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Mary still felt nervous. She wasn’t entirely sure it was over, because they had said that last time, hadn’t they? Reg had been so keen to get back to their little terraced house by the Avon, that they had returned to the UK the day it was announced on the radio, rushing through the goodbyes to all the other refugees and muggleborns they had been living with in that odd little village.
And Reg had gone back to work, and Mary was thinking about it (because she would have to, really, Reg’s wage wouldn’t support a family of five on its own), but she was afraid. Afraid to leave her children with Reg’s mother, afraid to set foot anywhere where there might be other witches and wizards ready to alert people that would grab her and haul her off for questioning, afraid to walk down Diagon Alley and maybe see one of the faces that had leered at her, taunted her, threatened her - the thought of seeing one of those faces calmly going about their day, maybe not recognising her at all was the scariest part of it all.
But Reg came back that warm summer evening, looking a little dazed, and strode across the kitchen, taking her by the shoulders. ‘Mary,’ he said seriously, ‘put something smart on.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Have the kids got anything smart? Do the girls still fit in those matching little dresses?’
‘What are you talking about? Where are we going? I… I’m not being questioned again, am I?’
Reg shook his head rapidly, and began to pace up and down. ‘No. This is good. Really good. Amazing. The likes of us, Mary-’
‘What are you talking about?’
He took her by the shoulders again, and guided her into a kitchen chair. He sat beside her, and leaned close, his voice low. ‘I got called up to the Auror office today. It was…’ he gulped. ‘It was Harry Potter. And that Ron Weasley.’
Mary’s jaw dropped. ‘Reg,’ she said in a hushed voice.
‘I know. I know,’ he said solemnly.
‘Did he have the-?’
‘Right there. I saw it.’
‘Oh my God…’ she breathed. ‘What did they want?’
‘They said they had some explanations for me - it was them what helped us escape, Mary. They…’ he swallowed again, paling. ‘We were right, what they were shouting - everyone said we must be mistaken, but we were right. That Ron Weasley knocked me out, because he needed to use me for polyjuice, and then it wasn’t Robards at all - it was Harry Potter.’
She covered her mouth with her hands. They had suspected. Wondered. Gone over and over the half remembered details of that blur of a terrifying day. But to have it confirmed was as shocking as though they had never imagined it at all. This sort of stuff just didn’t happen to the Cattermoles of Evesham.
‘Mary - he was asking after you all. He said he’d like to meet you. Check you and the kids are all right. Offer…’ Reg let out a shuddering breath, as though he couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Offer his apologies.’
‘What for?’ she squeaked.
‘For mixing us up in his mad scheme, he said,’ replied Reg. ‘They… They invited us round for dinner.’
‘Dinner?’ she said faintly.
He nodded, looking mildly scared. ‘You dress the girls, I’ll sort out Alfie.’
Mary wrestled her daughters into their matching red velvet dresses, pulling Maisie’s hair back into a plait and Ellie’s into a half-crown. ‘We’re going to meet someone very important,’ she told them quietly. ‘You must be on your best behaviour, all right?’
‘Are we going back to the village?’ asked Maisie unhappily.
‘No,’ said Mary firmly. ‘No, we’re back home for good now. We’re just going to…’ she shook her head vaguely. ‘We’re just going to meet someone.’
Reg reappeared, carrying Alfie in his little waistcoat and grey cap. ‘Are we all ready?’ he asked.
‘Reg!’ Mary cried. ‘I haven’t even had time to put on any make up!’
‘Just stick a bit of lippy on, we can’t be late.’
She rifled urgently through her handbag, her hands trembling.
‘Where are we going?’ Maisie asked.
‘To meet Harry Potter,’ said Reg. Maisie and Ellie giggled. ‘No, really,’ Reg emphasised to them, still looking a little pale. ‘Best behaviour, girls.’
‘The real life one?’ Ellie asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Reg, as Mary tried to stop her hand from shaking. ‘Says he wants to meet you.’ The girls giggled again. Mary could tell they were sure Reg was joking…
‘If this is all a trick to make me feel stupid, Reg-’ she said furiously.
‘It’s not!’ he promised, looking panicked. ‘Come on, Mary, I’m not that much of an arsehole.’
‘Arsehole,’ said Alfie, grinning gleefully.
‘Ssh, no - don’t say that.’
Finally they were ready, and they lined up outside, while Reg fumbled with a small slip of parchment in his pocket. ‘Says here we’ve got to go to, er, “The Burrow”, just outside Ottery St Catchpole in Devon.’
