Chapter Three - Day 1: Island of Incompetence

"What the fuck is this!?", The fact that it was Lily and not James who let loose this loud verbal curse perfectly incaputulated the very sight in front of their eyes. The broken mess and shambling remains of the Black Island Villa.

Earlier:

"So the two of you are all set then?" Her boss enquired as she and James were sat behind his desk, Lily having just signed the last of the paper work to grant her a two month 'leave of absense'.

"We have everything we need, research notes, the diaries Sirius gave us as well" Lily replied.

"Not to mention half of the Potter library" James joked, Lily turned to glar at her hersuabdn without any real malice behind it. Truth be told she had probably gone overboard but with the multiple compartment trunk they were taking she had plenty of room for as many books that she felt were required for the trip, everything from the mgaical and non magical varieties she could think to need.

"Good, you never know what you might need on assigments like this, still you said Lord Black altered the wards to allow for owls?" Her boss asked. Lily tiltered her head.

"Sort of, Sirius wasn't sure what altering them might do plus he's not a wards expert but he tested it with our family owl Loki so we can still use him" she explaied, her boss nodded in agreement.

"That's fine but I still expect regular reports from you Mrs Potter, what kind of time frame for the correspondence are we looking at?" James turned to his wife, the whole math equling time and distance was way above his ability to count.

"With the distance Loki will have to travel it'll take somewhere between 72 to 90 hours depending on the weather as well of course" she replied. Loki was still very healthy despite now getting on in years the round trip should never take morre than week according to her own calculations.

"Fair enough, though I will be speaking with Lord Black about potentially chaning the wards in the future, we can't have non magicals staying there if we can't communicate on a more regular basis" The department head said. Truthfully Lily knew they could have given one of the mirrors to her boss but she was more interested in hearing from her children, plus she fully intended to make sure she documented what was needed fully.

James simply nodded knowing full well that Sirius probably would probably break the wards rather than alter them, for all his best friends genius in some areas, wards was like another world to him, still he wasn't too worried even Sirus couldn't mess things up that badly just allowing for a single individual owl to have access right?

Back to present:

James couldn't believe what he was looking at, he had never been the manor before but he had seen pictures of it, the broken and twisted mess in front of him looked nothing like it.

"Huh, it looked better on the brocheur" he joked, Lily finally turned away from the disater area to glare at her husband.

"Really not the time James, what did that idiot do so badly to screw things this badly?" she snapped, "Oh how hard I'll wring your neck you overgrown mutt!" her thoughts only raplidy turning more violent thinking of her oldest childs godfather, James sighed realsing humor wasn't going to work here, he didn't want to set his wife off due to this being her assigment, he took in the damange, the top part of the village had entireley collapesed in and now the top floor was on the bottom and the bottom floor had been broken and squished bby the top, The entire house looked like a bomb had hit.

The only room that had managed to sruvive most of Padfoot's incompetence was the conservatory, the glass windows were all cracked but one and the roof had broken as well but the structure was still intact unlike the rest of the house. James turned back to his wife who he realised was looking at the same thing he was.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked, Lily glanced towards him briefly before turning back again.

"I highly doubt you're thinking of focing Black into his dog form and then sticking him in the kennels, but if you mean that the conservatory might be fixable then yes we're thinking the same thing" she replied, James snorted at the thought of Sirius stuck inside a kennel but turned back to the house, whilst magic could fix a lot fo things the destruction here was too grand, the main portion of the house and small garden was unsalvagable, but the conservatory might be. The glass panels could be fixed in a few second but he was worried the roof might not be. He thoughts were interuppted by his wife giving a loud sigh next to him.

"Okay.....first thing we need to is fix the conservatory and move all the debris near it, we can work on getting rid of the mess when we have mroe free time but we need to set up shop today so we can get settled in" she spoke aloud more to herself than anything trying to calm her anger and return to the reality of the situation and hopefully find a solution.

James quickly affiremed his agreement as the two began what would prove to be a busy day ahead of them.

Many hours later:

Lily used the towel to swipe away the swat on her forhead, they had been at it for almost seven hours now, the conservatory itself had taken just over an hour to fix, the glass pannels had been easy enough but the roof had been a headache,with neither of them being architects they had managed to get something resembling a full roof now, the door itself had been taken off the hinges with a simple bed sheet now being the only thing to cover the threshold between the home base and the breach, speaking of which.

