The quiet peace she had come to enjoy within her home had upended after Pettigrew's Christmas party. Even as she danced her single set with Ben her thoughts were elsewhere, trapped in the gloom of reality. He didn't love her, never would even attempt to, and, more than that, he'd informed his best friend of her treachery. After all the insistence that no one was to know, after the ironing of the details and the frustration when she'd told Lucy, Ben had gone and told Arthur bloody Pettigrew. The aging quidditch player was his best friend, sure, but he was also a drunken fool who couldn't even tend to his own wife! How was such a pathetic excuse for a person — nevermind a man — to be trusted with the very secret that could further ruin their lives?!

Melody refused to address it with Ben. The damage had already been done, after all. It wasn't as though either of them were particularly accomplished with removing memories, so there was nothing she might add that would remedy the situation. No, she had tried to squash it deep within herself and go on as though their lives were normal. As though her trust in him — which, regardless of their trials this last had grown to be a solid foundation — remained steady. However, with the strain of spending her first holiday away from her family, her nerves were too tensed for it all to be fully suppressed.

She could only handle so much.

Which was how they found themselves seated across an otherwise silent supper table. The tension rippled like waves off her body as she aggressively (for her) sliced her roast into pieces. Let him be the first to break the silence, she decided. For none of the words forming in her head were entirely kind.