Author's Notes: Another one based on Pottermore information.


koibito kibun - (n.) the feeling tenderly and delightfully experienced between (new) lovers in a relationship [Japanese]

Looking back, Minerva realized that she had never expected her marriage to be this happy.

She and Elphinstone Urquart had been friends for decades, but she had never quite understood his infatuation with her. She had turned down his advances several times; finally accepting Elphinstone's proposal had been a sort of surrender, her accepting that she was never going to find a "real" romance so she might as well settle.

Yet now, a few months into their marriage, she realized that her feelings for Elphinstone had changed. Strangely, not much else had: their dinner conversations were the same as they had been before the wedding, they took the same evening walks, reminisced about the same old stories. But looking at him made her heart swell in a way that it hadn't before. More than once she thought of him and found herself smiling like a schoolgirl.

Minerva was right; she had long ago given up the chance for the sort of head-over-heels, passionate romance that she had associated with that term. But now, she was starting to realize that that wasn't necessary for real love anyway.