The horizon was articulated by sagging rooftops flanking St. Jerome's crooked steeple, and a few leafless trees bent from windy torment. James glanced up from the changing table to watch the last streaks of light through diamond muntins that made a quilt of everything out in the world he used to encounter in three-dimensional form.

He could do it blindfolded by now—changing a nappy. Even the wet and smell were like his wallet and keys tossed on the credenza, registering only as familiarity itself. Harry spat a bubble down his chin, and James wiped it off with his index finger. He watched the sun slipping beneath the dark silhouettes of the village like a coin into an envelope. At Hogwarts, James had had a friend whose owl tossed red packets onto the Gryffindor table every Chinese New Year, in late January or February when the breakfast table was barely lit by the enchanted sky just breaking dawn, and winter was at its most dreary. Now the autumn would be over soon, and James wondered—what about another winter in the cottage? Even the new year might not know how to find them, stashed away as they were through a mousehole in Peter's psyche.

Harry whined when James clamped his puffy feet together to unpin the soggy nappy. The wet wipe across his bottom set forth a fresh round of unpleasant mewling. Harry was cutting a molar and particularly ornery in consequence.

'Almost done, Turnip,' said James through clenched teeth. 'Don't give me trouble now…' He reached for a safety pin, avoiding the hands that grasped for his hair and glasses.

When the fresh nappy was finally pinned, James picked up Harry and hefted him onto the queen bed while he Scourgify-ed the soiled cotton. Harry rolled over several times and managed to fall onto the floor in the fewer than ten seconds this took. His cries shattered the quiet. Lily appeared in the doorway at once.

'Oh no, precious, what's this?' She rushed towards Harry with arms outstretched. 'Oh no, pumpkin, have you fallen again?' Lily looked up at James as if to ask what happened. Her wide set eyes were rimmed in pink, just this side of bloodshot.

'He's alright,' said James guiltily. 'Aren't you, mate?'

Harry hiccoughed and grasped at the hem of Lily's generous muumuu. She had worn the same thing for three days in a row now, and James had said nothing about it, mostly because he'd been wearing the same trousers for a week and had shaved about twice in that period.

'Come here, my love. Here.' Lily scooped Harry into her arms and he stuffed a handful of her dark red locks into his mouth like they were peanuts. 'Oh, you sweet boy… I can see Daddy's changed you. But why did you dress him in his daytime clothes again?'

James clapped his forehead. 'Damn it. Should have got him ready for bed.' He'd been staring out the window, watching the light bleed off into the gloaming and he hadn't even thought to get Harry into his sleeper.

'Never mind, then.' Lily straightened up from the floor, bringing Harry up with her. He clung to her like a koala and she nuzzled his fine black hair with her nose. James approached her almost without thinking and leaned in to press his mouth against her forehead. There was a stray red eyelash like a comma on her cheekbone.

'We should turn the lamp on,' murmured Lily. 'It's almost too dark to see in here.'

'I was looking out the window.'

'I know you were, Jamie.' She said his name like no one else did—as though it were soft enough to bend in half, two syllables curving upwards like a cuddly toy compressed in a basket. 'You were looking at the steeple.'

'We almost got married there. Thank goodness we didn't.'

'Hmm.' She patted his forearm. 'It would've burnt down if we had.' Satin scraps curling into ash, the smell of scorched rice. That was a story for another time, of which they had plenty.

Harry whined again, and James drew his wand to cast a tickling charm on the baby. His giggles came out in different colours—blue checks, pink arches, and yellow oblong bubbles that burst into the dark bedroom.

'Let's get you into pajamas," murmured Lily. James followed her through the dimly lit hall to Harry's nursery. He tapped the elephant lamp with his wand, and light poured forth from a glowing beach ball balanced on the creature's curving trunk. Stripes of blue, yellow, red and white like candles on birthday cake. The walls were painted butter yellow, and the Niffler calendar hanging over the play mat was five months behind. James idled over to it and flipped the pages forward to October, where the picture showed three baby Nifflings chewing on a spray-gilded pumpkin, with chocolate frogs leaping over their fuzzy heads.

