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Dahlia Potter was done.
She had done her part for the Wizarding World time and time again. She fought Voldemort at the age of 11, destroyed her first Horcrux at the age of 12, won the Triwizard Tournament at 14, and ultimately killed the Dark Lord himself once and for all by the time she was 17. Needless to say, she felt like she deserved a break. However, the Ministry of Magic had their own opinion on the matter.
Sacrificing her childhood and risking her life on multiple occasions wasn’t enough for them. They wanted her to fill Albus Dumbledore’s shoes and be the new leader of the Light. They wanted her to take her place in Wizarding society and help lead them into a new era. No matter how vocally Dehlia insisted that she just wanted to live a normal, peaceful life, people assumed that she’d step up to the plate once the circumstances forced her to. However, Dahlia refused to once again become the Wizarding World’s pawn. That’s how she found herself at King’s Cross for the final time with her suitcase shrunk to fit in her pocket and her arms cradling a sleeping Teddy Lupin. She quickly bought a ticket for the first train leaving and resolved to not settle until she found the perfect home for herself and her godson.
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She found that home six months later.
Dahlia’s travels took her across all of Europe and most of South America. She found herself fascinated by the Muggle culture she had fallen so behind on. However, she soon realized how difficult it was to travel with a baby. Teddy Lupin wasn’t a difficult child by any means, but even perfect angles had their limits. With that in mind, Dahlia began to seriously search for a more permanent home for the last family she had left. She decided to start her search in the United States since it was far enough away from Britain that she wouldn’t be recognized, but a big enough magical hub that she’d hear any important news from her homeland. Her travels took her across the country, but she managed to find something wrong with nearly every state.
“The food just isn’t my taste,” Dahlia muttered to a snoozing Teddy in a hotel room one night. “I mean seriously, how am I expected to live in a place where they only drink their tea cold. Cold Teddy. Cold. It’s absolutely ludicrous.”
“I mean the landscape is pretty enough,” Dahlia said a few weeks later as she rocked Teddy to sleep in a different hotel room, “but the weather is simply dreadful. I thought the rain was bad enough in Britain, but it has nothing on the heat here. Seriously, I can feel my skin melting off. How could I, in good conscience, raise you in a place where your skin might melt off? We’ll have to keep looking.”
After going through 47 of the 50 states, Dahlia was beginning to lose hope. She was already considering what cities she might look into in Canada when her plane touched down in the great state of Vermont. Dahlia didn’t exactly have high hopes for Vermont, but she refused to let go of her initial hope in finding a home in the United States until it had been thoroughly disproven. With that in mind, she quickly grabbed her knapsack from the carry-on compartment while balancing Teddy with one arm, and murmured a quick apology to the people around her before quickly exiting the plane. Once she got out of the airport, the first thing she noticed was the landscape. All around her was lush green grass, with beautiful mountains looming in the distance. With a smiling face, she looked down at her godson and said,
“Teddy, I think we found our new home.”
With both the Potter fortune and the Black fortune behind her, Dahlia was not lacking in the money department, so she was easily able to buy a plot of land high in the mountains where nobody would bother her (actually, easily is a bit of a stretch since she did have to Confund the real estate agent when they started talking about her credit score.) Once she had her land, she started working on the house. As much as she loathed using magic to build the house, she had to be realistic. She couldn’t wait the amount of time it would take to build the house the Muggle way (and imagine having to transport all of the supplies up the mountain the Muggle way, it would have been absolutely dreadful) so she had to make use of her magic and build herself and her godson a suitable home.
Thankful, for both her and Teddy’s sake, she had done a lot of reading during her travels. She was much better at Transfiguration than she had ever been in school (she’s sure Hermione would be so proud of her if she could see her now) so it didn’t take her long to Transfigure the nearby trees and rocks into something that resembled a home. Granted, the porch was a bit uneven and the tile in the kitchen had a distinct stone pattern to it, but it was hers and she loved it. For the first time in her life, she felt as if she was in control.
