Chapter Text
At twenty, Holly Potter was supposed to feel triumphant. She had fulfilled her destiny, survived the impossible, and even gained access to a power unlike anything she had ever known. But instead of clarity, she found herself reeling, adrift in a sea of unanswered questions and new abilities she barely understood. For the first time in her life, no prophecy pointed the way forward.
So she turned backward. If she couldn’t see her future, perhaps she could understand her past. Everyone else seemed to know more about her family than she did, and the whispers tugged at her curiosity. Her search led her across the world: to India, where her great-grandmother’s roots still lingered in ancestral villages; to Hong Kong and the quiet shrines of southern China of ancestors further back; to New Zealand, where an adventurous branch of her family tree had once carved out a life on the edge of the world.
Eventually, the path carried her to America. San Francisco caught her off guard. She fell in love with its hills, its endless fog, its patchwork of cultures layered like a living tapestry. For the first time, she let herself imagine building something new, simply being Holly.
She rented a small flat, working per diem as a private music teacher when the mood struck.
Aunt Petunia had forced the piano lessons starting at five years old, dragging her to practice with the stiff smile of a woman eager to impress her neighbors.
Petunia Evans had grown up in Cokeworth, a mill town where coal dust settled on windowsills and money was never quite enough. Her family wasn’t as poor as the Snapes down the road, but every purchase required calculation. Petunia spent her girlhood dreaming of more: gleaming kitchens, heirloom vanities with bottles of perfume, dinner parties where the crystal glasses clinked like in the glossy magazines.
When she married Vernon Dursley, a man climbing steadily into the upper-middle class, Petunia bent every effort to fit the mold and embraced it with both hands. Perfectly normal people, no magical freaks in sight thank you, better than the rest. Manicured lawns, family portraits, and dinner parties with good wine. They hosted lunches, gossiped politely about neighbors, and ensured their son would grow up with every mark of refinement.
Children of in that class played instruments. Dudley, hopelessly tone-deaf and extremely spoiled, refused. But Holly, her inconvenient, unwanted niece, could serve as a substitute. For once, Petunia thought, the girl might be of use.
So Holly was marched to piano lessons and made to perform at dinner parties. “Our Holly plays,” Petunia would say with a thin smile, as if she’d polished up a family heirloom to display. Or a trained monkey. Petunia’s little showpiece, fingers flying over Chopin or Mozart while the guests murmured approval and Petunia basked in their praises.
But for Holly, those nights were complicated. When she played, people listened. The room went quiet. The music carried her, lifted her, made her something other than the strange, unwanted child in the cupboard.
Petunia couldn’t send her out there in Dudley’s cast-offs either. For these occasions, Holly had her own dresses, little gowns fit for a princess, all ribbons and laces. She sat at the table with the guests instead of the kitchen, eating the same rich food as everyone else. For an evening, she wasn’t stuffed in the cupboard. She was someone, watched, admired, fed, and dressed beautifully. Loved and cared for. The music, the clothes, the food, those were the rare moments she wasn’t a burden, getting scraps of happiness she clung to.
Now, years later, in San Francisco, music was hers alone. She didn’t play to appease anyone. She played because she loved it. She taught because she loved it.
Holly’s flat sat on a quiet, tree-lined street in Pacific Heights, tucked into a fully detached, century-old building that let the sunlight pour in from every side. Sunlight spilled across the hardwood floors through tall windows, warming the ornate trim and softening the classic lines of the century-old building. Little touches of classic San Francisco architecture.
Inside, the ceilings soared high, making the two-bedroom apartment feel airy and generous. The kitchen was bright and functional. Holly cooked only when the mood struck, but she liked having a kitchen that give her possibility. She could now cook in her kitchen, whenever she wanted. No more ducking flying pans, no more watching the Dursleys eat food she cooked but wasn’t allowed to eat with them.
The dining room was never really for dining. A small table sat against one wall, covered in sheet music, quills, notebooks, and an old enchanted metronome that ticked just off rhythm, something Ginny found at a secondhand market she thought Holly would love.
