Surviving in Harmony

Chapter Seventeen | Diagon Alley, August 2001

Chapter Seventeen

Diagon Alley, August 2001

 

                               “Win!” a little redheaded boy ran gleefully down the streets of Diagon Alley, his dark eyes glinting with mischief. “Win-Win, huwy!”

Winston chuckled and jogged after the toddler, grabbing his great nephew around the middle, sending him into a fit of giggles. It reminded him so much of the twins when they were growing up, years and years ago now. Two little babies, lying together under one blanket, tiny arms entangled. Winston had loved those babies like they were his own, and never regretted spending those years raising them with Hazel instead of having his own little ones.

“Shall we go look at the plants, Maxxie?” he asked, bouncing the boy up and down in his arms.

“Ya!”

It thrilled Winston that Max loved the greenhouse and the herbology stores, loved watching the flowers open and close with the shadows and sun, took great joy spending time with Winston at all. He had been a little scared the child Sonia had wouldn’t care for him at all, that he would lose an opportunity to be part of the child’s life; he almost had.

Entering the shop, Winston set Max down in front of some pots while he sorted through the seeds. He disliked thinking about the first few months after Hazel had died, after the war; there had been so much to rebuild, to mourn. Winston had lost his sister, and she left him two broken children to watch over.

Though the twins were anything but children at that point; Sonia newly married, about to have a baby; Andrew moving to London with Amara, starting a job. Winston felt as if it were just yesterday that he could hold them both in two hands.

It had been three years since Hazel had passed, and not a day passed that he missed his little sister, how she would just come and sit in the greenhouse, curled up in a chair beneath drooping blossoms. Her quiet company had been what Winston had always wanted growing up in Sweden, surrounded by family – but they weren’t his parents, not his little sister.

Then she had come to live at Hester House, gifted him with a little nice and nephew; he had spent the past twenty-two years helping Hazel, assisting with raising the twins – and suddenly she was gone, and Winston had no one to assist. When Max was born he was happy to babysit whenever Sonia and Charlie needed someone, never turned down the opportunity to go over and play with Max. When the young couple begged him to look after Max for a whole three weeks while they went on adventures, he couldn’t say no – so he and Max were having a grand time all on their own.

While Winston was occupied with the seeds, Max had become bored with the pots and toddled over to the flowers. As he looked up, a hazy image of a woman who looked suspiciously like his mother, but with blonde hair, smiled and beckoned him over.

“Come here.” She said “Don’t be shy Maxxie.”

Max got up and walked over to the haze and looked up “I Max.”

“I know,” said the apparition. “Do you see the woman by the plants? Go say hello.”