FicWad

The sky was beginning to pale, the very edges of dawn softening into grey, as if the night had simply grown too tired to hold on. The air was heavy with the scent of wet soil and damp leaves, the kind that clung to your boots and soaked into your clothes. My feet landed soundlessly on the narrow lane, the faint crack of Apparition already swallowed by the stillness.

It was too early for anyone to be awake. Or it should’ve been.

Streetlamps flickered overhead, buzzing faintly, casting pockets of amber light over puddles and paving stones. The village was quiet, the kind of quiet that pressed in around your ears and made you feel like even breathing too loudly might disturb it. Everything felt… suspended. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something it didn’t quite understand.

We hadn’t meant to be noticed. That was the point. No flash of wands. No noise. Just two cloaked figures appearing on a Muggle lane before the sun had properly risen.

It was meant to be clean. Quick. Unseen.

Of course, nothing ever goes quite the way it’s meant to.

I saw her just as the light shifted—just as my eyes adjusted to the low glow. A girl, maybe fifteen, crouched in the garden across the street. Her hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail, and she was kneeling in the soil, half-hidden behind a tangle of overgrown marigolds. She held a little spade in one gloved hand, and for a second, she looked like she belonged there. Mud on her knees. Cheeks flushed from the cold. The picture of normal.

And for the briefest moment, everything was still.

She hadn’t noticed us yet. She was focused on the earth, nudging something into the ground. It struck me how peaceful she looked—like she had no idea the war existed. Like no one had told her the world was falling apart.

Then the dog barked.

A sharp, jarring sound that cracked the air.

She jolted, her head whipping round. Her eyes found mine in an instant, wide and startled.

I didn’t move. Neither did Remus. We didn’t have to. She’d seen us—two figures cloaked in black, standing motionless at the end of the lane like something out of a nightmare.

She froze. Her expression twisted from confusion to fear in less than a heartbeat.

I could see it—the way her fingers tightened round the spade, useless though it was. Then, with a choked gasp, she dropped it and stumbled backwards. Mud smeared across her palms as she scrabbled away, her trainers slipping on the wet stone.

She didn’t scream, not properly. Just a ragged breath, caught somewhere between shock and alarm. Then the slam of a door, and she was gone.

Brilliant.

I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly through my nose, jaw clenched. I could already picture the scene: her crashing into the kitchen, breathless, trying to explain. Her parents half-listening, groggy, dismissing her with bleary eyes and murmurs of dreams and nonsense. But the way she’d looked at me…

She wasn’t going to forget.

Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

Beside me, Remus sighed. “We probably ought to have Apparated further up the lane.”

“Probably,” I murmured, unable to stop the ghost of a smile. “But then again—adds a bit of flair, doesn’t it?”

He shot me a look. Dry. Wry. Entirely Lupin.

Still, he didn’t argue.

We walked on in silence.

The village was beginning to stir—just barely. Somewhere, a baby started to cry. Curtains twitched behind glass. The wind caught a row of shirts pegged to a washing line, making them flap gently like half-hearted flags. There was something oddly comforting in the normalcy of it all. Something that felt… untouched. Like this place hadn’t been cracked open by war the way the rest of us had.

I let myself breathe it in. The scent of wet leaves, distant woodsmoke, and damp brickwork still holding onto last night’s storm. For a moment, it grounded me. Pulled me out of the fog of everything else.

Then we reached the hill.

It wasn’t steep, but there was something about the way it rose ahead of us—solemn, quiet, expectant—that made me slow without realising. And at the top, just beyond a low iron gate, was the house.

I saw the plaque first. Lupin, carved neatly into a weathered copper plate beside the post. No frills. No spells. Just a name.

The house itself was small. Two floors, stone walls streaked with ivy. A narrow garden curled around the front, brimming with flowers I couldn’t name—though someone had clearly taken the time to care for them. There was something gentle about the place. Not delicate, not weak. Just… quiet. Like whoever lived there had built it as a kind of defiance. A statement that said peace was still worth fighting for.