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Dahlia Potter was bored.
It had been two years since she left the Wizarding World behind, and well over a year since she’d settled down in her new home. Teddy was in the midst of the Terrible Twos, and Dahlia was at her wit’s end trying to take care of him by herself. And, when she wasn’t preoccupied with her godson, she had nothing meaningful to occupy her time. She had already read every book in the house too many times to count (and she couldn’t order books too often without gaining unwanted attention) and any repairs or improvements that she could make to the house had already been done. Hell, she had even taught herself Arithmancy in hopes of wasting time that way, but she eventually found herself done with that and bored once more. Dahlia had almost resigned herself to taking a quick trip to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade in search of adventure when she stumbled upon the object that would change her life forever: a spade.
To be quite honest, Dahlia wasn’t even sure why she had a spade. She can’t imagine any circumstance in which she would have bought herself a spade, yet there it was in front of her. As she looked at the spade, Dahlia couldn’t help but recall the piece of land a little ways from the house that was far too clear and flat for Dahlia’s liking. She had been planning on doing something with the land for ages, but she could never think of anything to put there. Until now. With a new conviction, Dahlia put on her coat and marched out of the house with the intention of grabbing supplies, but she immediately backtracked into the house once she remembered that she forgot Teddy.
Despite the rocky start, Dahlia found herself enthralled by the world of gardening. Aunt Petunia had made her garden throughout her childhood, but, due to the incurable heat, she had never grown fond of it. However, in the cool Vermont climate, Dahlia found herself content to spend hours in the garden working on her roses, violets, and lilies. If she found herself using magic to keep the plants alive from time to time, that was nobody’s business but her own.
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While gardening certainly kept her busy, Dahlia was at a loss of what to do with the countless flowers she grew. Eventually, she ran out of both vases and room in the house for them, and she couldn’t bear the thought of just getting rid of them. That’s when genius struck.
Teddy was three by this point, and, according to Dahlia, the most intelligent three-year-old on the face of the Earth. When Dahlia ranted to him about her growing flower problem at dinner one night, Teddy had the perfect solution.
“You should open a flower shop!”
It was then that history was made.
Dahlia thought about Teddy’s idea and found only pros. She would get rid of her excess flowers, have something else to occupy her time, have a feasible means of living (she was beginning to think that the grocer was getting suspicious as to where she was getting her money), and, most importantly, she’d start getting more social interaction (something that Hermione had been stressing the importance of in her most recent letters.) Convinced that Teddy was wiser than Dumbledore himself, Dahlia gave him an extra cookie before tucking him in and setting off to do her research. Within the next month, Marauders’ Flowers opened in the nearby town.
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Marauders’ Flowers was Dahlia’s pride and joy. After Teddy, it was the thing she spoke the most about. However, after she had been in business for about six months, she realized that she couldn’t run the business by herself. Rather than having too much time on her hands, she found that there weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, so she set herself the goal of finding the perfect person to hire.
The town Dahlia chose to open her shop in was far from perfect. On the edge of town, there was a bar that all the men liked to go to at the end of the week to have a drink and, in some cases, pay a pretty girl for a good time. Of course, brothels were illegal in the United States, but it was such a lucrative business that everyone in the town kept quiet. However, Dahlia had seen looks on some of the girls’ faces; she knew that a few of them wanted to make a better life for themselves, and Dahlia knew she could help them.
After dropping Teddy off at his grandmother Andromeda’s house for the weekend, Dahlia made her way to the local bar and brothel, Johnny’s, to change some lives. Unfortunately, the lovely patrons didn’t take too kindly to her presence once they realized she wasn’t one of the girls.
“You’d best get the hell out of here before we do something unkindly,” one of the men warned her, “this isn’t the place for a respectable woman such as yourself.”
“You can take your standard for ‘respectable woman’ and shove it up your arse,” Dahlia spat. “I’m not here to talk to you.”
“You stupid bitch!” The man snarled as he stood up, violently shaking the table.
