The morning was cool and clear. Eileen took Snape by Apparition to a breezy hillside.
Wherever his eyes fell, there were green meadows and woods, and the beautiful scenery of the village of Ottery St. Catchpole.
From the height, the village looked like clusters of toy houses, scattered like tiny dots among shafts of light spilling down through the clouds.
"How is it? Not bad, right?" Eileen asked.
"It's wonderful!" Snape said. "How did you think of building a house here?"
"I couldn't find a suitable one in the village. Later I heard that old Lovegood had a piece of land he hadn't sold for ages, so I went to buy it from him."
Eileen turned around and pointed to the two-story wooden house behind them. "He was delighted when he heard I wanted to buy it. Look, he even helped me build this house, only charged fifty more Galleons."
"Lovegood?" Snape was a little surprised. "Why would he sell this land?"
"He said it was too close to people, and he didn't like that. Though I disagree," Eileen said with a hint of hesitation, "compared with that strange cylindrical house where he and his son live, this place does indeed seem a bit too ordinary."
"Never mind, I like it here!"
Snape grinned. Since Luna hadn't been born yet, why should he care so much?
The rest of the summer, Snape was busy with Eileen arranging the house and clearing the weed-choked garden.
Although he had made it clear to Eileen that the Trace would not identify exactly who had cast magic, that the Ministry of Magic relied on wizarding parents to supervise their children's use of magic at home, and although he had argued with her about it several times, Eileen still insisted he follow the rules.
So he had no choice but to use his hands to turn every patch of soil and plant every little seedling.
"Oh, I've had enough!" Snape propped himself up on a spade, standing in the wide garden. "Mum, you should come and see!"
"What is it?" Eileen poked her head out from behind the window.
A group of garden gnomes, with bald, potato-like big round heads, were shrugging their little shoulders as they slipped into the garden through the freshly planted hedges.
The hedges hadn't had time to grow together, so for them it was effortless.
"Not just one or two,more and more of them!" Snape pointed at the gnomes struggling to wedge their small bodies into the soil. "At this rate, all the cabbages we worked so hard to transplant will be ruined by them!"
He bent down and seized a cabbage seedling fiercely, and along with a burst of wild struggling, pulled out an ugly gnome.
"Let me go! Let me go!" the gnome screeched, kicking and flailing with its callused little feet.
Amid the gnome's shrieks, Snape gripped it by the ankle, hung it upside down, then raised it above his head, leaned his body back, and with all his strength gave it a violent swing,
The gnome traced a graceful parabola through the air before tumbling and rolling down the hillside.
"Severus," Eileen said in some surprise, "that must have been fifty feet."
"What fifty feet?" Snape, irritated, pointed in the direction the gnome had rolled. "Look over there!"
Following his finger, Eileen saw more gnomes still scattered about, struggling to climb up the slope.
Tracing back along their path, through a tall hedge and orchard, a crooked little house loomed faintly into view.
Snape threw his spade onto the ground. "We need to pay them a visit."
Knock, knock, knock. Eileen, carrying a box of freshly baked custard biscuits, knocked on the Burrow's front door.
"Bill,go open the door!"
"Mum, I can't, I'm busy!"
After a short while, a plump woman in a floral apron bustled to the door to let them in.
"Hello there!" The anger on Mrs. Weasley's face quickly shifted into a friendly smile. "Oh, Eileen, is this your child?"
Eileen smiled and nodded. "Yes. This is Mrs. Weasley, Severus."
"Hello, Mrs. Weasley," Snape said.
"Thank you, Eileen." Mrs. Weasley accepted the box of biscuits happily and warmly invited them inside. "So you've moved here already?"
"It's been a little while. We've been busy putting the house in order." Eileen sat down on a chair in the Burrow's sitting room, looking a bit apologetic. "We should have come to visit sooner..."
Watching Eileen hesitate endlessly, Snape couldn't help but speak directly to Mrs. Weasley:
"Mrs. Weasley, the thing is, when we were tending our garden, we noticed gnomes migrating from here",he gestured at the Burrow with his thumb,"up the hill.
"Since our hedges haven't grown in yet, they've all slipped into our garden and started digging holes, so I thought-"
"Ah-" Mrs. Weasley suddenly called out, "Bill, Charlie, come here!"
Two red-haired boys ran over, each holding several gnomes in their hands.
One of them, slightly taller, had long red hair. Snape guessed he must be Bill. The other, sturdier boy was Charlie.
"Mum, we're clearing gnomes just like you told us!" Bill said impatiently.
"Don't worry about those gnomes, leave them be for a few months," Mrs. Weasley told Bill and Charlie. "Take the day off. Go on now, let them go and wash your hands."
They ran off again, their footsteps thudding away.
"I'm terribly sorry," Eileen and Snape apologized repeatedly to Mrs. Weasley. "We troubled you and interrupted their work."
"It's no trouble," Mrs. Weasley said gently. "Honestly, I'm nearly used to them. Arthur is too softhearted with them,every time he drives them away, they're back again before long."
While they were chatting casually, the sound of a baby crying suddenly came from one of the rooms inside.
"Oh, Percy, he's awake." Mrs. Weasley gave them an apologetic smile, then turned and left the sitting room.
After a while, she came back carrying a baby in her arms, softly humming a gentle tune.
Little Percy gurgled constantly in her arms, his small hands stretching unconsciously toward the air as if trying to grab hold of something.
Snape leaned closer for a look. Percy's little head tilted slightly, as though curiously observing the stranger before him.
"You're so cute!" Snape couldn't help tapping Percy's chubby little nose with his finger. He turned to Mrs. Weasley. "May I hold him?"
"Of course." Mrs. Weasley demonstrated how to hold a baby properly. "You need to support his neck and head with one hand, and the other hand supports..."
Snape carefully cradled Percy, whispering joyfully to himself in a voice only he could hear:
"Oh, you're surprisingly, adorable little Weasley."