After the burial, the five of us returned to the house, and Sebastian insisted on cooking dinner for all of us. Sebastian left later that night to go home, he had work the next day.

James and I spent one last night in that house before leaving the next morning.

Henry and Beatrice claimed that they would be okay, they only had one week left before they had to return to Hogwarts.

We had apparated to the Potter's manor to say hello to everyone, and to pick up our cat.

Despite my fathers death, James and I still ended up in Paris for the second week of our honeymoon. I wasn't okay, but I was coping.

Plus I had the whole estate thing to figure out in Paris.

My boots clicked softly against the herringbone floor of the manor-, well, my manor now, as I paced the living room.

I wanted to clean the entire house, from the kitchen to the attic, and rid it of anything related to Lucille. James had tried to get me to go home, and to take some time to grief before flinging myself into something else.

The depressing family portraits needed to go. They didn't move like most pictures because if they did then they'd expose the utter unhappiness of our broken family.

I took all of them off of the bright white walls, and set them in a box to bring up to the attic.

"Darling, what do you want me to do?" James asked as he watched me close up the box of pictures.

I sighed, "You can help me carry that up to the attic, then I'm going to to need paint-, a lot of it."

"What color?"

"I don't know," I replied, "Something other than this blindingly boring white paint."

James laughed, "Okay, but let's start by bringing this box up to the attic."

The attic was filled with dust, our boots leaving shoe prints on the dusty floor. It had been three years since anyone had been up here, allowing time for a thick layer of dust to settle.

"Tergeo," I muttered under my breath.

All of the dust gathered into a pile on the floor, and disintegrated, leaving the attic dust free.

"That's useful," James joked as he set the box of pictures on the floor.

Every single box that had ever found its way into the attic was meticulously labeled by my father.

I brushed my fingers across the labels of the boxes, reading each one as I went, looking for nothing in particular.

There weren't many boxes.

Christmas, Easter, Sebastian, Beatrice, Henry, Daphne.

My fingers stopped on the label with my name on it. I picked up the box and set it on the floor, sitting down on the wooden planks beside it.

"What's that?" James asked as he sat down on the floor beside me.

I shrugged, "No idea."

I pealed the tape off of the box, and crumpled it into a ball before opening the cardboard box.

At first glance, the box had several keepsakes from my childhood. I carefully took out my baby blanket, that I thought had been thrown out before we moved to Edinburgh. It was a lovey blanket, with a small fox.

"I carried this with me everywhere for the first five years of my life," I told James as I ran my finger across the smooth blanket. "I thought I lost it once, and had a full blown tantrum, but Seb hid it from me because he was mad at me."

James laughed, "What was he mad at you for?"

"I honestly can't even remember, all I know is that he was pissed enough to steal a four year olds' blanket."

I set the small blanket beside me and dove further into the box that contained my childhood.

Throughout the years, my childhood stayed untouched from the trauma and pain that I felt, and it made me feel nostalgic of the days when my biggest worry was my older brother stealing my blanket and toys.

There were tiny baby shoes, a pale pink, and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

"They're so little," James exclaimed.

I nodded, "I forgot how tiny babies are since there hasn't been a baby in this house for well over a decade."

"Bloody hell," James muttered, "Now I'm kind of scared. What if our kids get lost? They're so small that-,"

"Darling, babies can't just get up and leave. At least until they can walk."

James laughed, "I had to be kept on a leash as a toddler."

"I'm sorry, what?" I exclaimed. "How did I never know about this."

My husband shrugged, "I had a backpack with a monkey on it, and an attached leash. I liked to run off, I guess."

I burst out laughing, "Oh my fucking god. Does this mean that our children will need to be kept on leashes?"

"I sure hope not," James laughed.

I grinned, "Molly said that their two youngest ones, Fred and George, are already a handful."

"With three near perfect children it was only a matter of time," James teased.

I turned my attention back to the last item in the small cardboard box.

It was a scrapbook.

I flipped through the thick pages of the book. There were moving pictures of me. Sebastian was in some of them, Bea and Henry were in the occasional picture, but I was in every single one. As I turned each page, I saw my self growing older, but around age nine, there were no more pages.

"Nothing anywhere near recent," I stated as James rest his head on my shoulder and looked at the scrapbook as I did.

"It just occurred to me that this is the first time that I've ever seen your baby pictures," James realized.

I sighed, "I guess so, we left a lot here when we moved."

