for the highest setting.”

“You have a plan already,” I observed.

“Sort of.” He tapped his fingers against his knee, gaze flicking briefly to the fire before coming back to me. “I think I should tell them first. On my own.”

I regarded him for a beat. 

“So you can shield me from their first reaction.”

“Well, yeah,” he said simply, as if it were obvious. “They’ll get over the initial shock without you having to stand there while they process it, and then when you show up for the meet-the-family lunch, they’ll already be past the worst of it.”

The suggestion was not without logic—yet it sparked an unwelcome twinge, one I recognised as the same unwillingness I’d had to let him fight any battle alone. 

“If we are to do this, I would rather we do it together.”

Ron tilted his head, studying me. 

“You sure? Because it could get… heated.”

“I am accustomed to heat,” I said, allowing the faintest edge of humour into my tone. “And I have no intention of allowing you to absorb every barbed remark alone. If they are to have objections, they may as well voice them with me present.”

His expression softened, though there was still a flicker of concern in it. 

“Alright. Together, then.”

“Together,” I echoed, testing the word in my own mouth. It felt solid.

We sat in a brief, companionable silence, the fire snapping faintly in the grate.

“So,” he said at last, “do we tell them at the Burrow, or do we call a separate meeting just for this?”

“The fewer witnesses, the better,” I replied. “A private gathering. We control the circumstances, the audience, and the timing.”

Ron grinned faintly. 

“Look at you, plotting it like an infiltration mission.”

“Merely planning to survive it.”

His grin widened, but there was a steadiness in his eyes that hadn’t been there when we began the conversation. 

“Alright. Let’s do it your way.” He nodded to himself. “There are options. And given who’s involved, we should probably run through all of them before deciding.”

“Proceed,” I said, because he was clearly itching to start a list.

“Alright — option one: just turn up at Sunday lunch, together, no warning, and let everyone’s faces do the talking.”
“That,” I said flatly, “is a recipe for chaos. We would be unable to control the tone or timing.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d veto that one,” he said, half-smiling. “Option two is the ‘vague hint’ approach. Tell Mum I’m bringing someone, keep it ambiguous, and then walk in with you. Slightly less chaotic, but she’ll spend the night imagining worst-case scenarios — and she’s very creative.”
“On hold,” I said. “Mildly better than the first, but still far too uncontrolled.”

“Option three: tell her it’s my partner I’m bringing. Still no name, just… partner.”
“That softens the surprise, but removes the possibility of her making tactless remarks in front of the entire family because she thinks you’ve simply brought a friend.”
“Exactly,” Ron said. “But — then we’ve got the question of who else to tell beforehand.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “You have suggested telling only your mother. What about your siblings?”

Ron chewed his lip. 

“Telling just Mum makes sense because she’s the one most likely to take it personally if she’s blindsided. Bill’s the calm one, though — and if I tell him too, he might… you know. Rein her in a bit.”
“And if you tell Bill,” I pointed out, “you will be accused of playing favourites.”

He sighed. 

“True. But if I don’t tell anyone except her, the rest of them are all going to feel ambushed.”

“Then tell none of them,” I suggested. “We announce it in person, together, and allow them to respond — but not speculate — beforehand.”

Ron tapped the arm of the sofa. 

“So — that means the options are: Tell just Mum. Tell Mum and Bill. Tell no one.”

“Yes. And of those, I would discard ‘no one.’”

“Yeah, agreed,” Ron said. “So it’s between telling just her or her and Bill. I vote just her — keeps the circle small, but still gives her time to adjust.”

I considered that. 

“Acceptable. And the wording?”

“I’m leaning toward the partner option,” Ron said. “No name. Just — I’ll be bringing my partner to lunch. She can read into it whatever she likes, but she’ll know it’s serious.”

“Then we are agreed,” I said. “You will tell her privately the day before. I will prepare myself for Sunday.”

He grinned. 

“It’s a date, then.”

I refrained from pointing out that, if all went to plan, it might be the last Sunday lunch where we were both invited without suspicion.

The clock on the mantel ticked with an irritating regularity, its hands moving far slower than physics should have allowed.
I’d told myself I wasn’t waiting — I was merely reading — but the same paragraph had blurred before my eyes for the better part of twenty minutes.

He should have been back by now.

Ridiculous thought, really. He was hardly traipsing into enemy territory, merely to his mother’s. Still, the knowledge that he had gone there with the express purpose of planting the seed for Sunday’s reveal left me with the disquiet of an experiment running in another room, out of sight, beyond my control.

The lock clicked. Boots on the mat. Cloak hung with a familiar thud on the peg.

Ron stepped into the sitting room looking… not defeated, but certainly drained. 

“Well,” he said, dropping onto the sofa with all the grace of a felled tree, “that was a ride.”

I set my book aside. 

“Enlighten me.”

“She was… enthusiastic,” he said after a pause. “Asked about twelve questions before I’d even taken my coat off. First one — and I should’ve guessed this — was whether it was Sirius.”

My lips pressed thin. 

“Charming.”

“I told her no,” Ron said, “but then she went into overdrive — was it someone she knew, did we meet at work, did we go to school together…” He gave a small, humourless laugh. “And I deflected every single one. Felt like playing a particularly nosy game of chess, except she didn’t even pretend she wasn’t after my king.”

I arched a brow. 

“And she accepted that?”

“Not happily,” Ron admitted. “But she didn’t push too hard. Just… made me promise I’d bring him on Sunday.”

I could see the faint tightness in his shoulders, the kind he tried to smooth away in my presence.
“She is already building her expectations,” I said slowly. “And her theories.”

“Yeah,” Ron muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “And that’s the bit that’s making me nervous. I just… I want all the people I care about to at least accept each other. Doesn’t have to be hugs and sunshine, but—” He stopped, jaw working. “I don’t want to sit there feeling like I’ve got to referee between you and them.”

I let my gaze rest on him a moment longer than was comfortable. This was what it cost him, then — not merely the announcement, but the weight of possible collision between two worlds that had, until now, been kept carefully apart.

“It is possible,” I said, “that they will surprise you.”

He gave a crooked half-smile. 

“And it’s possible that Fred and George will decide to take up embroidery as a quiet hobby. But I’m not betting on it.”

His humour didn’t mask the apprehension in his eyes. And though I would have sworn I was indifferent to the Weasleys’ opinion of me, I found myself… resenting the idea that their acceptance mattered to him, and that I could jeopardise it simply by being who I am.

I’d already resigned myself to a late dinner by the time the clock crept past eight, but the creeping unease was harder to ignore. Ron had an impressive talent for coming home later than planned in a state that made me reach for the potions cabinet — a limp, a bite, the occasional scorch mark — and I was already running through possibilities when the front door finally opened.

No limp. No blood. Just a very distinct air of exasperation radiating off him like static.

He shut the door with more force than necessary, muttering something under his breath, and kicked his shoes into the corner.
“Mum babbled to Ginny,” he announced flatly.

I raised an eyebrow, the tension in my shoulders easing — no visible injuries, at least. 

“I take it she didn’t confine herself to delivering the news in a restrained, factual manner?”

Ron made a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh that had no humour in it. He dropped onto the sofa like a stone, leaning back until his head rested against the cushions, eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance.

“She cornered me after work. I’d stopped at my flat to grab something, and there she was, lying in wait. Questioned me like Mum did — all the same rubbish about how long we’ve been together, where we met, did we go to school together — but on top of that…” He pulled a face, the memory clearly unpleasant. “She started teasing. About what kind of bloke I’d introduce to the family. ‘Knowing my type,’ she said. And she wouldn’t leave. I was two seconds away from bodily chucking her out so I could get here.”

