Too Honest ~ James Potter

Chapter 49

After their honeymoon, James and Mariya lived with his parents for a few weeks before moving into their new house. They knew that they would one day inherit both the Potter and the Seratov Manors but in the meantime they wanted to find a nice house where they could live until that time came. Having determined this, they began to hunt for houses across Scotland. Eventually settling on living somewhere coastal, they managed to find a sizable cottage on the coast near a small bay called Crawton. It did not boast much more than a waterfall - though said water feature was rather beautiful - and a few ruined buildings. James and Mariya decided that it would be perfect for them; it was an incredible area but did not have any Muggles who would bother them if they needed to apparate or perform any other magic.

The inside of the cottage was in dire need of a renovation: the paint in every room was peeling, the carpets were stained, the wood floors could do with a wax, there weren't any curtains, and the little furniture that had been left was falling to pieces as they watched. Despite all of this, James and Mariya knew that this was the house for them and so they bought it. They spent months re-furnishing it to their tastes and painting every surface available. The kitchen was a deep blue with grey curtains patterned by blue flowers and the cracked tiled floor was pulled up and replaced by a dark wood. The hallways were pale green - though James had flicked white paint at Mariya whilst they were doing the doorframes and so they had decided just to artistically flick the pale paint over the green to make it look more interesting, rather than trying to scrape it off and start again. The carpet in the hallway was a darker shade of green and the skirting boards where white - something Mariya was sure would turn out to be a mistake. The living room was stripped of its peeling wallpaper and covered with a new layer of flat wallpaper before being painted a pale blue. Once this was done, Mariya spent a lot of time up a stepladder painstakingly drawing and then painting the solar system across the navy ceiling. They found a deep zig-zagging carpet for the living room that would hopefully hide a lot of the stains and crumbs often found in the regularly used room.

There were also four bedrooms in the house plus a box-room, the first was their own which they painted a deep purple-red and found a blue carpet for. The other three they were unsure about - they had decided that they wanted their children to have say over their own rooms and so merely painted them white and left the wood floors bare with plain curtains. Furniture was another problem as everyone they asked seemed to have a different opinion on colour schemes and wood types. Eventually, they decided to just find stuff and allow everyone to complain if it wasn't what they wanted. The kitchen was granted a table with six chairs as well as three stools for sitting at the worktop. The living room contained two sofas with a coffee table between them as well as a rug surrounded by beanbags. Each bedroom was fitted with a double bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, and a small table and chair, whilst the box room was left relatively empty for the time being, though Mariya had plans to convert it into her new art studio.

Many other things happened within their first year of marriage. The most important taking place only a couple of months after their wedding day, when Mariya entered the house with three tests in a bag at her side. The first one was Muggle and the other two were magical as she wanted to be certain.

As she sat in the kitchen waiting for them to provide results, she looked back on all of the things that had made her certain she would need the tests in front of her. Though she knew that most women experienced sick feelings, she had not thrown up once over the past few weeks, though she had put on some weight and had been experiencing a weariness that made her sure she was right in her thoughts. Glancing back at the potion and the piece of plastic in front of her, she smiled as she saw the results.

"James!" She had shouted out of the door, where she could see her husband attempting to build a bench for their garden, though he was having some trouble with the Muggle tools.