Their Seventh Year

Of course I’m not going to post the whole story now!  Anticipation is half the fun my Darlings!

Chapter 23- Gatecrashers

Since they only wore uniforms at school, and she wore muggle clothes on the holidays, Lily was not too familiar with what passed for high fashion in the wizarding world, and generally she didn’t give too much thought to such things.  But she absolutely loved the new emerald green dross robes she had for this party, and she could not help but think, as she looked in the mirror, that she did look very nice.

“Oh, you look lovely Dear,” the mirror proclaimed.

Flora turned from her own getting ready and nodded enthusiastically.  “You look fabulous Lily.  Too bad James won’t be around.”

Lily gave her a look and then changed the subject entirely.  “What should I do with my hair?”  She was not accustomed to spending a lot of time or effort on her appearance, and wasn’t sure how to achieve an elegant, and yet sophisticated kind of look she wanted.

“Don’t do anything!”  insisted.  “Leave it down Lily, most girls would kill to have your hair.  Or of it bothers you, just pull the sides back, like this.”

“Oh, that’s perfect, I have a clip…”

So she was pushed firmly into a chair while Flora and Alice played with her hair like she was a doll, and ignoring her protests, also took charge of applying her make-up.

“It’s a shame you two look this good, and no one from school will see you.”  remarked.

“What about you?”

“Well, I look absolutely fabulous as well, but I’m not single.”  She replied logically.

“Anyway, that’s not quite the case.  There will be some people from Hogwart’s around.  If their parents are friends with Mum and Dad.  Stop blinking Lily.  Let’s see, I know Gideon and Fabian Prewett always come.  Edgar Bones will probably come with his folks, he graduated last year, but still he’s pretty nice.  D’you know that second year Bill Weasley?  With the red hair?  His parents will be there.  The Emersons, the Turners.  Basically, there will be lots of people who can go back to Hogwart’s and tell everyone how fantastic we looked.  There you are Lily.  If only James could see you now.”

“You know McKinnon, I’m already seriously regretting telling you about that.”

“Sweetie, I already knew.”

======

“Shh!”

“You’re on my foot!  Get off!”

“Ow, that was my foot!”

“Bugger this, you can’t fit three people under here!”

And a black dog seemingly appeared out of nowhere.  He had, in fact, just emerged from under the invisibility cloak that still covered his two best friends, who were not so lucky.  While dogs and rats might be fairly commonplace in , stags certainly were not.  And as for werewolves….

It had not taken too much convincing to get Remus to agree to gatecrashing the McKinnons’ party.  After all, for all his good boy act, he was still a Marauder.  The only question had been how to slip past James’s parents, and that was where the invisibility cloak came in.  James had been worried his Dad might catch them, after all it had been his cloak and he probably knew all the tricks, but they had gotten out of the house without much trouble.  Now it was on to the party, which James could only hope would involve Lily and mistletoe in some combination.

The house was lit up entirely for the occasion, and they had no trouble slipping into a back door. 

“Ow!”  Peter transformed and tripped over a jumble of gardening equipment in the darkened hallway.  There was a loud crash as boots and shears and a rake went flying.

“Who’s there?”

A light flickered on just as James grabbed Peter by the collar and dragged him under the invisibility cloak.  That left Sirius standing in plain view as a brown-haired girl peered down the steps from what appeared to be the kitchen.  “Oh a dog!  How did you get in?”

Sirius turned and gave a pained look in the general direction of where he knew his friends were standing breathlessly.

“Come here boy!”  The girl said coaxingly.  “Come on.  I bet you’d like something to eat, huh?”

With a low growl that was most certainly directed at the people under the cloak, he considered.  If he stayed put, she would most certainly come down and try to pet him (he hated that) and probably bump into James and Remus and Peter, and scream, and they’d all be unceremoniously thrown out.  Sirius knew it was time to take one for the team.  Growling again in an unspoken warning to all of them, he climbed the stairs.  As soon as the door shut behind him, there was a swirl of fabric and the other three appeared.

“D’you think he’s okay?”

“I don’t see why not.  She was rather pretty.”

“Well, what are we waiting for, let’s go mingle.”

======

A ground floor room in the McKinnons’ already large house had been enlarged considerably for the occasion, so that it had transformed from what was probably usually a dining room to a vast ballroom.  Twinkling silver lights and red and green candles hovered in the air over the extravagantly dressed guests.  It was a good thing they’d had the foresight to wear their absolute best dress robes.  They were among the younger guests, but certainly would not look too out of place.

“So, do we just walk in?”  Asked Peter as they lurked just outside the doorway.

“Don’t just walk in, Wormtail, walk in like you own the place!”  James said confidently.  “Just follow me, I’ll- oh!”

James had gotten all of one step in his confident, owning-the-place walk when he stopped dead and Peter bumped into him from behind.  Following James’s stare, Remus saw immediately what had stopped him in his tracks- Lily Evans.  Remus had to admit, even from his considerably more objective point-of-view, she looked lovely.  She was smiling, and talking to either Gideon Prewett or his brother, they were nearly the same age and hard to tell apart.  He did not think anything of this until he saw that James looked outraged by it.

“What is she doing?”

Remus clasped a hand to his chest in mock horror.  “She’s talking to someone!  Oh, the nerve!  The scandal!  Somebody get a scarlet letter for that woman!”

James turned a dirty look on him.  “If you’re not going to offer anything constructive I’m going to send you to the kitchen with Padfoot.”  Hr returned to glaring at Lily.  “I’d love to know why she’s looking so chummy with that…that…Ravenclaw.”  He spat the house name as if it were an insult.

And with a decidedly “righteously angry” look, James walked confidently, as if he owned the place, over to Lily.

