The Absence of Wards
Eileen married Tobias Snape on July 20, 1959.
It was a Monday, and the rain had only just let up when the two of them said their vows. No music played. The registry office smelled faintly of disinfectant and something sweet—old roses, or overripe fruit.
Eileen's dress didn't quite fit.
It had been a gift from Callista—kind enough to lend Eileen a gown of her own: white, lacy, and unmistakably expensive. The kind of dress meant to soften Callista’s curves into elegance while still catching every eye in the room.
On Eileen’s thinner frame, it hung oddly—too much lace, too little weight. The dissonance between her solemn face and the frills produced a sense of quiet discomfort.
Callista had made a good show of trying to charm the hem so it wasn’t so obviously short, but Eileen had finally convinced her to stop—reminding her that robes of true quality repelled such charms.
Tobias looked like he’d just come off shift—hair still damp at the fringe, hands scrubbed but still lined with oil.
The only sound after the kiss was the clerk’s chair squeaking as he stood to shake their hands—and Callista’s jubilant claps.
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It began with the absence of wards.
Eileen Snape—no longer part of the magical world—had no protective magics around her home. No owls trained to block tampering. No wards keyed to her name.
So when the replies began—apprenticeship acceptances, academic invitations, all the hope Eileen had scribed into parchment now returning to her in careful ink—Callista took notice.
The Prince family had always kept discreet house-elves, trained in perfect silence. Callista’s family had something similar.
And on the day of Eileen’s wedding, she re-tasked hers—quietly, without fanfare.
A little wedding gift Eileen would never know.
The elf intercepted everything.
Eileen had applied to six different Masters across Europe. All six accepted her. She never knew.
Each letter arrived. Each was opened. Each was read. Each one vanished into a discreet wooden box, tucked neatly in the centre of Callista’s bedside drawer.
Sometimes, she read them aloud—just to hear what Eileen might have become.
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She never visited Eileen again. She didn’t need to.
But she kept the correspondence alive. “I’m abroad,” she wrote. “Still traveling. The continent is beautiful this time of year.”
When Eileen asked to meet, she responded with warmth wrapped in delay. “I miss you, too. We’ll see each other soon. For now, keep writing. I want to hear everything.”
And Eileen—who had no one else—believed her.
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Meanwhile, Callista fed the story.
She told Graham, in measured doses, of Eileen’s supposed joy.
“She’s happy, you know. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.”
“Her husband is a quiet man. Stable. Kind.”
“I think she’s really decided to focus on her marriage and her pregnancy now.”
Graham said nothing. But she saw it—the way his shoulders finally sank, the way his jaw clenched. And still, to her ragged disbelief, his eyes turned distant—like if he stared long enough, Eileen might reappear at the edge of his gaze. Like he could conjure her with longing alone.
She told the others, too—friends who had once sent congratulations, however cautiously. Friends whose letters Callista had also intercepted. “She didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but… she’s changed. She doesn’t want to come back.” And one by one, their attempts stopped.
Then, months later—just as the new year dawned, but far too soon for the baby to have arrived Eileen sent one more letter.
"The baby has arrived. A girl. She’s premature. I’ve named her Severina."
Callista stared at the letter for a long time. Then she dressed carefully. She found Graham. And she told him. “She’s had the child.”
He poured them a drink.
That night, he didn’t speak much. Didn’t ask for comfort. But he let her touch his shoulder. Let her undress him. Let her become the bridge between grief and forgetting.
And when it was over, he didn’t kiss her. But he stayed. And in the morning—in that numb hush before the light changed—he said: “Let’s marry.”
Just like that.
No ring. No promise. No fire.
It was not how she had dreamed he would propose. But Callista Fairbourne had dreamed her whole life of becoming Callista Parkinson.
She said yes.
The ashes beneath the ecstasy were easy to dispel.
They were.
But they settled.
Deep.
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The first time Tobias came home to a burnt kettle and a broken dish, he said nothing.
The second time, he asked if she’d ever been in a kitchen before.
The third, he shouted.