A flicker of heat curled in my chest — protective, irritated heat. I kept my expression neutral, though my gaze sharpened.
“She sees it as her right to interrogate you?”

“She sees it as her job,” he muttered. “Like she’s Mum’s deputy in family gossip control.”

I sat down beside him, watching the faint crease between his brows. It was a familiar expression — the one he wore when he’d been hounded past the point of finding it amusing, but was still holding himself in check.

“That’s two members of your family who have now decided that this is public sport,” I said quietly. “And they still don’t know who they’re discussing.”

His mouth quirked, but it wasn’t quite a smile. 

“Yeah. Imagine what they’ll be like when they do.”

I didn’t imagine it. I was already anticipating it and weighing how best to keep that future interrogation from turning into another one-sided siege.

By late morning, the kitchen looked like a bakery that had staged a coup. Every available surface had been claimed by cooling racks, flour dust, and the kind of chaos only Ron could produce without losing his rhythm.

He moved between the counter and the oven in an unbroken circuit — rolling, cutting, sliding trays in and out, muttering under his breath about temperatures and timing. The air was thick with cinnamon, nutmeg, and the faint tang of burnt sugar from a batch that had apparently failed his inspection.

This was his version of preparation. Stress baking. In silence, mostly, except for the occasional thump of a bowl being set down harder than necessary.

I’d learned long ago that interrupting him mid-flow was counterproductive, so I let him work and retreated to my own form of preparation. The sitting room was quieter, but no less crowded — in my case, with thought rather than pastry.

Tomorrow, we’d walk into the Burrow together. Not simply as Ron Weasley and Severus Snape — as if that pairing weren’t enough to make Molly’s eyebrows attempt escape velocity — but as partners. The word still felt new in my mind when applied to us, its weight simultaneously steadying and exposing.

I reviewed scenarios in my head with the same detached efficiency I might apply to a duel — Molly’s questions, the twins’ inevitable commentary, Ginny’s grin that would say far too much without a word. I measured my responses, ran through variables, considered how much to answer and how much to ignore. I didn’t expect a fight — Ron’s family weren’t cruel — but approval wasn’t guaranteed. And that mattered to him.

When I finally wandered back into the kitchen, he was dusted with flour to the elbows, a faint smear of chocolate near his jaw, and entirely focused on piping something delicate onto the tops of small tarts.

“You’re attempting to feed them into goodwill?” I asked, leaning against the doorway.

He didn’t look up. 

“You’ve got your way of dealing with stress. This is mine.”

“And if they don’t like what I have to say?”

That made him pause. He set the piping bag down and glanced over, mouth curling faintly. 

“Then they can still take a tart for the road.”

I huffed something that might have been a laugh and crossed the room to stand beside him. The smell was cloying, but I stayed there anyway, watching the steadiness of his hands as he worked. He was calm now, in that oddly methodical way baking brought out in him, but I could feel the tension beneath it — the same knot I carried in my own chest.

Tomorrow, we’d untie it. Or tighten it, depending on how things went.

That night, Spinner’s End was unusually still. No wind against the windows, no pipes groaning. Just the faint hum of the old radiator and the sound of Ron’s breathing beside me.

We’d gone to bed later than usual — he’d insisted on packing the baked goods just so, with labelled tins for the savouries and paper-lined boxes for the sweets. I’d pretended not to notice when he double-checked the seals before turning in.

Now, the lights were out, and he lay on his side facing me, one arm folded under his pillow. His hair was a little wild from the pillowcase, the lingering smell of cinnamon still clinging to him.

We hadn’t said the word “nervous” all day. Not once. But it hovered there between us, as tangible as the warmth under the blankets.

“You’re thinking about tomorrow,” he murmured. It wasn’t a question.

“So are you.”

A small huff escaped him, almost a laugh but not quite. 

“Yeah. Guess I am.”

Silence again. I could feel his gaze on me in the dark, could almost hear the unspoken I hope they’re good to you.

“They’ll survive the truth,” I said finally.

He smirked faintly. 

“That’s my line.”

I thought he might say something else, but instead, he shuffled closer, the blankets shifting, and pressed his forehead lightly against my collarbone. His arm came around my waist, easy and familiar.

Neither of us spoke again. The quiet wasn’t tense — not quite — but it was weighted, like the pause before a leap. I let my hand rest against the back of his neck, fingers brushing the edge of his hair.

Sleep didn’t come quickly, but when it did, it was with the thought that tomorrow we’d walk in together, and whatever reaction waited for us, we’d meet it the same way. Side by side.

The moment we stepped into the kitchen, every conversation faltered. Molly Weasley was by the stove, ladle poised mid-stir, eyes snapping from her son to me in an instant. Her smile for Ron was warm but too bright, too fixed.

“Ron, dear! And—Severus.” Her tone cooled by half a degree on my name, though her manners held. “Come in, come in. Coats on the hooks.”

Ron gave her a breezy “Hi, Mum,” entirely at odds with the faint tightness in his shoulders. I hung my own cloak beside his, watching her watch us, noting the minute flinch of her gaze at how close together they hung.

We hadn’t even taken three steps toward the table before the twins pounced.

“Oh, brilliant, Ron,” Fred crowed. “Best Polyjuice prank yet.”

“Yeah,” George said, grinning at me as if I were the punchline, “who is he really? Sirius? Kingsley? You went big this time, little brother.”

Ron didn’t break stride, just said flatly, 

“It’s not a prank.”

The words landed like a pin-drop in the kitchen. For a heartbeat, the only sound was the bubbling of something on the hob.

George laughed. 

“Good one—”

“Not a prank,” Ron repeated, voice even, final.

It was almost comical, the way the twins’ grins faltered in unison.

And then Molly exploded.

“Not a prank? Then—oh, Ron—” She set down her ladle with a clatter. “This didn’t start when you were still in school, did it? Tell me it didn’t!”

“Mum—”

“You promise me right now—”

“Mum—”

“I wish you’d told me sooner, I’m your mother, I shouldn’t be finding out like this—”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Percy’s lips press into a thin line as he nodded once at her “school” accusation, as if weighing it in some mental ledger.

Ginny broke in then, her voice amused but not unkind. 

“So this is who you’ve been keeping quiet about?” She gave Ron a grin that was equal parts curiosity and sibling mischief.

Potter, standing beside her, offered a stiff, “Congratulations,” that sounded as though he was reading from a cue card. His expression suggested he was still attempting to recalibrate his worldview.

Bill simply asked, “How long have you two been together?” in a tone so neutral it was almost disarming. Fleur stayed beside him, smiling politely, but I could see the calculation in her eyes as she assessed the room.

The twins recovered quickly from their initial shock, pivoting with seamless skill.

“So—” Fred leaned forward over the table, smirking— “do you call him Professor at home?”

George elbowed his twin. 

“Or is that only on weekends?”

Molly hissed their names like a curse, which of course only encouraged them.

Ron rolled his eyes, muttering something about “bloody children” under his breath, but I caught the faint pink climbing his ears.

And then Molly shifted tack, her voice going soft, almost wounded. 

“You could have told me. You didn’t trust me. Do you know how that feels?”

Her gaze flicked to me, sharpened. 

“I haven’t forgotten you stood by while my son was tortured in that graveyard, and I saw what those lessons during the war did to him—hours afterwards, he was pale and shaking. And now you expect me to believe you care for him?”

The room went still. A charged, brittle silence settled over the table, the sort that made every chair creak sound louder. I caught the faint hitch of breath from somewhere to my left, and someone’s quiet gasp before they clamped it down.

Then Ron’s voice cut through, low and icy enough to frost the cutlery.

