Disclaimer:
All things not Allosia and Gabriel belong to JKR.
I am so glad you all are enjoying Severus' letters — they are an immense pleasure to write and I'm gratified that they are as fun for you all as well. There should be another one soon — he's being a pest at me.
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Julia Petri resolved her pregnancy in time to make it to the Halloween Feast, much to Severus' relief although this didn't stop him from spending several hours a night in the Slytherin common room for the rest of the term. I imagine he merely sat there reading and occasionally glowering at the students, but the truth is I have no idea. Severus felt so strongly about the Lair being only for Slytherins that he wouldn't even carry a sleeping Gabriel in there with him. I wondered, but did not ask, if this indicated he thought his son might not be a Slytherin, or if it was merely a hope.
Minerva, of all people, actually volunteered to watch Gabriel on Halloween, as it was an anniversary for us and no secret to anyone else thanks to Severus' display that first October. For a woman who worked hard at not approving of anything he did, it was a rather generous way of encouraging us to get up to trouble, which we did in spades. Severus left the feast early to no one's surprise but my own when I returned to our rooms, to be grabbed by him in the dark. He was so proud of himself and we wound up going at it right there on his precious carpet. I still laugh to think about it.
Afterwards, I think we must have napped until his inevitable insomnia kicked in; we wound up throwing our robes back on and running outside to ride our brooms around the grounds, as we had both as children and when we met again. That he suggested it, for the first time in all the years we had known each other meant a great deal to me. It was perhaps the most tangible proof that I lightened his burdens instead of merely adding to them. If we disturbed anyone that night, it was never mentioned.
In November, Voldemort sent for Severus, yet again. I can't say it ever started to feel routine, but by then I had learned to at least try to rest during his absences. I certainly never expected to be woken by him shaking on the bed next to me. That was a bad night, frightening; for all his extremes of emotion, it was not familiar. We wound up sitting in the bath together for hours, my legs wrapped around him as he rested against me. He barely spoke until sometime close to morning, he told me about having to watch Avery kill a child about Gabriel's age. "It's always bad," he had said, "sometimes though, it's worse." He turned to me then, and whispered, "this is too much." I never figured out if he meant our family or what his work required of him. His fury at his students was worse than usual for the rest of that week, and he avoided Gabriel and I like the plague. I let it slide.
Being with him meant letting lots of things slide and that was unlike the woman I had once been. But I had married not just him, but his work on an epic scale, and if he could make the sacrifices he did for the war, then I could certainly stomach being a more acquiescing spouse than I had once intended. For the cause and all that. Our humour about it was at least always mutually black.
Gabriel turned two in December and Severus managed to stop making fun of the odd muggle clothes my mother sent for him after just a couple of days. Why it should surprise anyone, especially my husband, that my mother would be an eccentric woman, I'll never know.
The holidays that year were mostly quiet and kind to us and included the addition of a proud barn owl to our family. Severus felt that Gabriel needed exposure to magical household animals and while we had full use of the school's owls, they seemed to be what the boy had the most affinity for, and as such, seemed to be the best place to start. We named him Sendak, and spent many a wasted hour watching him and Gabriel try to stare each other down, the boy occasionally laughing or shouting only to get a disapproving narrowing of the eyes and turn of the head from the bird. I hesitated to ask where Severus had come upon a creature with the same odd sense of humour as himself.
Shortly after January's start of term, Severus received a late Christmas gift far better than any I could have procured for him — recognition of what anyone who paid the slightest attention to such things already knew, that he was, far and away, one of the best in his field, not of teaching, of course, but of potions research and development.