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The summer evening buzzed with a steady drizzle of rain as the people of London went about their lives like bees in a hive. A tide of umbrellas held the falling shower at bay as the crowd flowed past the entrance to Number 12 Grimmauld Place — blissfully unaware of the house hidden in plain sight. The hidden house that had once held captive a young convict aged beyond his years. Which had once sheltered three scared teens and a house elf huddled together around a locket, plotting murder. Which now hosted a family of four, built upon loving hugs and sweet memories filled with the laughter of children and the aroma of home cooked food.
She stood right in front of the house, an umbrella in one hand and a deceptively light purse in the other. A hint of a smile was on her lips as she looked at the sign on the iron gate: Potter. Her sight wandered over to the swaying swing in a garden of drenched flowers. She opened the gate in a hurry and walked quickly towards the doorstep.
The press of magic in the air gradually swelled in question as the ancient house evaluated it’s late entrant. Daphne quickly took her wand out of her sleeve and tapped the serpentine door knob. The magic in the air snapped into place as the home recognized its mistress. The door opened; she closed her umbrella and stepped into the foyer.
“I’m home!” Daphne exclaimed as the door closed behind her. She placed the umbrella in a stand on the wall which started steaming off the moisture with the light hum of raised magic. The air in the foyer warmed, and the wizened home dried off her clothes. She removed her boots and pointed her wand at them. The boots upended and shook off moisture, seemingly of their own accord.
The thuds of approaching footsteps on creaky wood alerted her towards the approaching person. She turned around.
“Jamie!” she said, her voice filled with affection as she moved forward to hug the child of twelve, her hand tousling the ever-messy hair he had inherited from his father. She slung her arms around him and held him tight.
“Oof, mum, my ribs!” He cried while laughing and hugged her back with the force of months of separation.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to pick you up Jamie. Why is your hair so wet?” The question wasn’t even finished before Daphne pointed her wand and cast a drying charm at his hair as he squirmed under his mother’s attention.
“We just arrived from King’s Cross. The train was late and we got caught in the storm. Blame Esme. I begged dad to use the floo, but she said the floo makes her sick. I swear she only wanted to get herself soaked! And dad wouldn’t hear a word of my objections. I think he also wanted to get soaked for some weird reason.”, he complained to his smiling Mother.
She kept on smiling at him. ‘ Some things never changed,’ she thought.
“Mum?”
“Nothing.”, she shook her head, still smiling.
“Stop smiling like that, then. It’s getting creepy.”
“Aww. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I’m almost tempted to accept that Potions position just to keep an eye on what you two get up to." She mussed up his hair once again in the familiar, fond gesture. How much she had missed doing this! “Aren’t you hungry? It’s a long ride from Hogwarts.”
“Yeah." He nodded shyly, escaping her hands. “Not as much as Esme though — She was looking at me like I was the food by the time we reached London. She's with Dad in the kitchen. Not that Kreacher appreciates the intrusion." Mother and son shared a look at that. "Dad will have to look out for poisoning attempts from him." Jamie said, grabbing his mother by the arm and leading her to the living room.
“Dad said he was cooking something special for dinner. Esme can’t stop blabbering about it. She is almost as bad as you when it comes to dad’s food.”
“Me?” Daphne raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said drily, placing her purse on the fireplace mantle.
“Yes. You. " Jamie emphasised his words by pointing an accusing finger at her. "Aunt Astoria says that half the reason you married him was for the food!”. He was smiling too.
“Is that the Aunt Astoria who can’t stop inviting herself to Harry’s dinners? Take that with a grain of salt, won’t you?” They stepped down the narrow stone stairs that lead to the kitchen.
Snippets of conversations could be heard from the kitchen, voices resonating in the cavernous space.
A long wooden table stood in the erstwhile meeting room of the Order Of The Phoenix. The room had long since been redecorated from its initial state in warm hues of Gryffindor gold and Slytherin emerald. The pantry stood to a side, Kreacher rearranging ingredients while muttering under his breath.
At the centre of the room stood her husband of fourteen years, a lively smile on his face as he wandlessly levitated vegetables with one hand and used the other to slash his wand carefully with a swish of parting air, slicing and dicing the floating ingredients. On the side of his face was an eye-patch. The surrounding scarred skin extended to the lightning bolt scar on his forehead which had faded over the decades into a comparatively minor feature.
A blonde girl of twelve with green eyes was leaning against the dining table, watching the complicated dance, her face scrunched up in concentration.
“Esmeralda! Shut up that stomach of yours, won’t you? Mum is here,” Jamie said.
“Oi! Look who is complaining! You didn’t have any problems stealing from the trolley sweets I bought,” Esme Greengrass bickered back.
As the twins carried on their bickering, Daphne exchanged a glance with Harry. For all that the twins could hex their ears off with their squabbling — the past few months had been rather lonely for the couple. The comfortable silences between them had been tinged with nostalgia and reading the daily letters from Hogwarts had been a bittersweet experience. She had caught herself focusing a bit too much on work and Harry had been taking more commissions than was strictly healthy. After the Christmas break had ended, with James and Esmeralda returning to Hogwarts, they could no longer deny what they had been missing.
