Amethyst Avenue
Amethyst Avenue
The bistro Barnaby took me to was a bit crowded and very lively. Which suited me fine because in my experience, it was always harder to be overhead in a crowd than in what was assumed to be a quiet place. We were able to get a table by the window and a friendly young Muggle girl came over immediately to give us menus. Barnaby scanned it hastily and ordered three starters to share and a main course for each of us. Our food arrived quickly which was a blessing because Barnaby was always happiest when he was eating. Even so, I decided to start off easy and opened with what I'd been dying to know since that morning.
"I want to know what you said to my parents before I woke up today." It wasn't even a question really, it was a demand. And from the look on his face it was not at all what he'd been expecting me to ask first.
Barnaby swallowed a bite of his food and said "Okay. Well, I told them some of our plans first of all. That I have a house and that we'd be living together soon, and that we have jobs lined up. And when that seemed to go over well enough with them, I told them how much I love you, and asked your father for his blessing to marry you" he finished with a charismatic smile.
"So you basically told them everything except that we were already technically engaged?" I asked.
"Yep. I figured if your father at least thought I'd come to him first he'd be more inclined to approve. That was always my plan anyway, and why I'd been asking to meet them for so long" he finished, shrugging as if it was a no brainer.
Well there he'd gone surprising me again.
"How long exactly, Barnaby?" I pushed gently.
"Well I've been asking you to bring me home for about a year now haven't I?" he laughed. I nodded, smiling. So he'd been planning this all along.
"Ever since I figured out how I felt about you Samhain, I knew we were too young and still at school and everything so I was trying to be patient and focus on the present, but you've always been my future. So I just knew I had to start planning for it" he elaborated.
I reached across the table and took his hand. "I might not have been thinking or planning ahead as much as you Barnaby, but all I've ever been sure about is that I love you" I told him. "And I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that marriage would be on the horizon, you are from a very traditional family afterall."
Barnaby looked a bit uncomfortable at that last part. A small crease had appeared between his brows and I didn't need to use my Legilimency to know that I'd upset him. "Barnaby? What's wrong?" He sighed. "I don't know where to begin telling you about my family Samhain. I was hoping I wouldn't have to at all but it's not something we can avoid now. It's, complicated. There's a lot I'll need to explain."
"I'm listening Barnaby" I said. "And nothing you tell me could ever change the way I feel about you or do anything to put me off marrying you."
He smiled lovingly at me, "Your stubbornness is an extremely attractive quality you know."
We both laughed and finished our dinner happily.
Barnaby didn't seem ready to volunteer any more information about his family yet and I cared about him too much to push the subject. I knew at some point it would come up again, but he had said we could have a long engagement, so whatever arrangements Madam Lee had in mind for us could wait awhile and we were free to enjoy the night together.
After we left the Bistro he took me on a walk through the town. The early summer evening air was warm and fragrant, and I was glad he didn't want to Apparate right away. Walking along hand in hand together, looking like a pair of Muggle kids out on a date suited me perfectly.
As it turned out, he wanted to walk because our destination was only a few blocks away. Two streets down and one over we arrived on the corner of Amethyst Avenue, and it was breathtaking.
The Lee family all seemed to revere the colour purple, I vaguely wondered if it had anything to do with Madam Lee's peculiar eye colour, or perhaps if her eye colour had been magically enhanced to reflect the family's taste.
Amethyst Avenue was perfectly named and I could see why it had been appealing to whichever Lee ancestors first built the house on it. The wide street was lined on both sides with trees similar to the shady lane that lead to Lee Manor, and the trees did have purple leaves as well. But it wasn't dim or threatening looking, it was dazzling.
The leaves on the trees were a true amethyst and they even seemed to sparkle in the orange light of the setting sun. As we strolled along I noticed the ground seemed to sparkle too, it was all so pretty.
We arrived at a large house, nowhere near the size of Lee Manor but recognisable to me as our destination because, of course, it was the only purple house on the whole street.
It was much more tastefully decorated than I'd assumed it would be though. Lighter shades, with big windows and an airy openness about it. It definitely looked like a house wizards might live in, but not dark wizards, and not because anything obviously magical was visible. It was just the sheer eccentricity of its style. It was a house with a lot of personality.
Barnaby reached into his pocket and I assumed he was going to give me the ring he'd received from his grandmother. But instead of the purple velvet box, he handed me a small and very normal looking key with a little purple bow tied to the top.
"No magical enchantments here to unlock, this is technically a Muggle neighborhood" he told me smiling. How very normal. I went straight to the front door and turned the key in the lock. The interior of the eccentric purple house was astonishingly average looking, modern, and seemed perfectly fit for a family of Muggles. "It hasn't always looked like this" Barnaby told me as he followed me inside and closed the door behind us.
"This is the house my parents and I lived in before they were arrested and sent to Azkaban, and Grandmother came to take me back to Lee Manor. This house used to look just like a smaller version of hers, I've spent the last few summers here renovating it with my Uncle Cecil. I couldn't use magic so I did what I could by hand and called him out here when I needed to add or break magical enhancements.