'Haven't changed this since our last time actually going to an Order meeting,' muttered James.

Lily sighed. 'Don't let it get you down.'

'I'm not,' he said. 'I'm just noticing.'

Lily slid open the chest of drawers and let Harry voice his desire for the broomstick-patterned sleeper with an excited, 'Eh! Eh! Uh!' She lay him down on the play mat and unsnapped his onesie with practiced fingers. Harry did not complain when his mother changed him—only James.

'You can tell him that story I like,' she suggested. 'The one with the holly tree.' Her long hair fell into Harry's face, tickling his upper lip. He opened his mouth wide and rooted for her tresses out of instinct.

'It's more of a Christmas story,' said James. 'But I could change the tree to a—'

'No!' Lily insisted. 'I like the holly. It's beautiful. It's like—it's a forever thing. Eternal life, rebirth, all that.'

'You know I just said holly tree the first time 'cause there was a sprig of it across from us when I was making it up,' said James wryly. 'There wasn't, you know—a deeper meaning.'

'It doesn't matter, James. I liked it either way.' Lily slid Harry's onesie off his head with one hand, carefully holding his tummy in place with the other. The fabric tickled his forehead and he squealed in joy.

James sat down in the rocking chair to watch her unsnap the broomstick sleeper with one hand. Her loose muumuu draped down from the neckline and he was reminded of a bust of the Madonna that he'd glimpsed in a Muggle Studies textbook, her soft features bedecked in the illusion of a translucent veil. Lily always made him think of art, with her creamy soft features and immovable strength redolent of Carrara marble or the arches of a Romanesque monastery. They'd had these dreams of a Grand Tour of Europe on broomstick, aerially tracing the meandering stone walls of ancient cities and stopping for gelato or tapas or strudel whenever the need arose. James always thought he had more money than he'd ever need, and then Lily came along and he realised he did actually need it to take her to all the places she deserved to go. Then the war came down over them like a candle snuffer and put paid to that, never mind the unplanned pregnancy and everything that came after.

'Can you get me that?' she asked, gesturing for Harry's dummy, left on the bedside table next to the lamp.

'Accio dummy!' He sliced his wand through the air and the dummy arced neatly across the room; James leaned over and handed it to Lily, who looked amused and annoyed.

'So you have your wand on you now,' she said.

'So I do.'

'Well, I'm glad you're remembering it.'

'I'm trying my best, Lilypad.'

She guided each one of Harry's chunky legs into the trouser legs of the sleeper. Even though he could now stand unsupported and walk with some guidance from the sofa or the windowsill, when he lay on his back his legs still folded into that newborn froggy position. When Lily let go of his ankle, his leg snapped back into the diamond shape, knees tucked sideways against the round dome of his tummy. Harry accepted the dummy from Lily and began to suck vigorously.

'Are you sure he's not hungry?' asked James. 'Look at his cheeks.'

'I only just nursed him while you were checking the wards,' Lily. 'He'll calm down in a minute, he just gets excited when I put the dummy in.'

James leaned far over Harry's head, enough to make a funny face at Harry. He stared up at his father in mild amusement. The dummy bobbed up and down from his face like a buoy on waves.

'One of these days, you'll figure out that's not the real thing,' said James. 'And then neither Mummy nor I will ever get any sleep again.'

Lily laughed. 'That's not true and you know it,' she chastised. 'When he's hungry, he knows it's not real. And he sleeps through the night, now—'

'Only because—'

'James, stop it!' she giggled.

'Only because we trained him at my say-so,' he said, raising his arms triumphantly. Lily smacked his ankle. 'You know it's true, Miss We'll-Sleep-When-the-Baby-Sleeps.'

'I only said that before he was born,' she admitted. 'Before I knew.'

'Before we both Knew.' They looked at each other—her reddish eyes, the unspoken evidence of private turmoil, and his glasses patterned with baby fingerprints—and laughed at the colossal thing that had mushroomed up between them, like an invisible city or a woolly mammoth, this thing they drank their tea next to, and for whom they budged over in bed to accommodate its wood-splintering weight.

