For Ollie ~ OllieDaWriter3721

【In which the only people Lily and James seem to be fooling is themselves...】

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"Well good evening, Lilyflower."

"I can't believe this is happening..."

I hated my sister sometimes. Actually that was a lie. I hate her a lot of the time; it's just more of a passive hatred that sits idly while I get on with my day. However some days I hate her more than most. Today was one of those days.

I'd always found ceremonious wedding proposals and extravagant vow exchanges poxy and overdone. If I ever meet a man worth marrying we're getting eloped. Preferably somewhere outside, like in a forest or a back garden. I wasn't fussy really, and that's what filled me burning enmity today: the fact that my bratty sister, Petunia, most definitely was fussy. She was so fussy that she wasn't far off throwing a strop in the middle of a bridal shop while the women of the family sipped champagne and strawberries like we were at a baby shower while my baleful sister tried and dumped garment after garment of different shades of cream and white.

My sister, in case you hadn't put the facts together, was getting married. Can you believe it?! Married at twenty-two? It wasn't just that and her brattiness either: it was her pompous, plum shaped husband-to-be that drove me up the twist as well. If he rocks up dead somewhere you'll find me taking refuge in Mexico where I can't be held accountable for his homicide which I likely will have committed.

So, those were just a few reasons why one might find me feeling particularly like I'd get a kick out of strangling my sister.

But the current main one was the topic of conversation she seemed to be steering to. One that I'd much rather avoid especially with my mother, aunt and grandmother present.

"Time is getting on, you know Lily. Soon you'll be too old to find a husband."

I let my eyes find the ceiling.
"And what if I don't want a husband?"

"Oh come on Lily!" My dear old mother interjected, "you've always wanted a husband, you just don't want the massive wedding ceremony. You told me this since you were about twelve."

Mentally I added my mother to the list of people I would go off the grid for if they were found deceased.

"Whatever happened to your last boyfriend, Bradley? He was a sweetheart," my grandma asked through her champagne flute.

I resisted the urge to snort, "Bradley?! —I mean, Bradley?" (Nailed it.)

"Yes Bradley what happened to him?"

I cast my mind back to Hogwarts, seeing Bloody Bradley up the astronomy tower with some random tart and me hexing them both so hard they both had warts for a week. Good times.

"Bradley wasn't serious about the relationship," I said with as level a tone I could muster.

I must inform you that I seriously regret what happened next. You must remember that I didn't mean to say this. It was the way Petunia was looking at me with that smug smirk that made me want to smash my champagne flute over the bint's head that made me say it.

"But I'm dating someone else. Someone much better. He's very sweet and I think it's quite serious."

Shit shit shit SHIT!

"Really?!" Mum cried, clapping her hands together and sharing a beaming smile with my aunt Silvia, "what's he like?"

(Now this is where things get sticky...) At this point I was taking a little bit too much pleasure in the way the smile was wiped off my sister's face and replaced with an odd grimace (which might have been due to the travesty of a wedding dress she was staring at herself wearing in the mirror but I doubted it)).

"Oh he's lovely, very good looking, intelligent, interesting, good sense of humour, all the good things." I replied, honestly reasonably surprised at my own craftiness. I was considering telling them he captained the sports team when aunt Silvia decided to take it one step further...

"So, what's his name?"

At this point I had three options:
One: panic and tell them he had no name, be forced to tell the truth and face humiliation.
Two: tell them it was a secret, have absolutely no one buy it, be forced to tell the truth and face humiliation.
Or three: say the first name that came to mind and cross my fingers behind my back.

"Oh... his name is... um James. Yes, James Potter."

Shit! Of all people Evans you chose James bloody Potter?!
In my defence, I had just been considering telling them he was the sports team captain...

"Oh that's wonderful, Lily! Isn't it Petunia?"

My sister eyed me with her beady little blue eyes in that way she did when she wanted to slip me up. She was plotting something...

"So," she smirked and I clenched the glass flute, ready to do some damage...
"So, are you bringing him to the wedding?"

It was out before I realised...
"Oh yes of course, if that's alright with you, Tuney?"

My mother answered instead, "oh that's a wonderful idea! I can't wait to meet him!"

This is why I hate my sister. You can see it now can't you?

Anyway that's what got me in this spot. Now I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. Or rather a crisis. Let's call it what it is.

So I'm in a crisis. Now, despite not being overly girly I didn't really have many male friends. I mean I was friends with Benjy Fenwick but he was a mutual friend of Bradley and I haven't talked to him since that breakup almost three months ago. Of course I could ask Remus, but being the little bastard that he is it's highly likely that he would tell James that his name had been the first one I thought of.

Oh curse my stupid mouth!

I decided I would ask Alice, she usually had little nuggets of wisdom and so I went round to visit her the next day, but to my utter dismay she simply laughed at me! I mean how dare she? Frankly I was aghast.

Once she'd finished getting her jollies out she told me just to ask James?! I mean we had been becoming friends over the course of sixth year and now being Head Students I supposed we talked more often but I would never trust him around my family. He definitely wasn't the type you'd want seducing your mother. And that is exactly what he would do if I asked him. I suppose it could have been worse: I could have choked out Sirius Black's name... that would have been an ordeal to say the least.

I asked Mary. She wrote back to me the same day advising me to take James. She and him were on quite good terms since they'd been on the Gryffindor quidditch team together for so long and according to her they had long been in an exchange of favours and it was his turn to do something for her. She even offered to use her favour for me which I told her I was considering.

Just to be sure I asked Marlene. Girlfriend to Sirius Black and resident bad girl of my group. If she didn't have a better idea I was writing to Mary to request her favour from James.
Sadly she didn't. Her only other useful idea was to fake dragonpox which I thought might be a bit too risky of a stunt, especially seen as the only people that knew I was a witch were my parents and my sister.