Before Dahlia could escalate the situation any further (and Merlin knows she was going to escalate it), one of the working girls came in from the back and grabbed her hand.
“Don’t mind my cousin, Bruce,” The girl said as she fluttered her eyes at the repulsive drunk, “she’s just a bit rough around the edges.”
“I’ll show you rough around the edges,” Dahlia muttered beneath her breath.
Before Bruce could respond, the girl dragged Dahlia out of the building and towards the group of trailers that served as the girls’ ‘working space.’
“You should really be careful around Bruce,” the girl advised as she dragged Dahlia further from the bar, “he might not look like much, but he can get awfully mean when he’s been drinking.”
“How do you put up with people like him?” Dahlia asked.
“Oh well you just get used to it,” the girl assured her. “Besides, not everyone is like that. Some of the younger men can be downright charming.”
“Don’t you ever want more for yourself than this?” Dahlia asked frustratedly, “I’ve seen the looks in some of the girls’ eyes, they aren’t happy here. Believe me, I know what it’s like to feel powerless and afraid, but I want to help. I want to help you guys make better lives for yourselves.”
The girl’s stance went from friendly to defensive instantly.
“Now who do you think you are coming in here all aggressive-like and telling me that I’m living a bad life? I’ll have you know that I’m doing the best I can with what I have to work with, and I’m damn well proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish!”
“I meant nothing ill towards you or the others!” Dahlia insisted, “I just want to give you guys the same opportunity that was given to me: the opportunity to make your life your own and break free from what people expect you to be!”
The girl sighed and gave Dahlia a considering glance before saying, “we don’t want your charity.”
“And that’s not what I’m offering,” Dahlia assured her, “I’m offering a better job with better conditions and pay that will allow you guys to change your lives for the better.”
“There is one girl here who could use a fresh start.”
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Mia Dearden was… interesting, to say the least. When she hired her, Mia assured Dahlia that she was 18 (Dahlia would later throw a fit that led to Bruce having three broken ribs and Dahlia spending a night in jail when she realized that Mia was only 15) and that she had ample working experience beyond Johnny’s. However, as soon as she began working, Dahlia realized that Mia had absolutely no idea what she was doing. On her first day alone, she misplaced $50, sold an old woman violets instead of daffodils, and somehow manage to set fire to the register despite there not being any fire sources within the store.
“I’M A FAILURE!” Mia screamed at the end of her first day before throwing her shoe against the wall of the store, where it hit the brick and fell to the ground with a pitiful thump.
“You’re not a failure,” Dahlia assured her patiently, “you just need practice.”
“Why would you bother keeping me on when you can find at least fifty people in this town who know how to work a cash register without setting it on fire?” Mia asked her glumly as she slumped in the break room chair.
“I’m sure there are at least a hundred people in this town who can properly work a cash register,” Dahlia replied dryly before nothing Mia’s miserable expression, “but that’s not important. What’s important is that I chose you because I could tell that you have heart, and heart is exactly what this place needs. I can buy a million cash registers if need be, but you can’t by the type of spirit that I see in you.”
“Now you’re just being sappy.”
“Get out of my sight, Dearden.”
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Just as Dahlia had carved herself a life in Vermont all those years ago, Mia quickly carved herself a place in Dahlia’s heart. Within the first couple of months of working at Mauraders’ Flowers, Mia got the hang of things; she was finally able to put change away without flinching at the new cash register. Dahlia didn’t fancy herself as soft, but Mia was quickly becoming a part of her family. Plus, she was always willing to babysit Teddy when Dahlia wanted to go out drinking, so that only served to endear her to Dahlia.
Dahlia was content with her lot. She had Teddy, Mia, and Mauraders’ Flowers; asking for more would simply be testing fate, and Dahlia had tested fate enough for ten lifetimes. At least, that’s what she thought before she woke up one morning and found an unconscious man crushing her roses.
