Chapter Forty Three
“Will I see you this holiday?” James asked, idly playing with Lily’s hair as they sat on the Hogwarts Express. She sighed with pleasure and motioned impatiently for him to continue. “Well will I?” he repeated, beginning once more after having stopped to see whether she had heard him; her eyes had been shut for ten minutes while a blissful grin had been glued to her face and he half suspected that she had fallen asleep.
“You will if you keep giving me a head massage,” she replied.
“I hardly think that’s fair. You’re definitely just using the fact that I’m your boyfriend to get limitless massages whenever you want.”
“And?”
“Seems a bit… well you’re exploiting me!”
“That I am,” she said, lifting her shoulders infinitesimally in a tiny shrug. “Um yes, you will see me.”
“Oh good. Well we can Apparate so it’s very easy. Will you be coming to me or am I coming to you?”
“Merlin James I don’t know! Can’t we sort out which day it’s going to be first?”
“Well when are you free?”
“Pretty much all of the holidays I suppose,” she replied. “How about we say the… sixteenth?”
James nodded before realising that she couldn’t see him from her position in front of him and said, “Yes. Sixteenth sounds good. Padfoot!”
“Mmm?” Sirius mumbled from behind his pile of Chocolate Frogs, poking his messy dark head out from between Cassie and Remus.
“Sixteenth of December.”
“What about it?” he asked blearily. “Are we going to the Harpies’ match?”
“Well you can but I’m seeing Lily.”
“Oh.” Sirius was about to retreat again when James stopped him, saying, “Don’t let me forget.”
“Prongs I’m a million times more likely to forget about that than you are. Get Remus to owl you or something the day before.” Remus shook his head and waved his finger at his friend. “Nope, don’t try to make me do that James. I’m going to be sleeping all Christmas and eating my body weight in chocolate. Oh and working.”
“Working?” Peter exclaimed as James yelped the same thing. “Why would you be working?”
“Why wouldn’t I be working? I have two essays due in for Ancient Runes.”
“That’s extremely unfortunate,” Mary said, sounding rather like she could care less.
They passed the journey back to London with various amusements and conversations, and various people wandering in and out of their carriage both adding to and taking away from the noise which spilled out of it and into the corridor. Eventually, after almost an entire day of travelling, the train pulled into King’s Cross and the students it contained were set free and let loose over the platform; just like every other year they sprinted from place to place, dashing through the crowds as they searched for their friends and their parents and dragged trunks between the two, a constant babble swelling and shrinking over everyone gathered there. Christmas wasn’t nearly as bad as the beginning of the summer though: although only a couple of students stayed behind to work or to be with their friends the holiday was shorter than the summer and so people felt able, after a quick hug and one last chat, to leave with their parents whereas, at the end of the year, it was impossible to go more than one metre without bumping into a couple of people who were clinging onto one another and promising to have wonderful holidays. The pandemonium was exacerbated by the seventh years, many of whom would often be saying goodbye to people for the last time and so were even worse than the others.
On this chilly evening, however, parents whisked their children away faster than usual, trunks, animals and offspring in tow as they hurried through the station. It was an odd sight for the Muggles there to see the almost endless stream of people with strangely shaped packages and trunks - and usually wearing odd outfits too - wandering through the crowds and they often imagined that they were the students of some age-old public school which still stuck desperately to its traditions, where teachers and pupils haunted ancient halls in a world which they would never inhabit, completely unaware of just how special these teenagers were as they were chivvied along by their harassed parents.
“Now Lily,” her mother said as they finished cramming her belongings into the boot and jumped into the tiny car, “what’s happening at school?”
“Not much really,” she replied, “mostly it’s just work and Prefect duties I guess.”
“How’s your Head Boy?” her father asked. “Is he being helpful?”
Lily paused as she thought about how to answer her father’s question, smiling unconsciously as she thought of the day a couple of weeks ago when he had grabbed her and twirled her around the courtyard or when he had taken her out on his broom once night had fallen and they had flown through the stars. “Well he can be helpful when he wants to be,” she muttered, finally answering her parents’ questioning glances.
“And he’s easy to get on with?” May asked.
“Yes, we’ve actually become very close. We might be seeing each other over the holidays too.” Lily crossed her fingers as both sets of her parents’ eyes collided with hers in the rear-view mirror and felt herself tense up.
“Might you now?” her father said, finally tearing his away from hers after a second or two and focusing on the road again. “Why would that be?”
“It’s what friends do. I’ve been seeing Cassie every holiday for years.”