“You don’t have to believe it, Mum. But you will accept that every choice he made in those moments kept me alive to stand here today. You weren’t there. You don’t get to rewrite what happened.”

He didn’t raise his voice, but the edge in it was sharp enough to draw blood.

The silence after his words was absolute. Even the usual creak of the Burrow seemed to have stilled. Someone, somewhere at the table, sucked in a sharp breath and forgot to let it out.

Molly Weasley stared at her son, visibly rattled. She hadn’t expected this—few here would have. Weasley’s usual temperament was all easy humour and fiery temperaments, not this icy precision, this measured venom that made the room itself draw back.

“I only—” she started, voice smaller now, her fingers whitening where they gripped the tablecloth. “I only want to be sure you’re safe, Ronald. He’s—” Her eyes flicked to me and away again. “—he’s not the sort of man people expect you to be with. You must understand a mother worries.”

She pressed on, but the bite was gone, replaced with something tentative. Even so, I could see her searching for a foothold, for a way to keep her fears voiced without provoking the same cold anger again.

Before her words could build momentum, Bill intervened with the ease of a man used to stopping trouble before it gathered force.
“All right,” he said, tone smooth but decisive. “We’ve all got questions, and they’ll get answered in time. But this isn’t the way to have that conversation.”

It worked—enough. Molly held back, lips pursed, though her eyes remained fixed on her son. Ron held her gaze a moment longer before turning away.

The rest of the table remained in stunned quiet. The twins, for once, were silent, their eyes flicking between brother and mother with the faintest trace of unease. Potter was visibly wincing, and the youngest Weasley was watching her brother with a certain recognition—the look of someone who’d seen that side of him before and knew better than to interrupt it.

I stayed silent as the tension thinned by degrees. His control had been absolute—more effective than any display of temper—and it had unsettled them all far more than raised voices would have.

And it unsettled me, too, though not in the same way. I had wondered—privately, and often—how he would fare if his family turned on him over us. I had feared the toll it might take, the weight of it pressing him into old habits of deflection and self-effacement. But seeing him here, meeting his mother’s barbs without flinching or faltering, made me reconsider.

He could defend himself. He could defend us.

Molly’s eyes searched his face a moment longer, then she nodded—once, curtly—and turned toward the kitchen. 

“Well,” she said, rallying in the same brisk, businesslike tone she used when wrangling seven unruly children, “the roast will be getting cold.”

The moment fractured. People shifted in their seats, breathed again. The scrape of cutlery on plates began as Molly busied herself with bringing in the food, and conversation stumbled back into being with the faltering momentum of a carriage that had narrowly avoided derailing.

The twins were the first to test the air, leaning forward together, their eyes flicking between Ron and me like they were watching for cracks in a wall.
“So… when’s the wedding?” George asked, tone half-joking, half-probing.

Fred grinned. 

“Or is that third date stuff for you two?”

Ron didn’t rise to it. He gave them a flat look that would have sent first-years running for the Library. 

“Eat your food,” he said.

Bill, ever the diplomat, waited for the chuckles to die down before asking, in a tone so measured it could have belonged in a Gringotts negotiation, 

“How long have you two been… together?”

It was not a hostile question, merely curious, but I felt the tension ripple through the table all the same.
Ron’s fork paused mid-air. His gaze flicked sideways to me — not long enough to be obvious, but unmistakably deliberate. An unspoken question.
Do we tell them?

It caught me off guard. I had assumed he would answer without hesitation, push the narrative forward as he had with every other barb and query today. But instead, he gave me the choice.
I gave a single, measured nod.

Ron’s mouth quirked faintly — gratitude or acknowledgement, I couldn’t tell — before he set his fork down.
“A little under a year,” he said, his voice steady.

The effect was subtle but visible — Molly’s eyes sharpened, the faintest twitch in her jaw betraying the mental arithmetic she was undoubtedly doing. The twins exchanged a look that was less amusement now and more intrigue, though I could see the unspoken are we still sure this isn’t some elaborate prank? flicker between them.

Ginny leaned forward, curious but not cutting, while Potter — sitting stiffly beside her — looked like he was still running the statement through some internal translation spell.
Percy didn’t flinch, though I caught the barest nod, as though the timeline, short as it was, did not entirely soothe him.

Molly spoke again, her voice softer than before, but there was an edge under it.
“And you… You’re telling me this began after the war? After you left school?”

Ron’s gaze stayed on her, steady and unwavering. 

“Yes.”

It was true, and he let the single word hang in the air, no room for misinterpretation, no crack for her to wedge another accusation into.

The conversation fractured then, several voices rising at once — the twins pushing for details (“Merlin, Ron, you’ve been hiding that from us for a year?”), Ginny asking how we’d met again in the post-war sense, Fleur murmuring something to Bill in French that earned a raised brow from him and from Ron.

I said nothing, answering only when directly addressed, my gaze skimming the table and taking in the way they were all digesting this new arrangement.
Some with amusement.
Some with suspicion.
But all of them — without exception — accepting the fact that it was no longer hypothetical.

Through it all, Ron’s hand brushed against mine under the table just once, a fleeting contact no one else saw. And though I knew the evening was far from over, the gesture was enough to keep my jaw unclenched until the plates were cleared.

And across the noise, Ron caught my eye again, just for a second, the look saying as plainly as words:
We’re doing this together.

Chapter Text

PART SEVENTEEN

JUST LOGISTICS

The door had barely clicked shut behind us when I felt him close the distance.
I hadn’t even removed my coat before his arms slid around my waist, his head turning in against the crook of my neck. He breathed once, deep and unhurried, and then simply stayed there — no words, no preamble, as though the effort of speech was more than he could spend after the day we’d had.

His weight was not heavy, but it was definite — a conscious leaning that spoke of weariness not of the body but of something quieter, more corrosive. Emotional attrition, from a meal conducted under scrutiny and undercurrents.

I stood very still. Not because I didn’t wish to respond, but because I knew the fragility of this exact kind of exhaustion. It is the sort that can retreat if you crowd it or break if you force it into conversation.

The scent of woodsmoke from the Burrow still clung to his hair. His breath, warm against my throat, was steadying in its own right. Without thinking, I allowed my hand to rest between his shoulder blades, thumb brushing lightly along the seam of his jumper.

It was not lost on me that he had chosen this — chosen me — as his first refuge when we returned. The afternoon had been rife with knowing glances, blunt questions, and at least one moment sharp enough to slice open old grievances. And yet, here he was, folding himself against me as if there were nowhere else in the world he would rather be.

A part of me — the part that still calculated, that still kept contingencies stacked in mental rows — wanted to analyse it, catalogue what it meant for the next step we might take. But another part, quieter and far less disciplined, simply wanted to keep him right here until the memory of the Burrow’s watchful eyes was nothing more than a shadow.

I bent my head fractionally, enough that my breath stirred his hair, and let the silence stand for us both.

The stillness held for a long moment — long enough that the only sound was the faint tick of the clock in the hall. His breathing slowed, evened, the faint tension in his arms easing as if the contact itself siphoned away the day’s weight.

“I needed that,” he murmured at last, voice muffled against my collar.

“I gathered,” I said quietly, my hand still at his back. I felt, rather than saw, the faint quirk of his mouth at my tone.

He didn’t move away. 

“It’s done now, at least. No more wondering when or how to tell them. No more… carrying it like a bloody live wire in my pocket.”

I made a low sound of assent. He was right, the most volatile part of the ordeal was over. The judgment had been delivered, questions asked, lines drawn.

“You do realise,” he added, finally leaning back enough to look at me, “that from now on, you’re coming with me every Sunday. Mum will insist. It’s her way of proving she accepts you.”

