Since the date, James and Renata had to remind themselves that they had actually been on a date and they no longer had to tiptoe around each other and their feelings. They were free to be affectionate with each other when they wanted to be, they could be open with their flirting, but there were moments where they still came across as incredibly reserved around each other, reverting back to how things they were. And Renata assumed it was probably because they were always around each other. Because she lived in the Potter household as Harry's nanny, there really wasn't a time where she was away.

When she had dated some others in the past, usually when the date came to an end, they left to their respective homes, seeing each other only when they met up again. It wasn't like that as Renata still had her job to care for Harry and help around the home with whatever James needed. There seemed to be a struggle of a boundary of whether she was the Renata that was working for James or whether she was the Renata that was dating James. Obviously, she was both but that left it to become awkward sometimes when she didn't know what to do or how to act.

There was still that professional line she had drawn when it came to calling him "Mr Potter," a habit she had yet to break. James didn't say anything about it though and she figured that maybe he wished to keep it that way for the time being. She thought that maybe he wanted to keep it that way until they were sure where the dating was heading. There was the possibility that maybe James wouldn't want to continue dating her, as much as she didn't want to fill her head with the idea. But it was definitely possible that he would be more open to the idea of dating other people as he grew more and more comfortable with passing time.

Of course, Renata didn't want to believe that would happen, but she was preparing herself for anything. She had never dated a widower before, so she didn't know when or what to expect. Hopefully, one day, James would ask her to call him by his first name, until then, she would remain patient. After all, James had taken a mighty big step in just asking her to dinner, let alone what it led to afterwards and in a weird way, she was proud of him.

Not proud because he asked her on a date or that he kissed her, but proud that he was able to finally see that he could still live his life. That he didn't die when Lily died and that he had so much to offer to the people around him just by being himself and being happy.

His happiness didn't solely affect him either but those around him, such as Harry and Sirius picking up on the drastic changes. Remus had witnessed it too before he had left and when he returned, he would be able to see even more growth. It was something they all needed to see, they wanted to see a lot of the old James return, but at the same time, they wanted the parts to return that were going to leave James the happiest in the long run.

They wanted him to have that bright confidence that he was known for, rather than watch him sulk around the house. It was all centred around taking baby steps every day, but any step forward was a good one.

And while James didn't flat out run over and kiss her with every greeting, there were instances of little gestures that left Renata more infatuated than any kiss. Sometimes in passing when they were both in the kitchen, Renata would feel both of James' hands touch her waist lightly as he attempted to move by her to grab something. Or she would be sitting next to him, neither one of them talking and he would absent-mindedly have to be touching her in some way. Whether it was his hand drifting to rest over her knee or his socked foot would remain over hers when they sat on the sofa.

Perhaps some would have viewed it as clingy, but Renata enjoyed it, there was always the pleasant sensation that ran through her body whenever James was touching her, even if it wasn't in an intimate manner. Sometimes he would play with her hair to get her attention if he wanted to ask something, but he wouldn't go beyond that. It wasn't like when he had her cornered against the counter or pressed up against the front door, it was almost as if he had to work himself up to get to those moments.

Renata was beginning to wonder if he liked the tension building as part of their interactions.

For James though, it wasn't exactly as cut and dry as Renata thought it was. He wanted to take things slow for the sake of letting events fall into place themselves so they didn't come across as rushed. There was such a fear of making the same mistakes twice that he was constantly second-guessing his own actions since the end of the first date. Before he did anything around or with Renata, he was constantly questioning himself or whether he should do it or not. 

There were many times where he wanted to reach out, grab and kiss her just as he had done on their first date, but at the same time, there was something about Renata that when he started kissing her, he really didn't want to stop. He and Sirius had confirmed that he didn't want the relationship to move fast, but at the same time, James wanted things to move faster inside his own mind. It was like having an internal battle going on every time he and Renata were in the same room together.

Luckily, Harry was usually around them, so it left James conscious of his actions around his son. However, as soon as Harry was napping or down for the night in his own bed, it grew increasingly hard for James to behave himself.

Such as one afternoon, Harry had fallen asleep after a late lunch, sprawled out on the sofa, with one of his little arms dangling over the sides. Later on, he was invited to the Burrow for another slumber party with Ron, but Renata wasn't going to drop him off until around dinner time. For the time being, it seemed that Harry was trying to get as much rest as possible so that he would have all the energy in the world to play with Ron when he arrived.

Renata was sitting on the floor, her back pressed against the back of the sofa as she read quietly to herself. James had initially been in the shower but as soon as he came out, Renata lifted her finger up to her lips, warning him to remain as quiet as possible. Catching sight of Harry, James realised what was going on and slowly tiptoed, but with his own exaggerated movements, made his way over to sit with Renata on the floor.

"How long has he been asleep?" James asked her in a whisper.

