Chapter Sixty
Lily was roused from her very pleasant dream by a poke on her arm and then her forehead. Moments later someone flicked her nose and whispered, “Lily,” in her ear.
“Mmm?” she groaned.
“So I was thinking,” James began.
“Can’t you think when I’m awake?”
“No. So I was thinking… It seems like everything is becoming more and more dangerous - even more so than before-“
“Well noticed.”
“Yeah well I was just thinking… what with the attack on the flat and our work with the Order and, you know, mini-Potter… Are you going to keep working at St. Mungo’s?”
“Why?” She hid her eyes with her forearm and rolled over.
“Well there was the attack on it last week and those three mysterious deaths and-“
“James there are always mysterious deaths in St. Mungo’s. That’s pretty much in its job description.”
“I know but don’t you think it was strange that two of them were Aurors and one of them was high up in the Ministry? It doesn’t seem like much of a coincidence, it seems like You-Know-Who is trying to gain control of the Ministry.”
“James he’s been trying to do that for a while and he hasn’t succeeded. Can’t I go back to sleep?”
“What about the Boneses? They’ve pretty much destroyed their family!”
“I know,” she sighed, burying her face in her pillow, “but I can’t just quit because of that. They’re not the first people to die.”
“Lil I’m sure they’re watching you,” he said. “Think how many times we’ve been caught unawares at the end of battles, think about the flat. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“And what about you James?” she snapped. “It’s not like you’re exempt from these events - they’re coming for you too.”
“I know but… I don’t care about myself as much.”
“I care about you. And you’re out with the Order all the time; you’re not exactly much safer than I am.”
“I know. Look Lil, I’m not saying… I don’t want you to quit if you don’t want to-“
She interrupted him. “I don’t want to.”
“But,” he continued, “personally I think it makes more sense to leave for a few months. You can always become a full-time member of the Order, like Dumbledore suggested. I mean… it can’t continue like this forever, can it? If you did quit, you could always go back to Mungo’s at the end of the war. It’s not like you don’t have a good reason for taking some time off work. But I mean… I don’t want to tell you to do anything. If I did presume to do that you would probably murder me so… that’s just a thought that I came up with while I was thinking about it last night.”
“Why does it bother you so much?”
“Apart from the looming possibility that the love of my life might be murdered, you mean?” he said lightly. “Well it’s just… I think they’re trying to destabilise our society - that’s why they want the Ministry, along with its power - and one of the other big, recognisable institutions is St. Mungo’s. Also, if they control the hospital then they essentially control who survives and who dies and, since so many of the injuries from battles with Death Eaters result in wounds the Healers have to treat, they would have a sort of monopoly on injured Aurors and Order members. No one would come out alive that they didn’t want to survive.”
“You have a point, I suppose,” she conceded eventually.
“Thank you.”
“You’re insufferable.” She subsided into silence and James waited just as quietly, desperate for her answer. “Fine,” she said. “If I tell them I can’t come in much any more, even though they need as many of the Healers as they can get, will you let me go back to sleep.”
“Yes,” he replied, utterly astonished.
“And, for the record, I’d been considering doing that ever since Dumbledore mentioned stepping up everyone’s commitment to the Order last week.”
The next day, Lily and James returned to their flat to collect their things. They decided that enough time had elapsed for them to be relatively safe and, because they wouldn’t be there for very long, they could go back.
“I would rather go back and risk it,” Lily was whispering as they climbed the stairs, “than have to spend another day trying to find something to wear.”
“What have you been wearing Lily?” Sirius asked. They had recruited him and Cassie to go with them and provide back up while they tided everything away.
“Um… let’s just say that it’s a good thing Dorea hoards all of her clothes and that I can wash things.”
The door of their flat was still hanging off its hinges and Sirius shook his head as they passed it. “Can see why you wanted to move. Have to preserve the beautiful memories of our time here together.”
“Exactly,” James replied.
