The sky had begun to pale, the first traces of dawn softening into grey, as though the night had simply grown too weary to hold on. The air was thick with the scent of wet earth and damp leaves, the kind that clung to your trousers and seeped into your clothes. My feet landed soundlessly on the narrow side street, the faint crack of Apparition already swallowed by the stillness.
We weren't supposed to be seen. Not by anyone. Especially not now.
Streetlamps flickered overhead, humming faintly, casting pockets of amber light over puddles and pavements. The village was quiet, the sort of quiet that pressed in around your ears, making you feel that even breathing too loudly might disturb it. Everything felt… suspended. As if the world were holding its breath, waiting for something it couldn't quite comprehend.
The war hadn't ended. Death Eaters everywhere, and us… ghosts in borrowed names, trying to stay ahead of the dark.
We hadn't intended to be noticed. That was the whole point. No wands, no noise, just two cloaked figures appearing on a Muggle lane before dawn.
We were here to start over. To live quietly, if only for a little while. To remember what normal felt like before we forgot entirely.
It was meant to be clean. Swift. Unseen.
Of course, nothing ever goes quite as planned.
I saw her just as the light shifted, just as my eyes adjusted to the dim glow. A girl, perhaps fifteen, crouched in the garden across the road. Her hair was scraped into a messy ponytail, and she was pottering about in the soil, half-hidden behind a tangle of overgrown marigolds. She held a small spade in one gloved hand, and for a moment, she looked as though she belonged there. Mud on her knees. Cheeks flushed from the cold. The very picture of mundanity.
And for the briefest moment, everything was still.
She hadn't seen us yet. She was focused on the earth, nudging something into the ground. It struck me how peaceful she looked, like someone who had no idea a war was unfolding just beyond her fence.
Then the dog barked.
A sharp, jarring sound that fractured the quiet.
She jumped, her head whipping round. Her eyes locked on 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 saw the way her fingers tightened around the spade, useless though it was. Then, with a choked gasp, she dropped it and stumbled backwards. Soil smeared her palms as she scrabbled away, her trainers slipping on the slick stone.
She didn't scream. Just a ragged breath, caught somewhere between shock and alarm. Then came the slam of a door, and she was gone.
Bloody 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, waving her off with bleary eyes and murmurs about dreams and nonsense. But the way she'd looked at me…
She wasn't going to forget.
Not tonight. Perhaps not ever.
Beside me, Remus sighed.
"We really ought to have Apparated further up the lane."
"Probably," I murmured, allowing the ghost of a smile. "But then again—it adds a bit of flair, doesn't it?"
He shot me a look. Dry, wry, unmistakably Lupin.
Still, he didn't argue.
We walked on in silence.
The village was barely beginning to stir. Somewhere, a baby started to cry. Curtains twitched behind glass. The wind caught a row of T-shirts pegged to a washing line, making them flap like half-hearted flags. There was something oddly comforting in the normality of it all. Something that felt… untouched. As though 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 brick still holding the memory of 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 doorpost. No frills. No charms. Just a name.
The house itself was unassuming. Two storeys, 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 or weak, simply quiet, as though whoever lived there had built it as an act of defiance. A statement that peace was still worth fighting for.
I stared longer than I meant to.
For some reason, I'd expected something colder. More haunted. But this was the opposite. This was a place that had clung to softness in a world that insisted on 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.
Right. Time to begin again.
Remus stepped forward, hand steady, and murmured, "Alohomora."
The old door creaked open with a reluctant sigh, as if it hadn't been used in ages. Not resisting us—just waking up, half-asleep and blinking into the morning.
We crossed the threshold in silence.
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 settle around me. It wasn't heavy. Just present. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt something stir inside me. Not relief, exactly. Not peace. But something quieter.
Hope.
The cautious kind. The sort that peers around 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 was what starting over looked like.
The light caught my eye before anything else. It moved through the house without hesitation, gliding over walls and spilling across the floorboards like it belonged there. No lurking shadows. No dark corners waiting to pounce. 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 one another 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 lived-in. 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. It didn't tick, yet it didn't feel forgotten. It seemed to have chosen to rest, as though 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 smelled faintly of tea leaves, dust, and something vaguely sweet; old wood, perhaps, 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 gone 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, entwined as if they'd forgotten which way was up. Bright specks of colour trembled under the drizzle: foxglove, cornflower, and poppies. No order to them. Just natural 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 cosy nook had been carved from what must once have been a larder—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 sofa, and the kettle sat on the stove like it had been waiting for someone to return 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 existing.
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 basin, 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 shelter people. How to carry footsteps and secrets without breaking.
And then I heard him.
"How do you like it, Harry?"
Remus's gentle and careful voice floated up from behind me. There was a thread of hope in it, but it was 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 used for years now, whenever someone asked how I was. It had become a rote gesture. Safer than honesty.
"It's… adequate," 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 felt heavy in my mouth. The truth was that this place didn't feel temporary. Not like the tents. Not like the caravans. It didn't feel like it was just borrowing space in 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.
Hope is a tricky thing. It doesn't ask permission. It creeps in, quiet as breath, and curls up somewhere inside your chest before you've even noticed. And once it's there, everything becomes sharper. 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 hiss of the kettle, and 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... a steady drip of days, one after the other, blurring at the edges.
