A charming tale, with its understanding of what it is to lose all love, all attachment. (Winky, remembering herself, understands and keenly observes Severus's loss, and develops her own attachment as well as the care Minerva had asked for.) Winky may have saved the Headmaster's sanity as well as his life. I do like it that post-war Severus still lives in that scruffy terraced house somewhere in the north of England, which a house-elf will probably make far more habitable.