You stirred your tea, the spoon clinking a hollow tune against the ceramic. The steam carried the scent of bergamot, and for a split second, it wasn’t your mug in your hands. It was a chipped, blue one, held in a pair of larger, warmer ones, a low voice reading aloud from a battered poetry book on a Sunday morning.

You’d moved on. You had a job you were good at, friends you saw on Fridays, a life that was full and fine. You told yourself that, often. You were over Theodore Nott.

(You were lying.)

The proof was in the small things. Reaching for the second coffee cup out of habit before remembering you lived alone now. Hearing a certain song on the Wizarding Wireless and your breath catching. Seeing a man with dark hair and sharp shoulders from behind in Diagon Alley and your heart performing a painful, hopeful somersault before he turned and it wasn’t him.

It was never him.

The breakup hadn’t been a fight. There were no slammed doors or cruel words. It had been quieter, colder. The war had ended, but the shadows it cast were long. He’d become more withdrawn, a ghost in his own life. You’d asked for a tomorrow he couldn’t promise.

A sharp tap at the window made you jump. An owl, bedraggled and persistent, was pecking at the glass, a cream-colored envelope clutched in its beak.