Lily clicked each snap into place, all the way up to Harry's double chin. He reached for her and she swung him up into the air. The way Harry spread his arms for Lily, opening and closing his fists like flowers in flickering stop-motion—it was like a well James drank from, cool and hard to swallow for the fizzy charge of its sweetness.

'Do you want to float Harry?' she whispered. 'Do you want to go upsie?'

Harry knew the word upsie (if you could call it a word), and he flailed excitedly at the prospect.

'Here goes….' sang Lily. She traced her wand over and around him like she was drawing a flourish or a cursive sentence; the magic trailed out of her wand, a glittering charcoal-gray rain of sparks. Harry rose, just four or five inches from the play mat, with his heavy sagging bottom just a little lower than the rest of him. His arms wheeled in pure happiness, like Catherine wheels exploding on Bonfire Night, and he kicked rapidly, as though testing the nonsensical absence of gravity.

'He loves that,' said James. 'He loves being in the air. Anything to do with flight.'

'I used to love that too, when I was a kid,' smiled Lily. 'I used to…' but she trailed off. With her wand, she raised and lowered Harry a few times, and the marionette strings of his pure radiant happiness pulled on the corners of James' own lips. Harry, the spitting image of his father, smiled so widely the dummy fell out of his mouth and rolled away on the floor into corners unknown.

'Ussie!' he cried.

'It's downsies for now,' said Lily, and she lowered him back to the play mat. Harry's smile melted away. 'I'm going to go clean his teeth now. Not that it's thrilling, but…'

'I'll come,' said James, abandoning the saliva-slick dummy. They must have lost about twenty of them a week to pure carelessness. Pushing himself up from the rocking chair, he followed Lily and Harry to the bathroom. Bottles, tubs and tubes cluttered the worktop—hand lotion, nappy cream, perfume, the contraceptive Brew, toothpaste, Lansinoh cream, the little plastic container of even more dummies, and cleaning solution for James' glasses. Neither he nor Lily had been the tidy ones in their families of origin, and so the Potter home—devoid of house elf or maid—was just a series of chaotic surfaces and items misplaced and Accio-ed when needed. Once, Lily had remarked, 'Yes, our whole house is the Room of Hidden Things, and we are the hidden-est of all.'

James opened the medicine cabinet and removed the little flannel used to clean Harry's gums. He also had an ultra-soft-bristle toothbrush for the new baby teeth springing up from Harry's lower gums like those pop-up ghosts Muggles put in the garden for Hallowe'en.

'Open up, precious,' said Lily, tapping Harry's lower lip. James wet the flannel and came towards Harry's mouth, pressing open his firm lower palate to wipe Harry's sore and swollen gums. He burst into tears at the pressure.

'Shhhh, it's alright. It's alright baby,' murmured Lily, pressing kisses to Harry's cheek. 'I hate doing this, I'm glad you'll do it for me.'

'I hate doing it too,' said James grimly.

'EEEAHHHHhhhh!'

'I'm so sorry, Turnip,' whimpered Lily. 'I know it hurts. Please finish it quickly, James—'

'Let me just get the toothbrush,' he said. And he grabbed the first stick-shaped thing from the worktop, which turned out to be a stray mascara wand, uncapped and crumbling into desiccation. 'Oops—hold on…'

'Harry, look at this, sweetheart,' Lily encouraged him. 'Look what Mummy can do.' She pursed her lips into a kiss shape, and through them, she blew an enormous red heart-shaped bubble made of imagination and pure will. Harry reached for it, lunging forward and nearly falling from her arms. Wandless charms were Lily's special gift. James had learned to love her for it, even though he knew where it came from—who had coached her and how she'd fine-tuned her raw talents under the sun-streaked pergola of childhood, and how it had come to an unclean ending with all the great eureka moments put to nauseating ends—and still, he wished beyond hope that Harry would inherit his mother's gift. She had distracted him enough to stop screaming, and James was able to get the soft bristle toothbrush into Harry's mouth to lightly scrub the few milk teeth which he felt the three of them had collectively earned, such was the (well-distributed) pain of their eruption.