I stared at it longer than I meant to.

For some reason, I’d expected something colder. More haunted. But this—this was the opposite. This was a place that had tried to hold onto softness in a world that kept hardening.

And it hurt. More than I wanted it to.

Remus didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. I could feel the weight of it on him, too.

I swallowed the knot rising in my throat.

It was time.

Remus stepped forward, hand steady, and murmured, “Alohomora.”

The old door creaked open with a reluctant sigh, like it hadn’t been used in ages. Not that it was resisting us—more like it was waking up, half-asleep and blinking at the morning.

We crossed the threshold quietly.

The scent hit me at once—aged parchment, faint damp, and the earthy tang of timber. Not mouldy. Not forgotten. Just… old. Lived-in. The kind of place where someone had made tea every morning for years, in the same chipped mug. Where time passed gently, without needing to announce itself.

Something in my chest pulled tight.

I stood in the hallway, letting the stillness press in. It wasn’t heavy. Just present. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something stir deep inside me. Not relief, exactly. Not peace. But something quieter.

Hope.

The cautious kind. The sort that peeks round corners and doesn’t trust the silence but wants to. The kind that doesn’t ask for promises—just a moment to breathe.

Maybe this is what a beginning looked like.

Again.

The light caught my eye before anything else. It moved through the house without hesitation, gliding over walls, spilling across the floorboards like it belonged here. No shadows lurking. No dark corners waiting to surprise you. Just clean, soft light, folding itself into every space it touched.

The ceiling above arched high and pale, smooth as bone, and the rooms flowed into each other without barriers—as though the house itself didn’t believe in shutting people out. No closed doors. No abrupt lines. Just quiet transitions, room to room, thought to thought.

To the right, the living room waited. It wasn’t polished or elegant—just real. Worn armchairs in mismatched fabric, cushions slumped from years of use. A rug stretched across the wooden floor, its colours faded like memories left too long in the sun. Everything felt used. Not broken. Not neglected. Just… honest.

A grandfather clock stood in the corner, unmoving. No ticking. But somehow, it didn’t feel forgotten. More like it had chosen to rest. Like it had already marked every hour that mattered and decided not to count the rest.

I reached out and let my fingers brush the back of a chair. The fabric was soft beneath my hand, almost familiar. The air smelt faintly of tea leaves, dust, and something vaguely sweet—old wood, maybe, or parchment warmed by sunlight.

People had lived here. You could feel it.

Not in obvious ways—no clutter, no photographs, no loud history on display. Just little things. A quilt with worn stitching. A leaning bookshelf lined with spines turned soft from being opened too many times. Echoes, if you knew how to listen for them.

Through a narrow passage beyond the sitting room, a small study gave way to a stone courtyard. Rain had begun to fall—fine and silver, like it didn’t want to be a bother. The garden outside had grown wild, but not unkindly. Clematis and honeysuckle spilt over the stone walls, wrapping around each other like they’d forgotten which way was up. Bright specks of colour trembled under the drizzle—foxglove, cornflower, and poppy. No order to them. Just joy.

Back inside, the kitchen was narrow but bright. Pale cupboards, copper pans hanging from a crooked rack. A little window above the sink looked out across the hill we’d just climbed. Off to the side, a den had been tucked into what must’ve once been a pantry—now soft-edged and welcoming, with a low table and great cushions in clashing colours. A worn blanket lay half-folded across the arm of a loveseat, and the kettle sat on the stove like it had been waiting for someone to come back and turn it on.

I could see it, suddenly—myself, hands wrapped around a mug, steam curling up into the morning light while the rain traced lazy paths down the glass. No war. No scar. Just quiet.

Just being.

Upstairs, two bedrooms. Nothing grand. Nothing loud. Just stillness. The sort that makes you instinctively speak in whispers, like you’re walking through someone’s dream and don’t want to wake them. The bathroom was simple: cracked tiles, an old sink, and a mirror that had seen better days. A little window opened onto the rooftops below. I lingered there, peering out, half-expecting to see the girl from the garden earlier—still watching, still wondering.

