Free Web NovelChapter 316: Chapter 316: Regulus’s room [bonus]
12 Grimmauld Place, Regulus’s room.
He stood at the window with the London night spread out beyond it, Muggle streetlamps glowing in the distance, their dim yellow light spilling from the tops of the posts onto an empty street.
A world away from everything he’d just lived through.
Twenty minutes ago he’d faced the most dangerous wizard of the age, and under that man’s Legilimency he’d held every secret behind a performance.
Now he stood at his own window, watching a Muggle walk a dog.
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Christmas morning in Cokeworth came clear, the weather better than anyone had a right to expect.
A skin of frost lay along the rooftops down both sides of Spinner’s End, melting now, droplets running off the slate tiles and dripping onto the sills with a soft tick.
The street stood near empty. Somewhere down the way a chimney sent up a thin straight line of smoke.
The little house at number four had its porch wound round with a loop of mistletoe and holly, tied up the afternoon before by Lily and her mother.
Inside it was warm. The fire hadn’t gone out since the night before.
Mr. Evans had come down in the small hours to feed it once. By now it had burned low, most of it caved in, the coals glowing a dull orange, cracking apart now and then with a sharp pop.
Sounds carried from the kitchen, pots and crockery knocking together, oil sputtering in a frying pan, the smell of toasting bread slipping through the gap in the kitchen door and filling the whole sitting room.
A Christmas tree stood in the corner, draped in colored paper ribbon and little fairy lights, a few parcels already heaped beneath it.
Lily sat on the blanket in front of the fire in a cream cotton nightdress.
Over it she’d pulled a cardigan her mother had knitted, the collar loose enough to show a stretch of collarbone, the sleeves running past her fingers. She’d drawn her hands up inside the cuffs so only the tips showed.
Her hair hung loose at her shoulders, the ends a little frizzed. A restless night had pressed a few kinks into it, and the fire had warmed it fluffy.
The flush of just waking still sat on her face, her eyes bright, fixed on the pile of presents under the tree.
Seven or eight parcels stacked there, all different sizes, some in brown paper, some wrapped in several layers of colored paper, the one on top tied with a red ribbon, its bow gone crooked.
"Lily, breakfast first." Her mother’s voice from the kitchen.
"No rush. They won’t run off."
Mr. Evans came out of the kitchen with a mug of tea and sat at the table, opening today’s Cokeworth Post. The front page carried the schedule for the town church’s Christmas Mass.
Lily grinned at her father.
Mrs. Evans came through with the plates. Fried eggs, toast, grilled tomatoes, a few rashers of bacon.
The smell reached Lily and her stomach growled. Cheeks pink, she scrambled up off the blanket, padded over in her slippers, and sat down at the table.
"Where’s Tuney?" she asked around a slice of toast.
"Just called her." Her mother pushed the butter dish across.
Lily spread butter on the toast and bit in, chewing, her eyes drifting back to the window.
Mr. Evans looked at his daughter over the top of the paper and gave a slight shake of his head.
Petunia came down in a dark blue house dress, hair brushed neat, face washed, a faint blue tinge under her eyes as though she hadn’t slept well. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Lily.
They wished one another a happy Christmas. Mr. Evans told a joke that wasn’t very funny, Mrs. Evans laughed obligingly, Lily laughed loudest, and the corner of Petunia’s mouth twitched, which counted as a laugh.
Everything ordinary, except that every little while Lily glanced at the window.
Twenty minutes on, breakfast finished, her plate not yet cleared, she was already back on the blanket.
Her parents settled on the sofa with their tea. Opening presents was the fixed program every Christmas, and the two of them waited to watch their daughters’ faces.
Lily started with her parents’ gift. A new jumper, pale green, a small pattern at the collar, the stitches her mother’s own work.
"It’s lovely!" She held it up against herself, then leaned over and planted a kiss.
Her father’s gift was a book of watercolors, landscapes from around England.
She turned two pages, said it was nice, and soon set it aside, hand reaching for another parcel.