'Okay, Turnip, we're all done,' said James, as lightly as he could manage. 'Look at you! All tidied up and ready for bed.'

Harry emitted a few low-effort hiccough-cries, as though he wanted his dissatisfaction registered solely for administrative purposes. James took him from Lily's arms and bounced him a few times; Harry tucked his head against James's cheek, and he kissed his son's wild, untameable hair. 'If you didn't cry at the prospect of bedtime,' murmured James, 'I would be thoroughly disappointed in you and sceptical of your paternity.'

'Yeah, yeah, we've heard this before.' Lily gestured at James to get out of the bathroom so she could use the toilet. She had this manner of waving him off like a dismissed chauffeur or footman that was condescending in the sexiest way possible, and he would never admit how much he liked it.

James carried Harry back to the nursery and settled into the rocking chair, conjuring a pillow for his back, which he'd permanently messed up from years of hunching over a broomstick. Harry stretched out his arms and legs like a starfish, and yawned. The weight of him in James' lap felt reassuring—like a wallet sagging from coins. Harry was twenty pounds at his last weigh-in, about three times his birth weight. To think that he and Lily had ever questioned whether Harry was getting enough to eat—back in that bleary, hazy August just after his birth, with the thunderstorms striking migraines into James' head every other wickedly humid day, with the mornings and nights mixed up and Harry's tongue tie leaving him and Lily both bleeding and in tears, the acid reflux, the blow-outs, and the horrid beak-on-glass pecking of owls that never stopped arriving with urgent, earth-shattering losses read aloud by James through the bathroom wall while Lily suffered horrible postpartum indignities on the toilet about which even the midwitch said, 'You don't want to know.' You had to pay the piper, James learned, if you wanted a little marshmallow man doppelganger who'd rip your glasses off and put them in his mouth at every opportunity.

'When Mummy comes back,' said James, 'I'm going to tell you the bedtime story.'

'Mep.'

'Yes, I know it's more for her than for you. I did figure out that much.'

'Hum.'

'Okay,' said James. He pointed his wand at the gauzy curtains and drew them shut against cold rain that had begun to collect in beads on the glass. The night had drawn itself tight around their cottage like the puckering closure of a drawstring bag, and James didn't want to see it anymore.

'Don't worry Harry.' His voice was low and quiet. 'Of the many scary things out there that want to hurt you personally, none of them know where we are.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, James, don't say stuff like that!' exclaimed Lily. She had returned from the bathroom, and in the doorway she stood, still in her faded floral muumuu, but now barefoot and devoid of jewelry. 'What if he understands more than he lets on?'

'If he understands what I just said, then he understands the Fidelius Charm, and that we're beyond harm.'

'It doesn't work that way with children,' she huffed. 'They only get bits and pieces. Don't even s—James, you know better than that.'

'He's a baby!' James gestured to Harry, who was attempting to fit his fabric-covered foot in his mouth. 'You really think I'm traumatising him?'

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. 'Don't get like this.'

'Like what?'

She pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets, as though to forestall a headache. The yellow incandescent light struck her face from beneath, and deep shadows collected on her forehead as though it were a deep ravine.

'You know how you're being, James,' she said in a low voice. 'Legalistic. Sophomoric. Purposefully obtuse.'

'Throw a thesaurus at me, why don't you?' He raised an eyebrow, which could be naughty or just arch, depending on Lily's mood.

'I'm not messing about, James.'

He showed her his open palms, in a posture that might have communicated Alright, you win, except that he quickly had to wrap an arm back around Harry's tummy when the baby thrust himself forward and nearly tumbled onto the floor.

Lily rolled her eyes. 'Just don't do it again. I'm telling you, I don't want you talking about that morbid stuff in front of him. Even if he doesn't understand. And especially considering we don't fully know what he understands of the—of our situation.'