She’d seen us. That part couldn’t be undone.

The floor creaked as I made my way back to the landing, but it didn’t feel accusing. Just… familiar. Like the house was letting me know it remembered how to hold people. How to carry footsteps and secrets without breaking.

And then I heard him.

“How do you like it, Harry?”

Remus’s voice floated up from behind me—gentle, careful. There was a thread of hope in it, but fragile, like he didn’t want to ask too much of it. Like he was afraid it might vanish if he pressed.

I didn’t turn.

Instead, I shrugged.

That same shrug I’d learnt to use for years now, whenever someone asked how I was. It had become a habit. Safer than honesty.

“It’s… okay,” I said. “For now.”

The words felt hollow the moment I said them. They echoed through the air and fell short, like they hadn’t been enough.

But the truth was harder. The truth was this place didn’t feel temporary. Not like the tents. Not like the cabins. It didn’t feel like it was just borrowing space from the world.

It felt like it belonged.

And I wanted to believe I could, too.

I wanted to tell him that. Wanted to say, It feels like somewhere I could stop running. Somewhere I could sleep without watching the door. But the words stuck. Because hope… hope had betrayed me before.

It’s a tricky thing, hope. It doesn’t ask your permission. It creeps in—quiet as breath—and curls up somewhere inside your chest before you’ve noticed. And once it’s there, everything hurts more. Because you start to want things again. Start to believe they might last.

So I kept quiet.

Let the silence stretch between us.

And listened—to the creak of the floorboards, the soft groan of the kettle, the rain pattering steadily against the roof.

Outside, the world kept turning.

But for now, for just this one morning, the house stood still.

The weeks slipped by without ceremony. No sharp turns. No explosions. Just… days. One after the other. Blurring at the edges.

Ottery St Catchpole carried on with the sort of quiet resilience only small villages seem to manage—stubbornly unchanged, like it had made peace long ago with being ignored by the rest of the world. The hedgerows still rustled with rabbits. The post owl still flapped sleepily overhead at six each morning. There were no alarms. No warnings. No sign that anything was ending or beginning.

And for the first time in what felt like years, I didn’t mind it.

There were no secret messages tucked into toast racks. No wands clenched under pillows. Just the ordinary: washing hung out to dry, cows lowing in distant fields, the faint chime of a church bell on Sunday mornings. Life here moved at its own pace—slow, steady, and utterly indifferent to prophecy.

I found myself walking more. Not to get anywhere. Just to be moving. It made the quiet easier somehow, to let my feet take me where my thoughts couldn’t.

Sometimes I imagined the stillness pressing in around me, softening the edges I hadn’t realised were still jagged. It was strange. After everything that had happened—after the screaming, the running, and the dying—I didn’t want noise. I didn’t want answers. I just wanted to walk.

Evenings were the best. When the sun dipped behind the trees and the whole sky went soft at the seams—bruised purples, dusky greys. A kind of hush would fall, not quite silence but something close. Like the whole world was exhaling after holding its breath all day.

One evening, Remus and I wandered farther than usual. No real reason. Just the pull of the fading light and the need to move away from the house without having to say why. We left the winding roads behind, passed the stone walls and hedgerows, and followed a narrow footpath that dipped down into the valley.

That’s when we found the river.

It slipped through the land—thin, silver, and certain. The last of the sun caught on its surface, flickering across the water like spells cast without wands. You could hear it too: the quiet murmur of water over stone, like it was whispering something you weren’t meant to catch.

I stopped. Not because of the river, though. Because of her.

She was already there. Sitting on the bank, legs stretched out in front of her, bare feet dipped in the shallows like they belonged there. Her jeans were rolled to the knee, damp at the hems. She wore a loose grey jumper—threadbare at the sleeves, the kind of thing you pull on without thinking. Too big for her frame. Borrowed, maybe. Or left behind by someone.