"Not very long," she answered, using her finger as a bookmark as she gave him her full attention, "I only heard him snoring about five minutes ago. He said he needed a break after I chased him around for a bit. Apparently, he was a bit more knackered than I thought."

"Or he's trying to get a headstart on the slumber party," he added with a chuckle before he looked down to see what she had been reading. " The Toadstool Tales? Ren, you're not torturing yourself by reading that, are you?"

As James recalled from his own childhood, The Toadstool Tales was a book of torture for children. Inside the book, contained the same stories from The Tales of Beedle the Bard, however, the author, Beatrix Bloxam had re-written each story into her own version. They were to be pure and help preserve the innocence of children. Beatrix had decided to rewrite the stories in her own words because she found the characters and themes in Beedle the Bard's work as unwholesome.

Her writing had managed to make all sorts of wonderful children's tales to become dreadfully boring and downright sickeningly sweet to the point where children were actually reported to have vomited after attempting read through the works.

"Well, I was curious about it since it was on the bookshelf over there," she said pointing over the back of the sofa. "Why do you have the book if you consider it to be torturous?"

"It was a bit of a gag gift from Remus one year," James told her, " he found a copy and gave it to me. You know it's actually a banned book, that's how terrible it is. Enough that they've looked to destroy every single copy that's been published. I only kept it as a sort of a novelty item and because it was a gift, jokingly or not."

"Oh, but Mr Potter, what is there to loathe about such a book?" Renata questioned him in a teasing tone. "I find it all to be adorable."

Truth be told, she found the book to be absolutely dreadful in comparison to the stories she read of Beedle the Bard to Harry nearly every night. But obviously, she wanted to have her own bit of fun with it and James' expense.

"Ooh, like this part right here," she said, clearing her throat and turning to face him, "Then the little golden pot danced with delight- hoppitty hoppitty hop! - on its tiny rosy toes! Wee Willykins had cured all the dollies of their poorly tum-tums, and the little pot was so happy it filled up with sweeties for Wee Willykins and the dollies!"

The expression on James' face held absolutely no amusement whatsoever, but it definitely made Renata laugh. He wasn't having any of that nonsense and wondered why Renata was reading the children's book in the first place since Harry was asleep. There were plenty of other books that she was free to choose from.

"Give me that," he said taking the book away from her, noting that he needed to hide it in the darkest corner of the home that he could find. "Why are you reading children's books, anyway?"

"I never had the chance to read them," she told him, "I was just curious to see what they were about."

"What, you don't have the Italian versions of these or at least the translations?"

"I'm sure they are around," she shrugged, " but my parents normally read us the newspaper when we were younger before bedtime."

It grew quiet as Renata waited for James to respond, however, he was actually speechless for several moments, bewildered by the idea of reading a newspaper to a child as a sort of bedtime story. He could only imagine if he tried to pull that type of stunt with Harry, the boy would probably smack the paper out of his hand, smack his father, and leave to go get a book.

"They read you the newspaper?" James repeated, just to get clarification that he had heard her correctly. "As a bedtime story?"

"Just until we were old enough to read on our own," Renata replied, ever-so-casually as if it was the usual thing. "Then we had a few minutes before bed to read to ourselves. My mother said it would keep us up to date with news so we knew what was going on in the world."

"But you were just a child, why should you care what was going on in the world around you? You probably couldn't even understand half the stuff you were reading, right?"

Renata didn't seem to want to talk about it anymore and seeing as she had been deprived as something as simple as bedtime stories as a little girl, James felt the need that he had to right the wrong. Pushing himself up, he made his way over to the bookshelf and started pulling out books left and right. He brought over several of them and sat back in his original spot in order to actually have Renata read them.

"My father loved reading bedtime stories," James said to her after sitting down, " he collected muggle books too. One of his favourites was Tails by Edith Nesbit, he nearly read this one to be every night. It has all the tails of beasts inside of it and I would try to guess them as we went along. Of course, after a short while, it became easy once I memorised them, but still, you need to start with this one, not with that Toadstool rubbish."

He opened the book up and placed it in her lap, watching as she looked away from him and down at the pages. James didn't expect her to read them out loud as he simply sat there and watched her start looking over the book in her lap. He pulled out one of his old books from school to look over, however, he couldn't bring himself to read a word.

Despite it being a children's book, Renata seemed absorbed with the content as she didn't even bring herself to look up at any point. Instead, she turned page after page, while James watched her make all sorts of facial expressions due to her reaction of what she was looking over. He couldn't help but smile and rather than reading, he just decided to watch her for his own source of entertain. Although at one point, Renata seemed to sense that she was being watched and looked over at him.

"Is something wrong, Mr Potter?"

"No, not at all, you should keep reading to yourself."

