All in the Family

Chapter 61: The Invitation

Lily held on even tighter to the letter as she fell, sending a mass of white over every part of her. She found herself struggling to even sit up, as whatever she was in moved with her like quicksand. Starting to panic slightly, as memories of the devil's snare flared up, she almost released her clutch on the paper in favor of grabbing her wand until her free hand grabbed onto something hard. She gasped in relief and sat upright, for a bewildering moment thinking she was trapped in a tornado of swirling letters, before an envelope fell onto her lap address side up, and yet her confusion only grew.

Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which someone had squeezed the Dursleys' address in minute writing. Scattered around her were other envelopes, though they all looked perfectly normal. Picking it up and clutching it in the fist still holding tightly to the letter, she glanced around more properly to find she wasn't the only one to land in a bin full of envelopes.

Alice and Regulus on either side of her were already trying to climb out of theirs. The older Black seemed stuck in a printer somehow, whether he'd tried to put his foot in that slot or he'd landed that way she wasn't sure, nor particularly cared for his misfortune as Potter and Lupin moved forward to help get him out carefully.

Peter Pettigrew wasn't even visible, if he would be at all, and Frank was shifting his weight awkwardly at the front desk where Lily now realized was a postal service station.

"Wow, where are we?" Alice asked as she plucked a stamp off her nose.

"Muggle place where mail goes," Lupin called in explanation as Black's foot came loose, though there was now printer ink all up his pants leg.

Alice gave him an awkward sort of smile he couldn't have seen as he hadn't really looked up. Lily grimaced at the tension still active like a live-wire in here and shifted even more uncomfortably to start crawling out as well. She realized that something in fact was jabbing her in the bum as she started to scramble about, and pulled the book free with her other hand.

"Need a hand?" Suddenly Potter was there, offering her a hand and that smirk she'd been dying to curse off his face for years now.

"No," she snapped, moving the book to her other hand as well, and juggling all three, managed to get out just fine on her own with fair grace. "And if you sick any more birds on me to ask how I am, I'll curse your meals to taste like worms for a month."

"Alright Evans," he grinned unrepentantly. She ground her teeth in frustration for how casual he was being, and almost changed her mind to turn away from him completely. At the last second though, she really looked at him. He was shivering in his damp clothes with the AC on, those hazel eyes were hard, much darker than she'd seen them the one time she'd bothered to notice. His smile seemed more forced than she was used to as he addressed her alone as if no one else existed. She recalled how he'd been prancing around all but nude on that beach to show off and looking her way every five seconds, still ignoring one friend and pandering the other while harassing her, all while boasting scars from the last.

She sighed, and decided he'd been through enough as she muttered, "err, well, since you're here, would you like to see this?"

He looked genuinely surprised as she shuffled her hand's load for a moment and offered him the letter from Harry to Sirius she'd found in that cave. It had been the only personal touch, and she'd spent the entire chapter examining every detail of it, fascinated beyond words how he wrote his g's the same as hers, the way it had been carefully folded by a Black she was only beginning to understand.

Potter accepted it with a look of such pure gratitude, she flushed and turned away before he could open his mouth again, and flipped the book open blindly to start reading before he could respond. The Invitation made her instantly curious, and she glanced again at the envelope in her hand, almost breaking it open to see what this was before changing her mind. She didn't know the charm to reseal it, yet. The beginnings of this one were disgusting on many levels. The continued interactions with those Dursleys set her blood to boil as much as dealing with the Marauders, if not more lately. The way they constantly excused themselves and especially Dudley of their actions, their mistreatment of Harry with no good reason, it made her want to invent a new potion to somehow change the very essence of her blood so that no future kids of hers would ever have to be anywhere near these people for any reason.

At least the explanation for the strange envelope came soon after, though Vernon having to be the one to find it left a bad taste in her mouth. Turns out she didn't even have to unseal it to find out the contents of why the Weasley's would be sending Harry mail, it was actually quite sweet of them to brave such a Muggle concept as sending mail just so they could try and accommodate people who didn't deserve it. She stopped for a moment and swallowed to hold back tears for the circumstances she kept finding this poor kid in, and more than half the time they seemed to be her fault.

It was her best friend treating him like scum at school, it was her sister making his existence hell in his own home. Yet not one person at the Burrow made him feel unwelcome, her influence at least couldn't taint anyone there.

She kept her nose buried in the book as the argument between Vernon and Harry began, ignoring the others circling the place curiously. She didn't notice that Frank stayed uneasily on his side of the counter, toying with the retractable part of a line divider. She didn't spare much thought to the three Marauders now chatting exuberantly about everything they found, like a tape gun. She did feel the smallest spot of warmth Alice stayed by her side, flipping through a phonebook and stopping every few pages to examine some add or another and mouthing a few of them aloud in confusion.

The chapter wound down with a sweet note, one she knew to savor now given past experiences. Harry was going to a game he really wanted, with a very good friend, and he felt safe at least with Potter's best friend there in spirit if not in person. After placing the letter fondly back in the bin she'd found it, she told the others to be ready for their next departure with an almost friendly sort of tone right along with her son for once.