They had taken some time out of their schedules for a few relaxing picnics, visiting the spots their younger selves had used for dates before their marriage and revisiting those memories with soft kisses and comforting embraces, a celebration of a relationship and marriage that had held strong and matured despite the weathering of time and the circumstances that had aligned against them. They may not have been madly in love — passionate as only new couples could be. Instead they were partners for life, confidants for each other in all endeavors, familiar with each other to a degree that made her insides warm.
Daphne Greengrass was married to Harry Potter, every little girl's hero, the Boy-Who-Lived who had grown up to defeat Voldemort against all odds. But only Daphne could claim to truly know the person underneath. Harry, whose favorite hobby was cooking, Harry, who put up with her bitchy moods and bad days, Harry, who still hadn’t come to terms with the headmaster’s betrayal, Harry, who hated rising up early because he had been forced to do so throughout his childhood, Harry, who had an unhealthy obsession with all varieties of treacle tart, Harry, who giggled like a little girl if you tickled him right near his —
Daphne's reminiscence was broken as Harry finished dicing up the vegetables and swiped his hands on his chudley-cannons apron that Weasley had gifted him for last Christmas. Its garish orange contrasted horribly with the green of the shirt he wore underneath
"Got caught in the rain too? The storm caught up with us right as we were leaving King’s Cross." he washed his hands with a smile at her.
"I got soaked walking home from the apparition point at the park. It lightened up just as I stepped inside too. Your luck must be contagious." She sat down, pulling back a wooden chair from the dining table.
"Hey! My luck is bloody perfect . The concept you cannot understand, dear plebeian wife, is that it is bipolar. Remember every single time my neck was saved in the nick of time with extremely lucky coincidences — yet the only reason it needed saving in the first place was my bad luck." He grinned, sitting on another chair pulled back from the table.
"Except for the one time it didn't," she pointed out.
His expression wavered, a finger tracing his eye-patch. “Lady Luck does occasionally like to take a vacation, I guess. Who doesn’t?,” he said, smirking.
They lapsed into thoughtful silence, the inane arguing of their children a familiar background. It had been more than half a decade since Harry had lost an eye and started his early retirement from the Aurory. His new career had given him a peace of mind he did not know he had been missing. Almost quadrupling the Potter vaults had been a nice bonus too.
“Jamie said that you were preparing something special for dinner?”, Daphne said, taking a deep breath, the distinct aroma of Harry’s food filling the kitchen.
“I will have to floo Astoria, won’t I? She somehow always finds out when you are cooking. Better to inform her than let her figure it out on her own.” She shuddered.
“And invite Malfoy along?” Harry’s nose wrinkled. “I suppose it won’t be too bad, the kids probably miss Scorpius, and we would have had to arrange a visit anyway, so fine — invite the Malfoys. So that’s four.. six.. and seven people to prepare dinner for, including Teddy. Oh, did I mention that Teddy would be visiting today?”
“I was under the impression that he was with Andromeda after the graduation ceremony?”
“He is with her now. He just flooed to let me know. Apparently he is leaving for Romania on the weekend and wanted to say goodbye.” He frowned and turned around, the background noise of arguments had suddenly stopped.
The twins had lowered their voices, exchanging whispers behind their hands. Harry clapped his hands. “Hey! Hey! Come now! I’m sure you’ve left out a lot of news from your letters. Or are the rumours I heard from Neville about a certain Chamber false?”
The twins shared a guilty look. Daphne was unamused.
“Come on, 'fess up. How did you figure out the entrance? I was very careful in leaving out the exact location of the entrance in all narrations. And I already know neither Aunt Hermione nor Ron or Ginny have shared that particular secret with anyone,” he asked with suspicion.
“Come on, Dad, who is the retired auror here?” Esmeralda spoke up. “It wasn’t that hard, we already knew that someone had died and left a ghost. All we had to do was track down Myrtle.”
“She had some interesting tales about you when we needled her. About a certain bath with an egg?” Jamie said while wagging his eyebrows.
Daphne looked at an amused Harry in question. ‘Later’, he mouthed. “Don’t try to distract me, kids. At least tell me you kept someone informed before going down there.”
“Of course we did! We aren’t stupid. There really wasn’t anything down there anyway. The whole place just reeked of dead snakes,” Esmeralda said.
A decade of raising the two troublemakers had finely honed Daphne’s skill of detecting their omissions. She could sense that they weren’t being entirely truthful and decided to see if she could get something out of them later. A year in Slytherin had not done any favours to their hitherto doubtful innocence.
Harry gave them an unamused look when they attempted to distract him by describing in exaggerated detail the inner workings of Slytherin house, but he did not interrupt them either.
Daphne closed her eyes and sighed, relaxing on the cushioned chair. The chair slowly heated itself up, gently warming her up from the rain’s cold. After five lengthy hours of negotiating a potions supply for her business with that utter arse Smith Jr. , a relaxing evening with her family finally complete was exactly what she needed. Surrounded by the echoing warmth of conversation, Daphne smiled.