The next couple of days were taken up by putting the finishing touches to the house. All the carpets and floorboards were cleaned to an impeccable standard and the troll umbrella stand was thrown out in favour of a wooden coat and hat stand that had lions carved into the feet. The dusty old lights had been replaced by new clean ones that shone a hundred times brighter than the previous fixtures. This year they opted to erect the Christmas tree in the sitting room; Bill and Charlie had manoeuvred it around the dazzling furniture with some difficulty. The whole family had thrown themselves into decorating the tree and house. Glittering tinsel adorned anything that stood still: the doorways, picture frames, the coat stand and the banister. It offered up little shards of radiance that twinkled under the shimmering candlelight. The morning after their foray into painting and decorating the wizarding way, Ellie had called Harry and Remus into the drawing room. The mahogany table was covered in boxes and books full of pictures and there was a huge selection of photo frames that varied in size stacked on one of the chairs.
“There you are. I wanted the two of you to help me choose some photos to put up around the house,” Ellie said, as she handed Remus a box full of photographs. He looked down at the contents and smiled to himself. She then dumped a pile of books in Harry’s arms. The three of them sat at the table for hours leafing through the thousands of photos and putting the ones they wanted to be considered for display in to a pile in the middle of the table. They stopped quite often to talk about what they’d found, and Harry had chuckled out loud when he found a picture of his dad and Sirius. The latter had James in a headlock and the two were tussling around the picture; every now and then they disappeared from the frame, but came rushing back in, pushing the hair out of their eyes and posing for the camera. When Harry flipped it over, he recognised the handwriting on the back as Remus’. He had written ‘Padfoot and Prongs “ If only they were half as good looking as they thought they were.’
“What’ve you got there, Harry?” Ellie smiled at him. He immediately handed the picture over to her, and she too laughed aloud at the Marauder’s quip. Remus looked at them questioningly until Ellie read his words out to him and he laughed as well.
“Never a truer word was spoken, even if I do say so myself.” He took the photo from Elizabeth and grinned at his friend’s behaviour. “They always were the same; every time a camera, or a pretty girl for that matter, came within twenty feet of them, they would turn on the charm and play fight. Once your Dad ended up with a black eye after Sirius hit him a bit harder than he intended. James swayed on the spot for a second completely stunned; Sirius was convinced that he was going to kill him. Then out of nowhere James doubled over in hysterical laughter. I wish you could have seen their faces; it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed.”
“What about my dad and my Uncle Andrew? What were they like together?” Harry was intrigued.
“For the most part, they fought like cat and dog. Andrew always acted like having a little brother was such a chore. If your Dad got into trouble, then your grandmother would send Andrew an angry letter about how he should have been looking after him, and your Dad was always getting into trouble.”
“So he hated him?” Harry was a little disappointed. For some reason he had wanted to hear that they had got on like a house on fire, like Fred and George but with black hair instead of red.
“Not at all, that was just what he wanted people to think. Whenever someone tried to pick on James, or questioned the Potter family honour, the two of them fought together just as fiercely as they did with each other. He never stopped James picking on Severus either, even when he became Head Boy. I think he quite enjoyed it, actually. He was always more serious about his studies than your Dad; he was more than willing to help when I needed it. Lily had a crush on him in her third year, which was how your Dad first noticed her.”
“Lily had a crush on my dad? Why did Uncle James want his big brother’s cast offs?” Like Harry, Ellie had been listening intently.
“She wasn’t a cast off as such and James didn’t really care; he was besotted with her. She consumed his every waking moment. He told me that sometimes the only reason he dragged himself out of bed was so he could see her at breakfast. Andrew spent so much of his time being wrapped up in Jane that he never really noticed that there was a little third year following him around like a love struck puppy.”
“Why did he like her so much?” Harry was remembering the way his mother and father had behaved towards each other in Snape’s memory, add to that the fact that his mother had been infatuated with her future husband’s brother, and it left Harry wondering why his mother had ever married his dad.
“She was a challenge; it really was as simple as that. So many people treated James like a god because he was smart, handsome, and a talented Quidditch player, but Lily just didn’t care. She thought that he was arrogant and conceited, and the fact that she was right annoyed him so much that he was determined to prove her wrong. He did a good job of it too, because by the time he got to seventh year he was unrecognisable. He changed entirely and he did it all for her. I think that was what impressed her more than anything else. He would still try and curse Snape when Lily wasn’t looking, but some rivers just run too deep.”
“It’s still running to this very day. Severus can’t let go either,” Ellie said in a solemn voice.
“He needs to get a grip. My Dad’s dead. It’s all over now,” Harry commented harshly.
“When Draco Malfoy is dead will you hate him any less?” Remus asked him.