“That’s Cassie though,” he answered.
“Oh don’t be like that John; it’ll be nice to meet him. We’re just surprised dear,” May explained to Lily, “you sounded… a little put out about it when you got your letter in the summer.”
“Yeah well I was kind of wrong about him, just like I normally am.”
“You are pretty quick to judge,” her father chuckled. “It will be interesting to meet him though, I must say.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh just… you know,” her mother replied airily.
“No, I don’t actually.”
“Well it’s just- you must know!”
“I really don’t Mum.”
“Well it’s taken so long for you to… and it took so long for us to learn anything about him; it took so long for you to actually tell us what you thought of him in the first place. You know I really thought that…”
“What did you think?” Lily’s stomach sank and she braced herself for the next sentence which would come out of her mother’s mouth - she already had an awful premonition of what it would be.
“I just thought that you two might… end up together. It would have been… amusing.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed to use my love life as a source of entertainment,” she sighed.
“Oh shush, I can do whatever I want; I’m your mother!” she chuckled. “But I suppose that if you’re still single then Mrs Stuart’s son will be happy.”
“Oh my god please don’t try to set me up with him!”
“Why not? He’s sweet.”
“He’s really creepy! Anyway I’m not single.” The part of Lily which wasn’t immediately regretting that revelation absentmindedly worried that her parents might get whiplash from how quickly their heads snapped round to face her. “Dad please keep your eyes on the road,” she muttered, quailing under her mother’s intent gaze.
“Who is he?”
“No one.”
“I just want to know Lily! Is he nice?”
“He’s very nice. Very charming,” she responded.
“What’s his name?”
Lily struggled not to reply, avoiding her mother’s gaze guiltily. “He’s called James,” she finally whispered, desperately hoping that she wouldn’t work it out.
Her hopes, however, were in vain: May was not a stupid woman.
She laughed and grinned at Lily. “I knew it! I knew you’d end up with that boy! What was his name again?”
“Potter,” her father supplied.
May settled back into her seat, grinning triumphantly at her youngest daughter and said, “So will we be meeting him any time soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, you should take him when you have dinner with Petunia and Vernon!”
“What?” Lily shrieked.
May frowned. “Didn’t Petunia tell you in her letter?”
“No,” she said, the word falling decisively into the newfound silence of the car.
“Ah,” John said after a while. “Well your mother thought it would be nice if you were to meet Vernon before the wedding and what with you being away at school and Petunia away working… We all agreed that that was a good plan.”
“I don’t want to have supper with her,” she groaned. “She hates me.”
“Don’t be silly Lily, she doesn’t hate you,” May sighed, “she’s just always been a bit iffy about Hogwarts. Look sweetheart, it doesn’t have to be for too long, it’s just one evening. You can take James with you for moral support if you want. Please… would you just do this for me? I promise that, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to deal with her once she’s married but could you do this one thing? I just want you two to get along.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, “but I’m taking James and if he says that he doesn’t want to go then I won’t either.” She didn’t miss the quick look which her parents exchanged before her father said, “Agreed.”
It was a few days into the holiday before Lily could face telling James about the change in their plans and, ever eager to please - as well as to keep her away from the mischief that Sirius would no doubt cause if she were to go to his house - he agreed. The news of their change in plans was met with joy in the Potter household and filled James and Sirius’ days with even more amusement than they had before while Lily was forced, rather glumly, to inform her parents that he had agreed to come.
Lily’s father had just finished clearing away their lunch when a crack tore through the air and startled her parents; this was accompanied by a loud crash as John dropped one of the plates he was holding into the sink in surprise and Lily leapt up, arriving at the door just as the first knock resounded through the corridor. She wrenched it open before the second one could fall on the frame, revealing James standing behind it with a surprised look on his face and his hand still raised in the air.
“Merlin I thought I had the wrong house!” he exclaimed as he threw his arms around her. “That was quick. Were you that excited to see me?”
“You sounded like you were about to knock our door down,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Come inside though, it’s freezing out here.” She dragged him through the door, a smile plastered to her face as her mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
“What was that horrendous noise Lil- oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh hello!”
“Hello, I’m James Potter,” he said with a winning smile as he extended his hand to her. “It’s lovely to meet you Mrs Evans.”
May visibly melted under his charm and beamed at him as she took his hand, shaking it vigorously. “Oh please James, you don’t have to call me Mrs Evans, May is fine! Anyway it’s lovely to meet you too! Have you eaten? We’ve just finished eating but I can find you something I’m sure-”
“Oh no don’t worry about it, the only thing my mum does when I’m home is feed me so I couldn’t possibly eat anything else.”
