Two

He's giving me the silent treatment again. Four days so far. Last time, it was a week. I try to put it out of my mind and concentrate on the Charms I'm casting. I miss the potions he used to make for me; I've never found any others that work half so well. So I use Charms these days as I've done for the past several years.

I was hoping he'd talk to me when I brought him his dinner earlier tonight. I told him about Harry's oldest boy's latest pranks, and the new students that will be coming to Hogwarts this fall. He just glowered at me. The only thing he wants to talk about is potions research. I get so frustrated sometimes, that I have Delky bring him his meals.

That damned snake! How could anyone have forseen that her venom would lay dormant for months and then erupt? Sometimes I wish Neville hadn't killed her, hadn't deprived me of killing that reptile myself. I know it's immature to wish such a thing, and I generally laugh at myself. But she took Severus from me. That man lying in the next room isn't Severus any more. He's a shadow of the man I wed.

Should I have noticed that he was having trouble earlier? Perhaps, but Severus was very good at masking his feelings. He told me once that he wouldn't have said anything if it wasn't becoming patently obvious that there was something wrong. As it was, his hands and feet had been tingling for weeks and he chose to say nothing to me. He didn't want me to worry, he said.

It might have made a difference. And somehow, part of me feels that he cheated me out of everything I wanted – children, travel, and a career as a potions developer. I gave it all up for him, and he repays me with silence.

It wasn't so bad at first. We spent hours talking, discussing possible lines of research for a cure. I did all the brewing of course. He tried a few times to help, but wandless magic is far too imprecise. As the tremors grew worse, I had to tie him to the bed to keep him from falling out. It helped that Ron and Harry would come by a couple times a week. While they weren't Severus' favorite people, they could engage him in conversation, and Ron would even play chess with him. Minerva and the rest of the Hogwarts staff visited regularly. Neville even came to see us once, though I thought he would faint when Severus glared at him. Then the tremors eased slightly and we thought he was getting better – but we were horribly wrong. Within weeks, he was paralyzed from the neck down. And he's been like that now for five years. Looking back on it, the first year wasn't really that dreadful. We still talked and worked on potions research. He insisted on keeping his wand with him, even though he couldn't hold it. I thought it might help him focus. He was a little short-tempered, but it was understandable.

The second year, he decided to try to master wandless magic. I tried to tell him it wasn't going to work. While Severus had an aptitude for it, the precision needed for brewing requires the focus of a wand. After the third exploded cauldron, I took his wand away from him. I was already cleaning up after him in some ways, and I really didn't want to have to keep cleaning up failed potions on top of that. He wasn't happy about that, and I don't think he really understood where I was coming from. I know he didn't understand when I moved into the other room. I tried to explain it – he snored and mumbled and talked in his sleep all night long. I was exhausted, he was angry. We both said much more than we should have. But I needed to be able to sleep.

He didn't give up on the wandless magic for months, and then only because I warded his room against it. It wasn't a hasty decision. Neither of us had worked in two years, and our money was running out. I didn't want to worry Severus, so I took a part-time job at Flourish & Blotts. It wasn't much, but it paid our bills with a few knuts left over each month. So I'd come home from work to find yet another mess on the floor – knocked over ingredients, or some such. And he'd just lay there and grumble about how he couldn't do anything. Minerva's death that year – she never really recovered from the injuries she received during the war – hit both of us hard. I cried myself to sleep every night for a week, and Severus was more sullen than ever. The capper on that year was the owl from St. Mungos saying that they'd exhausted their research funding and were going to have to give up on finding a cure.

I think I would've gone mad if Ginny hadn't invited me on a mini-vacation with the Weasley family. It was a weekend trip to Dover. It was such a relief to be around life and laughter again. It was a tonic, balm for my soul. I slept soundly and woke rested for the first time in years. I realized that I needed to do this more often. And that meant more money. A better job, or more hours at F&B.

I'd hired Delky to take care of Severus while I was gone. He's Dobby's nephew, I believe – a free elf. So instead of going directly home when the weekend was over, I went job-hunting. I borrowed fifty galleons from Harry, though I wouldn't tell him what it was for. It would've been just like him to insist on beggaring his own family to fund more research at St. Mungos. I owled Delky and let him know that I'd be a few more days and Floo'd to Diagon Alley.

I finally found a job at Gringott's in their Spell Research division. Much of what we do is examining old magical artifacts – ones that the Curse-Breakers have deemed safe – to determine what they were used for and to learn the spells used to create them. It's very exacting work, and can be quite tiring if an object doesn't want to readily give up its purpose.

When I came home that night, I had planned to tell Severus everything – that we desperately needed my income, and that I wasn't abandoning him. But he began shouting before I could say anything, ranting about my vacation as if it was the end of the world. He hadn't known about the extra three days. And that was solely because he had screamed at Delky when the poor elf tried to tell him. I told him he needed to apologize to Delky and that set him off again.

He alternates now between shouting at me and the silent treatment. Right now, it's the silent treatment. It's been almost a year since we've had anything like a civil conversation. My friends have stopped coming by the house; it's better if I go to see them on days I'm not working. They don't need to know how awful it is.

I cast the last Charm and take a look at myself in the mirror. It's a Muggle mirror; I don't need something else talking back to me. My hair is Charmed back out of the way so that it won't be snagged by some of the more precocious artifacts I'm working on. The Counter Charms for every curse, hex, or jink I know are set on my work robes. Not that we don't trust the Curse-breakers to do their jobs, but sometimes things slip through their skilled fingers. I tell Delky I'm leaving, and remind him that I might be working late.

I'll have to remember to ask Delky to fix the hinge on the door so it won't slam any more.