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12. December 1978

A soft sigh escaped her lips. Her eyes were fixed on the snowdrift that was slowly but surely building up at her kitchen window until she grasped her wand and with a quick wave reignited the stove at the other end of the room.

Her worries marked her face in a deep furrow. Stiffly, almost mechanically, she scrubbed the plates in the sink clean, deliberately refraining from casting a spell just to somehow distract herself and her circling thoughts. It took all the willpower she had not to give in to the unbearable itch of her forearm and scrape the burning mark from her skin with her own fingernails - not that she hadn't tried already. But it seemed futile. No matter how hard she tried, the mistakes of her naïve past were not so easily forgotten.

Especially not now. Now, at a time when war and fear were dividing the country, unsettling both Muggles and wizards in equal measure.

How she wished to get away - far away from all that seemed to threaten her and her perfect little world. But the reality of her possibilities was different.

She felt her gloomy thoughts begin to spiral into chaos as the soft rattle of the door lock snapped her out of her musings. For a brief moment, her hand instinctively flinched towards her wand, but then a relieved sound escaped her lips and a smile graced her face.

She quickly dropped the dishes back into the sink and dried her hands before pushing herself off the narrow kitchen counter and hurrying the few metres towards the door. He was already waiting for her with open arms and pressed a quick kiss to her hair while she took the bag from his hands and put it with his other belongings in the other corner of the small room.

From there she observed him intently for a moment; eyed the barely noticeable crease on his forehead and the tense posture of his shoulders that he struggled to hide from her watchful eyes. But she knew him too well to be fooled by him and his bad acting.

Briefly, it felt as if a crushing weight was constricting her chest. Her heart gave an unpleasant leap and began to thump rapidly, at the same time she could feel all the colour draining from her face.

"Olek?" she asked quietly, uncertainly, and the tentative smile on his lips abruptly disappeared. " Are there no good news?"

He was silent for a few seconds, apparently unsure how to announce the news, before he cleared his throat softly, "Some members of the Order have disappeared. Caradoc Dearborn and Edgar Bones. His wife and children are also nowhere to be found."

Her breath caught in her throat. Tears burned in her eyes and she struggled to get over the shock of his news, but still her legs gave way under her body and she fell heavily onto the battered sofa of her small living room. Within seconds her husband crossed the small room and dropped to his knees in front of her, soothingly taking her hands in his and tracing soft circles over on her skin with his thumbs.

"We're safe, darling," he said quietly but firmly, "us and the children. We are both half-breeds, surely they have long forgotten we exist. In the future, we'll just have to be more careful - until all this finally ends and we can live normal lives."

Briefly, she closed her eyes and again fought the tears and the suffocating lump in her throat before loosening her hands from his and to gently embrace his face instead. Carefully, she leaned her forehead against his and breathed in his familiar and comforting scent before finally nodding.

"Okay," she forced herself to smile, "we'll manage."

He too smiled briefly and opened his mouth to reply confidently when a joyful exclamation caught his attention, "Daddy!"

Abruptly they both straightened up and covered the seriousness of the situation with a carefree mask. Even as she wiped the tears from her eyes, he rose from his kneeling position and just managed to intercept his euphoric son, who threw himself into his arms, giggling.

"Pietro," he greeted him with a laugh, ruffling his hair.

The boy grinned widely with his big gap between his teeth. „I've missed you!"

"And I missed you," he also gave him a quick kiss on his brown hair before looking around the room in search. "Where's your sister?"

Pietro shrugged his shoulders and turned in the direction he had come from before: "Wanda!"

Surprised, she looked up from her book and glanced at the door before hastily jumping off the bed and running into the living area. A joyful smile spread across her lips as she spotted her father, and she too hurriedly ran towards him, only to be pulled into a tight embrace by his waiting arms.

"There's my girl," he said loudly, spinning her once in a circle before setting her giggling form down beside her brother. "I hope you two haven't made mum's life all too difficult today?"

"Oh, well Wanda," their mother began, joining them, one of her hands on each of the twins' heads, "has been reading her book all day. Or at least she tried to, while this little mister here," she also ruffled her son's hair and shook her head, "kept teasing her."

"That's not true!" protested Pietro hurriedly, but his father wasn't fooled by that.

He gave him a quick reprimanding, yet benevolent look before turning to his quiet daughter. With a wave of his wand, he let a small box fly into his hands, which he promptly opened in front of the children on the floor. "Then Wanda gets to choose something today."

A joyful twinkle gleamed in her eyes as her gaze wandered over the small collection. Those were her favourite evenings when they all would squeeze together on the small sofa and watch so-called 'movies' with the strange device from the Muggle world that her father had collected.

"Oh no," Pietro whined loudly in the background as he and his mother got ready to settle down on the soft cushions, "now we all get to watch the same film again, like always!"

She herself just smiled in response but lowered her head to the floor in shame. She thought for a moment before whispering softly, "We can watch something else."

"Nonsense," her father returned in a firm voice before taking said DVD out of the box. With a conspiratorial grin, he held it out to his daughter. Hesitantly, she took it from him and he added quietly, "After all, it's my favourite film too."

For a moment she eyed him uncertainly, then nodded quickly and the joy returned. With a soft giggle, she ran towards the Muggle machine and slid the cassette in, while her father turned to his son in fake anger.

"You've been able to cuddle with your mother all day. I guess it's my turn now."

"But Papa," the boy replied loudly and at length before dropping his head against his mother's shoulder, "it's so cosy right now."

"This is my corner," he insisted with mock sternness, but laughed out loud as Pietro grumbled in response to his request and joined his sister at the end of the sofa.

With a contented sigh, he dropped down on the seat cushion beside his wife and put an arm around her. "That's more like it."

As the snow covered the world, only the sound of the movie playing in the stillness of the evening, the worry and fear seemed forgotten for a moment. With a smile, he looked at his wife and breathed a gentle kiss on her forehead before his gaze wandered to the two twins who looked so fascinated by the movie.

Then there was a crash.

And darkness followed.