Not cruelly. Not violently. But with the exhaustion of a man who worked ten hours in smoke and steel, only to come home to cold bread and silence.
Eileen tried.
But trying meant little in Spinner’s End.
Her hands—so steady with silver blades and alchemical reagents—fumbled every domestic charm.
Household magic was beneath Prince study. And practical Muggle skills? She’d never needed them.
Meals were disasters. Laundry, wrinkled and half-dried. Dust collected in corners she couldn’t seem to master.
The neighbours whispered.
“She doesn’t even know how to make a proper stew.”
“Strange girl. Never talks. Never smiles.”
“Pretty, but soft. Look at those hands. Not a day of work in them.”
She heard it all. She just didn’t know what to do with it.
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Tobias began to avoid the house.
He didn’t mean to. But the pub was warm. The factory, at least, was honest.
Eileen was kind. Quiet. But never present. Not really. And what he had once mistaken for grace now felt like absence.
The pregnancy only made it harder.
Eileen grew heavier. Quieter.
Callista’s letters came less frequently. And from her father—nothing.
In her deepest heart, Eileen had still hoped he might reach for her, despite everything.
No replies from the Masters she’d written.
'Why has no one answered me?'
She read her NEWT results over and over—perfect scores. A flawless alchemical essay. Professorial recommendations.
And yet… nothing. Everyone had simply… gone silent.
'Why won’t they write back?'
She thought of Graham once. Briefly. Then forced herself not to.
She thought of going to Diagon Alley. Then realized she couldn’t afford the ride there.
She pawned her last wand-polish kit for a handful of pounds. Bought potatoes and a second-hand coat.
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One night, Tobias came home late.
She’d meant to cook. Burned the soup.
He stared at the pot for a long time.
Then said, without looking at her: “You’re not what I thought you’d be.”
She looked up from the sink.
“I thought… you were quiet. Good. Someone who needed a place. Someone who could build something with me.”
A pause.
“But you’re not building anything. You just sit here. Every day.”
Eileen felt her hands tremble.
“I’m trying.”
“You don’t even know how to sweep a floor.”
“I never needed to,” she whispered.
Tobias scoffed. “Yeah. I figured that out.”
And left the room.
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That night, she cried in the bath.
Not loud. Not hard. Just long. Like a pipe leaking quietly behind a wall.
When she finally slept, it was with one hand on her belly and the other pressed flat against the mattress—as if seeking an anchor.
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The walls of the house had learned not to echo.
They kept her secrets now—her failed spells, her quiet apologies to the kettle, her whispered conversations with the unborn child pressing steadily against her ribs.
She moved like someone inside a dream she couldn’t wake from.
Sweep the floor. Boil the water. Stir the pot.
Forget that the window doesn’t face anything worth looking at.
Forget that the name Eileen Prince once made Masters rise from their chairs.
She wrote to Callista again that week: 'I’ve grown rounder now. I can feel the baby move. I’m nervous. I wish you were here.'
The reply came three days later. 'I wish I could be, too. Paris has been a dream. You’ll be wonderful, I know it. Keep your strength up. I’m thinking of you.'
There was no warmth in the paper.
Just ink.
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Eileen sat by the hearth late that night, her feet swollen, her hair unbrushed.
She hadn’t used magic in weeks. There was no point.
And there, in the hush between candle flickers, the thought came:
'How did I end up like this?'
Not as a question.
As a mantra.
As though repeating it might force the world to answer.
She turned it over in her mind like a puzzle.
'How did a girl trained in precision and power end up in a crumbling house in a Muggle town waiting for a child she didn’t know how to raise?'
She went backward.
Back to Spinner’s End.
Back to her mother's death.
Back to Hogwarts.
Back to the whispers.
Back to Callista’s eyes—wide, warm, kind.
Back to the moment her father said get out.
'But I chose to go.'
'I told him it was my fault.'
'I told Callista I was sorry.'
'I chose this.'
'Didn’t I?'
The fire cracked.
The baby kicked.
And the question sat there with her.
'How did I end up like this?'
Looping.
Endless.
Tight as a noose.