4 seasons

Autumn Colours

The woods were shining in all colours of autumn, bright red, sunny yellow and golden brown, flecked here and there with the dark green of fir trees, as Harry Potter made his way along a seldom-used path across a hill in the vicinity of Godric's Hollow. A mild season with little wind and no storms had resulted in the majority of the trees retaining most of their leaves even this far into October. Harry breathed in the cold, clear autumn air, while enjoying the warm touch of the sunlight on his face. He wrapped his scarf more securely around his neck and turned around, watching Lily come up behind him. With Albus and James safely at Hogwarts, and Ginny off with some friends to watch a Quidditch match that promised to last at least one day, they had all of Saturday to themselves.

Harry smiled as he watched Lily bent down and pick several Morels. Lily had been beleaguering him for days to go out and collect mushrooms and nuts. She had gotten a wildlife book for her last birthday, including a guide to edible plants, herbs and mushrooms found in the wild and had been itching to try it out.

"Daddy, look," Lily shouted, "my bag is almost full!"

"Well done, Lily," Harry said, as she came running up to him. He knelt down and let Lily empty her bag into the bigger one he was levitating next to himself. He peered into it.

"Looks like we can cook a nice stew for Mummy tonight. She'll be hungry when she comes back from the match."

"And caramelised chestnuts for dessert," Lily said.

Harry smiled: "Okay." Since he had tried out a recipe of caramelised wild chestnuts some years ago, autumn had become Lily's favourite season. This was something he shared with his daughter. Ever since his first year at Hogwarts, Harry had loved autumn. He had spend most of the summers of his late childhood and youth waiting for autumn to come, the time when he would return to Hogwarts.

He straightened up and watched Lily bound down the path towards the woods, excitedly kicking up colourful leaves as she went. He waited a bit before following her, letting his gaze travel along the rolling hills of Wales, enjoying the many coloured-view that presented itself to him. What would it have been like to grow up here with his parents instead of a London suburb with the Dursleys?

~*~

A soft wind was blowing when he reached the woods at the foot of the hill, making some leaves tumble down from the trees. Harry smiled at the gentle touch of a falling leaf on his head. The sun was sending shafts of light through the trees' branches, casting the whole forest into a spectacular light. Harry looked around for Lily. She was bent down again, probably collecting more nuts, her vivid red hair blending perfectly with the bright red on the bush behind her.

Harry strolled over to help her bag the nuts, his shoes crunching on the gravel path. But as he knelt down next to his daughter, he realised that she wasn't in fact picking up anything, leastways no nuts or mushrooms. Her hand was extended towards a black spider, inviting it to crawl onto her palm. Harry had to suppress a chuckle. Alone of his children, Lily was okay with spiders, even adored them. This was something else that he shared with his daughter. Having grown up in the cupboard under the stairs in the Dursley's house, Harry had been used to spiders from an early age on. Both his sons, it seemed, had inherited their uncle Ron's dislike and fear of arachnids and could not be persuaded to stay in close vicinity to spiders. Lily had found out early on that she could retaliate her brothers' teasing by chasing spiders onto them, so she had learned to befriend the creatures.

As Harry watched, the spider crawled willingly onto Lily's hand. This was a rare feat. Mostly, spiders would seek to avoid humans and the warmth of their skin. Lily, however, could pass almost as some sort of spider whisperer, a talent possessed by few witches and wizards.

Lily straightened up and held her hand out to Harry.

"Look, daddy, a female wolf spider."

Harry bent down a bit, taking a closer look.

"This looks to me like one of the magical species. Do you see the characteristic brown and yellow pattern on its back?"

Lily looked closer, too. "Oh, yes, I see it."

"This means she has an extended period of life, and probably some other powers as well. Some magical wolf spiders have been reported to make extraordinarily long jumps from time to time, almost like jumping spiders, to change colour according to mood, and their silk is reported to be twice as strong as that of a regular spider."

Lily was getting excited. "Can I keep her, daddy, please?"

Harry smiled, and nodded. "Of course, Lils. But you need to take good care of her. She needs a cool and dark place to make her burrow, and you need to let her leave it if she wants to."

Lily nodded solemnly, and looked at the spider on her hand, who seemed to look right back at her.

"I think I will name her Edda," Lily said. She held her hand to her shoulder and Edda scuttled onto it, making herself at home underneath the rim of the hood of Lily's jacket.

"Hold on tight, Edda," Lily said, and she started walking along the path through the woods, choosing the spots with the most fallen leaves on the ground to wade through.

Harry followed Lily, scanning the ground and undergrowth for more nuts and mushrooms, listening to her talk to Edda.

"You won't get to know my brothers until Christmas, because they're both at school", Lily said. "I have to wait two more years", she added bitterly. "But when they get home, you just wait, they won't be stealing any of my toys now, with you around to guard them." She was silent for a while, wading through a particularly deep mount of leaves.

Harry caught up with Lily as she was fighting through the last bit of the mount and burst out of the other side.

