Disclaimer: The characters depicted in this little drabble are not mine except for the twins. ‘Nough said.

Author’s Note: This is a short plot bunny from the Heaven or Hell universe that gnawed at my ankle one day. Thanks and virtual Christmas chocolates to linlawless for her beta. It is much appreciated.

Watching

I don’t know what it is that drew me to a man who is so intelligent, yet so conflicted. All I know is I have respected him for all my school years, and I fell in love with him over the course of a year and a half spent both under his tutelage and being his colleague.

The Headmistress tells me she suspected from the very first day I returned to the castle to become his apprentice. No, that’s not quite right. She says it was when he decided I would complete his apprenticeship before any other professor would even be allowed to offer me an apprenticeship of their own. Of course, at that time I hadn’t even finished my seventh and final year of schooling, but she claims to have known it then. He just smirks and says nothing when she speaks of it, but she speaks of the subject often enough just to tease him.

I’m not saying the eighteen months between the time I returned to the castle after three years at Cambridge Wizarding and the time he proposed were all good times. There were times I could have easily strangled him and other times—other times I wanted to drag him off into a dark corner and snog him silly. Especially after the events of the Halloween feast his final year of probation. I’m pretty sure I kept my feelings hidden from him, but sometimes I wonder…

Now I stand here in the doorway to the nursery and watch him watching our twins. The expression on his face is both awed and a little tender. He reaches out with the long slender fingers that I love to have touch me and smoothes the blanket little Eileen has kicked off back over her legs so gently I have to sigh in appreciation. He turns to me and I hold out my hand in invitation, which he accepts with a graciousness I never knew he was capable of when I was a student. It makes me wonder what other quirks and mysteries I have yet to discover about this intelligent and conflicted wizard of mine.