for lancifolium

[lumenrelegandus]

The little town was barely on most maps. It was rustic—quaint even for muggles. The roads were scarcely auto-worthy and you got the impression they liked it that way. Almost everyone had their own vegetable gardens, in addition to the surrounding farmland, and everywhere was walking distance from everywhere else. All showed a real love of this place. They seemed to consider it blessed. There were hints in their conversation, that they themselves would be unable to identify, that this was more than a feeling. Something was truly Charmed, here.

At one end of town, the dirt roads gave way to paved ones, to eventually connect up with the modern world. At the other end was a gentle hill with a tree on top, picture-perfect as a place to sit and read or gaze out at the village. What she was looking for would be on the other side.

Sure enough, with the hill between it and the village, still in the clear before the start of the woodlands, and set back from the… hardly road, here just a path—was a little one-storey house. Its colour was hard to tell anymore. The paint was so discoloured and the plants so overgrown. They climbed up the walls and windowsills and curved delicately around gutters. The lawn was completely covered in flowering weeds. It seemed that no one could be living here. But the sense the house gave was not of haunting or desertion. Rather, it seemed pleasantly like nature had moved back in. The family of birds under the eave, squirrels in the small tree, and rabbits in the overflowed garden seemed to agree. They gave the impression—unusual to their species—of feeling entirely safe.

But if you looked closely, you'd notice that the roof was in good repair, the windows were all intact, and the front door was clear of plants. Closer still, the doorknob was shiny from touch.

This must be the place.

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[lancifolium]

The years that had passed since she had since Remus last had been both numerous and rough. Lily had needed to grow stronger quickly, becoming a widowed mother of an infant in the middle of a war. She and Harry had side-stepped something calamitous that night, but losing James had been a devastating blow, one she would not have weathered had it not been for the Order, and the friends she was honored to fight alongside. Thankfully her parents had remained safe, relocated temporarily to a safe-house during the height of it, and had been glad to have Harry there as well. There had been so many nights Lily had been terrified that she wouldn't make it back to her son, that she would do the unthinkable and leave him an orphan, but she had to do what was right, as James had.

Even years later the danger wasn't gone completely, though blessedly the imminent threat of it had receded enough that everyone could breathe a little bit easier. It gave Lily a chance to raise Harry in a peaceful, happy home - something she and James had wanted for their baby very much. Still, there was work to be done and Lily Potter had never shied away from putting in the work it took in order to do the right thing, even when that work took her down the most unexpected paths.

It was a path that could be described as exactly that, that had brought her to the front door of the cottage. Uncertain of what she would find and unwilling to ruin any sort of cover Remus might have made for himself, Lily had driven herself to the little village before leaving her car parked on the side of the last bit of road she felt comfortable taking it down walking the rest of the way to his door.

Or rather, what she hoped was his door.

Glancing around at the wildly flowering tall grass that surrounded the place, it was easy to think the little cottage might have been abandoned, but there were just enough hints there to make her approach. Perhaps there was just a certain warmth to the air that suggested that this was the place.

Clearing her throat Lily reached up and pushed her thick braid of hair over her shoulder, straightening her posture before knocking.