When he arrived to the empty kitchen, however, with no other sounds in the house save for the ticking of clocks in various rooms, he felt discomfort pool within him. The discomfort increased tenfold when he saw a neatly folded square of parchment on the table with Hermione’s purple wax seal pressed to it, a weight like a tonne of stone in the pit of his stomach. Cautiously, he approached the table and plucked the offending letter from the wooden surface, rubbing a thumb over his name written in her neat script.