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On the mantle of a well-used room, bathed in firelight next to a piece of a Common Welsh Green eggshell, an Augurey feather, and a photo of a beaming couple in dress robes, sits a memory storing potion quarter-filled with memories. Every year on their wedding anniversary they pull it down, fill the pensieve, and reflect on the years they’ve shared together.
A little girl with straight black hair detaches herself from a group in the stables being shown a hippogriff by a wizard wearing the name tag ‘Aurelius.’ She peers at a younger boy a stall over twirling around a dark feather with a green sheen for a group of large-eared kittens to play with.
“Ooh, what’s that?” She asks.
The boy lifted his half-lidded gaze to look at the girl but otherwise kept moving the feather, much to the kittens’ delight. “They’re Kneazles.”
“I know that. I meant the feather.” She holds up a hand. “Wait, don’t tell me. I can figure it out.”
A Kneazle bats at his hand, and the boy resumes moving the feather about.
“It’s rather big for a raven’s feather, though they’re a similar color. We didn’t get to see them on the tour because they’re shy, but I’m told that Auguery’s have greenish black feathers. Is it an Augurey feather?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, where are my manners!” She smiles. “My name is Alesana Swelyn. Pleased to meet you.”
“Edmund Rookwood.” He nods.
At an outdoor garden party, a slightly older Edmund wanders over to where Alesana is admiring a small brown spine tipped in white.
“What do you have there?” he asks.
“Guess.”
Young, school-age Edmund and Alice stand side-by-side in a torch-lit dungeon hallway.
Alice turns over a vial in her hands, holding it up to the light to inspect it. “We should make this official.”
Edmund straightens next to her. “In what way?”
“Keep score, have a time limit,” Alice smiles at him, “and a prize for the winner.”
Edmund smiles back, leaning into her space. “What kind of prize?”
Alice mirrors him, getting right in his face. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
In the Slytherin common room, Edmund sits bent over his homework, his tongue slightly sticking out in concentration as he quills another line in his essay.
Alice’s eyes flash back to focusing on her own homework. A barely perceptible smile gracing her lips.
In a well-kept garden, Edmund hands Alice a silver box with green accents.
“This better not be part of our game.” Alice smiles. “I want a real gift.”
Edmund’s gaze remains steady, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re not tricking me into telling you what it is, Alice. Open it.”
Alice opens the box and stills. Inside the box is a pair of beautifully detailed sapphire earrings in the shape of Chinese blue butterflies.
Edmund wraps his hands around hers, steadying them.
Music fills the air as couples gently sway around each other. Alice and Edmund turn on the dance floor, their eyes only for each other.
Sunlight streams through a window as Alice and Edmund wake up face to face and a pillow away. For a moment they just gaze at each other, all sleep mushed hair and soft eyes.
Edmund brushes a stand of hair behind her ear and cups her cheek. “Mornin’,” his voice croaks, thick with sleep.
Alice lays her hand over his and laughs.
A dark haired man leads a group through a hallway lined with several entrances to subspaces containing different biomes. Alice and Edmund walk side by side, their arms looped together. The guide says something in Sanskrit and then repeats it in English, “We’re happy to welcome our International Creature Reserve fellows and friends to phoenix Preshti’s Burning Day.”
As he repeats his welcome in 3 other languages, Edmund and Alice look around, peering into each entrance as they pass. The arched gates open up into sweeping landscapes of tropical forests, coniferous forests, mountainous tundras, grasslands, freshwater swamps, oceans, and more.
“Preshti is not owned by anyone in our Institute. She helps us from time to time in our research and preservation missions because she is a friend of Master Gupta, our Head of Operations.” The man continues again, cycling through different languages as he leads them into a subspace resembling a coniferous mountain valley where a humble hut sits next to a small amphitheater with a perch set over a wide bowl.
Edmund and Alice share a look and settle in to watch the presentation, arms still connected, content.
Edmund rounds the wall of a cubicle at The Circle and leans up against it.
Paperwork spread in front of her at her desk, Alice looks up, recognition crinkling the corners of her eyes.
“Would you deem me the pleasure of escorting you to lunch, love?” Edmund rumbles.
“Of course,” Alice stands up and links her hand in his offered arm, “the pleasure is mine.”
Alice sits in a rocking chair, slowly rocking and taking in the small room—a shelf of tall, thin children’s books, a cradle in the corner, diminishing evening light fading through the curtains—her hands wrapped around her round stomach.
Edmund walks in and kneels down next to her, kissing her on the forehead and settling an arm around her shoulders.
She moves one of her arms to grasp his other hand.
They sit in silence as the last light fades from the window. Once their eyes have adjusted, Alice asks, “Bedtime?”
Edmund nods and supports her as they stand up.
In a hospital bed, Edmund’s arms encircle Alice and a napping toddler. Alice stares down at the bundle in her arms, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Edmund rubs a circle on her shoulder with his thumb, leaning his head against her. Alice’s eyes shine with quiet, disbelieving joy as she turns her head to kiss Edmund on the cheek.
Alice loops her arms around the shoulders of a sitting Edmund at the kitchen table. “Slow week, love?”
Edmund rubs his eyes. “We settled the last of the hibernating creatures in for the winter last week.”
He sits up slightly as she holds up a vial of slowly congealing liquid. “Good, ’cause it’s your turn.”
Little grubby hands turn the page of a large picture book.
“We see them come. We see them go. Some are fast. And some are slow. Some are high. And some are low,” Edmund says. The little girl in his lap runs a hand over the shifting images of a golden snidget zooming around the page, a streeler leaving behind a trail of slime, an occampy flapping its wings, and a niffler burrowing underground. Edmund continues, “Not one of them is like another. Don’t ask us why, go ask your mother.”
“Mum, why is no creature like another?” the girl asks.
Alice looks up from where she’s curled up with a book written in runes on the couch next to them, rocking a cradle containing their youngest on the floor with her foot. “Biodiversity.”
Older versions of those little hands turn over fragments of giant eggshells in the learning lab of an International Creature Reserve. The girl’s hooded eyes focus on a brown piece with green speckles. “This is from a Common Welsh Dragon.”
“That’s right.” Edmund’s large hand ruffles her dark hair, and she beams.
“I’m just getting started,” she says, picking up the next egg fragment to study.
Large ballrooms with circles of friends’ laughter, quiet nights around the dinner table, farewells and greetings on a train platform, creature parts passing from one set of hands to another—small moments and treasured memories float by, one after the other.
Edmund, his hair greying, turns from the pensieve, a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
Alice smiles back, softly squeezing his hand held in hers. “Happy anniversary, love.”