"You never once mentioned you spent your summers rebuilding a house Barnaby" I accused him seriously. "Well I suppose I thought it was dumb, or that I'd probably never finish it, at least until it started really coming together last year" he admitted.
"By that point I'd already decided I was going to marry you and started working on it with you in mind. You'd told me enough about how you liked growing up in an average looking home and an average seeming family. Until what happened with your brother and you became infamous first as Jacobs's sibling, then as a Curse Breaker. I know you never asked for any of that so I just wanted to give a bit of that normalcy back to you. It's not completely average though, it only looks that way" he smiled at me, leading me around the first floor.
"Uncle Cecil has a proper flare for design and since I couldn't do the magic on it myself I let him have at it. I had a lot of fun working with him though, being here was the only part of the summer holidays I ever enjoyed so I tried to spend as much time here as possible. So what do you think Samhain?" he asked a little hesitantly.
I looked around at what I was just realising was my new home, our home, and grinned broadly, "I love it Barnaby, and I love you, so much."
I let him take me on a tour of the rest of our house and he hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said his uncle went a bit wild with artistic freedom. From the outside the house appeared to be a simple two storey structure. But after seeing the upstairs Barnaby led me up another staircase, and then another. There were five floors in total and they'd all been magically extended so that the house had two separate wings, much like Lee Manor.
The fifth floor however was inaccessible. When I asked Barnaby why he explained that there were a lot of embarassing dark items up there being stored because he didn't want them in the parts of the house we were going to be living in. Some simply could not be removed from the house, so the best that could be done was to move everything to the top floor and vanish the last staircase. Since the top three floors were invisible from the outside no one ever need know what was up there.
There were a few other oddities that you wouldn't find in Muggle houses, like a very large fireplace in nearly every room, each equipped with a small jar of glittering green floo powder and a soot brush for arriving guests.
There were also some sneaky Wizarding items hiding in plain sight. A perfectly ordinary looking wall clock for instance, that announced pompously what it thought you ought to be doing every hour, and a dustbin that seemed to be allergic to dust and would sneeze occasionally.
Overall it was a perfect blend of the magical and the mundane, but I'd have been happy anywhere with Barnaby. He just continued to exceed my wildest dreams in every way. I could see now that marrying him was going to be the most exciting adventure of my life, and I just couldn't wait for it to start.
We spent an incredible first night there together. Neither of us cared to bother with adding atmospheric enchantments, simply knowing we were absolutely and completely alone together was more than enough fuel to get us fired up.
Both of us had been battling our raging hormones since the morning we'd woken up at the Leaky Cauldron and we simply couldn't wait any longer to express our desires physically.
The day had been tiring and extremely long but the night was young and so were we. Barnaby saved the bedroom tour for last, he walked me in with his hands over my eyes and when he removed them with a "ta-da!" I was speechless.
The bedroom was minimalistic, and perfect. No furniture except for a large, sturdy looking and blissfully soft bed in the center of the room. A beachwood fire with blue flames roared in the fireplace, reminding us both of the first night we'd spent together in the Room of Requirement. Delicate French doors leading out to a private balcony stood slightly ajar letting in that delicious summer breeze, and in front of the fireplace, a lush white fur rug lay on the floor.
There was only one purpose for this room. Well, two if you counted sleeping. Barnaby wanted to show me the hidden closets he'd installed but I wasn't very interested just then. He also mentioned an oversized bathtub in the master bathroom through the door on the wall opposite the fireplace. That was much more interesting to me. He led the way in and my jaw dropped. It looked just like the swimming pool sized bathtub in the Prefects bathroom at Hogwarts. A tub I'd told him about many times but as far as I knew he'd never actually seen. I turned on a few of the gold taps and they were very similar if not exactly the same as what I remembered. Jets of dense white foam poured from the first one, a mixture of vanilla and cinnamon scented bubbles gushed from the second. I left them on, letting the pool tub fill up as I turned back to Barnaby and started to slowly undress him.
First his shirt, I unbuttoned it slowly starting from the top. With each button I released I grew hungrier to see more of him. By the time I got down to the last button I couldn't keep from touching him. I ran both of my hands over his perfectly carved stomach and chest sighing happily.
He threw the shirt on the floor and circled me in his strong arms. I looked up from his body and saw the hunger in his eyes was equal to mine. I kissed his open mouth and felt his tongue touch mine at the same time his hands went up under my dress and pulled down my panties, lingering to squeeze my bottom as we stood there pressed against each other and kissing like we'd never kissed before.
I was sending him a subtle signal, I kept my mouth open, inviting his tongue to enter and do what he liked. I fumbled with his belt a few times before I got it unbuckled, then I hastily unzipped his trousers and let them fall to the floor.
His hands still under my dress, moved up to my hips and pulled me forcefully against his body. Feeling his hardness through the thin fabric of my dress made me moan a little into his open mouth as he continued to penetrate his tongue gently into mine.
He finished kicking off his trousers and ripped my dress off over my head. We paused for a moment, letting our eyes roam every inch of each other's naked bodies. Then he scooped me up in his arms and carried me into the steaming bath.