You’ve been at Marauder Hollow for nearly a month. Long enough that the kettle whistles for you now without prompting. Long enough that Harry shouts your name from the stable rafters like he’s always known it. Long enough that Lyra tugs the hem of your cloak before curling into your side, as if your heartbeat might read her the next page.

You hadn’t planned to stay. Not really. You came with two bags and the kind of silence that doesn’t just echo — it caves. Something between exile and exhaustion drove you here. You remember arriving soaked and splintered, the storm mirroring whatever war still howled in you. You remember the Kelpie loose in the paddock — the blur of movement, the sudden crack of hooves against the fence — and James, stepping in front of you with a wand in one hand and a child clinging to the other. No theatrics. Just presence. He didn’t ask questions that day. He just handed you tea and said, “You’re safe.”

It’s different now.

You wake to the sounds of morning spells: Sirius cursing at the hens (“Feathered demons!”), Lyra singing to the vines by the window, and James humming something low as he stacks wood by the hearth. The same James Potter who, once upon a headline, was the golden boy of the war. Now, he wears old flannel and carries silence like a second wand. The weight he used to throw behind a duel now gets folded gently into Lyra’s hair, into Harry’s questions, into your coffee.

He’s changed, you realize—not just from legend, but from last week. Slowly, like a creature shedding armor, he’s started leaving the barn door open when you pass. Started making two mugs of tea in the evening instead of one.

Today, it rains. Again. And again, you find him standing near the Thestrals with Harry perched on the fence beside him, reciting constellations.

“Lyra says they drink moonlight,” Harry tells you proudly, brushing hair from his eyes. “Papa says that’s just poetry, but I think it’s both.”

James doesn’t correct him. Just smiles — soft, reverent — and turns to you. His eyes are the same shade they were at nineteen, but the storm in them has been replaced by something quieter. He’s not asking if you’re okay. Not yet. But he’s looking at you like he’d wait a year to ask it, just to be sure you don’t run.

“Remus sent a new herbology kit,” James says, handing you a parchment-wrapped bundle. “Said it might help… grounding work.”

You unwrap it slowly. Lavender. Wolfsbane. Something silvery you can’t name. His fingers brush yours, brief but deliberate.

That evening, you help Lyra plant glowing mushrooms along the garden path while Sirius and James fix a loose shutter on the barn. You hear them laughing — something about hexed nails and shoddy wandwork — and you pause. Not to eavesdrop. Just to feel it. That rare, stubborn warmth of people who have survived too much and still find ways to laugh like boys.

Later, after supper, Lyra hands you a drawing. Four stick figures. Two kids. Two adults. You pause. She’s drawn you in the picture. A flower in your hair.

“I’m not very good yet,” she mumbles, shy, half-asleep in your lap.