The first owl arrived at precisely two in the morning. James awoke from an unsettling dream involving Lily turning cats into people, Graziana Harding chasing him around with a candle, and Kat tearing Sirius into shreds. (The latter half of the dream was much more enjoyable than the former.) Sirius' arm was lying across his neck, cutting off his circulation, but that was not the immediate reason he had woken up.
There was an owl and he was currently tapping loudly on James' window. There was an owl and James was about ready to throttle it for waking him up. There was an owl and it wouldn't shut the heck up.
James pulled Sirius' arm off of his main supply of air, not really caring whether or not he woke up. If James had to be awake, then he was going to punish the rest of the world for it. Sirius simply rolled over and fell off the bed, repeating sleepily what sounded a lot like, "I wasn't cheating on you, just exploring other options…"
Fighting the urge to go with his first instinct, which was to slam the window down on the bird's silky feathers, James walked zombie-like over to the incessant noise and opened the window. The bird flew instantly in with an air of perkiness that should never be witnessed by any of humankind, especially at two in the morning, and zoomed around the ceiling. James glared at it and imagined the owl slowly roasting over an open fire. He waited for two minutes for the owl to come down and when it didn't comply, he threw Sirius' shoe at it.
The shoe only knocked the wind out of the bird, not rendering it unconscious like James hoped it would have, but it caused the owl to drop the letter and fly rather haughtily out the window. James shut the window and locked it tightly just in case the owl had a thought to fly back in. he entertained himself with the thought of the bird smacking into the window and falling straight down to the ground another story below, but then realized that he didn't care anymore.
He threw the letter over to the side, where it landed next to Remus' sleeping head, and climbed back into his bed intent on sleeping. It had a lot more room now that Sirius was gone, which suited James just fine. Falling asleep again, James promptly forgot about the unopened letter and began to have dreams about owls pecking his eyes out for revenge on their rather annoying brother.
It couldn't have been more than an hour later when the next owl arrived. James heard the tapping again from the window and groaned, turning over and putting his pillow over his ears. "Whoever had the ridiculous notion of using owls for a mail transport system is going to die!" he shouted from under his pillow, half asleep and half wanting to throw another shoe at the bird.
"Actually, I believe they're already dead." Remus sat up from his sleeping bag on the floor and rubbed his eyes. "This is the second time I've heard something in this room tonight…is Sirius snoring again?"
"No, nothing as bad as that. There are birds outside my window." James said into his pillow, trying to learn how to breathe without suffocating beneath it.
Remus picked up the letter beside his head and squinted at it in the dark. Looking up at the window he could clearly see two owls struggling to get in to deliver their letter, intent on getting back home as soon as possible. He glanced back over to James, who was still huddled under his pillow.
"Are you going to let them peck on the window out there all night?" Remus asked and James groaned. Remus sighed and got up to open the window. The two birds flew in, deposited their letters on top of James' inert form, and flew back out into the night sky in a burst of feathers.
Remus was about to close the window again when he saw a sight that made him do a double take. Outside, loitering on every possible surface, were about a hundred owls. Even more were on the house itself, still gripping their letter in their claws, calmly cleaning between their feathers. These were the smart owls, depending on how you looked at it.
"Why haven't you closed the bloody window yet, Moony?" James murmured into his pillow, intent on getting back to bed. Remus quickly recovered from his shock and closed the window once more, turning around to see the letters that had just been dropped upon James. James flipped his head back on top of the pillow and turned over, making the letters fall beside the bed.
"Uh, James?" Remus said quietly. "Aren't you going to read these?" James' whine that escaped from his mouth gave him his answer. Good. He thought, rapidly opening one after the other to find exactly what he feared.
The letters were all RSVPs to James' birthday party. James' surprise birthday party. And, if Remus had counted right, there were approximately one hundred and fifty of them outside just waiting for James to open them up and read them.
Just one question remained. Who had been the idiot to tell everyone to RSVP by owl to James' own house?
As if that was a hard question to answer.
However much Remus wanted to wake Sirius up by kicking him in the groin, it would have to wait. If he wanted James to wake up again and figure it all out he would have to wait until morning to kill Sirius. There was only one other person who could help him get rid of the evidence.
Lily Evans.
Unfortunately she was locked in another room with Mrs. Dongle, who was sure to suspect that Remus was just trying to get Lily to come away with him on a secret rendezvous. Or to magically toilet paper the neighbor's house. Either one.
Remus debated for about half a second before deciding it was the price to be paid. Sure, Lily and Mrs. Dongle would massacre him for waking them up at three in the morning, but James could not find out about this party. Then Remus would be more than dead. Whatever that was.