I arched a brow. 

“A dubious form of hospitality.”

His smile grew, small but more genuine now. 

“You’ll survive. You survived today.”

He was wrong. I had done more than survive. And perhaps, in the quiet that followed, I could admit to myself why.

We migrated, unspoken, to the sitting room. He collapsed into his usual place on the sofa while I went to fetch tea. No words passed between us until I set the mugs down and joined him, the fire throwing low light across the room.

He’d kicked off his shoes, legs curled up beneath him, shoulders drawn but no longer taut. The lines around his mouth softened with every sip.

“Feels quieter here,” he said at last, gaze on the flames.

“It generally does.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. 

“That’s why I like it.” A beat, then: “It’s why I keep ending up here instead of my flat. Feels… less temporary.”

Less temporary.

I made a noncommittal sound, but the words lodged. He was right; he was here more often than not. His books found their way into my shelves, his scarf hung beside mine in the hall, and the kettle seemed to anticipate his preferred tea as much as I did.

He stretched, finally leaning into my side with that careless familiarity that had once startled me. I let my arm rest across his shoulders, fingers idly tracing the seam of his sleeve.

He didn’t see the thought as it settled: that the quiet suited him, that the walls didn’t feel so empty with him in them, and that perhaps it was time we stopped pretending he lived anywhere else at all.

The house was too quiet.
I had been staring at the same page for the better part of twenty minutes, my eyes tracing the lines without registering a single word. The words were not the problem; they simply had the misfortune of competing with my own thoughts.

I had already admitted—if only to myself—that I wanted Ron to move in. The thought no longer surprised me. It no longer carried that faint, wary recoil it once had. The idea sat, steady and solid, like a door I could walk through whenever I chose.

And yet, the timing…

I turned the page, realised I had no memory of the previous one, and shut the book with a quiet snap. The table lamp threw a small, warm pool of light across the arm of my chair. Outside, the wind made its usual restless patrol down the street. It should have been a night for uninterrupted reading.

This week was already spoken for.
The anniversary of Dumbledore’s death loomed on the calendar—a date that did not simply pass, but settled over the days before and after like a damp, clinging fog. Ron never said much about it, but I knew it pressed on him as it did on me. Asking him to change his living arrangements on the heels of that would be in poor taste.

Then, almost immediately after, came Valentine’s Day.
The very notion made me want to sneer. If I were to bring up the idea then, no matter how careful my wording, Ron would suspect it was a whim born of the day’s manufactured sentiment. He might even think I had been… influenced by whatever saccharine nonsense was plastered across shop windows. I had no intention of cheapening the matter with such a backdrop.

No. I would wait.
Better to let the anniversary pass, let the red-and-pink frivolity fade, and choose a moment unburdened by grief or spectacle. When I asked him, he would know the decision was deliberate. Considered. Final.

I set the book on the table beside me, fingers resting on the cover for a moment. Patience, I told myself, had its uses. The right moment would make the answer sweeter.

And if I were being honest, I already knew what his answer would be.

The Prophet lay folded on the table, the top edge of the front page curling slightly from the steam of my tea. I had been avoiding it all morning, as though the mere act of not turning the page might prevent whatever nonsense they had chosen to print today from existing. But the anniversary had arrived, and Skeeter never missed an opportunity to wring something venomous from it.

I unfolded the paper.

The headline was as artless as it was calculated:
“UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT DUMBLEDORE’S FINAL MOMENTS”

Below, Skeeter’s byline sat like a signature on a forged confession. The first paragraphs recapped the official version—Dumbledore dying of magical exhaustion after years of waging a secret war—and then the prose shifted, subtle as a Bludger to the head.

According to “sources,” Ron and I had been the only ones with him when he died.
According to Skeeter, no one knew what had truly occurred in those final minutes. She allowed her readers to make their own conclusions, but salted the field with just enough implication to lead them to the gutter. Words like conspired and unaccounted for were dropped with surgical precision. She even went so far as to note that no autopsy had been performed—an omission she dressed up as “convenient.” And then came the poison tip of her quill: could the death of the most powerful wizard of his age truly be attributed to simple exhaustion?

My jaw tightened. The tea sat untouched.

The truth was far more prosaic and far crueller.
By the time Dumbledore returned to Hogwarts that night, he had been a breath away from collapse. Merlin only knew where he had been or what had driven him to such a state, but I had seen the way he gripped the edge of a table for balance, the parchment pallor of his skin. Pomfrey and I had worked without pause, using every ounce of skill and magic at our disposal, but all we had bought him were hours. Enough to summon those he wished to see—six people in all. Enough to say what he wanted to say. Enough to choose the place where he would draw his last breath.

I folded the paper shut and set it aside, but the words remained, burrowed in the quiet spaces of my mind. Skeeter could speculate all she liked; she had not been there. She had not seen the man who had carried half the war on his shoulders finally lay it down.

And she had not heard the last thing he said. Nor did I. And some memories were not for her ink, nor for anyone else’s.

I considered, briefly, leaving the paper where it lay and Vanishing it before he came home.
The impulse was almost… protective.

Ron would read it, of course—he read everything Skeeter printed about him—but there was a difference between finding it folded neatly on the kitchen table and having it shoved under your nose. The former gave you time to decide when you were ready to confront it. The latter felt like a summons.

But then I thought of him walking through the door, spotting the faint edge of guilt in my expression, and knowing immediately that I had kept something from him. That was worse. Infinitely worse.

He did not thank me for sheltering him from things. He never had.

So I slid the paper to his side of the table, aligning it squarely, headline up. No softening of the blow. No trimming away the barbs Skeeter had left for us.

If he wanted to ignore it, he could. If he wanted to read it and curse every line, he could do that too. What I would not do was pretend it didn’t exist.

I sat back, hands around my untouched tea, and waited for the sound of the door.

Ron stepped into the sitting room with the faint creak of the door, shaking snow from his hair. He unwound his scarf as he crossed to the low table where I’d left the Daily Prophet.

He didn’t even sit before his eyes caught the front page. Skeeter’s headline stretched across it in her usual blend of innuendo and bile.

Ron read in silence, his mouth tightening with each paragraph. When he finished, he folded the paper once, twice, pressing the edges flat with deliberate care.

“Dumbledore chose to die this way,” he said at last, his voice low, flat. “No one else could have stopped him.”

That—more than Skeeter’s latest poison—made me still.
Not the bitterness in his tone, but the certainty.

I turned my head fully toward him. 

“What precisely do you mean by that?”

Ron glanced at me, reading my expression as though weighing how much he wanted to give away. His eyes flicked to the folded paper in his hands, then back to me. 

“You’ve guessed, haven’t you?”

I said nothing. That was enough of an answer.

He sighed, came around the table, and sat beside me. 

“He wasn’t dying because of… nothing. He’d just got back from breaking into Gringotts. Bellatrix’s vault. There was a Horcrux in there—the cup. He wanted to get it himself, instead of leaving the job to me. And he did. But…” He shook his head. “It took a lot out of him.”

The pieces clicked into the shape I’d half-suspected for years. The absences. The faint smell of ash and dragon-fire clinging to his robes when I first saw him that night. Ron’s own half-clues and his tiptoeing around the two seemingly unlinked events.

“You knew all this time,” I said quietly.

“Yeah.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “He was on borrowed time and the clock was ticking. You knew it. I knew it. He knew it. He wanted his death to have a purpose. And no one—not me, not you, not McGonagall—could’ve stopped him.”

I looked at him then, truly looked, and saw not the prefect boy who’d stood at Dumbledore’s side that night, but the man who had carried that knowledge alone, and carried it without using it to burnish his own legend.

