Our conversations are bad and we should feel bad.
It was odd, to say the least, for Botan to look back and realize she had married her best friend. After all the times she had firmly shut him down when he was getting too frisky, she thought he would have become impatient and ended it. Besides that, in some manner she thought they shouldn't have been dating in the first place after saying how much like brother and sister they were.
Regardless (apparently) Alfred asked her to marry him and Botan accepted with nary an urge to call him "binky." That wasn't quite as fluffy as she had always thought being proposed to would be, but it was good enough.
There was only the problem of what happened after Arthur found out that his son was marrying a Muggle-born. Botan never got to speak with him much in the sporadic times he taught at Hogwarts, he still seemed like he meant well most the time. She was surprised at how ill he looked after Alfred introduced her as his fiancée, but Arthur didn't say anything explicit about his feelings.
Then the letters started appearing.
"I'm not mad, Alfred," the first one read. "You're still my son."
That made Botan nervous, Alfred just waved it off insisting that it was how he usually acted.
Then a letter appeared for her.
"You're a lovely girl," it read in shaky handwriting. "I'm sorry your family is so unfortunate."
"Alfred, I don't think your father likes me," she said after showing it to him.
"Pfft, it's okay," Alfred replied with a dismissive gesture again. "That's just how he is, trust me."
After the letters started, Botan noticed that Arthur had a tendency to stare very hard at the two of them whenever she and the Kirklands all went out. That, and order rather hard liquor in vast quantities as he stared. "Botan, I'm serious, that's just how he is," Alfred said after noticing how nervous she looked.
He emptied the bar at their wedding reception. Alfred still insisted she not worry about it.
"He likes you, really."
The letters only got more unsettling after Botan got pregnant.
"Congratulations, I'm sure your children will be…interesting looking."
It looked like he pressed down rather hard when writing "interesting."
"I suppose they'll have green hair. That is how it works, isn't it?"
Well, not with the first one, but when the second one was born there was sort of a greenish tint.
"Are you going to expose your broccoli-heads to those muggle things?" Now it looked like he was pressing down very hard in addition to his usual shaky handwriting whenever he wrote about the blood status of their children. "I understand they're…halfbloods, but they could pass for purebloods if you raise them right."
Botan winced and Alfred looked annoyed at the next bit as it said: "And as long as your rather lovely wife doesn't show her face." He crumpled it up and threw it in the trash as soon as they finished. "Alfred, I honestly think he doesn't--" Botan tried to say before he waved her off.
"Don't worry about it, he does like you, he's just weird."
The letter she received today was addressed to her. "Hello, Botan dear," it began, not quite in that shaky handwriting but almost there. "Best of luck," it continued, now starting to look jittery. "You'll need it. Cheers." It then added in smaller handwriting: "Don't die." Botan couldn't read the rest as it was incomprehensible scribbles. "I guess he really does like me," she said with a shrug.
As their children got older they had to explain that grandpa always sent funny letters and it was just how he showed that he cared.