Hello, there! Here's a project I've been working on while I try and figure out my other piece. I hope you enjoy it! XOXO

FRESH RAIN

PROLOGUE

Think of your favorite scents. Conjure them up in your mind, and reflect on why they mean so much to you. Would you expect to smell them on the worst day of your life, tainted by awful smells?

Wet grass, fresh rain, and rose perfume. Dark Magic, acrid smoke, dust and rubble. These scents have perversed those which remind me of the day I met her, the days I spent with her, the evening I betrayed her, the night I nearly lost her forever. I can't burn these smells from my brain; it's been forty-eight hours since I first caught the mixture, and yet they still surround me, and when I close my eyes, panic sets in as though I'm standing in that house still.

I haven't slept in these long two days.

Harry has slept, however. He sleeps, curled on m chest, snoring slightly and drooling. I dabbed a touch of rose oil behind my ears, and he no longer screams for Lily, as long as I am holding him. He won't let himself be held by others, save for one healer with red hair who he tolerates as long as I am near. He misses his mother.

Lily still hasn't awoken. Healer Greene wants her kept in the coma until her magical stores are built up. He fears that the blast of magic from the Dark Lord severely damaged her powers, and I share this fear, though I refuse to voice it. No one knows what happened in that house. Lily may be able to tell us when the Healers rouse her, but for now the only evidence we have is the demolished house and the gash on Harry's head. There is much speculation in the papers, though. Reporters have come and been shooed away, and I wish that I could remember what Lily's grandmother's name was, so I could contact her, the last family she has that would care for her condition, or for Harry.

Albus allowed Harry to be released to me, much to my astonishment. I know enough about the old man to realize that he has a plan, some ulterior motive, but I cannot read it as of yet. He voiced considering Lily's sister and her husband as guardians for the baby, but I convinced him otherwise. I remember what a selfish, bitter woman Petunia Evans was, and felt certain she would hold little, if any, love for her magical nephew. So, he put Harry in my custody.

I have no idea what to do once the shock wears off, but he seems content with me. I've kept him fed and watered. I ensure he sleeps well, and the more motherly Healers and assistants have brought him hand-me-down toys to play with and clothes to wear.

So, I'm sitting here, in this rocking chair which the Healers have set next to Lily's bed, rocking her son to sleep, and wondering at the odd turn my life has taken. With the Dark Lord gone, could my life settle into some semblance of normalcy? Could Lily forgive me for my awful mistake years ago? I regard her sleeping face, littered with bruises which the Healers were unable to fade, her proof that she stood up to the Dark Lord; I allow myself to hope, for a moment, that she-and Harry-could be a part of my new normal.

Would that I could burn this Mark off my skin the way that Dark Magic burned the house down around the three of us. The way it burned up James Potter's body.

I wonder if the smell of burning flesh and ink and Dark Magic would smell better than wet grass and fresh rain and rose perfume.