"You were such a cute baby, and I was a cute baby, which means that our child's will be adorable."

"I can only pray that they don't need to be put on leashes," I laughed.

James and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the attic, scanning through boxes and getting rid of things that no longer held any value to me.

• • • • •

December 31st, 1978

The few days that James and I spent at the estate in Paris were filled with lazy mornings, crepes and coffee from the cafe down the street, and lots of renovation, and paint splattered clothes.

Throwing myself into taking care of the estate helped me grieve my father in some strange way.

James and I had painted all of the pristine white walls of the manor, which meant that we painted practically every single room except for my siblings and my old bedrooms.

The living room stayed white, but we painted all of the trim around the fireplace black. We painted the kitchen and dining room a pale blue, the foyer was now painted yellow.

We gathered all of the furniture out of the rooms, except for my siblings and my rooms, and donated it.

The previous decor, and overall manner, of the estate was pristine and perfect. It looked like a house that was never meant to be lived in. The walls were bare, the furniture was stiff and expensive.

The master bedroom and bathroom were now painted a blue-grey color, and currently had no furniture.

James and I had been staying in my old room, with pale pink walls, because it felt weird to sleep in the room where my parents had slept every night. Even though it has been a decade since they slept beside each other in the master bedroom.

The pool room remained the same, there was no need to change it.

My boots echoed on the bare floors as I met James in the foyer to go search for new furniture. Everything echoed throughout the house because of the lack of occupied space. We could even hear Romeo padded down the hallway in the dead of night.

"I think Romeo's mad that you got rid of all the furniture that he's lounges on," James said as he held Romeo in his arms.

I scoffed, "Probably, good thing that we're going to get furniture."

Romeo purred in James's arms as I stroked his soft grey fur. James and I found that he likes the quiet, empty, manor much more than he likes the Potter's manor, which is always noisy.

James set Romeo down on the floor, and the cat ran off to go sit on the window sill, his tiny paws padding against the floor.

I intertwined my fingers through James's, "Ready to go, love?"

He kissed my hand, "Yes, but only if we can get lunch after we get furniture."

I kissed him on the cheek. "Sure," I said, "But only after we get at least a couch, and stuff for the master bedroom.

•••••

We returned from our excursion in the early evening with hot coffee, and bags filled with a variety of throw pillows and bedding.

I insisted on checking out a few estate sales in the neighborhood before going to an actual furniture store. There we found a set of white wingback chairs with gold-colored legs, for the living room, an oak coffee table, and a set of nightstands, a dresser, a wardrobe, for the master bedroom.

The furniture we found at an estate sale was set to arrive soon after we returned home, while the rest of the furniture was not set to arrive until the second of January.

Our shopping trip was a success, with only a little bit of complaint from James throughout the six hours we were gone.

"I almost forgot," James stated, "It's New Year's Eve."

A look of realization swept across my face. The days had flown by since we arrived in Paris, and I had completely forgot that the year would be over in only several hours.

"Should we do something?" I asked as I watched Romeo sit on the window sill, staring out the window.

My husband shrugged, "I know we don't have a couch, but we could bring a mattress down here, get a ton of blankets, and watch movies."

"That sounds so much better than going out and clubbing," I replied excitedly.

James's eyes widened, "Padfoot would ridicule us, we are totally a married couple."

"While he's out clubbing and blacking out at four in the morning, we will be fast asleep in our house after a quiet night of watching movies," I added, "So I think that we're winning."

James kissed me softly.

"You are the best wife ever."

I grinned, "Yeah, I guess I'm pretty cool."

Half an hour later, we had moved our mattress into the middle of the living room, and almost every blanket in the house.

We had just ordered a pizza when the doorbell rang.

Someone from the estate sale had brought over all of our furniture, and helped James bring it into the house. It would've been much faster if he had used magic, but the man was muggle so we settled for carrying the furniture into the foyer and using magic to bring them to their rightful spots after he left.

The sky was dark as we cuddled up on our makeshift bed in the middle of the living room with a large pizza, and Romeo curled into the crook of my leg.

The opening scene of Superman played as I laid my head on James' chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.

"I feel so at peace," I mumbled.

James ran his fingers through my hair absentmindedly as he watched the movie. "Me too," He replied, "And I'm glad that you are."

I looked up at James and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek.

"I love you so much."

James smiled widely, "I love you too."

That night we spent watching movies, completely oblivious to the ringing in of the new year, until we fell asleep tangled in each other's embrace.