The Serpent and the Lion [L.S]

Chapter 10

• ◈ •

Doncaster works magic on Louis.

Not the exact kind of magic Louis is so used to having at his disposal, but something better. This was the sort of unexplainable euphoria that made Louis feel whole again. The magic of hearing his little sisters giggle in the next room, of riding in his mum's car to the market; the simple joys Louis hardly remembers anymore.

Everything in his life has changed.

The person who stepped off the Hogwarts Express in September is not the same person who came back to Doncaster in December. It's something fiercer than relief to know that even though at school nothing is the same, he can count on the fact that everything at home will be.

For the first three days that he's home, Louis sleeps.

Hibernating may be a better term for it, really.

Everything in his bedroom is just as he left it, except he can tell his bedding has been freshly washed; it nearly brings him to tears when he imagines his mum pulling up the sheets that nobody has slept on in months, only to wash them so that they're soft for Louis when he gets home.

When Louis finally fell into bed that first night, with everything smelling of laundry detergent and his mum and home, it was almost like deflating; the way his body sank into the mattress, and a plug from his brain seemed to be yanked from the socket.

It was a dreamless, weightless sleep, and when Louis woke, he had the ability to breathe again for perhaps the first time in all of December.

Each morning he'll wake up to one of two things: The first being the smell of breakfast wandering under the crack of his door, combined with the raucous noise of his siblings arguing which of them will pick what to put on the telly.

The second being his body protesting the amount of hours he's been asleep, cramping from how long he's been curled up in the same position, demanding that he wakes up. Those are the days he'll physically roll over and stumble out of bed with too-bright sunlight prying his eyes open, and the smell of food under his door by that point is lunch.

Louis loves opening his bedroom door and shuffling down the stairs to see his youngest sisters laid up in living room on their bellies, Lottie talking loudly on the phone with her mates, the phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder with knitting needles in her hands. The sounds of rock music will play further down the hall, muffled only by the closed door, Felicity preferring to keep to herself until the early afternoon; just like her brother.

It's bliss, Louis thinks.

Quietly, he'll pad to the kitchen and his mother will kiss his cheek. He'll gratefully accept the cup of tea she always seems to have ready for him; returning to the living room to curl up on the hideous and devastatingly beat-up recliner they've had since Louis was small, and refuses to allow his mother to get rid of.

Louis will sip his tea, half-eavesdropping on Lottie's school drama, and half-watching Peppa Pig shouting to Suzy Sheep on the telly, all with Felicity's muted playlists in the background.

It's then, in the middle of all that wonderful and ordinary chaos, that Louis's mind will slip.

The hideous recliner with stains on the cushions will remind Louis too much of Hagrid's enormously big armchair, and how this one seems infinitely smaller in comparison, drawing the corners of his mouth downward into a frown before he can realize what's happening.

The tea his mother made will taste too good. She knows exactly how Louis likes it—not at all how Harry will make his tea when they're out at Hagrid's, drowning him in entirely too much milk, and bitter without the sugar. Louis will picture Harry's flushed face and rolling green eyes, practically hear his murmured, slightly-snarky apology in his mind.