♡ Be My Baby ♡

one.

White Willow Manor has stood at the centre of Harry's life for as long as he can remember. A steadfast constant, the Georgian house with its many rooms and a sprawling garden is a character of its own. Houses have acted as sentient individuals in many stories, sometimes angry like the Hill House or a suffocating dream that is Gatsby's West Egg house. White Willow is more of a spectator, a chameleon reflecting the emotions and turmoils of its residents. Seeing generations come and go, wars, Kings and Queens, White Willow's walls are bleeding history, while listening in with a careful ear that doesn't have a mouth to tattletale your secrets.

Harry wasn't born at White Willow, which he sometimes deems a pity when he's contemplating writing a memoir. Maybe a skilful editor will help him come up with a little lie, so it all sounds better. Despite the small imperfection, all the events that have shaped his life have happened under White Willow's stoic supervision. His first steps, his first broken bone, his first kiss (aged six, in the garden, with his mum's best friend's seven-year-old daughter), his first real kiss (aged fifteen, in a guestroom, with his mum's other best friend's eighteen-year-old son) and many other firsts.

When he was nine, he had this literary phase. His mum had given him a strict screen time limit and he'd outgrown his boyish years of running around the garden chasing cats and playing football with the wall or the groundskeeper. White Willow's location on the outskirts of London was quite lonely. While school was in, his boredom was manageable but once summer came, Harry often found himself nearly all alone. Gemma was a teenager, which granted her the coveted privilege of going out with her friends in the city and she took full advantage of it. Harry was the baby of the family, the youngest of all the cousins. At every family reunion or a party, he wasn't included in the gossip that they were all so interested in and whenever he suggested they actually play, it was met with laughter. Surely, none of them were hanging around to keep him company in summer. He didn't mind being the baby because it allotted him more of his mum's attention and, most of the time, he got away with all his shenanigans. Everything except for screen time, because that, according to his mum and all the babysitters, was really dangerous. So Harry, with his limited access to TV and the computer, shifted his attention towards the manor's impressive library. There, no limits were given. Harry had free range all across the library, as long as he didn't touch the old documents and priceless first editions that were in the only bookshelf with glass cabinet doors. Of course, it was tempting to get his hands on them, but getting banned from the library wasn't worth it. (He got to them anyway, once he was a teenager and had little to no regard to rules imposed by parental figures.)

It was during that summer the house gained its sentience in Harry's eyes. He devoured one book after the other, mostly classics, which always included great stately homes and tales of balls and parties, the locations shrouded in a veil of romantic mystery. Harry started appreciating the manor more, stopped seeing it just as a strangely big, old house he grew up in. Suddenly, Harry found himself looking behind paintings, opening stray doors and cupboards in search of secret passageways, even sneaking up into the attic. He was looking for adventure, mystery. The whole endeavour was only fuelled by the new books that his mum got him after noticing he always had a book on him. Typical books you'd give a child slowly inching towards their teenage years, full of magic and adventure and monsters and friendship and mystery. Sadly, Harry never truly uncovered anything interesting in the manor. Or did he?

The house became his friend, shielding him from loneliness. It seemed like his best friend at the end of that summer, a few days shy of the next school year when he and Gemma were called into a parlour one evening. Their parents were sitting on two different sofas, beckoning them to take a seat. The most vivid memory of the however many minutes their parents spent announcing their divorce is a mosquito that wouldn't stop biting Harry's ankle. Then it's the house, whose grandeur and radiance dropped gradually with each word that left their parents' mouths, how in a matter of moments it became dull and grim. On his way back to his room, the colours faded. He looked at wallpapers and paintings and everything seemed washed with grey, no longer vibrant. Harry felt the walls closing in, inching towards him but not in a suffocating way. Grief, that is what the house felt like that late August evening.