James bit back a retort, even though he had at least three or four waiting on his lips. They were quick to spar these days, and he no longer had Sirius to come around and decompress with, or Remus, who made Lily calm like nobody else could. No visitors allowed, except Peter—and to recognise how little affection he had left in his cup for Peter, who was putting his own life in jeopardy for the Potters' sake, was like staring down at the watery depths of a cavern to find his own reflection doubled back at him, grey and dark from wet stone.

'Can you not see—that this is my sense of humour, this is how I make light of things.'

'And can you not see that this is a young child, and we're—' Lily broke off and swept her hair into a single thick lock, twisting it tightly with one hand. 'I don't want to make light of this because it's not funny and you could make light of anything else. Anything.'

'But that's just it,' James stared down at Harry, who was knotted into a pretzel and had managed to get the toes of his footie jammies soaked in drool. 'If it weren't dark, I wouldn't need it to be funny. This is what I have to do.'

Lily let go of her twist and shook out her head; the great auburn tresses spilled out into a loose helix. 'I wish you could say to me, yes, I chose to do this and I could have done something else. Because we still have free will.'

'Yes, we have free will. Are you happy?' James pulled off his glasses and tried to wipe them on his shirt without catching Harry's attention. 'Here I am, doing exactly what I want with my free will.'

'No, you aren't doing exactly what you want, but you're doing what you have to. Which is the choice you've made.'

'I know what I chose,' he said, and even he didn't like how bitter he sounded. 'I would choose Harry over anything, and you know that, but it's like—I've got to have a bit of me left. So, I tell awful macabre jokes to my toddler.'

'You've still got plenty of you left.' Lily closed her eyes. Her arms criss crossed over her breasts and she hugged herself as though she were podium, column and pediment all at once, trying to bear the weight of herself as some great temple sinking into loam. Harry seemed to pick up on her distress and he called out 'A-ma!' along with a disgruntled moan.

'It's alright, Harry...Mummy's just tired.' She blew him a kiss and James pretended to catch it like a Snitch and press the kiss to Harry's puffy cheek. Harry touched his cheek, as though to double-check it was really there. He seemed confused.

'Just promise me, Jamie, that you'll keep that dark stuff away from Harry. Tell it to me, or Sirius if you have to—'

'Alright. Fine, okay.'

Lily cocked her head at him, as though to scrutinize his sincerity. He hugged Harry to his chest with one arm and reached out to her with the other.

'Come sit,' he sighed. 'I'll tell you the story.'

'The holly tree story,' she specified.

'Yes.' He conjured a homely flanged pillow out of nothing, and it fell to his feet, where Lily liked to sit. She gathered her skirts and settled down on the pillow, leaning back against his legs and wrapping an arm securely about his calf as though they hadn't been quarrelling ten seconds earlier.

'A-ma!' Harry's voice was high and sweet, like a songbird up in a tree. He patted his mother's hair with a drool-wet foot. The rain was coming down a little harder now, and they could hear the sound of it like rice scattering on the knotty floor of the bothy where they'd actually married. It was, Dumbledore believed, the wisest place—cupped in safety by the mountains swelling from fields of myrtle and gorse, and far away from the nearest Floo station.

'A long time ago and far away from here,' prompted Lily. She gave his calf a little pinch.

'A long time ago,' repeated James, 'and far away from here, there was a land called Slumber and a town called Drifter's Field and street called Hush Lane.'

'Mmm,' agreed Harry.

'Hush Lane was out in the countryside in a place that looked like this place, but was not this place. But it had grass and trees, and, er, little stone cottages and a few buildings painted white that were by now half grey.'

'Still,' Lily cut in, 'it was a nice place to live.'

'A very good place,' said James, 'plagued by the occasional serial interruptor.'

She laughed like the bells chiming in a sweet shop door.

'Anyway...at the end of Hush Lane, the very end of it out in the snowy meadow where the nearest house was something you could make out only by the chimney smoke, a cardinal dropped three seeds onto the snow. And right away, the snow melted away and there was a patch of fresh earth underneath.'

At this point, the story paused briefly as James rearranged a very squirmy Harry in his arms, moving him around so that he now faced James and could lean his head into the crook of James' neck and pluck at the neckline of his father's jumper with one demanding baby hand.