When they moved into the sitting room Sirius whimpered. “My beautiful flat! What have they done to you?” It wasn’t necessarily that much worse than what the two boys had done when they were experimenting with new spells or just messing around - among other things they had once managed to set an armchair on fire and, on multiple occasions, had torn the curtains down - but, because the damage had been done by Death Eaters, Sirius actually cared about it.
Lily and Cassie stood in the middle of the room, and Lily, with her wand raised, returned everything to its previous state. The flat fixed itself around them and, when it was finished after a couple of minutes, everything began to shrink. Finally all of their things packed themselves into two boxes which James pulled out of a bag, and then Cassie shrank the boxes down as well. Sirius picked one up, and James picked up the other, and the four of them left as quickly as they had come.
When they were a few streets away, James attached the boxes to his broom and hugged Sirius and Cassie goodbye. “See you next week then,” he said before he mounted his broom and kicked off. “I’ll see you in an hour or so Lily,” he called.
“You could just come back with us for a bit,” Sirius suggested as James vanished. “Our flat’s safe and James will probably get lost, seeing as how he’s an idiot and all.”
“What did you do?” she asked warily.
“Nothing!” he replied. “But you can’t deny that he is an idiot.”
“He’s cleverer than you Sirius,” Cassie muttered.
“Yeah but I accepted long ago that I’m a moron.” The girls chuckled and Sirius, in his usual exuberant manner, pranced off; attempting to swing himself round a telephone pole, he hung there for a second before landing back on the ground and bowing.
“Fabulous,” they called as he moved into a curtsey.
It didn’t take long for her friends to prevail upon her to go back with them and, while James flew their things to Godric’s Hollow, she sat in the warm sitting room which had once been hers. The time passed quickly as they chatted and, before too long, she left them and returned to the cold outside. Shoving her hands deep into her pockets, she hurried down the street, stopping on a dark corner to Disapparate.
“I had a feeling you might have stayed with them,” James said when she blew into the hall with a blast of freezing wind.
“It is absolutely impossible to shut those two up,” she said as she unwrapped her scarf from her neck.
“You can’t just have noticed,” he laughed. “I’m glad you’re safe though. I did think for a second that something might have gone wrong…”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” she shrugged as she smiled at him. “Although I did worry, for a second, that one of them might kill me when I told them about… you know.”
“Can’t imagine Sirius took it well.”
“No he took it wonderfully. It was almost terrifying how excited he was. I don’t really think it’s properly sunk in though.”
“Just wait until he realises that his position as child of our group is going to be usurped,” he grinned.
Lily strolled away from him, and, as she busied herself with hanging her coat up she said, “I thought you two were always fighting for that honour.”
“Well… maybe.”
“I can’t imagine either of you are going to become much more mature any time soon.” She emerged from the closet to find James pouting at her. “I’m mature,” he grumbled. “Or at least, I can be when I want to.”
“And when do you ever want to?” she teased.
“I will have you know that I am ever so mature. It’s just Sirius. It’s all his fault - he brings out the worst in me.”
“Oh I know.” James reached to hug her and, as she stood in his arms he kissed her nose. “Your nose is cold,” he complained.
“Yes. All of me is cold. It’s cold outside. That’s what happens in December because we call it winter and the sun goes away.” James rolled his eyes and let go of her. “I forgot how much I dislike you sometimes,” he said.
“If you’re not going to be mature, I’m perfectly happy to treat you like a child,” she called as she headed into the sitting room. “And I love you too.”
“I can’t be serious and adult all the time,” he said as he followed her. “I need to give my mind a rest every now and then. You wouldn’t want it to explode, would you?”
“I thought it exploded years ago, when you first tried to think by yourself.”
“Very witty,” he retorted. He stretched himself out along the sofa and grabbed a cup of tea which he had left on the floor. “I can be serious and mature if you want. We can talk about bills and the Ministry all day long but… we’re only young and we have a good sixty or seventy years’ worth of conversations to hold so I may as well save the boring stuff for last.”
“So really what you mean is,” she said slowly, “you’re going to spout rubbish for the next thirty years and then start acting your age.”