The living room was the heart of her home. A secondhand sofa, a coffee table littered with books Hermione gave her, and a battered armchair near the window with a cushion embroidered with pumpkins, a housewarming gift from Molly. Plants crowded the sills - pothos trailing down in green ribbons, a fiddle-leaf fig stubbornly clinging to life Neville mailed her, and a cluster of succulents she picked up in the wizarding side of the Mission. Her bookshelves were a riot of novels, travel journals, and music scores, with the framed photographs of her parents tucked among them, snapshots from Hogwarts, keepsakes from travels in Madagascar, Japan, and the places she had chased her family’s shadow.
There was a coat closet by the door. It must have been the same size as her closet at the Dursleys, and she still didn’t know how to feel about that.
The bedroom was cozy and private, with crisp white curtains and a quilt she had bargained for in a market in Egypt, deep indigo stitched with gold thread.
The second bedroom was her true sanctuary. She had enlarged it to be twice as big and soundproofed with wards, the walls lined to keep the music in and the city noise out. Inside was her studio: a gleaming upright piano against one wall, her violin resting on a stand, a guitar she picked up in New York, a small hand drum a student had given her after a lesson for her birthday. Sheet music lay in stacks, vining up from the floor, each scrawled with penciled-in notes. A whiteboard marked with rhythm patterns and teaching reminders stood in one corner. This was where she practiced, taught, and sometimes simply played for herself, where she lost hours, where the world slipped away.
From her windows, she could see leafy trees stretching toward Alta Plaza Park. Sometimes she’d walk there to simply breathe. Hers wasn’t a grand flat, not compared to the sprawling estates or the ancestral manors she’d seen. But it was sunlit. Private. Hers.
A place to build a new life, not as the Girl Who Lived, but as Holly.
This morning, she had three lessons lined up. Her students came in all shapes and sizes.
Mateo was first. Nine years old, wiry as a sparrow, with a perpetual smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. His parents owned a bakery in Mermaid’s Wharf, the wizarding side of Fisherman’s Wharf, and they often dropped him off straight from the kitchen. Holly had once saved Mateo’s mother’s cousin’s roommate’s brother-in-law or something-or-other during the War, and he always arrived with some treacle tart in hand for her. Young and sugar-high, he could never sit still. He tapped rhythms against the piano lid, against his knees, against Holly’s chair.
“Since you’re going to drum anyway,” Holly told him with mock sternness, “we might as well make it music.” She shifted him to the bench, clapping out syncopated patterns on the piano until his hands followed along, laughter spilling out when he managed it without tripping over himself.
By the end of the half-hour, he was playing something that sounded like jazz. He bounced out the door declaring himself a “musical genius.”
Holly grinned. “Close enough.”
Next came Priya, sixteen, shoulders weighed down by AP textbooks and her mother’s expectations. She played clarinet and was in the school marching band because it looked good on college applications. Her father was a pediatrician and her mother a property lawyer; Priya was expected to make herself something similar. Holly could see the resentment in the stiffness of her fingers.
Instead of scales, Holly pulled a worn folio of movie themes from her bag. “Let’s try this,” she suggested. The moment Priya recognized a theme from The Fellowship of the Ring, her eyes lit, just a fraction. By the second page, she leaned in, the stiffness gone, music flowing naturally.
When they finished, Priya asked, “Can we try some from the Addams Family Values next week?”
“Of course.”
Her last student of the day was Olivia, six, so shy her voice barely rose above a whisper. She was Holly’s youngest and newest student. She originally took her on as a favor to Olivia’s father, who Holly knew through Seamus Finnigan. He was newly widowed and struggling to find ways to get Olivia to open up after her other father’s death, a concert cellist with the San Francisco Wizarding Orchestra. He thought music could do the trick.
She had a rented quarter-size violin clutched to her chest like it might shatter. Holly knelt, meeting her at eye level, and gently guided her hand to pluck one string at a time.
“See? It sings when you let it.”
Olivia giggled when the A string squealed. By the end, she was laughing freely, her tiny bow scratching out something that might eventually resemble “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Holly applauded like it was a symphony. Olivia left grinning, her little violin case bouncing at her side.
By the end of the lesson, Olivia always left clutching her tiny rented violin case like treasure. Her father looked less stressed than he had in days.
When all the lessons ended, Holly was light, almost buoyant. For all the confusion in her life, teaching music was simple. In those moments she was simply Miss Holly, a music teacher.