They took the Knight Bus, the girls shrieking with elation as they let themselves be flung around onto the beds, Reg handing Alfie over to Mary so he could hold his head in his hands and try not to throw up. Mary bounced her son on her knee, breathing heavily as she gazed out the window at Cirencester flashing past, the bus bombing down the roads of the South West. What if this was all a trick again? What if she was going to be hauled into another cell? She’d only just got a wand of her own again. But this seemed like a ludicrous way to lure them out of their home - a ridiculous, twisting tale when it would have just been easier to drag them out.
But what on Earth would Harry Potter want to see them for?
‘Stop!’ she hissed at her daughters. ‘Stop, you’ll crease your dresses. Behave! This is important!’
Finally the bus leapt from Yeovil to Exmouth, and then was speeding down country lanes under the golden evening sun.
‘This is mad, Reg,’ she whispered. ‘Mad.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘No one’s going to believe this, are they?’
She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
The Knight Bus came to a sudden, lurching stop, and the family found themselves at the bottom of a long, dirt driveway, looking up at a crooked, towering stone house, surrounded by slightly overgrown gardens dotted with chickens and gnomes. Alfie squealed in delight and wriggled in Mary’s arms as he reached for one.
‘Come on,’ said Reg hoarsely, and he took Ellie by the hand while Mary took Maisie’s, and they walked up to the front door. From inside, they could hear loud, but cheerful, voices, and the blur of movement through the steamed up windows. Reg knocked, and they waited. Even the girls were quiet.
The door was opened by a ginger, freckled man, who frowned at them curiously.
‘Hello,’ said Reg weakly. ‘Er… H-Harry Potter sent us-’
The man blinked at them, and then shouted over his shoulder. ‘Oi! Harry! You started inviting people round our house now?’
‘Ron and I asked your mum first,’ called back another voice, and then suddenly a dark haired young man had joined the ginger one, smiling at them. ‘Hi,’ he said brightly. ‘Reg, how are you?’
‘I-’ croaked Reg. Mary wanted to say something too, but she couldn’t quite get over the fact that Harry Potter was standing right in front of her, less than a metre away. She had seen his picture in the paper dozens of times, but it was quite different to see him standing there - he was quite handsome, really, with very striking green eyes, and taller than she had expected, but even so she hadn’t expected him to look quite so young.
‘Come in,’ Potter told them. ‘Oh - this is Charlie, by the way. Charlie, the Cattermoles - Reg and Mary.’
‘Thanks, clears that up,’ said the man called Charlie, shrugging in exasperation.
He led them through to a cosy kitchen, where he introduced them to Molly Weasley, a plump, ginger witch who waved kindly from the stove where she was preparing dinner, Arthur Weasley, who smiled at them as he laid the table, Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, and Ron Weasley, who nodded and said, ‘good to see you again, Reg. And you, Mary, though I don’t suppose you remember me.’
‘T-Thank you,’ she stuttered. ‘For inviting us over.’
‘Least we can do,’ said Ron cheerfully. ‘I did pretend to be your husband and put your lives under immense danger.’
‘Right… Yes…’ said Mary, because she couldn’t think what else to say.
‘We’re so pleased to see you’re all OK,’ said Harry Potter quietly. ‘We worried about you all.’ Mary couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him properly, she was rather star struck, but in her peripheral vision she saw him tilt his head and smile down at her daughters, both of whom were peering shyly around her legs.
‘Hello,’ he said to them, and they said nothing back. ‘Which of you is Maisie, and which is Ellie?’
‘This is Maisie,’ said Reg hoarsely, touching Maisie’s blonde head. ‘The eldest. And then Ellie, and Alfie.’
‘Hello,’ he said to them again. ‘I’m Harry.’
Still they said nothing. ‘They’re shy,’ Mary blurted out, even though her daughters were not usually shy at all.
‘That’s all right,’ said Harry Potter. ‘I’m quite shy too.’
‘Are you the real life Harry Potter?’ whispered Ellie.
Harry Potter frowned, as though he were thinking, and crouched down so that he was level with Maisie and Ellie. ‘I… think so,’ he said slowly. ‘Come and have a look for me.’
He motioned for them to approach, and they slowly did - cautious and hesitant, like wild animals reaching for food. As they got close to him, he raised his hand and pulled back the dark hair that fell over his forehead. Beneath it was a thin, red scar, jagged, in a harsh lightning shape.
Mary was quite as entranced by it as her daughters - she stared at it. All the mystery and the violence and the hope and the fear and the legend in one small scar.
Maisie reached out her hand. ‘Maisie!’ Mary hissed, but Harry Potter’s green eyes flicked up to meet hers and he smiled softly.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. Maisie touched the lightning bolt scar, her little fingers tracing over it.
‘Did it hurt?’ she whispered, her face a little more awed and excited than Mary thought was appropriate.