Ottery St Catchpole went about its business with the kind of quiet resilience only small villages seem to manage, stubbornly unchanged, as if it had long since made peace 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. No alarms. No warnings. No sign that anything was ending—or truly beginning.
And for the first time in what felt like years, I didn't mind.
There were no secret messages tucked into biscuit tins. No wands clenched under pillows. Just the ordinary: laundry hanging out to dry, cows lowing in distant fields, the faint chime of a church bell on Sunday mornings. Life moved at its own pace here: slow, steady, and utterly indifferent to the prophecy.
I found myself walking more. Not to get anywhere. Just to move. It made the quiet easier somehow, to let my feet go 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—the screaming, the running, the dying—I didn't want noise. I didn't want answers. I just wanted to walk.
Evenings were best. When the sun dipped behind the trees and the sky went soft at the seams: bruised purples and dusky greys. A kind of hush would fall, not quite silence, but something close. Like the world was exhaling after holding its breath all day.
One evening, Remus and I wandered farther than usual. No particular reason. Just the pull of the fading light and the need to leave the house without having to explain. We left the winding roads behind, passed stone walls and hedges, and followed a narrow footpath dipping into the valley.
That's when we found the river.
It slipped through the land—thin, silver, and certain. The last of the sun flickered across its surface like wild magic 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, but because of her.
She was already there, sitting on the bank with her legs stretched out, bare feet dipped in the shallows as if they belonged. Her trousers were rolled to the knee, hems damp. She wore a loose grey jumper, threadbare at the sleeves, the sort of thing you pull on without thinking. Too big for her frame. Borrowed, maybe. Or left behind. I wondered.
Her hair was long and red, but not bright red. This was deeper. The colour leaves turn before they fall. Autumn red. Wild red. It moved with the breeze, catching light in flickers; soft and sharp all at once.
She didn't look up or fidget. She simply sat, utterly still, as if she had grown from the earth itself. Something about her made the world go quieter, like even the birds were watching.
I stood frozen. So did Remus.
There was a hum in the air. Not fear. Not quite. More like the pressure before a storm when the sky feels too full and everything waits.
Then she looked up.
Slow. Calm. Not startled. Her gaze found us like she'd been expecting someone—not us, necessarily. Just someone.
"Hi," she said, as if we were neighbours crossing paths. Her voice was light like a breeze through reeds. No suspicion. No sharpness. Just... stillness.
Then she smiled. A small smile. Easy. Soft. The kind that makes you smile before you've decided to.
"Nice night for a walk."
I swallowed. My throat felt dry, though the air was damp. "Yeah... it is."
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 a tabloid headline. Just... a boy. A boy walking through a field at dusk.
She glanced at her feet, the water lapping gently.
"You're not cold?" I asked, nodding towards the river.
"No," she said. Shrugged. "I come here when I need to feel calm."
Then she looked up again. Her eyes were brown—not flat. Not simple. Deep brown, like soil that holds things—old things, buried things. And I had the strange sense that she saw something in me I didn't want to name. She saw the weight.
"Want to try?" she asked.
There was a space beside her. Just enough for someone else. I pictured myself there, feet in the river, letting it take the weight I carried without questions. Letting the current pull something from me I hadn't been able to lay down alone.
For a moment, I wanted it. Badly. Just to not be Harry Potter. Just to exist.
But I didn't move. Because beside me, Remus shifted.
And that was enough to tip the world.
"Best come away now, Harry," he said softly. 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 nod. Just stepped back.
The girl didn't flinch. Didn't ask me to stay or wonder who I was. But her smile faded, a fraction. Barely. As if something had 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 might'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 tilted on its axis.
It was small. Barely there. But enough.
It was like… a crack had appeared. 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 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. A slow regret.
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 was something you had to earn, like a 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 intended.
"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 myself anymore.
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, etched into him like old stone smoothed by years of rain. But it wasn't just his sadness. It belonged to others too. The people who were gone. The promises broken. The 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 moment. We were just talking."
"She was a stranger, Harry," he said. His voice was calm, always calm, yet it pressed like a weight. Like something that wouldn't budge no matter how hard you pushed. "And we can't afford to take risks. 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 hunched in, just slightly. Her head tilted, like she was listening to something only she could hear. She didn't look upset. Not angry. Just… subdued.
Maybe she'd known I wanted to stay. Maybe she'd seen it in the way I'd looked at her—that pull. That burden I couldn't seem to put down, no matter how hard I tried.
And her smile—that quiet, real smile—hadn't been special because it was beautiful. It was special because it had felt… genuine. Like she'd seen something in me and decided it was enough.
And that broke something in me.
Not loudly. Not in some dramatic fashion. Just… gently. Quietly. Like a seam in the dark giving way without anyone taking notice.
"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. To disperse it.
It wasn't a question. Not really. Just a wish. A sort of scream that had long since lost the stamina 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, would it, 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 entails. You can't drop your guard. Not here. Not ever."
I wanted to scream at him. I know! I wanted to shout. I KNOW! I've always bloody known!
Every minute. Every single 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 was the worst part.
"There are still people who want you dead," Remus said. "Death Eaters who'd kill you without a second thought. 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 snug. 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 respite.
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 one breath, I wasn't Harry Potter.
Just… a boy.
The river whispered on, soft and relentless, carrying everything I couldn't keep.
Freedom, I realised it wasn't something you win. It's something you borrow.
And the cruellest kind of peace is the kind you have to walk away from.