Remus quickly stole out of the room, shutting the door behind him, clutching the letters in his hand. He prayed silently that another owl would not wake James up before he and Lily had a chance to gather up all the letters. He just hoped his prayers were good enough.
*~*~*~*~*
Getting into Mrs. Dongle and Lily's room proved to be the easy part of the mission. It was waking up Lily without also waking up Mrs. Dongle that was the problem.
Remus used a simple spell to unlock the door and crept in silently. The two women slept on opposite sides of the room, but their shapes looked exactly alike. Remus tiptoed toward one bed only to be overcome by the scent of moldy baked ham and day old tea. He instantly went the other direction, convinced that this was not Lily.
Lily didn't smell like anything; thank Merlin, because Remus almost gagged when he stepped too close to Mrs. Dongle. However, she was obviously deeply asleep as she didn't stir when Remus got near her. This was going to be tricky.
"Lily?" Remus tentatively whispered, not sure if he wanted to chance shaking her awake or not. "Lily, wake up…it's me, Remus." It was then that Remus realized how stupid it was to tell her who he was because she was asleep. He reached out a hand to touch hers, absolutely entirely not sure on how to do this without scaring her.
He precariously shook her hand and when that didn't work he pushed her shoulder a little bit. In a flash Lily's eyes were wide open and she let out a piercing scream that lasted about four seconds before Remus clamped his hand over her mouth.
"Shh! It's me, Remus! I'm sorry for waking you up, please don't scream-OUCH!" Remus pulled his hand away from Lily's mouth, inspecting his wound. "You bit me!" he cried incredulously, almost forgetting about Mrs. Dongle for a second.
"Well then, don't put your hand over my mouth." Lily whispered back, her head falling back on her pillow. She put her hands on her head and ran them through her hair. "Why am I awake at three o'clock in the bloody morning?"
"There's an emergency." Remus said seriously, still nursing his bite.
Lily looked over at him tiredly. "Enough of an emergency to wake me up at bloody three in the morning?" she asked.
Remus grimaced. "The world is ending." He said seriously.
Now Lily looked half bored. "Really?" she said lazily, almost completely back to sleep now.
"It will look that way when you take a glance outside. C'mon, we've got to round up some owls."
"Huh?" Lily sat up and strained to look outside, but Remus grabbed her hand and pulled her into the hallway and down the stairs before she got a chance.
"Just promise not to scream again." Remus asked, letting go of her hand to open the door. Lily rolled her half open eyes at him, still basically asleep. He kept the door closed and asked her, "Have you ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds?" she nodded her head slowly. "Well, just imagine that, but with owls." And he opened the door wide, pushing her outside and closing the door behind them without another word.
Lily's eyes bugged out of her head. She was at a loss for words, but at least the shock had woken her up.
"Wha…What are we going to do with all these letters?" she questioned, swallowing hard at the scene around her.
Remus shrugged. "Check off who's coming and who's not?" Lily wouldn't even dignify that with a response.
"I'm going to kill Sirius."
*~*~*~*~*
James had fallen back asleep imagining plucking an owl's feathers out one by one until it was completely bald. It was quite satisfying even if he didn't remember the owl being bald because he had fallen asleep by then. However, he was once again woken up about forty minutes later by some indescribable noise he chose to believe was more owls.
He slammed his pillow against the bed and opened the window about ready to yell at another owl. Then he saw Lily and Remus chasing down what looked to be about a hundred or so birds and grabbing letters from them. James rubbed his eyes over again to see if what he was seeing was a vision. It wasn't.
He looked over at Remus' sleeping pallet, Remus and Lily outside, Sirius still asleep on the floor, and back again only to still be completely confused. Convincing himself that he must be sleepwalking, James stumbled back to bed and collapsed, not even bothering to close the window again.
He woke up again at about seven, saw the window closed and Remus asleep on the floor, and rolled back over and went to sleep.
*~*~*~*~*
Lily stuffed all the RSVPs into her dresser drawers. She counted almost two hundred replies. All of them said yes. And if she weren't so tired from catching owl's posts all night, she would be ecstatic.
She went to bed at about four thirty in the morning not even noticing one unopened letter in the batch.
The return address had one name.
Graziana Harding.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Ok! That's the end of this chapter…does anyone remember who Graziana is? I do…but I created her. Ah, well you'll just have to re-read the rest of the chapters to find out.
Next chapter! There will be the infamous party that will live on in many minds for eons. And there will be….
Graziana Harding
Sirius getting chased (more than one time)
Spiked butterbeer
A rather drunk Lily…and
James turning 17, finally able to do magic outside of school.
Exciting, no? Oui.
I'll see you next chapter!
Emmablk1
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