AN- Sorry this chapter took so long to get out, everyone. I'm still retyping the whole thing after it got erased, and after I go over it again I find so may errors. That combined with my increasing workload as a high school student and the fact that I actually have a life now, (it's a boring one, but it's still a life outside of the house nonetheless) has kept me busy and slightly overwhelmed. Still, please review me to tell me what you think so far.
Disclaimer- Nothing's mine but the idea of the fic…
Harry had, in the few months since he'd dropped literally out of the sky and into Hogwarts, changed everyone around him. James had become less arrogant and childish, Remus had become less introverted and quiet, Peter had become more angry and weak, and Sirius had become more compassionate towards others, and more perceptive of others feelings.
And as Harry thought about it, he realized that he'd changed his mother a little, too.
Sure, she was still McGonagall's favorite. She still made the perfect Head Girl, still told James off for chewing with his mouth open, and still demanded attention when she spoke simply because of how she held herself.
Only now, she was laughing when she told James off for chewing with his mouth open. She had learned not only to speak and demand other's attention, but also to listen to the other side of the story. And she smiled a lot more.
The last change was the most prominent. Lily's new, upbeat attitude had made her new friends, caused her to be more open to other's opinions, and had forced her to generally lighten up. It was like Harry had forced James to grow up a little, and made Lily realize that she was still just a teenager, in the years when life couldn't always be serious.
"Oof." And that proved it. Harry tried to brush all of the snow out of the back of his shirt and cloak and turned to glare at the possible culprits. All of the Marauders, and Lily. "All right. Who did it?"
A few months ago, the Marauders would have instantly been handed the blame.
Now, all four of them shrugged at him and then turned to her. Lily, grinning vindictively, carefully packed a snowball and took aim. The snowball hit it's mark and sent Sirius into a string of curses as he tried to thaw his face back out.
SPLAT!
"Oh, Evans, you're going down!"
The snowball fight that followed left all five boys flat on their backs in the snow as Lily hurled snowball after snowball at them, only giving them enough time to cover their heads with their arms and occasionally fire something resembling a snowball back at her. When dusk had finally fallen, everyone was cold, tired, and hungry.
"Where'd you learn to throw snow like that, Evans?" Sirius asked later on, breaking the comfortable silence that they had fallen into since arriving at dinner.
Lily smiled slightly. "My dad. We always used to have snowball fights and go sledding after the first snow. It was tradition. Just Petunia, Dad, Mum and me." The soft smile and shining eyes made Harry wonder about the girl who would become his aunt, and what she had been like in this time.
"You miss them?" He asked, truly curious.
"Sometimes. But I still see them every Christmas, and it's only a couple weeks away now." Lily replied, taking another bite of the chicken on her plate. "I have to go this time, too. My older sister's getting married!"
Harry was pretty sure that a piece of the biscuit he accidentally inhaled at that moment would be permanently lodged in his throat. "You all right there, Harry?" Sirius asked, roughly pounding on Harry's back. Brushing off Sirius's concern, Harry tuned back in to the conversation.
"Yeah, only one older sister, Petunia." Lily was replying as she buttered a roll.
"I've never heard you mention her before." James said, truly interested.
Lily looked amused. "Well, we've only been on civil terms for a little while now, and there was never really any reason to bring her up." She replied. "She's a muggle, of course, like the rest of my family."
It seemed quite a bit like she was testing James, despite the fact that she and everybody else knew that he didn't mind muggleborns. At first, Harry couldn't understand this, until he realized that perhaps Lily was a little more under confidant than she let on about her muggle bloodlines.
James nodded, but didn't seem to pay any extra attention to the fact that Lily's family was muggle. "So, she's getting married over Christmas break?" He asked.
Lily nodded, an annoyed look on her face. "Right on Christmas Eve, too." Lily muttered, seeming irritated.
"What? You don't like her?" Harry asked, hopeful. Maybe his aunt had always despised magic, and he really hadn't made it any worse. A small part of him still thought that maybe it wasn't his magic that his aunt hadn't liked; that she didn't dislike magic, she just hated him.
Lily sighed. "There are times she can get pretty annoying." In the moment of silence that followed, she was clearly remembering several of those times, "but she's still my sister, so I guess I have to love her, don't I?"
Harry didn't reply, because he wasn't entirely sure what to say. Even the smallest and most insignificant comment could start something in this time that didn't fit into his own, and he wasn't sure what would happen as a result.
James didn't let the subject go nearly as easily. "How can she dislike magic though? It makes everything so much easier, and so much more beautiful." James, who had been raised in a magical household, was staring incredulously at Lily.
Lily shrugged. Remus, who was buttering a roll and silently listening to the conversation, spoke up. "You know, she's probably jealous of it. I mean, it would be a little upsetting to see your younger sister have a gift that you knew you would never have."
"She sees it as unnatural." Lily said by way of reply. "And I'm really not sure how to change her mind about it."
"Well, maybe you should try doing something nice for her wedding, or Christmas." Sirius suggested. Everyone turned to look at him, some gaping and some, (like Peter) confused. "What?" He asked, irritated.
"Padfoot…that was actually a good idea." James answered for everyone, causing everyone but Sirius to laugh.
That night, as Harry and the Marauders helped Lily create a beautiful magical Christmas ornament for Petunia, Harry had to wonder when hi aunt had begun to hate magic…and anyone involved with it.
"What are you thinking about?" Remus's quiet voice complete caught Harry off guard.
"Nothing, really." He turned slightly and saw Lily laugh at something James had said, her head thrown back and her expression open and relaxed. "She's really changed since she got to know James."