'Continuation,' James announced, and Lily giggled again. 'So, the snow melted away, even though it was the middle of winter—as I said, it's more of a Christmas story than a Hallowe'en, but we'll let that go—and the seeds buried their way into the earth, all on their own. The first seed was—Harry, please stop strangling your dad—it was a chestnut, and he dreamed of becoming a glorious oak tree with the biggest canopy and enough shade for forty people to picnic together...'

A long time ago, and far away from here, there was a land called Slumber and a town called Drifter's Field, and a street called Hush Lane. Hush Lane was out in the countryside in a place that looked like this place, but was not this place. But it had grass and trees and little stone cottages and a few buildings painted white that were by now half grey. Still, it was a very nice place to live.

At the very end of Huh Lane, out in the snowy meadow where the nearest house was just a lamb's tail of chimney smoke, a bright red cardinal dropped three seeds into the snow. Tuh! Tuh! Tuh! And right away, as though by magic, the snow melted away and there was a fresh patch of earth underneath.

The first seed was a chestnut. He dreamt of becoming a glorious oak tree, with a great canopy that would grant enough shade for forty people to picnic together on the hottest day of the year—the 31st of July. The second seed was the stone of a plum, and she dreamt of growing into a bountiful fruit tree that would blossom pink in the spring and then bear ripe plums in autumn. The third seed was a single red berry resembling a drop of blood.

The chestnut asked the holly berry how much shade he would cast when he was fully grown.

'I don't know,' said the berry. 'I only need to cast enough shade to keep my roots moist.'

The plum stone asked the berry how many fruits he would bear to feed the hungry people of Drifter's Field once he was grown.

'I don't know,' said the berry, again. 'I only need to grow enough fruit to grow one more holly tree after me.'

The chestnut and the plum stone were disappointed with these answers, but they kept their feelings to themselves. It was a long, cold, hungry winter for a seed, with the earth frozen up to six feet deep and the winds harsh a shrill like a whistle.

In the spring of their first year, all the seeds put forth their roots into the ground. Each seed also grew one leaf that poked up through the soil to blink at the sun. The chestnut tree cast just enough shade for an ant, the plum grew a single fruit about the size of a blueberry, and the entire holly tree was no bigger than a three-leaf clover.

'Why am I not tall yet?' bemoaned the chestnut.

'Why do I bear no fruit?' wailed the plum.

'It's alright,' said the holly berry. 'We have just enough to survive the next winter.'

It was a long, difficult winter there at the very end of Hush Lane. Even the sun went to sleep, and the moon drew the heavy clouds over herself like a duvet. Every single day, the three little seeds wondered if spring would ever come back.

But of course, it did. The sun woke up and yawned and stretched her rays back down to the earth, and a few more leaves grew on the three little trees. That spring, the plum tree showed off her first lovely pink blossom, and in the summer, the oak grew his very first little chestnut. But the poor little holly tree grew nothing but waxy, spiky leaves too prickly to touch.

Autumn came, and the oak and the plum trees celebrated their accomplishments. Both oak and plum's leaves turned bright orange, and then deep scarlet.

'Why aren't your leaves changing?' asked the plum tree. 'Don't you want to be colourful, like us?'

'I don't know,' said the holly tree, in a small voice. 'I want to be like you, but I don't know how.'

'Well, I'm sure you'll figure out something,' said the oak tree. 'Maybe you could turn purple or yellow.'

But the holly leaves did not turn any colour. Autumn faded into winter, and as the snow began to trickle down like salt, the plum and oak trees lost all their leaves. In their nakedness and shame, they turned to the holly tree. To his surprise, the holly tree had lost not a single leaf. He spread his branches out and tried as best he could to protect his unclothed friends from the icy wind.

'Thank you, holly tree,' said the plum and oak together. 'Because of your kindness, we will be strong and healthy in the spring.'

Well, the harsh winter eventually gave way to a bright, lovely spring. A few daffodils and other such flowers grew in the meadow at the end of Hush Lane, and sometimes the children would come out to pick flowers or make picnics. The oak tree, now in his third spring, was strong and mighty. He cast enough shade for five children to fall asleep on a picnic blanket, even in the heat of midday.