Ron didn’t look at me after that, and I didn’t press him.
It was enough—for now—to have the shape of the truth, even if the edges still blurred.

But later, when he left the room to fetch more tea, my mind slipped back to that night.

When the moment came, Dumbledore’d been propped up against the pillows, his skin thin as paper, the air in the room tasting faintly of smoke. Ron had sat beside him, their hands clasped, heads inclined in quiet conversation.

And then—impossibly—Dumbledore had smiled. Not the tight, pained curve he’d worn since his illness began, but something serene. As though whatever Ron had told him had not only eased his passing but made it welcome.

I’d never asked what words had bought him that peace. Perhaps I’d feared the answer.

Now, hearing the quiet conviction in Ron’s voice, I realised he still carried that final moment like a sealed letter in his pocket—one I was not yet meant to open.

And though curiosity burned in me, I knew I would not demand it.

The scratching of my quill filled the room, steady as the ticking of the mantel clock. The reply to this particular client had been delayed far too long, and I was forcing myself to focus, though the quiet beside me kept pulling my attention.

Ron was on the rug, one leg stretched out and the other folded, a loose shirt hanging half-open at the throat. The coffee table had been cleared to make space for his deck, the cards laid out in the careful, precise arc that only came from long habit.

He didn’t notice me watching — or if he did, he didn’t comment. His brows were drawn in that faintly pensive expression he wore when he was deciding whether to take a card at face value or dig for some hidden thread between them. A fingertip tapped the edge of one card twice before he turned it, the movement so natural it was almost unconscious.

I had no faith in such things. Even the concept of “divination” had always struck me as a romanticised excuse for selective memory. Yet with him, the ritual didn’t seem like grasping at shadows. It was focus, pattern, method — all things I could respect. He wasn’t chasing prophecy. He was thinking. Sorting. Weighing.

It had become such a fixture of our evenings together that I now found myself attuned to it: the soft shuffle, the pause as he glanced at a particular card as if it were a familiar face, the way his thumb brushed the deck’s edge before drawing. Watching him work through it had a quiet steadiness to it, the sort of rhythm that settled in one’s bones without permission.

When I looked back at my own parchment, I realised I had written the last two sentences of the letter without consciously thinking about them.

He murmured something under his breath — a name of a card, or perhaps a thought — and I let my eyes rest on him once more, the golden lamplight catching in his hair. I wouldn’t call it faith in the cards. But I trusted his mind, his instincts, in ways I’d never admit aloud.

And so, without saying anything, I returned to my quill, the faint sound of shuffling and the scent of parchment ink mingling into something quietly, unexpectedly domestic.

Ron gathered the cards into a neat stack with a few unhurried taps against the wood, sliding them back into their worn case. He set it on the table, then glanced up, and caught my gaze before I could school it into disinterest.

An amused spark lit his eyes. 

“You think it’s stupid, don’t you? Believing in Divination?”

I kept my quill poised above the parchment for a beat longer before setting it down deliberately. 

“I think,” I said evenly, “that most who claim to practise it are charlatans… but that some know how to use symbols to sharpen their own thoughts. That, I don’t consider stupid.”

His smile didn’t fade. Instead, it curled into something far too knowing — the expression that reminded me he was a fox Animagus in more than just form.

“Funny thing,” he said lightly, as if commenting on the weather, “back when Trelawney was teaching us relationship spreads, I did one for you and me. Cards said we’d end up together.”

I held his gaze, trying to decide whether he was serious or baiting me. His tone was casual, almost lazy, but there was a glint in his eyes that suggested deliberate provocation.

If it were true, I could only imagine the chaos it would have caused if he’d voiced that prediction while still my student. If it was a fabrication, it was unsettlingly well-tailored to disarm me now.

“I see,” I said finally, my voice dry. “And tell me — was that revelation before or after you decided to test it by pursuing me?”

His grin deepened, which was no answer at all. I returned to my letter, though the quill hovered uselessly over the parchment for a long moment. Whether I believed him or not hardly mattered. The thought of him sitting there, years ago, turning over cards with my name in mind… lodged itself in my mind in a way I suspected it would not leave quickly.

The fourteenth dawned grey and damp, the kind of weather that would have flattened even the most desperate florist’s bouquets and sent gaudy heart-shaped balloons sagging into the gutter. Perfect, I thought, for ignoring the entire spectacle.

Ron, predictably, had not ignored it. He wasn’t one for glitter and pink icing, but the moment I walked into the sitting room that morning, there was a plate on the coffee table — biscuits cut into fox shapes, the edges dipped in dark chocolate, still faintly warm. He was stretched out on the sofa, hair mussed from sleep, reading the Prophet with one hand and holding a mug of tea in the other as if he hadn’t done anything remarkable.

“You’re early,” he said, glancing up at me. “And damp. You’re dripping on the rug.”

I ignored the comment, sat beside him, and took one of the biscuits. It was rich, perfectly baked, and maddeningly moreish. I could almost feel the smug satisfaction rolling off him when I reached for a second.

He hadn’t said the words Valentine’s Day once, but the gesture — simple, quiet, deliberate — pressed against a thought I’d been holding back for weeks. I wanted him here, not just today. Not just in these rare unbroken stretches, but every evening, every morning. The Weasley lunch had proved the first hurdle could be cleared; now it was a matter of timing.

Today was not the day. Anything asked on Valentine’s could too easily be dismissed as a whim or a surrender to sentimentality, and what I meant to ask him was neither. So I swallowed the words before they could take shape.

He set his mug down and tilted his head to look at me. 

“You’ve gone quiet. More than usual, I mean.”

“Miraculous that you notice,” I replied.

His mouth curved, slow and knowing. 

“You’re thinking about something.”

I was — about moving him in, about furniture arrangements, about how the kitchen could accommodate two people cooking at once. But I only reached for another biscuit. 

“Nothing of consequence.”

He smirked. 

“I’ll get it out of you eventually.”

I let him think so.

Ron had fallen asleep not long after midnight, warm and heavy against my side, his breathing deep and even. The remnants of the day — crumbs on the coffee table, an empty teapot, the faint scent of chocolate — lingered in the air like a quiet aftertaste.

I stared into the dark, listening to the rhythmic creak of the old house in the wind. My mind, treacherous as ever, circled back to the same thought it had stalked all day: I want him here. Not as a guest. Not as a visitor whose absence leaves the rooms feeling hollow. Permanently.

The family hurdle had been cleared — more or less. His mother’s glare might not soften for some time, but she had not barred the door, and no one else had tried to drag him away from me. The worst of it was behind us. All that remained was to ask.

But not now. Not tonight, not in the residue of Valentine’s warmth. I would not have him think the question was born of red-paper hearts and an excess of sugar. What I meant to ask him was solid, deliberate — something that deserved its own space, not to be lost in a haze of seasonal sentiment.

I turned my head slightly, looking at him in the dim light spilling from the streetlamp beyond the curtains. His hair was a mess against the pillow, his face slack in sleep, one arm still draped across my ribs like he intended to keep me there by force if necessary.

It would wait. I would wait. Until the last traces of roses and chocolate had faded, until it was clear the question stood on its own merit. Then I would ask, and I would have him here for good.

For now, I reached down and covered his hand with mine, and let the night take me.

Ron was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled to the elbow, the scent of cinnamon and something faintly citrus hanging in the air. I’d been watching him from the doorway longer than I’d meant to, weighing the words in my mind the way I might weigh an untested potion — checking its balance, its risk of volatility.

He turned at last, spotting me. 

“Tea’s on. Give me two minutes.”

