It always rained in Spinner's End.
Charlotte supposed that was simply an effect of England. After it rained, everything seemed just a little bit gray.
A far-cry from the Scottish moors she had grown up in, Spinner's End was a community built under the pretense of shoving as many muggles as humanly possible into the smallest space humanly possible. It was obvious from any reasonable witch or wizard that the entire plan had been concocted by a muggle who lacked any understanding of solitude, peace, or quiet.
Instead, Charlotte listened to the soft music of rain amidst the screaming across the sidewalk that occurred when her muggle neighbors had indulged too heavily in their muggle liquor, and somewhere a child was crying.
Despite all of this, Charlotte reveled in her days at Spinner's End.
At Spinner's End, Charlotte had a garden she could sit in for hours and read the pile of books she purchased over the last summer. There was a certain amount of freedom in sitting outdoors in just her pajamas, curled up on the wooden bench she suspected her husband's mother had purchased for the exact purpose to which she herself used it. Charlotte could lose herself for hours in the dusty pages of a book.
In fact, it was perhaps her favorite thing to do.
When she was not reading, Charlotte cleaned. It was remarkable, she noted each year, how much her husband was capable of in nearly three months. Cobwebs reappeared and soot streaked across the walls from his inability to clear the fireplace. A lingering scent of potion ingredients marred the air in foul odors.
Sometimes, Charlotte wondered if he noticed.
It was not as though her husband was ignorant. He was, perhaps, the most perceptive individual she had ever come across. He was unlike her first husband in nearly every remark and it regularly astounded her that the pair had both been in the same House. Whereas her first husband had been rash and impulsive, her second was calculating and precise.
Severus Snape was a true Slytherin.
As she moved through the small house collecting her belongings, Charlotte wondered what Regulus would think of her now. She had prided herself in their posh London townhouse – their exquisite furnishings and tasteful décor. The house on Spinner's End was anything but exquisite, and the décor was simply nonexistent. Charlotte had loved inviting her friends to have brunch at their home, sitting on their quaint patio and sipping oolong served by the house-elf gifted to her by her mother-in-law.
Just like everything else in the townhome, Bibsy, too, had gone.
She paused suddenly in her search for a pair of sandals, digging her fingers into her temples. Her skin felt suddenly both hot and cold, like pressing a burn to a piece of ice.
Charlotte was not supposed to think about that, she reminded herself.
Snagging the pair of sandals from beneath the sofa, she quickly tucked them under her arm and fished out her pocket watch.
Above the face, reading quarter past eleven, she noted the other hands. Three in total, each with a set of monogrammed initials – CS, SS, and SB – pointing at a variety of locations. Her own hand, CS, stood taught at 'Home', SB had not moved for nearly two years, and finally the initials of her husband, SS, sitting comfortably at 'Hogwarts'.
She scowled.
For nine months of the year, Charlotte lived at Spinner's End. During those months, she dusted away the signs of neglect, tidied as much as she was permitted, and at the end of the school year, she stocked its cupboards full of potion ingredients requested by her husband, and filled its cabinets with food and Snape's preferred liquors.
Severus was as likely to go grocery shopping as Dumbledore was to wear a wig.
Over the summer, Charlotte lived in a rented room at the Leaky Cauldron.
The arrangement had been in place for little more than a year and Charlotte dutifully filled her part of it. After all, she reminded herself as she packed her trunk, it was not as though Severus had come to her to be his wife.
Moving to the bathroom to begin packing her toiletries, Charlotte caught sight of her reflection in the stained, frameless mirror.
She had seen better days.
Her long, coffee-colored hair still held a trace of its former luster, caught in wild waves that had not seen a proper salon in over two years. Charlotte wondered if they still gave chocolate covered clementine's at the salon she had gone to with her mother-in-law. She could still smell the spicy perfumed air and recalled the effortless way the lobbyist had tucked mimosas in their dangling manicured fingers, the soft hush of witch gossip hanging in the air like a fine mist of hairspray.
She was feeling too nostalgic today, she noted, and quickly tied her hair into a haphazard bun.
This was her reality now, she reminded herself, and there were plenty worse off.
Like Regulus.
A large crack interrupted the silence, and Charlotte looked up to see the bathroom sconce explode as a wave of heat washed over her.
"Reparo," she looked up at the sconce to see a few pieces return to the fixture.
Her eyes narrowed, "Reparo!"
Glass quickly fused together under the forceful shout from her mouth and the swish of her wand.
She did not think about how three years ago, she had been able to perform wandless magic with hardly any conviction. She did not think about how as time passed on, Dumbledore's words seemed to grow truer. She did not think about what if's, what could've's, or what would've's.
Charlotte did better when she did not think.
By the time Snape's hand began to slowly tick towards its destination of 'Home', Charlotte had already packed her trunk and was standing by the front door. She had cooked him a Salisbury steak with a few potatoes and a chunk of broccoli, though it had never been part of their arrangement.
