The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

Chocolate Pudding and Crisps

It was raining and cold at 6am on 24 December, 1978. The rain fell and made pools in the street out front of the curry shop in East London. The gentleman that owned the shop looked out and frowned, but he still hung the paper poster he and his daughter had worked to make the day before in the window - a great sheet of paper that read congratulations Lily and James on it in big thick marker ink.

Upstairs, Dora Potter was humming tunelessy as she lay plates of bacon and toast before her son, who was in his quidditch pyjamas. She ruffled the hair on his head, making it even messier than he'd woken up with it being, and kissed the top of it, and for once he did not complain.

He was too nervous and excited to complain about anything.

He wondered if Lily Evans was awake yet and if she was if she was as nervous and excited as he felt, and if she was thinking of him, too.

She was.

"Oooh this dress is to die for Lily!" Marlene gasped as she looked at the gown hung on the back of the closet door in her bedroom. She stared dreamily at it, her thick blonde hair a mess of bed curlers and bobby pins, which Emmaline was struggling to undo. "Ouch!" Marlene gasped.

"Hold still, then," Em said around several pins sticking out from between her teeth.

The four girls had had a slumber party at Marlene's, where they also planned to prep before going to the wedding.

"I love these sleeves!" Alice said, running her hand over the gauzy fabric that would soon hang from Lily's elbows. Alice was working on Lily's ginger hair, brushing it out before she would style it to look like the folded open page in Witch Weekly they had balanced on Marlene Mackinnon's vanity table. "You're going to look like an absolute angel!"

Lily blushed as they all four giggled with excitement.

"Oh I hope I look half as pretty when Frank and I are married," Alice whined, looking at the page of the magazine and holding it up next to Lily's face to imagine the style. "If we ever finally get married!"

"You will," Lily promised.

"I reckon he's waiting until graduation," Em said around the pins. It was getting harder for her to speak around them the more she plucked from Marlene's head.

"Yeah, and he'll make it up for all the waiting I'll bet!" Marlene said, "As he should with all the time you've hung in for -- Frank's a good bloke like that."

Emma pursed her lips around the pins and pulled a little too hard on the curler she was unravelling.

"Ouch!" Marlene squeaked.

"Sorry," Em murmured.

Ali glanced at Marlene and Emma and then turned back to Lily's hair. "Today's not about me and Frank anyway," she said, "It's about Lily and James! So. Lily. Can you believe you're less than twelve hours away from being Mrs. James Potter?"

Lily shook her head, "I can't believe it, no. It feels so surreal..." She paused and sighed happily, staring up at the dress. "We wrote our own vows, you know."

Marlene sat up straight instead of reclining as she had been and Emma nearly tore off a whole chunk of hair that was wound up in the curler she was unpinning. "OW!" Marlene shouted again. "Em, I'll do it myself, alright?" she said and Emma held up her hands in surrender and got up off the bed, tossing the pins and rollers she'd already taken out onto the pillow. Marlene immediately rerouted again, "You wrote your own vows?! How did you ever get him to agree to that?"

"It was his idea," Lily answered.

"Oh gods could James Potter be more perfect, seriously?" Em asked. She'd sat down on the cushion in the window seat, hugging a stuffed Paddington Bear tight.