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Dahlia would like to think of herself as adaptable. When a half-giant showed up and claimed that she was a witch, she took it in stride. When it turned out she was The Chosen One, she took a deep breath and carried the burden. When she realized that the only way to defeat Voldemort was for her to die, she looked at her friends one last time before going to greet Death like an old friend. However, none of those scenarios gave her any insight on how to deal with the unconscious man in her garden.
He was roughly six feet tall, very muscular, and had long, dark hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. From just glancing at him Dahlia couldn’t determine what had caused him to pass out (on her flowers no less.) Deciding that she couldn’t just leave him there, she pulled out her wand and started levitating him towards the house. Teddy was at primary school already, so she wasn’t worried about the stranger potentially hurting him. As for her, well she could take care of herself.
Once she got him inside, she gently laid him down on the pale blue sofa in the sitting room. Deciding to worry about the mess later, she headed to the bathroom to get the first aid kit. However, when she got back to the sitting room, kit in hand, the stranger wasn’t on the sofa. Before she could react, she felt the sharp sting of metal at her throat. She stiffened as she felt the man move his mouth closer to her ear and whisper,
“Who are you?”
Before Dahlia could stop herself, she replied, “What do you mean ‘who am I’? Who the bloody hell are you? You’re the one who decided to take a nap in my yard!”
Rather than getting angry (like Dahlia expected him to), the man seemed to deflate. However, the pressure at her throat didn’t relent as he replied, “I don’t know.”
“...You don’t know?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then,” Dahlia replied, “how about I make us some breakfast then because I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”
Dahlia was nothing if not adaptable.
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Dahlia learned nothing, yet everything about the man in the following weeks.
He would appear for a few hours at a time, then leave for days (and on one notable occasion, a week.) Dahlia would cook him food, and the pair would eat in silence. Any time she tried to ask him a question, he had the same response.
“Where are you from?”
“I don’t know.”
Despite the stranger’s clear foreboding nature, Dahlia felt like he was being honest with her. She also felt like he meant her no harm (it’s not like he actually cut her the first time they met, he was just surprised), so she continued to make him food.
“You know, you can use the shower if you want to.”
The man rarely looked at Dahlia, but this caused his gaze to rise from the plate of steak and kidney pie to give her a considering look. Pale blue eyes met vibrant green as the two started an unintentional starting match that only ended when Dahlia raised a single brow, causing the man to look away.
“The bathroom is the first door on the left. There are towels above the sink. Oh, feel free to use the conditioner.”
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“James.”
“Pardon?”
“My name is James.”
“Well, James, it’s lovely to meet you. I’m Dahlia.”
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Despite the initial wariness, James managed to worm his way into Dahlia’s small family. Despite the terror in James’ eyes when he first met Teddy (and boy was that an interesting day) the boy adored him, and James was surprisingly good with kids. Mia, after meeting James on the rare occasion she accepted Dahlia’s dinner invitation, immediately adopted the man as a brother of sorts. James, surprised at the girl’s immediate acceptance of him, could do nothing but nod along as Mia regaled him with tall tales from her high school. And Dahlia? Dahlia wasn’t entirely sure what she thought of James, but she knew she wanted him to stick around.
“You know,” Dahlia said as she watched James do the dishes after she made them dinner one night, “you don’t have to keep disappearing on me.”
James didn’t look up as he replied, “I have to keep moving.”
“After… after I got justice for my parents,” Dahlia said carefully, “I felt like, if I stopped moving for even a second, my entire world would come crashing down. I had spent so long, so much of my life preparing to honor them that I had no idea what to do with my life after I finally achieved that goal.”
“How did you figure it out?”
Dahlia smiled and looked out the kitchen window where Teddy was catching fireflies in the garden with Mia.
“I found people worth living for.”
When Dahlia looked back at James, he was looking straight at her. And, for the first time, she saw a smile on his face.
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“You know, Marauders’ has been getting a lot of business recently. I could use another worker.”
“I’m not sure you’d let me decline that offer.”
“Do you want to stay?”
“Yes.”
“Then here’s another reason to.”