She looked oddly confused but listened to what he said as she turned back to finish the story, of course, as she started making faces again, James found himself all too captured by her. His hand had come to rest originally on her shoulder earlier but had moved to slide her hair off, so that his fingers could graze over her collarbone lightly. He could see that she was fighting to remain concentrated on the book, but was failing miserably at the time.

It brought a smile to his face as the seconds went on and it seemed Renata couldn't fight it anymore as she looked over at him with a playful glare.

"I thought you wanted me to read the book?!" she grumbled, only to come face to face with the cheeky grin planted on his face.

"I changed my mind."

James couldn't help himself as he was left with the same feelings that had taken place on the first date. All the stolen gestures and moments that had occurred afterwards that they didn't act on had built themselves into such a tension that just watching her read was getting a reaction out of him. He had been patient, of course, to the best of his ability but he couldn't take it anymore as he removed the book from her hand and climbed over her.

It had definitely caught Renata off guard as she had attempted to scoot away unsure of what he was doing, only to find herself lying on the floor with James on top of her. The weight of his body on top of hers left Renata with a building pressure in her stomach that she could only describe as satisfying.

"Are you alright?" he asked her, using the same tone that he had used when he first told her that he wanted to kiss her. She adored the way that he always seemed to ask permission if something was alright, there was something about it she couldn't explain.

She didn't answer him with a verbal "yes" though, instead, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him down further, however, he didn't go for her lips first. He teased her with the kisses against her neck that drove her mad in a good way, but she just really wanted him to kiss her. The tension continued to build and she wasn't sure if she wanted to punch him or kiss him because her brain was going haywire.

However, if that wasn't enough to drive her mental at one point, James pulled away so abruptly, climbing off of her and then grabbing the book to hand back to her, leaving Renata in one hell of a daze as he started walking away.

"Sorry," he said to her, " I shouldn't have interrupted your reading, I'll let you get back to it."

One would have probably assumed something was wrong until James flashed a smile over his shoulder as he headed towards the kitchen.

He was still teasing her and it was working.

Renata was up on her feet, tossing the book aside into one of the armchairs, ready to give him a piece of her mind for teasing her in such ways. It was worse than the dream she had of him and that was unacceptable on all levels.

"You can't just do that," he said following him into the kitchen as James just casually poured himself a glass of water. "That's...that's...unfair!"

"Shhh, Renata," he grinned at her after setting his glass down, " we have to be quiet or you'll wake up Harry."

"I have no problem doing that," she threatened him in return, "I'll wake him up right now."

She opened her mouth looking as though she was about to just scream, leaving James to panic until he realised that she was playing the game right back. It appeared the kink of the couple had turned out to be that they really loved getting the other one worked up with all sorts of teasing. The game of doing everything besides kiss each other had built up enough tension that even the sword of Godric Gryffindor couldn't slice through it.

And James didn't want it to all come to an end with Harry waking up, as he quickly made his way over and kissed Renata again so that she couldn't yell.

He could feel her smile of triumph against his lips as she had won that round as he had given in first, which only left him wanting to kiss her more. There wasn't much of a height difference between the two, but James proceeded to lift Renata up to sit on the counter in the kitchen.

"You play dirty," he mumbled as his forehead came to rest against hers.

"No, Mr Potter, I play to win."

A cheeky afternoon snogging session had left both adults with bright and silly smiles on their faces as they were coming around to realise that they didn't have to tiptoe around each other anymore. Although there little "game" or whatever they wanted to call it, seemed to bring out the best or the most intense moments out of both of them. Neither one of them could complain about that.

When Renata left to bring Harry to the Burrow, she claimed that she was probably going to be gone for a bit as Molly enjoyed a nice chat. It left James alone to sit in the living room and rest as some music played in the background. He was thinking about dinner oddly enough, more so what he wanted to cook for him and Renata. However, before he could come up with an idea, he heard a knock at the door, leaving him to stand up to answer it.

Cross the hall and making his way to the door, he peered out the small side window to see Sirius, leaving him confused as he wasn't expecting him to come over. He hadn't spoken with Sirius since he left that morning before he woke up.

"Sirius-"

James didn't get to finish as Sirius pushed his way inside as soon as the door opened. "James! You're not going to believe this, my friend! You're not going to believe the information I found out. You might want to sit yourself down for all of this."

He really wasn't given an option to do anything else otherwise as Sirius pushed him back into the living and pushed him down onto the sofa before sitting next to him.

"Sirius, what the hell is going on? You're acting mental right now, you know that-"

"Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?"

Apparently, Sirius was being very serious as there was no smile on his face and he actually looked worried or concerned, a mixture of both. That left James more than nervous as he wasn't expecting any sort of drama or something very important to come up.

"Alright, go on, Sirius, what's going on?"

As if the scene wasn't dramatic enough, Sirius took a deep breath and exhaled before he looked directly at James.

"I don't know how to tell you this, Prongs, but I think Renata and Adelmo are part of a cult."