Two minutes. I could wait two more minutes. I’d already waited through the anniversary, through the holiday, through enough long nights of convincing myself the timing wasn’t right. But as I watched him move, at ease in my kitchen, in our evenings, the decision crystallised.

When he came back into the sitting room with the teapot, I spoke before my better caution could interfere. 

“You should move in.”

He froze mid-step. 

“That’s… one way to start tea,” he said, setting the pot down with exaggerated care.

“I’m not suggesting it lightly.” My voice sounded steadier than I’d expected. “I’ve considered it — at length. The arrangement suits us. We already spend most of our time together, and I—” I hesitated, aware that I was treading the edge of sentiment. “I prefer it that way.”

His eyes searched mine — the quick, sharp assessment he did when deciding if I was joking, testing, or dead serious. 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” No qualification, no retreat. “Unless you’re not.”

He huffed a quiet laugh, sitting opposite me, leaning forward on his elbows. 

“No, I’m not not sure. I just… didn’t expect you to say it first.”

I allowed myself a faint smirk. 

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m capable of initiative.”

The corner of his mouth curled. 

“Alright, then. I’ll move in.” 

He said it without hesitation, as though the idea had already been living quietly in his own mind.

And just like that, the matter was settled. The tension I’d been carrying — unacknowledged but constant — eased, leaving a strange, weightless space in its place.

Now all that remained was deciding where his things would go… and bracing for the inevitable chaos of actually combining our lives.

Ron leaned back, clearly pleased with himself, but I could see the wheels already turning.
“So… do I just apparate my stuff over and pile it in the hall, or should I give you time to clear space first?”

“Clear space,” I said dryly, “implies that space exists in surplus. Which it does not.”

He grinned. 

“So… we’ll make space.”

“You will make space,” I corrected, “by determining which of your inexplicable hoard of jumpers you can part with. I refuse to dedicate an entire wardrobe to knitwear in seventeen shades of orange.”

“They’re rust,” he said, mock-offended. “And they’re seasonal.”

“They’re offensive,” I replied, which earned me a laugh and a muttered, “Merlin, you’re lucky I love you.”

I poured the tea, passing him his cup. 

“We’ll need to set boundaries.”

“Like what?”

“No creatures in the house.”

He snorted into his tea. 

“Fine. But that means no jars of pickled… whatever you’ve got on that shelf in the bedroom.”

“Specimens,” I said, perfectly calm.

“Creepy,” he shot back, still smiling.

It occurred to me, as we sat there negotiating the coexistence of cauldrons and knitwear, that I had worried about this moment for nothing. The reality was simple: I wanted him here. He wanted to be here. Everything else was just… logistics.

Chapter Text

PART EIGHTEEN

COMBINATION

I had been in the room for less than two minutes before my patience was tried.
On the second shelf, three identical green covers caught my eye. I removed them one by one, turning to where Ron knelt on the floor, half-buried in an open crate.

“You own,” I said, weighing the absurd stack in my hand, “three copies of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?”

Without looking up, he replied, 

“They keep being eaten.”

I stared at the back of his head. 

“Eaten,” I repeated, because sometimes repetition was the only way to absorb idiocy.

“Mm-hmm.” He shoved a collection of battered scrolls into the crate. “The first one went to a doxy infestation—long story. The second was… I think it was a chizpurfle? Anyway, I’ve learned to keep backups.”

“Backups,” I said, flatly.

“You mock,” he went on, “but you’ve never seen the devastation a hungry puffskein can do to a reference section.”

It was a measure of my control that I did not immediately consign all three copies to the fire. I placed one deliberately into the donate pile.

He rescued it with the indignation of a child snatching sweets back from a sibling.

“That’s not how this works,” he told me, holding the book to his chest like a rescued kitten. “You don’t have the authority to bin my things.”

“On the contrary,” I said, turning to the next shelf and removing a hideous ceramic mug shaped like a dragon, “I believe I have an obligation to do so.”

“That,” he said, plucking it from my hand with a glare, “was a gift. From Charlie. In Romania. It’s history.”

“It’s a biohazard,” I muttered, returning to the shelves before the urge to ‘accidentally’ drop it overcame me.

The process repeated itself: I identified something unsuitable for human habitation; he defended it as though I had insulted a beloved family member. We exchanged barbs, skirting around each other in the small space without colliding—without even thinking about it.

Somewhere between the mug and an appalling collection of mismatched cushions, I realised we were moving around each other with the ease of long practice. Not careful avoidance, not conscious accommodation—just… instinct. He anticipated when I would step back; I knew when he would reach past me. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness, no need to think about where the other would be.

I caught myself, absurdly, imagining this room emptied of his battered furniture and filled with ours. His books mingled with mine. His terrible cushions—Merlin help me—on my sofa. His voice cutting across the quiet with some defence of the indefensible, and the sound not grating but grounding.

I had agreed to this move because it was practical, efficient—two lives made easier under one roof. But the more we worked, the more I began to understand that I wanted it for far less defensible reasons. I wanted this—his presence, his commentary, his infuriating attachments to useless objects. I wanted to reach for a book and hear him muttering about something in the next room. I wanted the unthinking closeness, the domestic ease.

I wanted, in short, for this not to be a temporary task.

I was still holding that thought—his voice in the next room, the imagined sound of it in our home—when he glanced up from the crate. Caught me looking.

His mouth curved, slow and wicked. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, tone casual but eyes sparking. “It makes me horny.”

I blinked once, very deliberately, and turned back to the shelf as though the words had not landed with a weight far heavier than they should have. 

“Then perhaps,” I said, sliding a copy of Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean into the box, “you should focus on packing.”

He huffed a laugh behind me, clearly unrepentant. 

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then you’ll have considerably more to unpack when you arrive,” I replied, not looking at him again because the corner of my mouth had begun to betray me.

The room fell quiet again, save for the sound of books and parchment shifting, but the air had changed—warmer, more charged. And though I did not indulge him with another glance, I was aware of him the entire time.

The Burrow was quieter this time, though not in the funereal way it had been a week ago. No—this was the quiet of people adjusting, their sharp edges dulled by time, if not entirely smoothed. The moment Ron and I stepped inside, the familiar scents of Molly’s cooking wrapped around us, mingled with the high, soft noises of a baby somewhere deeper in the house. Fleur’s lilting voice carried over the clatter of dishes, half in English, half in French, every other word directed at Victoire.

Molly greeted us with a smile that was polite enough to count as brittle. 

“Severus,” she said, inclining her head just slightly. “Ron.”
It was not warm, but it was a marked improvement from the wary, hawk-eyed reception of last week. She was making an effort, which in itself was… dangerous. A Molly Weasley who was trying was often far more unnerving than one who was openly hostile.

Granger was here today, seated beside Fred, and she looked up with a genuine smile when we joined them at the table. She greeted me as if I were no more controversial than the bread rolls, and that small ease was an unexpected balm.

Fred and George, for their part, had traded suspicion for curiosity—and their brand of curiosity was far worse. 

“Well, well,” Fred murmured as I took my seat, “look who’s brave enough to come back for seconds.”
“Guess we didn’t scare him off,” George added, grinning. “Yet.”

Across the table, Ginny caught Ron’s eye, grinning with the faint disbelief of someone still entertained by the impossibility of it all. It was the same expression she’d worn at the end of the last lunch, like she couldn’t decide whether to toast him or interrogate him.

Bill was here too, leaning back in his chair, watching quietly. He had the same slightly narrowed gaze he’d worn last time—calculating, but not unkind. Fleur was beside him, but she was entirely absorbed in coaxing Victoire into accepting a spoonful of something pale and sticky. Fleur’s priorities were clearly elsewhere, and I could hardly complain.

