Irriguous: well-watered, as land.
April 14, 2015
Scorpius fancied the marshes to be a giant oil painting, like the ones lining his mother's parlor. The boggy water glowed purple in the fading orange sun. Trees more wild than any he had seen anywhere else closed in around the muddy back garden, deep green leaves dripping over the low stone fence. The grass – where it grew – was dark, too, and long and swishing in the wind.
Outside the stone fence, the land was wild and uncivilized forever around. But inside the fence, in the muddy back garden with its millions and billions of strange herbs and luminescent flowers and the bench painted apple-red, everything was safe.
"Come along, Scorpius, love," Aunt Daphne said, straightening up with a wicker basket full of drippy leaves and sharp petals. "It's getting dark. Don't want to be out when the fog comes in, do we?"
Scorpius leapt off the back of the apple bench, landing with a splash in the muddy puddles and kicking up a shower of droplets that sparkled in the setting sun. Just like paint, he thought. The whole place was painted perfect. He ran to catch Aunt Daphne's hand as she waited by the open cottage door.
Aunt Daphne's house was just two rooms: an upstairs and a downstairs. Scorpius knew that Dad thought it was mental, that Grandmother Greengrass was painfully embarrassed, and that Mum would rather not say what she felt about her sister living in a swamp (it wasn't a swamp, Aunt Daphne said), but he thought it was brilliant. Aunt Daphne got to live in a storybook, he thought.
There was an iron cook stove in one corner that was always brewing some strange-smelling potion or other for Aunt Daphne's cellar store, and a pan of hot chocolate or honey milk for Scorpius. Dried flowers and bunches of leaves and vines were strung up across the ceiling 'for the pixies to play in' Aunt Daphne told him when he slept at her house, wrapped up snug before the fire. And in the middle of the room was a big wooden table for laying out and preparing stores from the garden and for mixing potions.
Scorpius ran to the table as Aunt Daphne shut the door and closed out the dark night 'before the brownies come out to play'.
"Can I help?" he asked eagerly, climbing up onto a chair.
Aunt Daphne set her basket on the table and pulled off her bonnet to let her dark hair curl down her back, pretending to scrutinize him carefully.
"I don't know… I need the best eyes for picking just the right petals to use."
"I've got the best eyes," Scorpius told her promptly, playing along with the game they always played.
His aunt raised an eyebrow in mock skepticism. "Oh really? Care to put it to the test?"
Scorpius nodded enthusiastically, dragging the wicker basket across the table and beginning to sort out good flowers from bad ones in his most practiced eye. Aunt Daphne watched him intently for a few moments before the potion on the stove began boiling over and she had to rush off to fix it.
Even the flowers were painted a special color of red that Scorpius never found anywhere but his aunt's garden. He ran his fingers lightly, delicately over the long, spikey petals, enthralled to be in the midst of such magic. Here was where magic must come from, he thought. It must drip off the trees and rise up out of the marshes and blossom in his aunt's garden, because nowhere else in the whole wide world was there such a place for anything to happen.
Daphne returned, slightly sweaty-faced and frizzy-haired, to check up on her nephew's progress. She Oo-ed and ah-ed and proclaimed she'd never seen such a keen selection of petals before as she ran an affectionate hand over her nephew's blond hair. Working away as he was, so thrilled to be part of his aunt's enchanted world, Scorpius couldn't know just then that he was the one that brought the enchantment.
A/N: I've long-since felt that Daphne was a bit of a loner. Not sure why precisely. I have it in my head that Draco first attempted to win her affections after the war as she was a decent, pure-blood girl who had no affiliation with the war, but she was too absorbed in academia, in potion-brewing and such to take much notice of him, and he quickly shifted his attention to Astoria. Now, ten years down the road, Draco and Astoria have a wonderful son adored by his rather quirky aunt, who is not unhappy living out in the middle of nowhere on her own, but I imagine lonely at times. Anyway…. Just some backstory for you. :) Reviews are greatly appreciated. I know it looks like I have more than I know what to do with – which is an awesome testament to you guys! – but I average about three reviews a chapter, so I promise I read and value them all! :)