This was the first year she had gone the full nine months living alone at Spinner's End, skipping over their wedding anniversary in December as though it were just any other day of the year.
In reality, it was.
Severus hadn't wanted a wife. Charlotte had not really wanted another husband.
Their union was simply one of convenience.
Safety.
Solitude.
When I return home from Hogwarts, I expect to see no inclination that you lived in this house.
Charlotte did better hardly existing.
This is not a marriage that will develop beyond our arrangement.
Charlotte had never expected that it would.
There will be no children. There will be no marital relations. I have no expectation of this from you.
Charlotte did not particularly want to see her husband as naked as the day he was born. But the children bit.
That reality had stung.
For a moment, Charlotte wondered if he had expected her to still be at Spinner's End when he arrived home. The previous year, she had left a few days earlier. But Tom had fewer rooms available this year for long-term guests and Charlotte had agreed to show up late that evening to check in. But by the time she noted the knob of the front door was turning, Charlotte reasoned it was too late to suddenly apparate. She did poorly with that, too, now.
"Hello, Severus," She greeted.
Her husband looked somewhat haggard, but that seemed to be a trademark of Severus.
His hair was looking particularly unwashed, his long nose centered between his narrowed, disdainful gray eyes. Beneath his particularly disapproving expression, his mouth was curled in his signature scowl.
He toted his school trunk, still plastered with Slytherin crests from his schooldays, and the particularly beaten-looking cage of his horned owl – a gift from Dumbledore – and his typical robes thrown over his arm to show a pair of loose black slacks and a fitted black buttoned shirt.
"Charlotte," he said her name carefully, "Did everything go well?"
"Yes, I wasn't sure if you wanted me to check in this year," she began just as carefully, "We didn't discuss it."
Snape stared at her as he closed the door and set his trunk down. His eyes glanced around the room and Charlotte certainly imagined a ghost of a smile wink in his eyes before it was extinguished.
"You do not need to check in with me," He answered after several moments, "Is there anything to which I must be brought aware?"
Charlotte could not think of anything and told him so.
They stood awkwardly in the foyer for several moments.
"Then, I'll be off!"
She sounded awkwardly hasty as she grabbed the handle of her trunk. Her eyes closed and she focused on the Leaky Cauldron. She focused extremely, extremely hard.
Nothing happened.
Severus was staring at her, his mouth's scowl slowly deforming into a frown.
Concern?
No, Snape was never concerned with anyone but Snape.
Charlotte remaindered herself that she was now a Snape and needed to stop calling him that.
"Charlotte?"
Her eyes were burning, and Charlotte quickly squeezed her eyes shut again, and demanded that she go. With every fiber of her being, she demanded she go.
There was a sudden hurl – like falling down stairs – and when she opened her hazel eyes, she was standing in the street before the Leaky Cauldron.
Relief escaped her mouth in an exuberant sigh.
Pain flared at the back of her head, and she reached back to pull away fingertips smeared with blood. A fine line of her scalp was missing. She had splinched herself.
Scowling, Charlotte adjusted her bun and hurried inside the Leaky Cauldron. She had some dittany lingering about in her trunk somewhere and could apply it later. There was no need to panic, she had splinched herself many times. She chanted this mantra to herself as she side-stepped liquored patrons and witches singing another lofty tune about the Dark Lord – no, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named – and his fall by the Potter boy.
Charlotte wondered if they would ever grow tired of the bloody tune.
"Mrs. Black!" Tom greeted before his face fell, "I am so sorry, love, Mrs. Snape, now, isn't it?"
Charlotte nodded curtly, "Thank you, Tom. Here to check in."
Tom scratched at his scalp, embarrassment clear on his face as he reached for her room key. "I'll send the bill on over to your room each week, same as last year?"
"Thank you, Tom."
Safely tucked away in her room that still smelled of some sort of new age incense, Charlotte dropped her trunk and allowed herself a moment.
Thirty seconds, she allotted.
Her eyes burned as she collapsed onto the musty, quilted bed. Her face grew hot as she slowly counted to herself. She heard the bulbs of light fixtures popping within the room, the fireplace had begun roaring in the middle of June, and the ceiling fan spun erratically.
Charlotte wanted to go home.
Seven.
She wanted to go home and lay in bed with her husband, foreheads pressed together.
Thirteen.
She wanted to laugh on her quaint patio with Bibsy.
A sob escaped Charlotte's mouth.
Seventeen.
But more than anything – more than her wish of her townhome that had been hers, and the husband that had loved to lay in bed with her and whisper about their future, and the laughter she could share with her beloved house elf – Charlotte felt herself grow cold at her deepest wish.
Twenty-three.
She wished, more than anything, that she had married the other brother.
Thirty.
As Charlotte cleaned the broken glass and extinguished the fire, she very carefully emptied her mind of thoughts. She felt them slip away from her like rain off a window pane.
Charlotte really did better now not to think at all.
Well, there is Chapter One! Please let me know what you think, reviews make me feel warm and fuzzy.