“Probably not.” Harry felt a little bit guilty about this admission.
“Well, if dearest Draco isn’t careful, he’ll be dead a lot sooner that he might think.” The coldness that was in her voice shocked even Harry and, although he hated Draco, he wasn’t sure that he would go so far as to kill him.
“Elizabeth Alexandra Jane Potter, I know you don’t mean that,” Remus admonished her. He was looking at her in a strange way; it was almost pity.
“Believe me, Remus, I mean every word. Draco Malfoy is pushing his luck.”
“If you do anything to him, Elizabeth, I’m afraid that I might never be able to forgive you. There is no excuse for taking a life, none at all. Your mother would be thoroughly disappointed to hear you talk like that and your father would be furious.”
“They’re dead, Remus, so what they would think doesn’t really matter, does it?” Her voice was empty of all emotion and she stared straight ahead. Although she was looking at Remus, she wasn’t really; she was looking straight through him; her eyes were boring into the wall behind him.
“They may be dead, but I am not and neither is your grandfather. I don’t think I need to tell you how he would feel about you taking a life. Everyone will look at you in a different light; you wouldn’t be the girl we thought you were. Elizabeth, are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” She continued to stare into space before she sharply turned back to the album in front of her. “So, have we settled on the pictures that we want?” she asked as though the conversation that had preceded her words had never happened.
“Ellie, promise me you won’t do anything stupid?” Harry put his hand on her forearm; he was concerned that she might do something she would regret.
“I won’t make promises I can’t keep, Harry.” She closed the book in front of her and left the room, making it perfectly clear that the conversation was over.
“She wouldn’t really kill Malfoy, would she?” he asked Remus.
“I honestly don’t know, Harry. Elizabeth has always had a fiery temper, and her mother was the same. If he were to catch her off guard then there’s no telling what she might do. The thing you have to understand is that she’s been gone for fifteen years. Tucked away in Italy, she hasn’t really had to think through everything that happened, and then she came back here under the worst circumstances. It has just riled up all the anger in her again. Seeing Malfoy acting the way he did in Diagon Alley infuriated her; she paced the floor the whole night. I’m not sure what happened between her and Draco on the train, but she wasn’t happy in the least bit when she came back to the front carriage. Anger can be the worst emotion, Harry. When it is ventilated it often hurries towards forgiveness but when concealed it hardens into revenge. Holding on to it is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at some one else; you are the one who gets burned. Ellie has been holding on to her anger for a very long time because in Italy she had no one to direct it at, but now she does, and it’s burning more furiously than ever. The thing I would entreat you to remember more than any other is that anger is only one letter short of danger, think about it.”
“I never thought about it like that. Why is she so angry though?” Although he could more or less understand why Ellie was angry, he didn’t really understand why she wasn’t prepared to let go.
“Because, more often than not, the people who are angry are those who are most afraid.”
“What’s she afraid of?”
“She’s afraid of losing you.” Remus stared at him for quite some time with a look of knowing in his eyes. After a few minutes he left the room in search of her, thus leaving Harry alone with his thoughts.
Ellie seemed to give Remus a rather wide berth for the rest of the day. She busied herself with framing all the photos that they had selected and hanging them in various rooms around the house. Pictures from both his mum and dad and aunt and uncle’s wedding days lined the staircases, so that the Potter family grinned and waved at you first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She had filled the drawing room with pictures of the Marauders; Harry was pleased to see that Peter had taken to skulking behind the frame of every picture he was in. There was one picture in there that also had his uncle Andrew, aunt Jane and mum in it. Lily and Jane appeared to be ambushing Andrew.
“What’s going on in this one?” Harry asked Remus when he spotted it.
“That’s your mum and aunt Jane giving your uncle Andrew an earful because your dad was enforcing a strictly ‘no girls’ policy for the Marauders. They were furious and thought that if they harassed Andrew enough he would sort James out. It didn’t work though; Andrew always seemed to be the more reasonable of the two, but he was every inch as stubborn as James, and perhaps even more so. I believe that explains an awful lot when it comes to you and Elizabeth,” Remus chuckled wickedly, careful to take a few steps out of arms length of Harry.
“Hey!” Harry protested. There were more photos in the sitting room; these were pictures of his forgotten childhood. Harry spent most of his afternoon looking at each and every picture carefully. One had a pretty young girl that he quickly identified as Ellie chasing two even younger boys, who looked as if they had just learned to walk, around a back garden. Closer inspection revealed that the two boys were himself and Neville, and that the six beaming figures in the background were their parents.