By summer's end, the plum tree was delighted to share her juicy purple fruits with four children and one hungry hedgehog. In September, she even uncovered one extra, hidden fruit, which she split into three pieces with a spiky twig, and shared amongst herself and the other two trees. It was sweet and ripe and tasted like the golden sun's own honey. But the holly tree could hardly bear to eat a bite of it.

'Oh no,' he cried out. 'I thought I would be happy with only my own roots and my leaves getting bigger, but now I see that there is more to being a tree than mere survival. I wish I had great big branches to give shade, or the ability to grow plums.'

'But you kept us warm during the winter,' said the oak.

'And your leaves were colourful when all around us was grey and white,' added the plum tree.

'Do you really still want to be friends with an ugly, spiky, fruitless tree like me?' asked the holly. His friends assured him that they did.

That winter, the plum and oak shed their leaves once again, and the holly held them close, though not so close that he would poke them with his pointy leaves. On the first day of December, he woke to find a tiny little red berry on his highest branch. On the fifteenth of December, he found a second little red berry. And on Christmas Morning, the plum and oak woke the holly up with their excited laughter, for they saw that the holly was covered with beautiful red berries all over.

'You see?' said the oak tree. 'You can grow something wonderful too! No other tree could grow such fruit in the dead of winter!'

'Look at those ripe, red berries!' cried the plum tree. 'May we each eat one?'

The holly tree loved his dear friends very much, so he allowed each tree to taste a berry. But it was a terrible mistake, for the berries were lovely to look at, but poisonous to eat. As soon as the two other trees took a bite, they fell mysteriously silent. It was as though they had fallen into a deep slumber. Try as he might, the holly tree could not wake them up. They slept all winter long, and he was sure they would never bloom again in the spring.

When the sun struck his leaves again at the end of March, the holly tree was crying tears of sap, so certain was he that his friends would never return. He was surprised and overjoyed when their leaves grew back, and their branches stretched up towards the sky.

'Hello?' he said. 'Are you awake now?'

They were not awake. But their trunks still thickened, and the plum tree shed pink blossoms all over Hush Lane, and the oak tree cast his massive shadow over the meadow all summer. The children came to pick ripe plums and nap in the shade. Some of them even tried to pluck a few red berries from the holly tree, but he used his sharp-edged leaves to protect the children from their curiosity. They were handsome trees beloved by all who visited Hush Lane, but they never spoke their kind words and their silence was like a dark storm cloud whose shadow never left the holly tree.

For ten years, the holly tree sheltered his silent, sleeping friends in the winter, and watched them bloom in the summer with his shame etched into the very veins of his leaves. More and more children arrived to picnic at the end of Hush Lane, and some of them brought their parents and grandparents. A few carried hamsters or rabbits in their arms. After the tenth year of quiet, the holly tree was sulking in the pale snowy meadow when a visitor arrived.

It was a bright red cardinal who landed upon the holly tree's highest branch.

'Do you remember me?' he asked. 'I was the bird who dropped you and the chestnut and the stone of a plum onto the end of Hush Lane, back when you were no more than a little berry.

'I do remember,' said the holly tree, 'but you ought to stay away from me. I don't do anything good for anyone.' And he explained the story of what had happened in the intervening years.

The cardinal listened quietly, but when the story was finished, he spoke up. 'Yes, of course I know about all that,' he said. 'I knew your friends would taste your berries—don't you know why I dropped you three here, together?'

'No.'

'Well, don't you know what happens when a tree goes to sleep, like your friends did?' said the cardinal, sounding bemused but not uncheerful.

The holly tree responded glumly. 'Yes, they go away forever and they never talk to you again.' The cardinal laughed. 'Your berries are magical, Holly Tree. When another tree tastes a holly berry, they lose the roots that chain them to a single spot in the Land of Slumber. Their tree bodies still give us shade and fruit, but their spirits go off to the Land of Morning, where they are free to move about and travel wherever they choose.'