"I'll build Edda a nice burrow", Lily now said to Harry, walking next to him on the path. "With some leaves and sticks and stones from our garden."

Harry smiled. "If you're trying to find a way to avoid having to clean all the mushrooms we collected..."

Lily frowned at him indignantly and said: "Of course not! But this is important. Edda will hunt at night, so she will need to rest before that."

"I'll save you some mushrooms to scrub, then." Harry teased her.

Lily just huffed indignantly at her father's apparent ignorance.

~*~

A little further on, they came by a sunlit clearing with a small grove of apple trees. Some apples were still hanging on the trees, and though slightly shrivelled looked to still be edible.

"Let's pick some of those apples," Harry suggested. Autumn apples, when having survived the drop of temperature while still hanging on the tree, had a unique taste that Harry liked very much.

Lily followed him onto the clearing, and Harry lifted her up to sit on his shoulders, so that she could reach the upper branches. They worked in unison for a few silent moments and had soon each collected a handful. Harry let Lily down again.

"How about an apple each right now?" Harry asked his daughter, and Lily nodded her agreement enthusiastically. They had been walking for a while, and both were a bit thirsty. They took two apples from the bag and polished them on their trousers. They left the clearing happily munching, but Harry pulled a face soon after. "Urgh, I think mine's got a worm in it."

"Give it here, Daddy. Edda will like that," Lily immediately said.

Harry pulled a pocket-knife from his pocket and cut away the wormy piece of apple, handing it to Lily. He watched, fascinated, as his daughter put the piece of apple onto her shoulder. Edda came out from underneath Lily's hood as soon as Lily had let go of the apple. Instead of cutting out the worm, however, the spider seemed to suck the liquid out of the surrounding piece of apple.

"Oh, look, she's quite thirsty, too", said Lily.

On they went, opening their coats and unwinding their scarves as they strode along, for it was warmer underneath the cover of the trees than it had been on top of the hills. Occasionally they bent down, picking up more mushrooms and nuts. Before they reached the other side of the forest, Lily had emptied her bag once more into Harry's. On this side of the forest there was a small village, where Harry knew of a nice café that they sometimes visited. Before walking out of the trees, he terminated the levitating charm on the bag full of mushrooms and nuts and instead picked it up by hand. It wouldn't do to attract Muggle attention with a floating bag, no matter how heavy the bag was by now.

"How about a hot chocolate, Lils?" Harry asked, panting a bit.

"Oh, yes, with some whipped cream on top!" Lily exclaimed.

"That's decided then." Harry commented, and steered towards the village.

~*~

They had soon reached the café, where Harry gratefully dropped the bag of mushrooms and nuts next to a small table on the front terrace. They both sat down and read the menu, the sun warming the back of their heads. When the waitress came, Harry and Lily ordered a hot chocolate with whipped cream for Lily, a tea for Harry, and some scones with jam and even more cream to share. Then Harry looked at Lily.

"Lily," he said, "many Muggles are afraid of spiders, just like your brothers. So it would be a good idea for Edda to stay hidden underneath the hood of your coat until we leave the café."

Lily nodded, but insisted on giving Edda one more piece of apple to drink from.

Soon they each had a steaming mug standing in front of them and were munching happily on the scones.

"Daddy," Lily said, with a frown on her face, "is Al really friends with Scorpius Malfoy?"

They had received the news earlier that week, in a very indignant letter from James. Being surrounded by the large Weasley family, all of his children had grown up with some amount of scepticism (bordering on dislike in James's case) where Malfoys were concerned. Harry sighed. He would probably never consider Draco Malfoy his friend, but he also hadn't forgotten what he had seen of Draco during those outlawed months of Horcrux hunting. Draco might have boasted about his mission during their sixth year, thinking of himself as rather more important than he was. But he had not killed Dumbledore, would not have, and he had not been happy as a Death Eater and torturer in Voldemort's service.

"It's true." he said. "And it's good. If Scorpius can befriend Al, that means that he is nicer and more open-minded than his father was at that age. And that can only be good."

Lily nodded solemnly, considering this. "Yes, then he is really different," she said. She drank from her chocolate and then stirred the remaining contents of her cup for a while.

"Will Scorpius come to our house with Al then?" she finally asked. "I mean, for the holidays? James won't like it much if he does," she added.

Harry grinned. "Then it's time for James to learn to like it," he said. "Scorpius is welcome in our house, if he wants to visit." He drowned his tea, and got up. "I will get the bill, and then we can go home."

~*~

The way home took them through the fields of the Muggle farmers around Godric's Hollow. Lily was busy with her new spider pet, and Harry's thoughts strolled back to his past, and then to his children. It would indeed be a good thing if Scorpius came to visit them. And if Al went to visit him. Harry had no intention to pass on his feud to his children. If Al and Scorpius became friends, then everyone would understand that the divide was over. Then they would truly get over the past.

With that comforting thought in mind, they turned a corner in the lane, and their house came into view. But first, Harry thought with a contend smile, he would cook a great mushroom stew and caramelised chestnuts for his wife and daughter.