Chapter Forty Two
Lily crept out of her dorm with the others, leaving Cassie snoring under her duvet; as soon as the door shut behind them they began to giggle, tripping lightly down the stairs and laughing at how deeply asleep their friend was capable of being. The five girls spilled into the Great Hall and took seats at the table, chattering eagerly while they buttered toast and poured bowls of cereal; as per usual there were some strange things on the house tables and today, alongside the normal breakfast cereals, were bowls of fudge cubes and chocolate digestives. Lily had just grabbed one when the post arrived and Alice’s ditzy owl landed right on top of one edge of the bowl, tipping it over and spilling biscuits everywhere before it deposited her letter on top of them and hooted.
Marsali, missing Cassie and so having nothing to do, landed beside Lily and brandished her leg. Lily absentmindedly took the letter attached to it and put it next to her plate so that she could take it up to Cassie afterwards; it wasn’t until a few minutes later that Mary asked her whether she was going to open her letter.
“It’s not for me,” she mumbled, “it’s for Cass.”
“Well that’s weird since it has your name on it,” Mary replied, grabbing it and waving it in front of Lily’s tired face.
“Oh right,” she said. “Yeah I’ll… I’ll open that later.” She took it off Mary and put it in a pocket in her robes before standing up and heading upstairs, trailed by the others.
When she woke Cassie up the first thing her friend groaned at her was, “Why the hell would you get up when we have a free period first thing?”
Eventually Cassie emerged and she, Lily, James and Sirius sat in the common room; unfortunately having the two boys with them made it extremely hard to work. After a while, instead of working, Lily dug through the pockets and grabbed her letter, ripping it open. “What? What is it?” Cassie asked as Lily skimmed the letter quickly.
“Petunia’s engaged!” she cried.
“What? Who’d want to marry her?” Cassie shrieked, surprise, and her hatred of Petunia, overwhelming tact and making the two boys dissolve into laughter. Lily glared at her, well aware of how estranged she had become from her sister but still protective of her. “I mean… wow, who’s the lucky guy?” Lily’s oldest friend corrected.
She scanned the letter which her mother had sent her quickly before finding the name of the culprit. “Vernon Dursley,” she answered, speaking the words into the perfectly silent air before the three others spluttered back into life and started laughing again.
“Dursley? Dursley! That is the funniest name I’ve heard in my entire life!” James roared as a couple of tears threatened to fall from his eyelashes and he clutched his side in agony.
“Your sister’s going to become Petunia Dursley!” Sirius choked as Lily, rolling her eyes at their antics, crossed her arms and shot them both a nasty glare.
“I’m sure he’s a perfectly lovely man. You two are not ones to talk either.”
“I’m sorry Lils but Cassiopeia is a million times better than Vernon!” sniggered Cassie. “At least I can shorten it to something.”
“Yeah and I happen to think that Cassiopeia is a very pretty name!” Sirius agreed. “Plus, I come from a long line of Siriuses.”
“Sirii,” James added. Lily rolled her eyes again and sighed. How anyone ever managed to be such an idiot was utterly beyond her and she lacked the will to work it out.
“Maybe he comes from a long line of Vernons,” she suggested hopefully, wondering whether a family-wide curse of Vernons would be better than just one isolated incident.
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