𝙳𝚊𝚢𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖 𝙱𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 ~ 𝙷. 𝙿𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛

Chapter 1 - head in the clouds

~Summer 1993~

Jean Lupin was currently sitting at her small round kitchen table holding a spoonful of cheerios in midair with a glazed over dreamy expression in her eyes.

Harry Potter was sat directly across her, having wolfed down his breakfast, now attempting to snap his best friend back into reality by waving a hand across her face.

"Jee?"He spoke softly, trying to bring her back into the real world gently. She gave him no reply.

"J?" A little louder this time.

Harry's patience was wearing thin "Jean!" he yelled, feeling slightly guilty as she started and knocked over her cereal.

"Merlin Harold, you've got some pipes on you to shout like that this early in the morning" She gestured to the little clock that hung above their heads which showed that it was currently 5:15 in the morning.

Most teenagers would be asleep this early in the morning, especially during their summer holidays. But since Harry was staying at the Lupin's cottage in Cornwall for a while in the summer, Jean felt it was her duty to show him a proper Cornish sunrise on the beach. Hence why they were up so early and Harry was in such a desperation to pull Jean from her daydream, as the sun would rise in about 20 minutes.

Harry found her criticism of his loudness unfair, as the 12 year old was desperate to get to the beach and watch the sunrise "Jee we've literally got 20 minutes to walk to the beach and you had your head right up in the clouds!" He complained. A small sigh resounded from the girl "I suppose you're right Potter" she gestured to the spilt cereal in front of her "Id better just clean this up first, or dad will go mental if I've wrecked the tablecloth" Jean grabbed some kitchen towel and begun to sponge at the milk that was seeping in to the seagull patterned tablecloth that Remus Lupin had brought at some market in town.

Once the mess had been cleared up, she shouted a quick "see you later dad!" To her father upstairs, grabbed her bag containing a beach blanket and some snacks and dragged Harry out the front door. Despite being rather poor, the Lupins owned a cottage that was relatively close to a little beach in a very small Cornish town, an area that usually cost a lot of money to live in, but their cottage was given to them by her grandparents Lyall and Hope Lupin when they moved to Wales. Before then, Jean and her father lived in a cramped flat above a corner shop in Cardiff, She often missed how convenient that flat was when they'd run out of milk.

The walk from the Lupin's cottage was short, they only lived about 10 minutes from the beach, but it was all uphill, and by they time she and Harry had reached the steep downward path that led to the beach, they were sweating like pigs, they stopped for a moment to regain their breath.

After finally making it on to the beach and deciding to sit on top of the pier instead of on the sandy part of the beach, Jean watched Harry's awestruck reaction to the gorgeous sunrise with a strong feeling of glee at the enjoyment her best friend was experiencing.

She was ecstatic that she had managed to convince her father to let Harry stay round for the first week of summer, it had taken a lot of letters in the last few months of school full of grovelling to make him contact Harry's remaining family and ask them if they would allow their nephew to stay with him for the first week of summer.

Remus had told her of his meeting with the Dursleys and how he had actually met Petunia before as he was friends with Harry's mother, apparently he was the only one of her friends she could tolerate due to his calmer and more normal demeanour. Polite and thorough as always, Remus had prepared many ways to convince the Dursleys to let Harry stay with him and Jean as he was expecting them to be quite protective over their nephew, much like he with his daughter, especially considering the tragedy involving his parents. And so he was very shocked at how little the Dursleys seemed to care about Harry's safety and how much contempt they seemed to hold for him.