Percy was… Percy. Upright, composed, neutral to the point of being glacial. He acknowledged us with a nod that was neither warm nor cold, a perfect bureaucrat’s greeting.

The meal began with polite conversation—Granger asking Ron about his week, Bill discussing the latest from Gringotts, Fred and George supplying the occasional cutting aside that made Ron roll his eyes. Molly joined in here and there, asking me perfectly civil questions about my work. I answered in kind, aware of her scrutiny in each pause, every flicker of her gaze toward her son.

If last week had been a battlefield, this was a ceasefire. Still tense, but with less risk of a sudden volley of accusations. I could feel them watching us—me, specifically—measuring our exchanges, weighing the casual normalcy Ron displayed against whatever reservations they still nursed.

Granger, at least, seemed satisfied. Ginny was entertained. Fred and George, though, were plotting something—I saw it in the twin sparks of mischief each time they looked at me. Percy was a fortress. Bill was a sentry. Fleur was a mother.

And Ron… Ron was exactly as he always was—at ease in his own skin, speaking to me the same way he would at Spinner’s End, which might be the only reason this didn’t feel like another trial.

By the time the plates were cleared, I realised the shift had happened without anyone declaring it: I was no longer the interloper. Not accepted, perhaps, but present. Counted. And in a family like this, that was its own quiet victory.

Ron was rifling through the second kitchen drawer like a man preparing for siege.
“These,” he declared, holding up a gleaming set of measuring spoons like relics of the Sacred Kitchen Order, “are coming with me. My moulds, my pans—basically all the tools worth having. I’m the cook out of the two of us, and mine are better.”

I didn’t argue the point. I had no particular attachment to my own cookware, and he was, infuriatingly, correct.
However—
I eyed the half-packed box of crockery with growing offence. 

“The mugs are an abomination.”

That made him glance up, an unholy grin spreading across his face. 

“You have strong feelings about my mugs?”

“They are mismatched, cracked, and at least one appears to depict a troll in highly inappropriate circumstances.”

His grin widened into something perilously close to laughter. 

“I’ll make you a deal—no more mismatched or ugly mugs if you let me keep the one already at Spinner’s End. My favourite.”

I inclined my head, adopting my most formal tone. 

“Very well. One offensively ugly mug may remain, under the strict condition that no further additions to the collection occur.”

He laughed outright then, the sound warm enough to soften the kitchen’s stale winter chill.

A knock at the door cut through the moment. Ron set down a handful of spatulas with a sigh and went to answer. Voices—Ginny’s unmistakable, bright with glee—drifted in.
“We need to gossip,” she announced, and swept inside before Ron could get a word in. Potter followed, slower and with the resigned air of one accustomed to Ginny’s unchecked momentum, carrying bags of takeout.

Ginny stopped dead upon entering the kitchen, her gaze bouncing from the half-packed boxes to me, then back to Ron.
“Oh,” she squeaked, startled but clearly intrigued.
Potter gave me a polite, slightly bemused nod before eyeing the boxes with raised brows.

“Yes, come in,” Ron said dryly, though there was the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Ginny lingered a step inside, eyes narrowed with theatrical suspicion. 

“Are we… interrupting something?”

Over her head, Ron looked at me—a silent question in the arch of his brow. Stay or go?
I considered the disruption, weighed the prospect of a peaceful evening against the unavoidable consequences of attempting to eject them. A faint nod from me answered the question. Let them stay.

We moved the boxes and cookware off the table, making room for the takeaway they’d brought. Before long, we were all seated, paper cartons steaming between us.

“So,” Ginny began, brandishing a fork like a pointer, “what’s all this? You upgrading to a bigger place, Ron? Or… are you two moving in together?”

“Moving in,” Ron said casually, without looking up from his noodles. No point denying what they’d already caught red-handed.

Ginny’s eyes lit with mischief. 

“Whose place? Keeping the troll mugs?”

“Absolutely not,” I replied, before Ron could speak.

That earned me simultaneous laughter from all three of them, though Potter’s took the form of a quiet chuckle as he shook his head. 

“Good luck, Snape,” he said, sounding almost amused.

The meal that followed was far lighter than any Sunday lunch. Conversation flowed easily, Ginny doing most of the steering, Ron volleying back with dry remarks, and Potter contributing in measured doses. No tension, no unspoken battles—just the easy rhythm of people who, for once, weren’t weighing every word.

When the cartons were empty and the table littered with crumpled napkins, they rose with sleepy goodbyes and promises to see us Sunday.

Ron shut the door behind them, leaning back against it with a sigh. 

“I’ll bet you anything the whole family knows by then.”

I merely gave him a look. 

“You say that as though it’s a possibility, not a certainty.”

The moment the Burrow’s front door swung inward, I knew.
It was in the way Molly’s eyes lit with far too much knowledge, the quick, conspiratorial glances between her and the eldest boy. Fleur smiled faintly, rocking the baby in her arms, and even Percy, who rarely looked at me directly, wore the air of a man who’d been briefed.

They knew.
Which meant that Ginny had been… indiscreet.

Molly launched into questions before my coat was even off.
“When is the move? Do you have enough cooking equipment? Curtains? Proper towels?” She ticked the list off on her fingers as though she were planning a siege. “I’ve got a lovely set of pans you could have, and I can help rearrange your furniture—”

I felt the muscles in my jaw tighten. My furniture was not to be rearranged. But before I could interject, Ron fielded her barrage with expert calm, his voice light but resolute.
“That’s very kind, Mum, but we’ve got the kitchen sorted. Curtains, too. And the furniture’s fine where it is—no need to go shifting things about.”
Each deflection was neat, almost surgical, wrapped in enough warmth that Molly could not take offence.

I said nothing, but the flash of pride was immediate. He had learned to parry as well as any duellist.

The front door banged open again, and in rolled the twins, noisy as ever.
“Housewarming gift incoming!” George announced.
“But first,” Fred added, narrowing his eyes at me, “an important question: what’s your position on taxidermied kneazles?”

I stared at them. 

“…I beg your pardon?”
“Just gauging your taste,” George said, grinning in a way that was not reassuring in the least.

The mental images that presented themselves were… disturbing.

Then Ginny and Potter arrived, shedding cloaks and chatter in the doorway. Ron’s head turned toward his sister with the kind of timing that promised mischief.
“I finally understand why Harry’s dating you,” he said.

Ginny, wary but amused, bit. 

“Why?”
“Because he damn can’t help catching snitches.”

It was quick, unexpected, and entirely at Ginny’s expense—and before I could stop myself, a short huff of laughter escaped me. Worse, the corner of my mouth curled and stayed there, traitorously amused.

Potter snorted. Ginny’s eyes flicked to me, startled, then to Ron, and her grin spread with dawning delight. Bill and Fleur exchanged a look; Percy arched a brow. Molly only looked faintly confused, which was perhaps for the best.

The moment passed into the bustle of being shepherded to the table. Chairs scraped, dishes were passed, and soon the air was full of the clatter of cutlery and a dozen overlapping conversations.

And through it all, Ron sat across from me, faintly smug, as though my laughter had been the real victory of the day.

Molly’s cooking was, as always, enough to feed a regiment. It also provided her with ample excuse to hover, pressing extra potatoes toward me with the kind of determination that brooked no refusal.

“You’re too thin,” she muttered, as if I weren’t in the room, piling another roast carrot onto my plate.
Ron intercepted the serving spoon mid-air. 

“Mum, he’s fine. I promise I’m feeding him.”
That earned him a suspicious look, as though she doubted my survival prospects under his care.