She walked out into the late afternoon sun and let herself drift through the neighborhood. Her feet carried her, as they often did, toward the record shop on the corner. A sanctuary of vinyl and dust, she’d been coming for weeks now.
The bell above the record shop door jingled as Holly stepped inside.
The air smelled of plastic and cardboard, the ceiling fan whirred softly under the croon of Sinatra. Rows of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs stretched into the dim corners of the shop, their spines like soldiers in neat rows, promising entire worlds.
She loved it here. Where no one knew her name, and no one would ask her to save the world. Holly moved towards the back.
It was there she met him.
Tall. Broad. Curly, blond hair catching the weak sunlight streaming through the shop’s dusty windows. He was leaning over a bin of old jazz records, his expression intent, a faint crease between his brows as though the music in his hands mattered more than anything else in the world.
And then he looked up.
Hazel eyes met her green ones, steady, open, and startlingly kind. Holly’s breath caught, a beat too late, and she quickly dropped her gaze to the row of sleeves of vinyl in front of her.
“Sorry,” he said, shifting slightly to the side. His voice was warm, deep, polite. “Didn’t mean to hog the whole section.”
Holly shook her head. “No, you’re fine. I’m just—” She gestured vaguely behind him to the stacks of loose papers and books, words slipping away. “Going over to the sheet music over there.”
His gaze flicked to it. “You play?”
“And teach,” she admitted.
Something sparked in his eyes. “Piano?”
"Started with piano,” she admitted. “Now violin, flute, a lot of instruments, really.”
He smiled. Genuine, easy, not the strained politeness of strangers pressing through an unwanted conversation. “That’s impressive. I took lessons as a kid. Lasted about three months before my teacher begged my parents to let me quit. Apparently I was unteachable.”
Holly laughed, the sound escaping before she could stop it. “I doubt that. Probably just the wrong teacher. Or the wrong songs. Sometimes it’s not about patience, it’s about finding the music that makes sense to you.”
He tilted his head, turning that thought over. “I never thought of it that way.” Then he extended his hand, steady, certain. “I’m Wyatt.”
She hesitated just a heartbeat, then slipped her hand into his. “Holly.”
His hand was warm, his grip firm but gentle. It enveloped hers entirely and she’d never known that could make her heart hammer away in her chest.
“Well, Holly,” Wyatt said, glancing back at the rows of records, “since you’re clearly more qualified than me, maybe you can help settle a debate. Coltrane or Davis?” He held up two sleeves, one in each hand.
She arched a brow. “That’s cruel. That’s like asking me to pick between air and water.”
“Exactly,” he grinned. “I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes trying to decide. I’ve been trying to get into jazz and I figured I’d start strong.”
“If that’s the case, you don’t pick,” Holly countered, reaching out to tap the records. “You take both. That way your future self doesn’t hate you for leaving one behind.”
He laughed, low and warm. “Smart. You’re saving me from myself.”
The ease between them surprised her. Usually she kept people at arm’s length, wary of what they might want, what they might recognize in her. She hated to be looked at.
And she realized, with a quiet thrill, that she doesn’t mind Wyatt looking at her. And she might actually, really, desperately, want him to keep looking at her.
“Do you always rescue strangers in record shops?” he asked.
“Only the ones who look hopeless,” she teased, daring to meet his eyes again. And so handsome.
His grin tilted crookedly, “Well, hopeless is probably accurate. I used to memorize the composers and producers to every track on albums I like. I don’t know why.”
“That’s very…” Holly pretended to think. “…academic of you.”
“Polite way of saying nerdy and weird?” he asked, good-natured.
She laughed, surprising herself at how easy it felt. “Maybe. But you own it. That counts for something.”
Wyatt shifted his body, then shoved one hand in his pocket. Not exactly smooth, but endearing in its own way. “I just like knowing things, if that makes sense.”
“It does,” Holly said softly. It reminded her of herself, eight years old and buried in sheet music because she thought it’d help her play better. And then maybe somehow the magic of music will make Aunt Petunia love her.
She tilted her head, studying him. “So, Wyatt-Coltrane-or-Davis, what is in your collection? I can’t believe your entire personality is just trying-out-jazz.”