'But I am all alone now,' said the holly tree. 'Even if they are in the Land of Morning, I am still here in Slumber and I have no friends anymore.'

'Are you sure?' asked the cardinal, and he gestured to a group children approaching with a basket and scissors, to clip decorations for their mantles at Christmas.

'But it's not the same,' sighed the holly tree. 'I like when the children visit...but they aren't trees like me. They don't know how to talk to a tree. They don't know what it was like to be a seed.'

The cardinal lowered his bright head in sympathy. 'No,' he agreed. 'It isn't the same. And one day, you will get to go to the Land of Morning and your plum and oak friends will come to see you and teach you how to fly. But for now—you are a holly tree. And you make magical berries, and these children want to see something bright and green in the dead of winter.'

The holly tree was quiet for a long time—long enough for the children to finish playing in the snow and take their baskets home, full to the brim with holly clippings.

'I understand,' he finally said to the cardinal. 'But will you stay on my branch, just for the night?'

'Yes, but only for the night,' said the cardinal. And the next morning, he flew away into the wide, white sky.

Harry was fast asleep, with a strand of drool extending down his chin and onto James' shirt. Lily rested quietly against his legs. The two of them listened to the pitter-patter of the rain. James wondered if he would even be able to stand after so many of his limbs were numb from the pressure of Harry and Lily.

Finally, he spoke. 'I guess it worked as a bedtime story. Harry's long gone.'

'Thank you, Jamie.'

He brushed her head with his palm, just enough to feel the grease of her roots just starting to spread across her crown. 'You're quiet.'

'I'm sleepy too.'

'I can change the ending,' he said, his voice cracking a little. 'If you want. I know it's a bit…'

(A bit too attached to the tendrils of this thing that had wrapped itself around them and squeezed, he thought. As if nothing went untouched by the wide, brittle, hollowness of the past two years and that night in Dumbledore's office with the infantile phoenix staring out at them from his cage, shrivelled and tiny like a prune, and Lily's tears evaporating into salt as she faced Dumbledore without flinching from her stone countenance, when he said 'and it could be either child.' )

Lily shook her head, and he felt her hair sweep across his legs. 'No. I don't want you to change it.'

'I—"

'It feels right, the way it ended' she said. She looked up at him, and her eyes were glossy. 'And you did get Harry to sleep.'

James pecked at Harry's head. 'Now's the hard part.'

They had perfected the choreography of this sequence over the past fifteen months—James easing up to a standing position with both legs numb, the transfer of Harry to Lily's arms without ever varying any of the pressure applied to his head, chest or arms, the sliding (not walking!) of Lily's bare feet across the floor to the cot; James unlocking the cot's front panel, and using his wand to lower it so slowly that no sound could possibly be emitted at any point; and finally, Lily placing Harry down onto the cot and pressing her hands down into the mattress to slide them out from under him without disturbing him. James raised the cot bars and locked them in place. Lily reached towards Harry to brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead, as she often did, but James gave her That Look, and she smiled and lowered her hand to stroke James' thumb instead. He leaned into Lily and, pressing his face to her shoulder, mouthed their private endearments into her very skin. She embraced him and kissed the helix of his ear.

'Let's turn off the light,' she breathed.

He produced his wand and cast a wordless Nox. The elephant lamp went dark, sliding a deep, hypnotising tranquility over the nursery. He and Lily padded hand-in-hand out of the room. James shut the door with the soft click of a baby tooth against a glass of milk. Lily stood at the precipice of the stairs with her hand draped over the newel.

'I'm going to take a bath,' she whispered. The hallway was dim with only a few dregs of bluish light from their bedroom winter making patterns upon the carpet.

'Okay.'

'I'll be in bed by nine.'

'Alright,' he said. She disappeared into the bathroom and James went downstairs to put the kettle on and sit in the kitchen with the stale holiday cards hung from the shutters like an eclipse of pale moths, and his gaze caught on a woodcut of a cardinal perched on a log, head tucked under a swash of wing, as if to say, 'Yes. But only for the night.'