Albus moved silently into their sitting room, his sitting room he amended, letting the portrait of the Scottish highlands swing shut behind him. In the ten steps it had taken him to cross the room, his hat, boots, and now black outer robes had fallen to the floor before he slumped onto the small love seat before the fire.
It would have broken even the most jaded of hearts to watch the once great wizard reach for the now ever present bottle of fire whisky. He poured himself a glass, and knocked it back without a second thought and a grimace. He never had gotten used to the burn it created, but it was the one thing that allowed him to do what he craved most; to stop thinking. A sigh escaped his lips as his head lulled to the right, coming to rest along the edge of the love seat. The next part of his nightly ritual gave cause for the first. His now dull blue eyes fell upon the one lone remnant of his former life.
It was a photograph of their fifth wedding anniversary. It was a muggle photo, she had even fled from the many moving photographs that once littered the walls. She was smiling at him as he playfully kissed the back of her hand, and the look she had in her eyes still sent shivers down his spine. It was the look he had taken for granted as his, that was until it was gone.
He shook himself from that line of thought as a log in the hearth cracked, and on instinct his hand refilled his empty glass. Even after all these years he still didn't understand what went wrong. One day he returned from another pointless meeting with Cornelius, and she had simply vanished with only a letter of resignation and that photograph in her wake.
He spent every waking moment for the first month looking for her, calling in every favor owed him, but still he came up empty. He did, however, at least have the peace of mind of knowing she was well. He had sent dozens of letters with Fawkes in an attempt to bring her back, but his familiar had apparently turned traitor. He would always return without his letters, but he always refused to take Albus to her.
In the six years since she had left him, Albus knew he was a changed man. He had aged more than should be possible, and the things that once brought laughter into his life now meant nothing. Just that morning he had taken twenty points from a student for no reason; the poor boy had been merely talking with another student. He knew the other professors were worried about him, and that only made it worse. Speculation ran rampant though the staff room, but none of them knew. They only saw their once revered friend and colleague slip farther and farther from himself.
Both of them had always known about the rumors of their mutually denied love, and neither had done anything to discourage them. It had provided a perfect cover and several laughs over their occasional chess games. He continued to allow his staff to believe that it was unrequited love that plagued him, specially since even he couldn't offer a better explanation.
Slowly he fell into a routine of work and quiet evenings alone. His presence at the ministry was sporadic, but even rarer were his appearances in the Great Hall for dinner. His entire day now revolved around this very moment; when he could drown his sorrows and fall into a world where none of it existed, and they were still happy. He let his eyelids fall shut as his hand came up to rub his temple. His head had been pounding for almost a week now, and he had never felt so tired. He let the glass fall to the end table as he drifted off to sleep, his mind filling with the one day in his life he wanted most to forget.