He blinked, then smiled, a little sheepish. “A lot of pop, I’ll be honest.”
She broke out into a wide smile. Cute.
He looked briefly stunned before he cleared his throat, “Some alternative, more than a bit of dad rock. A shameful amount of film scores, if I’m honest.”
“Shameful? Why?” Holly perked up. “You can tell a lot about someone by their favorite soundtrack.”
He raised a brow, playing along. “And what do film scores say about me?”
“That you’re secretly dramatic,” she said instantly, lips curving. “Probably the type to air-conduct symphonies when no one’s looking.”
Wyatt’s ears went faintly pink, which was all the answer she needed.
“I knew it,” Holly teased. “You do that, don’t you?”
“I plead the fifth,” he muttered, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him with a smile.
She leaned closer, boldness sparking in her chest. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. But I’m going to picture you waving an imaginary baton every time you look serious from now on, conducting Britney Spears maybe.”
Wyatt laughed, the sound bright and unguarded, and something in Holly melted at how genuine it was. He wasn’t polished or practiced. He was earnest and a little nerdy. And it drew her in more than charm ever could.
He glanced at her, hesitating like he didn’t want the moment to end. “So, um. What’s your favorite? If you could only take one record out of here forever.”
She thought for a moment, then smiled slyly. “That’s cruel. But since you asked… Spice by Spice Girls. 'Wannabe' always get me dancing.”
Wyatt blinked. “That’s… not what I expected. Very dramatic.”
“Because I’m a music teacher I have to be pretentious and only like classical music?” she coyly raised an eyebrow. “What about you?”
He fumbled for an answer, then admitted, “Honestly? John Williams. The Empire Strikes Back. 'The Imperial March.'”
Holly burst out laughing. “Darth Vader’s theme?”
He grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Told you I was dramatic. The other tracks are complete fire as well, I just want to mention.”
“Well,” she said, green eyes dancing, “I think we’ll get along.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them, bold and honest. But instead of recoiling, Wyatt looked… hopeful.
For a moment, the space between them felt charged—not with magic, not with destiny, but with something far simpler and infinitely scarier.
Possibility.
Wyatt glanced at her, then away, then glanced at her again. His lips parted once, closed, then opened again like he was debating with himself. Finally, in a rush, he said, “So, uh, this might sound forward, but… do you want to maybe get a coffee? Tea? There’s a place down the block. Nothing fancy, just…”
He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck, as though already regretting the question.
Holly tilted her head, amused. He looked so strong and steady on the outside, but here he was, stumbling over a simple invitation. Something about that tugged at her.
“Coffee,” she repeated, as though considering. Then, with a spark of boldness, she let a smile curve her lips. “I thought you’d never ask.”
His brows rose, surprise flickering across his face before relief softened his features. “Really? That was… easier than I expected.”
“Oi, I’m not that scary,” Holly teased. “Though, fair warning I take my coffee sweet. None of that black-like-my-soul, my order will be 80% sugar.”
“Sweet like you?” Wyatt grinned, before the red from his ears spread across his cheeks once he realized his forwardness.
She said nothing, only smiled and hummed, titling her head towards the counter so he could check out. She stepped past him, and their arms just brushed each other. It must have been for a fraction of a second, or a millimeter of touch, but it sent a shock wave through her. And as close as she was, she could hear the strangled sound escaping from Wyatt.
After, as Wyatt led her toward the door, he called back to their conversation. “I’m glad. Saves me the embarrassment when I get a caramel frappe with extra whipped cream.”
She smirked. “Oh, so you do air-conduct symphonies, love Britney, and drink dessert coffee. I’m learning all your secrets today.”
“Okay wait, first of all, I never said that I loved Britney Spears, that was you making an assumption. Not to say that I don’t love her, she is an icon…”
They stepped out into the San Francisco afternoon, sunlight glinting off the hills, the city alive around them. Holly felt lighter than she had in months, her laughter still echoing in her chest. Beside her, Wyatt glanced down as he continued to talk, a small smile tugging at his lips all the while.
For the first time in a long time, Holly wasn’t thinking about her past or her future, who she was or what the world wanted her to be. She was thinking about coffee, and music, and the man who looked at her and saw only Holly.
And she liked it.