Disclaimer:
It's JKR's world, I just play in it.
-------
Severus recovered. I recovered. Although in each case it took longer than either of us cared to admit, and left scars that were evident, but unspoken.
For my husband's part, Florence aged him. The lines in his face, that had always been evident, that had threatened to appear even when we were children, became deeper, his skin taking on a terrible transparency under the eyes when he was tired. And while it surprised many but me, this bothered him more than a little.
He took to staring at himself in the mirror sometimes before bed, telling me on one occasion that the more he knew himself the less he recognized himself. He sounded sad, as he said it, but I couldn't help but be hopeful, although I couldn't tell you of what.
I, eventually, stopped being angry about the truth, stopped insisting that Severus take it out on me in bed. Not that power games hadn't always amused us both, but when there was such purpose behind them we were both as unsettled as we were captivated. Besides, he needed to be taken outside himself just as much as I always had, if not more so. I could not be merely a small and delicate thing and keep either of us happy.
The fear was harder to lose. I worried not that he would leave me, but that one day I would find out something too terrible to bare, and I would lose my courage and abandon the long years of tolerance. Without him, my hands would feel a finger short; losing him, through any choice of my own, was simply not an option.
But everything is always an option. It is what makes life so frightening, and love so miraculous.
Gabriel turned three, and then four. He became very focused on the way people interacted, blurting far too often what he surmised Severus or I might have thought of someone. While it was often simplistic, it was never wrong. We joked about it being a Slytherin trait, although I think even then, we began to suspect that Gabriel would never be placed in his father's House.
Shortly after Gabriel's fourth birthday, Flitwick announced this would be his final term as a teacher at Hogwarts, and so the search began for a suitable replacement, as I was named, somewhat reluctantly, to head the House I had mostly forgotten to belong to as a student.