“Oh Merlin, this won’t be pretty.”  Said Peter resignedly.

======

Luckily, James had learned a thing or two in the last three years of fighting with Lily Evans, and one of them was that she responded better to him when he was polite, and for this reason he made a conscious effort to control his temper as he approached her.  The truth was he thought Prewett was a decent sort of guy, it was just that Lily looked so incredibly beautiful, in his eyes anyway, he could understand how a normally decent sort of guy could lose his head.

“Good evening Lily, Prewett.”  He gave a short nod to each of them and then enjoyed the expression of shock on Lily’s face, her eyes widened slightly, her jaw went slack, she gasped, and oddly enough, went a bit red.  Was she blushing?

“Evening Potter.”  Prewett shook his hand in a friendly enough manner, having no idea he hadn’t been invited.  Ravenclaws were all right, after all, it wasn’t as though he was a Slytherin.

“J-James!  You…you weren’t invited, were you?”

“A grievous oversight on the part of the planners surely.”  He said with a wide grin.

She narrowed her eyes and seized him by the wrist.

“Excuse us Gideon.”  She dragged him a few paces away.  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

“It’s the holidays Lily, a time for celebration…”

“You’re gatecrashing Flora’s parents’ party?”

“Yes, I’d say that pretty much covers it.”

“James!”  She was making a good effort at looking and sounding outraged, but the corners of her mouth were twitching dangerously.  “Honestly, you can’t…I mean, what if you get in trouble?”

He shrugged.  “What are they going to do, throw us in Azkaban?  I’ll behave myself, though I can’t speak for Sirius and Peter.”

“You brought…Oh Merlin…”

======

Remus could not tell, from where they stood, if Lily was angry or not, but she didn't throw anything or slap James, so that was generally a good sign. He didn't have anymore time to consider it since Flora passed right by them, in brilliant scarlet dress robes. She smiled absently at them and said "Oh hello", and then did a double take, turned, and stared at them.

"What...how...were you invited?"

"Oh look, there's that guy I wanted to talk to about that thing.  Bye." Muttered Peter, and bolted. Remus got the crossed-arms, foot-tapping pose directed at him, which was never a good thing when a girl did it.

"Well, now, Flora, "invited" is a very strong word..." He began.

"You're gatecrashing my parents’ party?"

“No, but when you're friends with James Potter and Sirius Black social niceties like invitations become unnecessary."

"Oh, so this is about Potter stalking Lily."  She nodded to herself, as though she had expected that all along.

"Let me give you a hint McKinnon, everything James does is about stalking Lily."

"Which reminds me, you owe me ten galleons."

"May I inquire as to why?"  He asked politely.

"She admitted she liked him. Just as I said would happen before the end of the holidays."

"She did? Really? She actually said that, or you're assuming that?"

"Her exact words were 'I like James'."

"Hm." He looked surprised, and thoughtful. "Well, that's an interesting development, but I still don't owe you ten galleons yet. You said they were going to get together before the end of the holidays. I still have complete faith in James's ability to screw up spectacularly."

======

Peter was just wondering if a passing uniformed waiter would notice or object if he helped himself to a glass of champagne, when something hit him very hard in the back of the head. When the stars in front of his face cleared, he saw that the something was Sirius.

"Some friends I've got."Sirius said irritably, cutting a very nasty glare in his direction.

"Well what were we supposed to do?" He replied rhetorically. "So you gave them the slip?"

Sirius scowled again and then nodded. "Yes, they're currently searching the whole house for the "stray dog" that got away."

Normally, the whole incident would have amused him, so Peter was rather at a loss to explain his dark expression. "Sirius, are you all right?"

"Yes, I just heard some people talking in there...never mind, it's not important."

"What did you hear?"

"Never mind Wormtail, I'll tell you another time, it's not for tonight. Where are James and Remus?"

"Well. James is currently mangling Lily's shoes, I'm sure." He indicated the dance floor. "And I left Remus to suffer the consequences of gatecrashing with one very angry Miss McKinnon."

"Brilliant."  Sirius muttered, but he still seemed distracted.

======

Lily had seriously thought her already agitated mental state was causing hallucinations when James appeared next to her, but after she got over her shock she realized it was just exactly the sort of thing he would do. She wanted to be annoyed, but he looked very nice in dress robes and it was kind of...funny. She wasn't sure if Flora's parents would be very amused, but you had to admire his ingenuity.

"Seriously James, I don't know what you were thinking."

He smiled. "I was thinking we should dance. Come on, I went to all the trouble of coming, you have to at least dance with me once."

She was well aware that dancing with James, in light of her recent revelation, was a slippery slope, but he was right, he had actually crashed a party in order, it seemed, to see her. That deserved a dance.

"Oh, all right."

He seized her hand before she could change her mind, and she had only time to think that her plan of stopping liking him was not going very well before they were on the dance floor, one of her hands securely in his, his other hand at her waist. 

James could not believe his luck; she actually seemed amused, even…happy to see him?  He didn’t want to push his luck, and he intended to remain silent, but he couldn’t help himself.

“You look really beautiful tonight.”

She bit her lip.  “Thanks.  You too.  I mean, you look really nice.”

“Thanks.”

For once in his life, James didn’t feel the need to say anything else.  This was enough, this moment, this dance.  Maybe it was just that is was Christmas, maybe it was just that it was a party, maybe it was just that she was in a good mood, but he didn’t care.  At that moment, all James cared about was that he was dancing with Lily Evans, and it felt absolutely perfect.

The song ended, and they broke apart somewhat awkwardly.

“You know, there was another reason we had to come tonight…” he ventured, partly to cover the nervous silence, partly because he was so nervous he wanted to get it over with.

“What’s that?”  She played along.

“To give you your Christmas present, of course.”

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