Remus stared at him thoughtfully. "No. She's really changed since she met you. I think you're the first person who ever successfully got her to laugh at a joke, or actually have a civil conversation with Sirius." They both watched, amused, as Lily swatted at Sirius's head after he suggestively winked at her, wiggling his eyebrows flirtatiously. Remus laughed. "Well, a reasonably civil conversation, anyway."
"They seem to be getting along pretty well." Harry agreed, smiling slightly.
"Who? Lily and Sirius?" Remus asked, surprised.
"No! Lily and James." Harry answered, shivering at the thought of Sirius dating his mother. He wasn't sure what it might change in the future, but for all he knew he might cease to exist.
But his future mother and father did seem to be much closer, and Harry would have to say that out of all of them, it seemed like James was now at least as close to Lily as Harry himself was.
"He's liked her for years." Remus murmured. "Everyone knew it, especially her. He used to ask her out al the time, in the weirdest ways too. At first she might've been a little flattered by the attention, but you know how fifteen year old boys can be, and…"
Harry nodded, understanding. Clearly, Lily had held James's actions prior to the seventh year against him. He could understand that, but he was relieved to see that his parents had at least become friends by Christmas of their seventh year.
When Harry noticed that James had received a small gift from Lily the next day, he wondered if maybe the easy friendship they had developed was becoming something more.
"It's not like it's some expensive heart-felt present." James pointed out when Sirius began to voice Harry's thoughts just moments later. "It's just a picture of all of us in a nice frame."
"You didn't get a book, though." Peter pointed out, holding up his own present from the redhead. Grinning, Harry unwrapped his own present and was surprised to find a beautiful snow globe, with `Merry Christmas' spelled into the middle. Alongside it, of course, was a book on word enchantments.
"I'm not complaining." Remus murmured, his nose already buried in the book Lily had left him, this one titled `The Everyday Cure". Harry guessed that Lily had noticed, like everyone else who knew Remus but not his condition, how often Remus `fell ill', and had decided to make an effort to make him more healthy. He grinned; it was something that would have been typical Hermione.
His spirits dropped a little as he thought of his friends back in his own time. They had to be worried by now, with him having been gone for months on end. Hermione would be mad as hell if he ever returned…no, when he returned. Staying behind wasn't an option.
"You know, Prongsy, for someone who's gotten `just a picture' for Christmas, you don't seem very disappointed about it." Sirius pointed out. Harry noted that even the teasing smile on Sirius's face couldn't rival the ecstatic expression on James's.
For once, James didn't have a come-back.
The rest of Winter Break passed relatively normal, with the exception of the several small pranks that the Marauders played on the staff and students remaining at the school for Christmas.
The suffocating hug that Lily greeted Harry with upon her return reminded Harry of one of Mrs. Weasley's hugs; warm and comforting. He smiled at the knowledge that his mother had been acting like a mother towards him before he'd even existed.
"So how did the wedding go?" Remus asked after dinner as they settled into the common room to relax before bed and the return to classes the following morning.
Lily looked up from the homework that she was trying to help Sirius finish at the last second. "Oh, it was horrible! We were almost lucky we even had it, and it was all my fault!"
Sirius frowned as James asked, "Well, what happened?"
"I gave her that ornament we made when it was just her husband and my family at dinner, because I didn't want anyone to see it and ask how it was made." Lily explained, abandoning the homework that Sirius had apparently forgotten about. "But I didn't take into consideration that there was a chance that she hadn't told him about magic either."
The group listening winced sympathetically. "He threw a fit about it! He went on and on about how freaky magic was and h-how I was a f-freak for having it." As Lily started to tear up, Harry comforted her and felt a small amount of satisfaction; Vernon hadn't just been a jerk to him, then. He'd been a jerk to everybody.
"And he tried to call the wedding off, and it was the night before Christmas Eve, so nobody was really sure what to do about it. Petunia blamed me for everything, and the wedding almost completely fell apart, but it really wasn't my fault!" Lily pointed out, her face flushing as her anger built. "That guy was an ass before he ever knew about magic! He was probably just looking for an excuse to call the whole thing off, and that was the first one he could think up!"
Harry saw where this was going, and grimaced slightly. A moment later, Lily proved his theory right. "And let me guess; you told her so." Harry said, almost groaning when the redhead nodded proudly.
"Yes I told her so! So she blew up at me for ruining everything, and… well, I got really upset about it, I guess, because she was so embarrassed about me, and I kind of sort of…" Here, Lily broke off in her story and blushed.
"Kind of sort of what?" Remus prodded, trying to get the rest of the story.
Lily hesitantly continued. "Well, I kind of sort of did a little accidental magic."
"What kind of accidental magic?" James asked.
Lily's face turned even redder. "Well…the kind of accidental magic that can leave one's sister completely bald on the night before her wedding." Everyone started laughing, and eventually Lily couldn't help but join in. At the time, it had seemed so serious and she'd felt guilty for hours afterwards; the magic reversal squad and seeing his fiancé bald didn't improve Vernon's opinion of the magical community. Now, laughing with her friends about it in the common room, the event seemed more like a practical joke than a mistake.
Besides, the look on Petunia's face made it all worth it.
But Lily began to frown again as she remembered her sister's cold and unfeeling behavior towards her following the incident. They'd been growing apart ever since Lily had been accepted into Hogwarts; maybe this was the push that her sister needed to actually cut ties completely.
The topic changed, and Lily forgot about her sister's anger towards her in favor of helping Harry tease James. Petunia may be mad about how magic had messed up her wedding, (her hair had grown back, but it had come in too thin and in the wrong color) but she'd get over it eventually.
She couldn't hate magic. And she certainly couldn't hate Lily. After all, they were sisters.
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