Despite the fact that Harry had met Frank and Alice Longbottom in St. Mungo’s, he felt like the two of them were almost unrecognisable next to their former selves. In this photo they positively brimmed with mirth as they watched their son being harassed by the older girl. He felt a rush of sorrow for Neville and promised himself that he would ask him whether he would like to visit during the summer. Hopefully he would be out of Privet Drive as quickly as was humanly possible. As he continued to work his way around the room his eyes fell on a larger picture that was full of children, seven of them with red hair and two of them with darker hair. Harry’s nose was barely a centimetre from the glass when Bill came in with yet another box of baubles.
“I’d watch out if I were you; Ellie’s in a bad mood and if you smudge that glass she just might use an Unforgivable on you,” he said, sitting the box on the floor near the tree.
“I’ll take my chances.” Harry’s gaze didn’t leave the picture for a second.
“What is it that you’re looking at anyway?” Bill came to stand beside him and looked at the photo for a second before smiling. “The good old days.”
“Is that who I think it is?”
“Well if you’re thinking that it’s the Weasley clan with a couple of Potter additions then yes, it is.”
“Is that Ron next to me?” Harry was watching carefully as a toddler with bright red hair, who was about the same age as him, tugged on his ear roughly.
“Yep. That’s Fred and George just in front of you.” He pointed to where the two small twins were sitting on the floor in front of Harry and Ron, covered from head to foot in mud. “Ellie’s over there scowling at Percy because, ten minutes before this picture was taken, he had told her off for trying to escape out the garden gate. Charlie is trying desperately to get her attention. Percy is holding Ginny; she was only a month or two old at the time.” He shifted his finger from the spot where Charlie was sitting on a chair and trying to pull Ellie up into his lap to where Percy was cradling a small bundle with a tuft of red hair poking out of it. “And there I am in the back, entirely bored with the whole thing and wanting to get back to my broom. I’d been practising for a Quidditch tryout.”
“So I knew Ron when I was a baby?”
“Yeah, I think that was part of the reason that mum was so happy you and him became friends at Hogwarts; it was like it was fated or something.” He shrugged his shoulders as if this idea was a little too far beyond him. “I suppose everything does happen for a reason. Everybody thought that when Ellie disappeared to Italy that she’d forget all about us but she didn’t. Charlie was convinced she’d come back and she wouldn’t like him as much anymore, but she did.”
“How come she liked him so much in the first place?”
“There was a day, a lot like this one,” he said, pointing to the picture. “When you two came over to play with us lot and Ellie climbed into the chicken pen. Percy went stomping after her to pull her out. He stood and shouted at her; you know, the usual Percy stuff. Charlie wasn’t very impressed. The way he saw it, she’d just been having some fun and she wasn’t in any danger. When he tried to tell Percy that, Percy went off on one at him as well. Charlie lost his temper and punched Perce right on the nose, and after that he was Ellie’s hero and they would trot about the place hand in hand. I always thought it was a bit weird. I mean Charlie was nine and Ellie was only three when he proposed. That’s weird right?”
“S’pose it is a bit.”
“But there you go; now it’s not weird. Here we are and they’ve never been happier, so maybe it was fate after all.” Again Bill wore an expression that was tinged with scepticism. “Talking about fate, it smells to me like dinner’s ready.” He sniffed the air. Harry was struck by the sudden impression that this might be what Ron looked like in a few years time. With one last lingering look at the photo, he followed Bill down into the kitchen.
His mind swirled with thoughts. Neither he or Ron had been aware of their past acquaintance when they had boarded the Hogwarts Express in their first year, but they had still become friends. Was it fate? He knew that such a thing existed; it was fate that he would have to fight Voldemort. Had he always been destined to fall back into the arms of this family? How could anyone have possibly known that after ten years living away from the Wizarding world that he would come back to the people he had once been pulled from? His mind teemed with the possibilities of what could have been if he had been sent to live with the Weasleys instead of the Dursleys. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Molly would have taken him in; she would have cared for him properly and treated him like one of her own. She would have made sure that he wasn’t any different from the rest of her brood; he could have been here the whole time, being loved. But when he looked at them all sitting round the large table, he realised that it didn’t really matter; he had them now and, perhaps because of what he’d been through, he appreciated them more. He couldn’t think of a single place that he would rather be at Christmas and he couldn’t think of another family that he would rather spend it with.
A/N: Do you feel all warm and fuzzy yet?
Big, big thank you to kjpzak who let me borrow the line on the back of the photo from chapter one of her story Blood of the Heart.
Yet more thanks to Magical Maeve and Ashley for their arduous beta work, you two make the story so much better!
The next chapter is going to be… A Potter Christmas
Now available for your reading pleasure is The Night That Started It All, it provides us with some insight in to what happened when Ellie's parents died, feel free to stop by and drop me a review for it! (hint, hint)