Lily allowed herself a moment to actually admire the ocean and golden beach in fron of her, truthfuly it was gorgous and honestly had it not being for the chaotic image upon the arrival she would have been in awe. Truthfully she was actually looking forward to tomorrow, maybe take a quick dip in the water and and begin to sort through her things, but day one overall was going to be a bust.

Lily hated herself for it but she just couldn't cope with the idea of the working next to huge pile of wood and clay, whilst not a neat freak even she had a limit, thankfully with James's help and the two only stopping briefly for a quick snack from the food pantry in their trunk they had managed to remove most of the debris itself.

Lily looked over at the house, the exterior still looked terrible but they had managed to remove most of the broken structure. The house hadn't had much inside it heirloom wise but what little they did find was piled away into one of the trunks spare comparetments. It wasn't pretty but she could now at least work with this.

The conservatory was only about half the size of their bedroom so space was a tiny issue, James's tranfiguration skill had come in handy as he had turned the sofa inside into a make shift bed, it wasn't overly large and rather basic but it would be somewhere to sleep.

A few items had been salvage including a table and a couple of chairs which would work as her office space and thankfully they had managed to fix a set of draws so they had somewhere to keep the clothes other than the trunk, also with the trunk as well it left a limited amount of space. The biggest issue was going to be 'doing her buisness' whilst she didn't mind bathing in the clean ocean too much going to the toilet in nothing but nature was going totake some time getting used to, if needs be she might be able to do something with the broken one but it was a problem for later.

James walked up to his wife and grabbed the towel to wipe his own sweaty face, using so much magic had been draining enough they had had to resort to pure muscle to remove some of the lighter debris, still after seven hours of hard labour in the soaking sun exhaustion was mroe than settling in.

Lily had apologised during luch for snapping at him knowing James wasn't at fault. Truthfully James wasn't exactly over the moon with his brother in all but blood at the moment either, he'd been looking forward to some time alone with Lily and help her with her job whilst taking in some sun and sea. Seven hours of moving Black family crap around and James was regretting agreeing to this somewhat, but he had been briefed about the experiment and what it could accomplish, a little hard work would be worth it for the world as a whole, didn't mean he wasn't going to send Sirius a bollocking and a half in a letter.

"So how we looking love?" he asked "Sweaty" she joked before turning back to the image of his actual question.

It wasn't terrible and James and even she when she wasn't working could remove the rest of the ground floor walls and foundation. There little home wasn't too shabby, hell she would admit on teh beach with the beautiful reflection of the red sunset reflecting on the conservatory windows it looked inviting.

"I think we're good" she stated honestly.

One hour later:

Lily had been rather shocked when discovering it had just passed 7pm when they finally called it quits on the work. The sun though setting was still pleasently warm. With both being so exhausted a few cleaning and hygine spells the two were now at least wiped of any dirt or dust.

Neither having the enrgy to cook with magic they had settled on a couple of cheese sandwiches witht he provisions they brought, the two discussed there plans for tomorrow and whilst Lily certainly wanted to get started on her research she was well aware of the fact she would be aching tomorrow so resigned to take at least the first part of the day off the relax and explore the area close by and maybe take a dip in the ocean.

Toilet time had been a problem, whilst James was more okay with going about nature Lily definately found it more difficult to simply just go behind some bushes, she had a plan to deal with it tomorrow witht he aide of some ruins but right now she and her magic were too drained for anything else. She made a mental note to see to this before anything else.

It was just before 9pm when the Potter couple finally entered the bed, whilst the matrees was nothing special the clean and comfy sheets from home had made up for it. The last hour of the suns fdwindling light making her sigh in pleasure almost.

Her husbands arm wrapped around her, comfy pajamas and bedsheets, the fresh sea air and the gentle gentle ocean waves providing perfect noise backdrop. The day might have started out as a disater but in this moment of calm and exhanstion Lily fell alseeo far quicker than she had in a long time.

And so we finally make it to the island, please take my weekly apology for the terrible spelling and grammar.
At the moment I will say I have a decent backlog of chapters but I haven't written anything in nearly three weeks since I've been busy but as mentioned there are still plenty of chapters in the bank.
Hope you guys enjoyed the smut last chapter, I can promise it isn't the last and I'll see you next Wednesday.