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73- Rome

Rome, Italy.
One year later.

It had been a year.

I don't think I had changed as much as I had then. I felt like a completely different person.
I didn't even recognise myself, but the first time in my life, I liked what I saw.

In a year, I matured massively.
It felt like I had grown up all at once.

Me and Theo.. we weren't kids anymore. We weren't stupid and naive and we didn't party like we used to or play these games with each other like we did.
We were successful.

More than I ever thought possible.
We started up fresh in the heart of Italy, Rome.
Italy was beautiful. It was pretty and clean, and there was places to go, the food was amazing, the nightlife was class, and most importantly, their people were maybe one of the friendliest people I'd ever come across.

Everyday to begin with felt like a holiday.
Their weather was better than ours and with Theo with me, it felt like I was on top of the world, like we were unstoppable and like nothing could ever bring us down.

It was over a sangria, we were in this cafe, touristy but very aesthetic, Italians would have called it a sell out but it did the job. I was thinking of joining the Italian aurors, but I wasn't sure what their laws were here. At first Theo wanted a similar sort of job to the Ministry, it was all he knew how to do he had said.
But it was him who has suggested it and at first, at first I was terrified that this could all have gone wrong and I feared that my worst nightmare would come true.
That I'd be a complete failure with absolutely nothing to my name.
But we took a risk, and it turned out it paid off.

We each put a significant amount of our savings into it from each of our trusts, our money that our parents had left for us and we were reluctant at first, but it was the best decision we had ever made and it was so easy what we did.
Buying and selling. Buying and selling.
We'd buy property, parts of land that we thought had potential, get it all done up make apartment complexes or work offices for businesses and it'd go for triple the original price.

We'd put in our investments for trades too, the market was good here, the economy was better. It was the smartest decision I had ever made in my life.

We were so young and we were drowning in money.
More than we could have ever imagined and it all happened in just a year. In a year, with the right people around you, you could do so much I had learnt.
Had I stuck with Adrian, a year would have flown by and I would have been nothing, I would have been in the same position I was in, stuck in the cycle of rehab and relapsing.
I would have been miserable.

Moving to Italy was the best thing I had ever done for myself.
Theo said it was the best thing he had ever done too.

We felt accomplished, we had enough to set us for a lifetime without ever having to work again. We had a good few houses, we could move anywhere we wanted, we had each other.

Life felt beautiful.

I fell for Theo, hard.

He made me see things in life in such a different way to anyone else.
He was rational where I wasn't, but he wasn't perfect, he had his own faults and I wasn't blind to see them, but nevertheless I accepted them, they seemed insignificant compared to how great he was.

It dawned on me that maybe this was how Remus had fallen for Tonks.
I don't know, I can only speak for myself but, the love I had for Theo, it wasn't anything like mine and Remus'.

It was different, a different kind of love, but it was still love.
Maybe maturing meant that you experience different types of love in your lifetime.