OK, you sucked me in with that wonderful line: "Severus was a cynic, a realist, an atheist, and an absurdist—but if he believed in love and purpose and heaven, he would have thought that the two found such things in one another."

I love the way you described the rest of the staff's growing suspicion of the relationship between them.

Lovely story about my favorite triad, and wonderful response to the prompt.