Chapter Text
Epilogue: House
The house had been empty for a long time, until the day that three people appeared suddenly on the front porch, as if from nowhere.
One, a boy, craned his neck to look at the windows on the upper story while the girl turned to survey the wide, flat, grassy field that surrounded the house. The other, a tall man with dark hair in a long-out-of-date style, put a key in the lock, gave it a little jiggle, and turned.
With a creak, the wooden door swung open. The girl pivoted and hurried inside, the boy following behind more sedately, cautiously. The man paused to brush a peeling flake of paint off the door before he, too, entered, swinging the door shut behind them.
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The house was exactly as large as it needed to be. There were three modest bedrooms upstairs, while the downstairs contained an eat-in kitchen and cozy living room. Most importantly (at least as far as the house’s occupants were concerned), it also boasted a single indoor bathroom–a gift from a previous homeowner who appreciated the convenience of indoor plumbing just slightly more than the house’s historic charm.
It sat at the end of a little-used lane, far from its neighbors, somewhere north of Birmingham, though the particular magic at work on the house made its exact location rather tricky to pin down. It was conveniently near enough to a small village for the occasional outing, but distant enough to preserve the occupants’ privacy. Of course, distance was not a concern of these particular occupants, as they could travel across the country with little more than a thought, but they appreciated the location nonetheless.
There was a large kitchen garden (mostly overgrown) and a small brick outbuilding, which had held all manner of things in the many years since it had been built, but was presently little more than a disused storage shed.
The bricks were ancient, but strong. The roof was old slate, but sound. The glass in the windows was wavy, but unbroken. The interior was dated, but in good condition. The front door was solid, but in need of a coat of paint.
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The first summer was spent transforming the house into a home. The front door was painted. The interior was redecorated. The unruly kitchen garden was tamed and tended. The outbuilding became a bigger-on-the-inside potions laboratory. The living room filled with books. Drawings of flowers and unicorns and stars were spellotaped to the walls. A jigsaw puzzle took up residence on the coffee table.
On Tuesdays, a man with youthful eyes and greying hair knocked on the blue door and visited with the children. He played games and told stories while the other man disappeared into the shed to work. He left them each a chocolate bar in a bright wrapper and a promise to return the next week.
Other children came, too, sometimes alone and other times as a group. This, too, often made the man retreat to a quieter place. Sometimes the girl would stay with the children and play boisterous games of exploding snap or pictionary or charades, and sometimes she would go with the man to quietly brew potions and talk of life.
By the end of August, the old house had been made new and filled with magic and laughter and life.
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It was the same year after year.
From September to June, the house stood empty, excepting the two weeks each Christmas when the man and boy and girl came home and it was suffused with light and warmth.
But in the summers, the house truly came alive.
The boy and girl grew. Each time they came home they were larger than when they had left. The girl took down the old spellotaped drawings. In their place, the man hung empty frames, which she filled with her latest work, exchanging them each summer for something even better than what they held before. She draped her doorway with strings of beads and danced to music from the wireless as she tidied her room.
The boy tended the garden and spent time with his friends, traipsing out into the surrounding fields to run and play and fly and talk. And, later, when he was older and one friend began to come over more frequently and alone, he and she held hands in the evenings as they ventured out after supper to watch the sunset, her golden hair fanning out across the blanket as they lay talking, dreaming, kissing, and naming the stars.
Always the man brewed, sometimes alone, sometimes with the boy, or the girl, or both together. He hung the patent for his Memory Restorative Draught on the wall and soon added another. He began to join the children in their weekly visits with the old-but-young man, often staying up late into the night, long after the children had been put to bed, sharing a drink and lamenting the state of the world or discussing the latest research in this subject or that.
The house saw them in glimpses, snapshots in time. They grew in leaps and bounds. They were home for a vibrant, wonderful moment, then gone again. There was laughter and love (and sometimes tears and shouting, too, though never for very long), and then there was silence.
They cast spells, brewed potions, flew on brooms, talked about unicorns as if they were real. Garden gnomes moved into the kitchen garden. The house was filled with magic people, but, as is often the case with such things, it was not long before the house became a magic unto itself.
Time passed.
The children grew. The man grew grey hair. The boy became a man and left the house, though he visited nearly every day in the summer. The girl began to bring her own friends to play exploding snap and pictionary and charades while the man retreated again to the quiet of the shed. Sometimes the boy accompanied him there, and they talked of life as they worked side by side. Laughter and joy and magic suffused every inch of the house and every acre of the fields.
Then, for a time, there was fear and deep sorrow. One September came and went, and still the man and boy and girl all remained. The house was occupied, but it did not come alive as it usually did. Laughter was scarce. Joy was unreachable. Visitors were few, but frequent. Owls carried long letters and news that brought tears. Magic thrummed protectively around the house all the time.
But that, too, was temporary. A flurry of activity preceded a few long days of emptiness (the first the house had seen in almost a year), and when the man and boy and girl came back, weary and wounded, but together and alive, they brought with them relief. On its heels came celebration and joy. Laughter rang through the halls again. The boy kissed the blonde haired girl in the field beneath the stars and promised her forever. The girl painted new pictures for the frames and played games with her friends. The man shared a drink with the old-but-young man (no longer as young as he once was) and, as he always had, brewed.
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The house had stood in the field for over two hundred years when the man and boy and girl arrived. It would be nearly that long again before the last of the three left. By that time, the house had seen more children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren than it could ever hope to count. Though it remained the same simple brick house it had always been (three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, and much-appreciated loo), it was transformed by the magic within it into something far greater. It became a centerpoint, a rooted trunk from which the family began to branch and grow.
More homes sprang up in the distance throughout the once-empty field, testament to a family that never wanted to be parted from each other. Winding lanes connected the homes. Cousins traded with cousins and built workshops and laboratories and markets (and pubs to meet in and share drinks when the business was done).
The community grew as the family did. More homes were built. More lanes were trod and cobbled. The house and the field became a village, founded and filled with Snapes of all shapes and sizes, living, working, playing, and laughing together.
A hundred years after that, the small town of Snapeshire found its way onto magical maps of the UK, hidden from muggles, but a well-known, bustling hub for wizards, conveniently located in the heart of the Midlands, close enough to its muggle neighbors for the occasional outing, but far enough to provide the occupants with their privacy (with a little magical intervention, of course).
And at the back of the village, at the end of an old narrow lane, all but forgotten by time, stood a simple brick home, ancient, but sturdy, covered in ivy from an overgrown kitchen garden, and forevermore surrounded by life.