Alicia’s smile broadened as she chuckled and slipped out from under Adrian’s arm to instead lean back against his chest as they looked up at the house. This. This felt safe. This felt comfortable. This break felt allowed, as opposed to back home in London, with the twins, and the Foundation, and the upcoming school start, and Genie, and Gwenog, and Oliver, and all the people who needed help, all the messes that needed cleaning up, all the Healing she couldn’t not do…
“It was a palace,” she remembered fondly. “When I grew up I was going to be a princess and a lorry driver and make hard candy. I’d marry a prince, and play Quidditch and have 5 children and 3 brooms and a goat.” It wasn’t just that she remembered her old dreams, her mum had recorded and re-played an old cassette tape with her listing all the things she was going to do and be and have when she grew up. “Mum did piano lessons for the children in there when I was five or six, but I’ve only ever been in the garden. I’m sure it’s not so, but mum never did or said anything to make me think that it didn’t look like a real princess house in there.”