“Can’t promise I’ll act my age in thirty years,” he replied, “but I might act like I’m about twenty when it happens. Anyway, I can’t talk about politics for forty years!”
“You know, that almost works out as if you’re ageing backwards right now.” She giggled and dangled one hand in front of the fire.
“I’m not ageing at all,” he announced. “I will stay this age forever. I am at my peak. No point in my life will beat this period, when I am both desirable and devastatingly attractive and witty and-“
“Completely unable to count or use proper English?”
“It’s a quintessential part of my charm.”
“Speaking of your current physical… condition,” she said, “I need you to buy and help cook some of the food for Christmas.”
“Can I eat it?”
“Only if it’s been cooked. Which is quite a fundamental part of the process, since if it hasn’t, it probably doesn't exist.”
The next day they moved into the cottage in Godric’s Hollow and the days that led up to Christmas were filled with various tasks, as they sorted out their possessions and organised what was going to happen on Christmas Day. Sirius and Cassie appeared one evening for dinner and another day Peter visited them. It was the first time they had seen him in a while; they were all glad to see each other. Remus, however, was still away in some distant place somewhere, and Lily could sense that James was beginning to wonder about it.
Lily spent most of the preceding days in the kitchen, making various cakes and tarts, as well as mince pies. James, for his part, was repainting a couple of the rooms and sometimes swooping in to steal a spoonful of whatever she happened to be cooking at that moment. Or, in the case of the mince pies, a plate vanished with him and reappeared in one of the bedrooms. “I give up,” she said, when she found it. “You can go and buy some mince pies.”
“But your homemade ones are so delicious,” he protested.
“You’ve eaten most of them.”
“Well how many are left?”
“About seventeen.”
“How many were there?”
“Thirty.”
“I’ll buy some more tomorrow. Leave me a little note on the table and I’ll get them when I get the butter.”
When she returned to the kitchen the next morning, the other seventeen mince pies had also disappeared into James’ never-ending stomach. “Seventeen is too few to serve to Cassie and Sirius,” he said when she questioned him about it. “And seventeen homemade ones served alongside the bought ones would be weird and confusing.”
However, once she had finished the desserts and hidden as many as she could from his marauding, she was able to relax. On Christmas Day, James left her in bed and went down to begin cooking their lunch. Lily lay there, wrapped up in her duvet, as the house began to smell like roasting turkey and coffee. It was, she realised, the first truly magical Christmas she had ever had. Every other year she had come home from Hogwarts and spent the day with her family, talking to her parents and ignoring Petunia, just as she ignored Lily. In the years since Petunia had married Vernon, however, instead of being graced with their presence, Lily was thankfully awarded a Christmas with just her parents. She would never willingly pass a day more than she had to with Vernon, especially not Christmas. That morning, however, she almost found herself wishing that she was on speaking terms with Petunia, just so that she could invite her over, under the pretence of wanting to band together after the death of their parents, and see how she reacted to the carnage that would take place that afternoon. What little experience she had had of magical Christmases would certainly give her sister an aneurysm, and she thought it would be quite entertaining to witness. ‘Oh well,’ she thought to herself, ‘maybe next year. Or more likely never, but it would be funny.’ The thought of Vernon seated between James and Sirius, most likely not touching his food, for fear that it was poisoned - which, if he was between those two, it probably would be - made her chuckle to herself. Eventually, however, she got up and got ready, so that she was dressed and laying the table when Cassie and Sirius arrived at about two.
They announced their arrival with ceaseless banging on the front door. Or, more accurately, Sirius announced their arrival like that. James, who was singing along to a Christmas song called ‘In Floo Father Christmas’ at the top of his voice, left Lily to answer the door. As she did so, his particularly painful top note emanated from behind her and the three of them burst into laughter. Sirius shouted for James from where he stood and Lily, wincing away from the battle-cry, left room for James to burst through and all but scream, “Merry Christmas!”
Merry Christmas everybody! :) I don't know when I'll next be able to update, but here's some more to keep you going :)