Her hair was long and red—but not the bright red that shouted. This was deeper. Like the colour leaves turn just before they fall. Autumn red. Wild red. It moved with the breeze, catching the light in flickers, soft and sharp all at once.

She didn’t look up. Didn’t fidget. She just sat—utterly still, like she’d grown out of the earth itself. Something about her made the world go quieter, like even the birds were watching from the trees.

I stood frozen. So did Remus.

There was a hum in the air. Not fear. Not exactly. More like the pressure before a storm—when the sky feels too full and everything waits.

Then she looked up.

Slow. Calm. Not startled in the slightest. Her gaze found us like it had been expecting someone all along—not us, necessarily. Just someone.

“Hi,” she said, as though we were neighbours and she’d merely caught us on our usual route. Her voice was light—like a breeze catching reeds. No suspicion. No sharpness. Just… stillness.

Then she smiled. A small smile. Easy. Soft. The kind of smile that makes you want to smile back before you’ve decided to.

“Nice night for a walk.”

I swallowed. My throat felt dry, though the air was damp. “Yeah… it is.”

And oddly, it wasn’t awkward. It should’ve been, shouldn’t it? Two strangers appearing out of nowhere. But the way she looked at me—it wasn’t like she knew who I was. Not The Boy Who Lived. Not the headline. Just… a boy. A boy walking through a field at dusk.

She glanced down at her feet, the water lapping at her ankles. “You’re not cold?” I asked, nodding.

“No,” she said. Shrugged. “I come here when I need to feel calm.”

Then she looked up again. Her eyes were brown, but not flat. Not simple. Deep brown, like soil that holds things—old things, buried things. And I had the strange feeling that she saw something in me I didn’t want to name.

“Want to try?” she asked.

There was a space beside her. Just big enough for someone else. I imagined myself there. Sitting down, dipping my feet into the river. Letting it take some of the weight I carried without asking questions. Letting the current pull something from me I hadn’t been able to set down on my own.

For a moment, I wanted it. Badly. Just to not be Harry Potter. Just to be.

But I didn’t move. Because beside me, Remus shifted.

And everything tilted.

“Come away now, Harry,” he said quietly. His tone wasn’t sharp. Not a command. Just… firm. Like he was drawing a line I hadn’t seen but probably should’ve.

I didn’t argue. Didn’t even nod. Just took a step back.

The girl didn’t flinch. She didn’t beg me to stay or ask who I was. But her smile faded a fraction. Barely. As if something had just slipped past—unspoken, but understood.

Possibility. That’s what it was. The space between what might’ve been and what couldn’t be.

“Maybe next time,” she said.

And her voice, like the river, was barely there.

But it stayed with me. Even after we turned away.

And I wonder, sometimes… what would’ve happened if I’d said yes.

As we walked away, I looked back. Just once.

She hadn’t moved. Still by the water. Still and quiet. Her feet dipped into the current like nothing had changed. But I knew something had. I felt it. Not loud, not obvious—just a shift. Deep down. Like something inside me had shifted on its axis.

It was small. Barely there. But enough.

It was like… Something had cracked. A fault line, invisible until now, hairline-thin but real. And through it, something had slipped in—or slipped out. I couldn’t tell which. Only that the space behind my ribs didn’t feel quite the same.

The river whispered behind us, the sound soft and steady, as if it was trying to smooth over what had just happened. But it couldn’t. It was too late for that. The ache had already begun to grow in my chest, quietly at first—then sharper. Sharper still. Like regret in slow motion.

It wasn’t just Remus’s voice that had pulled me away from her. It was everything. The weight of who I was. The history in my blood. The rules I’d never agreed to but still had to follow. The idea that peace—real peace—was something you had to earn, like some prize at the end of a test you weren’t allowed to pass yet.

Even a moment like that… even just talking to someone who didn’t know what I carried—it was too much to ask for.

And that girl… her stillness, her ease… the way she’d looked at me without flinching, without curiosity or awe—that was the cruellest part. Because for a single, breathless second, I’d felt like someone else. Like someone free.