May giggled as Lily said, “Okay… well we’ll just go and sit in the sitting room or something then,” before starting to sidle away from her with her hand wrapped around James’ arm.
“Okay sweetheart. Don’t forget that you have to be ready to leave for dinner by seven tonight. Petunia’s booked a table at some restaurant in Cokeworth but I can’t remember what it’s called.” With that she smiled at the pair of them before they disappeared behind the door to the sitting room with one final wave.
When they were finally seated side by side on one of the sofas in her sitting room, safe from her mother, Lily said, “Sorry about her! She’s been… curious about you for a while.”
“Has she now?” he leered. “I wonder why that would be. Have you been talking about me a lot?”
“A bit,” she shrugged, “but mostly because I spent the past few years complaining about you to them.” Lily grinned at James, making light of their years of hatred, while he frowned. “I hope she doesn’t already have a bad impression of me,” he murmured to himself, “I’d hate for your parents to hate me. Yours are the only ones I’ve met apart from Remus and Peter’s.”
“Not Sirius’?”
James shuddered and shook his head. “Merlin no,” he answered, “I’d hate to meet his parents properly. I’ve seen them in the station a couple of times and they’re horrible… besides I think they’d probably treat me like I was some kind of vermin. Blood traitors are the worst according to them. Not forgetting the fact that my family took their least favourite son in when he ran away of course.”
“Well I wouldn’t worry about mine. I think my mum’s wanted us to get together longer than you have,” Lily chuckled.
“Really? She knows what’s good for her daughter then, eh?” he replied, wrapping her in a hug and all but tackling her into the sofa.
“She’s more deluded than I thought if she thinks you’re good for me!” was Lily’s muffled reply, making James sit up above her and pout at her. “I am good for you,” he whined.
“I think you’ll find that it’s me who’s good for you,” she wheezed. “Do you have to sit on my stomach? I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry,” he said as he shuffled backwards. “I forget how manly and strong I am sometimes.”
“More like manly and heavy.”
“Same difference,” he shrugged, “I’m heavy because of my superb muscles.”
Lily giggled before shaking her head minutely and saying, “I just cannot be bothered to argue with you right now. You’re so wrong but I’m just going to leave it.” Above her James grinned and threw his arms into the air victoriously. “I missed you so much Lily,” he said when he had stopped cheering, the seriousness of his voice an odd contrast to how exuberant he had been only moments before.
“I missed you too James,” she said, “and now our first day together is being ruined.”
“By what?”
“By this stupid dinner with Petunia,” she muttered.
“Aw don’t worry Lil,” he murmured, his voice full of tenderness, “I’m sure it will be fine. Anyway you don’t have to face her alone tonight - you’ve got me too.”
“Yeah but she’s got Vernon.”
“So it’s a fair fight,” he shrugged, “I hardly doubt Vernon’s going to be the issue here. Or maybe he is, I don’t know, but either way I’m sure we can handle whatever they throw at us. We’ve got each other, we’ll be fine.”
Lily smiled weakly at him as he filled her with hope again and James changed the subject easily, starting a much more pleasant conversation about their holidays; they laughed together in the sitting room for most of the afternoon before wrapping up and heading outside to wander around the neighbourhood, still ceaselessly talking.
The evening drew in faster than they thought possible as they ambled around, Lily’s arm tucked into James’ and their cheeks pinched rosy by the wind. Every so often an errant snowflake would shoot out of nowhere and settle on a coat, a nose or some hair and they wondered together whether it would be a white Christmas that year.
“Which reminds me,” James said, “I have a present for you but I don’t have it with me. Should I give it to you at school or see you again before Christmas?”
“Are you sure you can survive not seeing me for another two weeks?” she teased.
“It might be hard but I think I’ll be fine.” They both began to laugh, just enjoying being together, and the sound spread through the empty air. Not many other people had ventured out in the chilly weather unless they had to, preferring to sit ensconced in their warm homes with mugs of tea, and the people they had passed had hurried by with hunched shoulders, leaving only white puffs of breath behind them.
“Well I suppose we should start heading back now,” Lily sighed, “I need to change before we go out to dinner.”
“Are we going to Apparate there or what?” he asked as they turned back.
“I’m not sure, I need to know where it is first. Guess if we’re going to make an awful impression then we might as well do it well,” she grinned.