The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

Tell It To Take You Home

"See, the rice doubles to hold the stems and also it'll be there for the rice toss at the end."

Alice Prewitt said, pouring white rice grains from a bag into a clear glass jam jar. She took up a small branch of pine, a twig of spruce, some cedar bark, and a sprig of bluebells, slipping them stem-first into the jar of rice, arranging them carefully. She smiled at the result and turned it so Lily could see.

"Oooh it's so pretty!" Lily squealed, barely able to contain herself. She looked around at James, who was reading this month's copy of Quaffle Talk on the couch. "Look, James."

He looked up, "Oh that's spiffing!" He said, grinning, more excited over Lily's pleasure at it than by the arrangement itself. He sat up and looked at it more closely, because it seemed that's what she wanted, and he smiled, letting his fingers gently ring the little bell shaped flowers. "You're really talented for this sort of thing, Ali."

Alice flushed, "Thanks."

Lily and Ali kept on filling jars and James lay back into the cushions again to keep on reading. He was glad for the end of term to have come, and Ali had opted to come home by disapparation rather than the Express, so she'd arrived a day sooner than anyone was expecting. Frank didn't know it yet, and there was dinner in the oven, making the flat smell delicious, which they'd invited him over for as a surprise reveal of the extra time with Alice.

It meant, too, that everyone was home - other than Sirius, who'd had to travel out to some village near to Oxford with Bilius for a degnoming job. James was glad for not having to figure out what to do with another empty day.

Somehow, reading quietly on the couch with Alice and Lily making arrangements for the wedding and Remus in the next chair studying made everything feel better.

He was reading an article about school quidditch teams and how there was murmurings at the Ministry sporting office of some members talking about reinventing the old Triwizard Tournament, which hadn't been played in ages due to potentially dangerous situations.

The article was talking mostly about how lack of proper training at the school levels was leading to weak recruitment seasons and an overload on the coaches and assistant trainers in the International level. This, they said, was being remedied by many students in the schools taking on hiring private coaches to train during the spring and summer months of their sixth and seventh years so that they could impress recruiters and be asked on to teams. This of course was only being done by the most serious students, the ones who showed true potential for eventually going professional.

James imagined himself in another life having begged his parents for a coach. He would've probably been one of those serious students, and he knew Charlus would've been on board the idea. He had always supported James's aspiration to be a quidditch player, much to Dora's horror, and James smirked thinking of Charlus petitioning for a trainer just as hard as he himself was. Probably over breakfast they both would've been begging, "Pleeeeease mum, pleeeeease!"

Suddenly the door burst open and in came Sirius. "HONEY I'M HOME!"

James didn't even look up from the magazine, he just called out, "You're early - we thought we had at least half the day without having to look at your ugly mug!"

"Regulus!" Lily cried, springing up from where she was sitting, running across the room and hugging the younger Black brother. "Oh my goodness, I owe you a thousand thank yous for saving my boys."

Regulus looked most uncertain about how he felt with the hug at first - but the longer she held him, the more he felt the anxiety leave, the fear lifted off him, like a thick black cloud parting to allow a little sun through. He felt his muscles relax tension he didn't even know he'd pent up. It lasted longer than it probably ought to have, but Lily did not let up even once during it, her arms squeezing him just right until he'd sort of melted into the hug. She stepped back and held him at arm's length, looking into his eyes, and he saw tears in her eyes and she brushed the hair off his forehead and planted a gentle kiss there, which he hadn't been expecting, but which comforted him in a way he had never felt before.