I stopped walking.

The frustration swelled inside me before I could shove it down. It came out faster than I meant.

“What’s wrong with you?”

The words hung in the air—too sharp, too old, too tired for someone my age. But I said them anyway. I didn’t even know if I meant them for him or me.

Remus turned, his face unreadable. He was quiet for a moment. Then our eyes met, and I saw it.

That sorrow.

He always had it. Always had that look—like he’d seen too much, lost too much. It lived just beneath the surface, worn into him like old stone smoothed by years of rain. But it wasn’t just his sadness. It belonged to others too. People were gone. Promises broken. Things never said in time.

But even with all that, he didn’t waver.

He never did.

He stood firm, like he always had. Like some line between me and the things I wasn’t allowed to reach. The life I might’ve had. The choices I didn’t get to make.

I breathed out slowly, trying not to let the heat rise in my chest again. My next words came rougher. Lower.

“You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t even let me have a minute. It was just a conversation.”

“She was a stranger,” he said. His voice was calm—always calm—but it pressed like weight. Like something that wouldn’t budge no matter how hard you pushed. “And we can’t afford to take chances. Not with you.”

I turned away from him. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t stand the way the truth sounded when someone else said it.

I looked back instead—back to the river. Back to her.

She was still there. Small in the distance. But her posture had changed. Shoulders curled in, just slightly. Her head tilted, like she was listening to something only she could hear. She didn’t look upset. Not angry. Just… quieter.

Maybe she’d known I wanted to stay. Maybe she’d seen it in the way I’d looked at her—that pull. That weight I couldn’t seem to put down, no matter how hard I tried.

And her smile—that quiet, real smile—it hadn’t been special because it was beautiful. It was special because it had felt… true. Like she’d seen something in me and decided it was enough.

And that broke something in me.

Not loudly. Not in some dramatic way. Just… gently. Quietly. Like a seam in the dark splitting open without anyone noticing.

“Why can’t I just be normal?” I whispered.

I don’t even know if I meant for Remus to hear it. Maybe I just wanted the wind to take it from me. Scatter it.

It wasn’t a question. Not really. Just a wish. A sort of scream that had long since lost the strength to be loud.

I felt Remus step closer, his presence calm and solid beside me. A moment later, his hand rested on my shoulder. Steady. Warm. Not heavy—just there. Like a reminder that I wasn’t alone, whether I liked it or not.

“Because normal wouldn’t be you, Harry,” he said softly.

The words landed harder than they should’ve. I knew he didn’t mean them cruelly. But they still stung.

“You’ve been marked,” he went on, voice quieter now. “You know what that means. You can’t let your guard down. Not here. Not anywhere.”

I wanted to scream at him. I know! I wanted to shout. I KNOW! I’ve always known!

Every minute. Every bloody step. I knew. I carried it in my bones, in the scar on my head, and in the quiet way people watched me when they thought I wasn’t looking.

But I didn’t say it. Because he was right.

And that—that—was the worst part.

“There are still people who want you dead,” Remus said. “Death Eaters who’d kill you without blinking. You know that.”

“I know,” I muttered. The words felt sour. Like stones I’d swallowed a long time ago that had never really settled.

“The night’s not safe,” he said gently. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

The word sat there. Hung in the space between us like something unfinished.

I thought of the cottage. The warm den. The creak of the floorboards. The way light poured through the windows when the curtains were drawn back. It felt like a home. Looked like one. But it didn’t promise anything.

It wasn’t peace. It was just a pause.

Another stop on the way to whatever came next. Another temporary maybe.

I turned back, one last time. Toward the river.

She was still there.

She didn’t know who I was. Not the name, not the scar, not the stories they’d written. She hadn’t stared or turned away. Hadn’t asked for anything. She’d just been there. Like I could’ve been anyone.

For a moment, I hadn’t been Harry Potter to her.

Just… a boy.

And that moment—that small, impossible breath of something like freedom—it felt like everything I’d never quite had.

And probably never would.