‘No, not at all,’ said Harry Potter.
‘You’re a lucky girl, Maisie,’ said Ron Weasley, leaning against the kitchen counter as he watched with mild surprise. ‘He doesn’t let many people do that. Never lets me.’
‘Well, you never ask,’ said Harry Potter lightly, as Maisie finally pulled her hand away.
‘Is the story true?’ Ellie asked. ‘That You-Know-Who tried to kill you but it didn’t work?’
‘It is,’ said Harry Potter.
‘Why didn’t it work?’ asked Maisie.
Harry Potter looked at them closely for a moment, and then gestured them still closer, moving his head forward so he was between them, and whispered something in their ears. Mary’s heart plummeted, convinced that whatever he was saying would give them nightmares, and she wouldn’t know how to make it better - they could be so sensitive, her girls. But then he pulled back, smiling gently again, and the girls stared at him, and then at one another, and then back at him again, their eyes wide, but their expressions calm.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ said Molly Weasley softly.
Harry Potter straightened up, still looking down at the girls. ‘I bet you’re hungry. I am.’
‘Please,’ said Arthur Weasley, gesturing. ‘Sit wherever you want.’
Reg and Mary moved to sit at the large wooden table - Mary was praying that Alfie would behave and sit still for once as she plonked him between them.
‘He’s sweet,’ said Harry to Reg, nodding at their toddler son. ‘How old is he? I know nothing about babies.’
‘Er, nearly three-’
‘Charlie,’ Molly Weasley was saying in a low voice, ‘take a plate up to George-’
‘He won’t eat it, Mum-’
‘Just take it,’ she said firmly. Mary noticed that her face seemed to be in misery, but by the time she had turned back to the table and waved her wand to serve up the food, she was smiling sweetly again.
Ron Weasley leaned forward. ‘So, Mary,’ he said, dolloping a spoonful of mashed potato onto her plate for her. ‘Harry and I have already done the apologies and explanations to your husband, but I think I should probably explain a few things to you too.’
Over the dinner, Harry, Ron and Hermione explained that they had to break into the Ministry to retrieve stolen information from the woman who had been conducting Mary’s trial. An awful coincidence, they said, that it happened to be Reg they targeted. They also told them, at great length, that the woman who had been conducting the trial had been arrested, and that there was quite a lot of history between them all. ‘We’re helping to build up a strong case against her,’ said Harry Potter. ‘Another reason to ask you here tonight, rather than writing, is to ask you if you would be willing to stand as a witness for the prosecution, Mary?’
Mary agreed at once. She felt as though she had been let into a secret world. She certainly got the impression - from exchanged glances and hesitations - that they were still holding some things back, but that they had bothered to reach out at all, that they then patiently listened as Reg described their escape, was more than Mary could have ever imagined.
By the end of the dinner the conversation was lighter - Ginny Weasley talked animatedly with Maisie about Quidditch - Harry Potter seemed to watch closely. Molly Weasley cooed over Alfie. Ron and Charlie made Ellie giggle by telling silly jokes.
When Alfie began to show the overtired signs of a temper tantrum, the Cattermole family decided it was probably time to call the Knight Bus again.
‘Thank you,’ Mary said, shaking Harry’s hand as they stood at the door. ‘And congratulations.’ He blinked at her, clearly confused. ‘On the battle,’ she said. ‘Defeating You-Know-Who.’
‘Oh, right. Yeah, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re all OK. Best of luck with everything. Keep in touch - I’ll see you around the office, Reg.’
***
She tucked them into their bunkbeds that night, kissing their foreheads and smoothing their blankets. Ellie had fallen asleep almost straight away, the excitement of the evening exhausting her so that she slept so deeply, open mouthed and drooling onto the pillow, that she didn’t even wake as Mary lay on the bed beside Maisie and read her a story.
When she had finished, she closed the book and placed it on the bedside table, and was about to get up when she shifted to look at her daughter more closely, brushing back the mousey blond hair from her forehead. ‘Maisie,’ she asked softly, a little worried about what the answer would be, ‘what did Harry Potter whisper to you and Ellie this evening? When you asked him why You-Know-Who’s spell didn’t work?’
Maisie’s large blue eyes looked up at her. ‘He said it was because his mummy loved him so much,’ she whispered. ‘Just like you love us so much.’
It was very sudden, the hot prickle at her eyes, and she was afraid to speak because she knew her voice would come out broken, and that might upset Maisie. So she simply nodded, and tried to smile.
‘Do you think it’s true, Mummy?’ Maisie asked.
‘Of course it is,’ said Mary. The words tumbled out in a breathless way. ‘Of course it is, my darling.’