In that month apart, every brick she laid to guard her barren heart screamed his name. it’s like he was etched into her now, into the fabric of her existence. He was still the one she wanted to go to with good news, be it a victory in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement or Crookshanks’s latest hunt in her garden. He was still the one she sought when she found a long-forgotten passage of note in a tome she’d perused for too long. He was still the embrace she craved at nights, curled up on her side of the bed and trying not to tuck her face into his sweet-smelling pillow. If she was honest with herself, she might have taken him back at any moment. In spite of the catastrophic damage he’d dealt her, if he had shown up to her office (not her home, which was still tightly warded) and begged for her back, she knew she would have crumbled on the spot. Even tonight—one sad look and the mirage of a whispered promise, and she was consumed by him once again. She was growing tired of fighting his pull; she would take him back, she knew, if only he asked. If only she gave him the space to ask.