Author's note: Last time I wrote some Poppy and Alastor, you all seemed to enjoy it or at least be intrigued. So here, have a drabble. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #12, Notable witches and wizards task #2: Write about a healer, known or otherwise.

Warnings: Anxiety for partner; dangerous job


Dulce periculum (danger is sweet)

This was the way she greeted him every time he came home–well, to her home, at least. He did not live in her shoebox of a flat, he had only recently acquired a drawer in her chest and even that was likely a sign that they had taken this thing between them too far.

But when he came to her, after a long mission, she let him into her flat so she could close the door behind him and immediately take his face between her hands. She tilted his head right and then left, up and then down looking for a new scar or the bloom of a black eye or any other kind of damage. She wouldn't let him move before that was done, and then she was the one who took his coat off his shoulders and felt up and down his arms in case he was hiding a bandaged bicep or a wrapped shoulder from her. Sometimes there were bruises or scratches on his knuckles from a fight, usually there were calluses on his fingers from hours of clutching his wand and duelling. She took an extra long time examining Alastor's hands, always.

"Happy yet?" he would ask.

"Not yet," she always answered–because she was never sure that he had come home uninjured. Not home; to her. They did not have a home. An Auror and the Auror Office's Official Healer could not share homes, build homes, or make homes together. It was not allowed. So, Alastor was simply coming to her. Not home.

If he had been gone especially long on a mission, or if she had treated an especially injured Auror today, she would untuck his shirt and pop as many buttons of his shirt as she needed to be sure that his chest and middle–where all the most important parts of a person that needed to be the most protected–were safe. Sometimes, if she still looked nervous after that, he would pull her to his chest and press her ear to his heart, or put her hand on his neck where she could take his pulse. Sometimes both. This usually happened; she usually found some sign of an injury, an attack, a narrowly-won duel or brush with death on him.

"Poppy?" Alastor would ask to gently ease her out of her worrying.

"I wouldn't do this if you stopped being in danger all the time," Poppy would say. "I wouldn't do this if your life wasn't always in harm's way."

"I know," Alastor would say. He would kiss her, then. "Are you sure enough, yet?"

"Yes."

"Can it be enough that I come back? Can that be sweet enough for you?"

"Yes," Poppy said, because she knew that as long as Alastor was Alastor he would be on the frontlines of this war. She would always, always say yes, even if it wasn't true. Because then he would keep coming to her, home or no home.


WC: 492