Marcia Fawley’s gift had come in deep purple paper, a silver pattern threaded faintly through it, the design shifting slowly. A wizarding shop, plainly.
The moment Lily tore the wrapping, the box sprang open on its own, and a dozen-odd colored candy balls burst out, popping in the air, bouncing crackling everywhere.
Halfway through their jumps they changed color, red to green, green to gold, gold to bright glittering silver, ricocheting around the sitting room, springing off the walls with a clear little chime like a bell.
Mr. Evans jumped, his teacup nearly slipping from his hand. Mrs. Evans flinched back too, and then the pair of them sat staring at the candy bouncing all over the room, exchanging a look.
Lily laughed so hard she couldn’t straighten up, snatched one out of the air and popped it in her mouth, and broke into giggles at once, her tongue gone blue.
"Your... your mouth..." Her mother pointed at it, expression sliding between alarm and amusement.
"Honey-flavored!" Lily said thickly around the sweet, already grabbing for a second.
A silver ball bounced onto Mr. Evans’s newspaper and hopped twice across the front-page headline.
He pinched it up between two fingers to look. The ball turned pink at his fingertips, still faintly trembling.
Lily ran over and egged him on. "Dad, try it, go on."
He hesitated, put it in his mouth, chewed, and his face went complicated. "Strawberry."
Laughing, Lily dug Marcia’s card out of the box. A lopsided owl was drawn on the front.
"Happy Christmas! This batch is Honeydukes’ new one, limited edition, the bouncing lasts about half an hour and then stops on its own, don’t worry. Marcia."
"Half an hour?" Mrs. Evans watched a ball spring up onto the lampshade, looking rather helpless.
Lily pressed her lips on a smile and bent to the next one.
Susan’s gift was a small woven charm, several colors of thread plaited together, crossed and tangled, a wooden bead knotted at the end with a smiley face carved into it.
The work wasn’t fine. A few of the knots had come out too big, the thread ends not tucked away, but the care that had gone into it showed.
In her card Susan had written, "You can hang this on your bag or by your bed, either way. I spent a whole afternoon plaiting it, my hand nearly cramped up."
Lily looped the charm round her wrist and gave it a shake, the wooden bead tapping lightly against the back of her hand. She smiled and tucked it into the pouch Regulus had given her the year before.
There was more. Several Hogwarts classmates had sent cards, some with a Chocolate Frog or Bertie Bott’s beans tucked in, some with a homemade magical bookmark folded inside that flashed once when you opened it.
She unwrapped them one by one, laying the cards out in a row on the blanket, now and then reading a line or two aloud to her parents.
Lily picked up the last little parcel.
Grayish-brown coarse paper, no ribbon, the mouth cinched shut with a thin length of string.
She opened it. Inside sat a small glass bottle, about as tall as a thumb, half full of a pale balm.
The mouth was sealed with a thin layer of wax, the surface pressed smooth and flat.
A narrow strip of paper was stuck to the bottle in handwriting so neat it bordered on stiff. Hand balm. Use a small amount. Guards against chapping.
Lily held the bottle up to her eye. The balm was whitish, faintly translucent. She twisted off the cap and leaned in to smell it, a thin herbal scent, not unpleasant.
She dabbed a little on the back of her hand, a thin film, and her skin went cool at once, the fine cracks the winter had drawn there vanishing within seconds.
"Sev’s," she said to herself, capping the bottle and setting it beside her.
All unwrapped. But there’d been no dark green paper, no thread of silver, no silk ribbon.
She packed the gifts into her pouch, then sat with her hands on her knees, watching the coals in the grate break apart by slow degrees.
A few candy balls still bounced about the room, springing onto the coffee table and off again, chiming as they went.
Lily muttered something under her breath, so low even she didn’t catch what she’d said.
Her eyes slid to the window again. freёweɓnovel.com
Beyond it lay the street of Spinner’s End, a string of colored lights on the porch across the way, the lawn next door whitened by frost, no one out, and no owl.
She drew her gaze back and twisted a finger once round the cuff of her jumper.