The twins kept circling back to their alleged housewarming gift.
“We were thinking something truly memorable,” Fred said.
“Something that really says ‘welcome to your new home,’” George added.
“If I come home to find a live manticore in my sitting room, you will both regret it,” I said flatly.
“Noted,” Fred said, in a tone that suggested it was not noted at all.

Bill was tactful enough to steer the conversation toward neutral ground, asking Ron about work. Percy listened intently, nodding at all the right moments, though I suspected his mind was elsewhere. Fleur cooed to the baby and ignored the rest of us entirely, looking far happier than anyone else in the room.

I focused on my wine.

It was… less tense than the last gathering. Still, there was an undercurrent—Molly’s worry, Percy’s guarded reserve, the twins’ relentless probing—that kept me on edge. And yet, between Ron’s calm management of his family, Ginny’s irreverent amusement, and Potter’s awkward attempts to bridge gaps, it was not intolerable.

By the time plates were cleared and dessert served, even Molly’s overbearingness had softened into ordinary maternal fussing. Victoire gurgled in Fleur’s lap, Ron leaned back in his chair with the contentment of someone who’d survived without incident, and I realised—with a mixture of surprise and resignation—that these meals would become a recurring ordeal.

An ordeal… but perhaps one I could bear.

The noise of dinner faded by degrees as people drifted toward the living room, cups of tea or plates of Molly’s endless puddings in hand. I had no particular wish to be drawn into whatever raucous conversation was brewing by the hearth, so I claimed a seat at the end of one of the sofas.

Ron followed a moment later, sliding into the seat beside me with the ease of someone who’d long since stopped asking if I minded. He leaned back, arm along the sofa’s backrest, and murmured low enough for only me to hear.

“Three more questions about curtains and I might have to fake a fainting spell,” he said, mouth twitching.

I allowed a faint smirk. 

“Tempting, but you’d be leaving me to fend her off alone. I’ve survived more dangerous things, but not many.”

His grin widened, that fox’s glint in his eyes. 

“I’d never abandon you to the wolves, Professor.”

I was about to point out that his mother was hardly lupine—merely relentless—when a sharp twin-voiced declaration rang across the room.

“Well, well, look at the lovebirds, all tucked away in their cosy corner!”

The volume was calculated, enough to still several conversations. Fred and George stood just inside the doorway, grinning like they’d caught us in some scandalous act.

Ron didn’t even flinch. He rolled his eyes with long-practised ease and said, 

“You’re just jealous.”

The twins exchanged a mock-offended look. 

“Of you?” George asked.

“Of him?” Fred added, jabbing a thumb at me.

“Absolutely,” Ron replied without missing a beat. “You’ve both been trying to match his level of charm for years, and failing miserably.”

That drew a ripple of laughter from the nearest seats, Ginny smirking into her tea, and even Potter managing an amused snort. I let the faintest curl touch my mouth—small enough to pass for tolerance, though Ron, I suspected, would know better.

We had been at it for the better part of an hour, working our way along Ron’s bookshelves in a rhythm that was almost efficient—until my hand landed on something wholly unexpected.
A small, hardback volume in pink and gold, the gilding dulled with age and fingerprints. Something about it scratched at the back of my memory.

I had just begun to tilt it towards the light when Ron made an undignified noise—half squeak, half growl—and darted forward to snatch it from my grasp.
That was… suspicious.

My curiosity sharpened instantly. 

“What is it?” I asked, letting my tone turn mild, which in my case is always a warning. “And why does it look vaguely familiar?”

Ron’s ears went pink, then the flush crept down his neck. He dropped the book into the “to be binned” stack without meeting my eyes. I noticed that pile had, until now, been sacrilege—he had insisted even battered duplicates of Fantastic Beasts were to be donated, not discarded.

I raised an eyebrow. He fidgeted. I waited. I was patient when patience would serve me.

Finally, with a low groan, he muttered, 

“You think it looks familiar because you saw it during one of our worst Occlumency lessons.”

My mind sifted back through those fraught evenings—anger, frustration, fear. I did not recall any involving a pink and gold book.

Ron sighed again, visibly steeling himself. 

“It’s… smut.”

Ah. And suddenly the memory was clear—his mortification, his desperate attempt to redirect me before I had lingered too long in that particular corner of his mind. The recollection made the corner of my mouth want to curl.

“You should not have bought it if you couldn’t own up to it,” I said, allowing the faintest shade of amusement into my voice.

“I didn’t buy it,” he protested immediately.

That earned him my other eyebrow. 

“No?”

“Gift,” he said shortly.

Now my curiosity was something brighter—who, exactly, would present adolescent Ronald Weasley with such a thing?

He answered before I asked, perhaps seeing the question in my face. “From another teenager with shitty humour. Harry.” His tone was flat with long-standing exasperation. “Thought it was hilarious to give me that for my birthday, ’cause it’s a story about an illicit affair between a teacher and a student.”

I stared at him for a beat, processing the layers of irony, impropriety, and sheer mischief behind such a “joke.” Then, against my better judgment, I felt laughter—dry and sardonic—threatening.

Trust Potter to weaponise bad literature in the service of adolescent provocation. Trust Weasley to keep it.

I let the silence stretch just long enough for him to start shifting from one foot to the other.

“You kept it,” I observed at last. “All these years.”

He scowled as if I’d accused him of something unspeakable. 

“It got shoved on a shelf and forgotten, all right? Not like I was cherishing it.”

“Mm.”

I stooped, plucked it from the “to be binned” stack, and turned it over in my hands. The gilt title was absurdly florid, the sort of thing calculated to make anyone with taste feel their intelligence drop by a measurable degree.

Ron made another grab for it. 

“Oi—”

I lifted it out of reach. 

“If you truly intended to be rid of it, you’d have done so years ago.”

“Because binning a book is ‘a blasphemy,’ remember?” he shot back, throwing my own earlier words at me.

I made a noncommittal sound, flicking the pages just to watch his colour rise another shade. 

“I suspect Potter would be gratified to know his gift survived intact until now.”

Ron groaned and covered his face with one hand. 

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“Immensely,” I admitted, slipping the book back into the stack with exaggerated care. “Consider it a reminder, should you ever be tempted to underestimate my memory—or my curiosity.”

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Foxes bite, you know,” and bent back to the next shelf, his ears still scarlet.

And I, damn me, was still amused.

The flat felt oddly hollow without its usual clutter, as if even the air had been swept into the cardboard boxes lining the wall. Only three remained to be dealt with, lids closed and neatly labelled in Ron’s careful, slanting script. I stood beside them, wand in hand, ready to shrink them for transport.

“That’s the last of it, then,” I said.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he prowled from room to room, head turning with that meticulous, almost predatory habit of his—checking corners, the tops of shelves, even the sill of the one drafty window in the sitting room. It was the sort of final sweep I’d seen him do after a mission, eyes alert for anything left behind.

“You’ve looked twice already,” I called after him.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to get home and realise I left my second-favourite frying pan under the sofa or something.” His voice carried from the kitchen, followed by the thump of a cupboard door.

“Your second-favourite frying pan is in the bottom of that box,” I said dryly.

“I know.” 

He emerged at last, brushing dust from his palms, gaze sweeping the place one final time. The set of his shoulders was lighter than when we’d started this process—less tension, more anticipation—but there was a faint, thoughtful crease between his brows.

Satisfied at last, he stepped back to me. 

“All clear. We can shrink them.”

I tapped each box in turn, watching them compress into neat, portable parcels. Ron scooped them up without effort, stuffing them into the enchanted canvas bag he’d brought. He glanced around the stripped-bare sitting room one more time, and for a heartbeat there was an expression in his eyes I couldn’t quite name—something between farewell and relief.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and gave a short, decisive nod. “Let’s go home.”

And just like that, the flat was no longer his.