So I wrote to Mary, reluctantly as you might imagine and she sent me two letters back. One consisted of a note to James and the other was for me. She instructed me to write him a letter carefully detailing my plan and arrange a place to meet before the wedding. (She also told me to give him an odd little quidditch key ring which, apparently, they used to keep track of who's turn it is for a favour).

And so I did. In fact, I sent him a two page long letter detailing everything that had happened to me up until that point and arranged to meet him in my garden the following midnight where I gave him the key ring and told him to be back here at seven o clock –not a second later– to pick me up. I also forbid him from seducing my mother, flirting with any of the bridesmaids and having any sort of in depth conversation with my father. Once he was briefed I sent him on his way with a 'thank you' and a 'don't be late or i'll castrate you.' –you know? The normal stuff.

Honestly I was astonished to hear a knock at the door at seven o clock sharp. I raced over to the door (nearly tripping on my dress) to see an illegally handsome James Potter, dressed in a Muggle formal getup that I had no idea he even owned.

"Well good evening Lilyflower," he smirked, holding a white rose out to me.

"I can't believe this is happening."

"Am I sharp enough?" He asked, checking an invisible watch on his left wrist.

"I'd have preferred you knocked on the millisecond but it'll do. In you come," I held open the door for James and he stepped inside.

"You look ravishing by the way."

He'd ruined the good looking-ness by now with that shit-eating grin of his, chuckling at the dress Petunia had picked out for me. It really was hideous, and his caustic quips were not doing my self esteem any favours.
"Shut up, Potter, I didn't pick it."

"That much was clear. Now, what am I saying to impress your family?"

"Absolutely nothing. Let me do the talking and stick with me when we get to the reception, okay?"

James winked at me, "negative. I've had seventeen years of sucking up to elder family members and ministry officials at my parents 'Events' I think I can handle talking to some loved ones."

I gave him a look; one of my famous 'don't fuck with me' looks and he seemed to get the message (it didn't stop him talking though, the bastard).

My mum saw us first. She flounced out the kitchen and hugged us both, almost bowling James off his feet as he struggled to bend down low enough to look dignified in the embrace. He really was one tall bloke, I reckon he'd like basketball...

"Oh it's lovely to meet you, darling! We've heard all about you, haven't we Lily?"

"Not really, mum I mentioned it like...once." (Yep, I was definitely killing my mother once this nightmarish ordeal was over).

James, on the contrary, was having a grand old time as I knew he would.
"Have you now? All good things, I hope?"

My bloody mother laughed as I pictured my hands around her throat, "no not at all! We've heard about you for years! 'James Potter the annoying quidditch extraordinaire, James Potter the arrogant toe-rag, James Potter, James Potter!"

I'm not going to lie to you I did consider the logistics of punching my mother in the face and how that would look for me legally. I held out however, long enough to chuckle politely, take James' arm and safely escort him in a new, safer, direction.

The feeling of being so close to James was still quite foreign to me at that point. I don't think one could really prepare themselves to be near James Potter (or perhaps it's just me?) but there was something about his warmness that spread through me like the fever or an infectious disease (and I mean that in the best possible way– I realise that analogy sounds quite sinister but I assure you it's rather elating).

We found ourselves three hours later wandering (hand in hand) around a function tent that was much too extravagant, not to mention cold, for a New Year's Eve night.

James must have seen me shivering: "you're cold, aren't you?"

"It's this horrible dress!" I argued, reminding myself not to shrug him off when he wrapped his arm around me and rubbed my shoulders.

"It's not exactly my colour but I reckon i could pull it off," he said in all seriousness, eyeing the coral pink dress with what could only be described as perplexity.

"In your dreams!"

He went slightly pale, "not like that! I just meant like... never mind."

I couldn't resist a smirk, "I got the joke, don't worry. I'm just not in the mood for quips in this bloody cold, I mean, who gets married outside in New Years?!"

James nodded, "it's anarchy, simply lawlessness! The beginning of the downward spiral, I'd argue!"

"Oh, of course!"

We stood for a moment, side by side, at the edge of the canopy surveying the scene of mayhem, or bliss depending on your persuasion.

"If I get married, I'm eloping somewhere rebellious and random." James stated with the sort of simplicity that almost knocked me off my feet.

I had said the exact same thing days earlier! In fact, I had always said the same thing! How could me and Potter have something in common?! This must have been the real downward spiral!...

"Are you now?" (I'll admit I did my best to play it cool).

"Almost definitely."

"Well it's just you don't seem like the marriage type."

He looked down, frowning at me, "I don't?"

I shook my head, still shivering, "you appeal to me more as the sexy bachelor type that won't settle down till he's in this mid-thirties."

Shaking his head I almost thought he wasn't going to reply.
"People surprise you sometimes." He then shrugged off his muggle suit jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. It smelled like teenage boy and I, regrettably, loved it.

I groaned when I clocked my grandma approaching us, ruining what had been up until that point, quite an enjoyable moment.

"Listen, no charming my grandma okay?"

James shook his head, "negative. Perhaps Mary didn't tell you the rules but once the keyring has been exchanged the terms and conditions are sealed and I don't recall anything about charming grandmothers in the manuscript. Seducing them: that was mentioned but nothing about charming."

"You infuriate me." I hissed, still not quite fully grasping the many odd rules regarding the Potter-McDonald tit for tat agreement.

When my grandmother reached us James already had his arm around me.
"Good evening Mrs Green," (someone did their research) "I'm James Potter, I don't believe we've met?"

Grandma shook her head and smiled when James offered her a little bow.
"No we haven't but I do like you already."

"Thank you madam." He grinned wolfishly.

She turned to me then, "it's ten minutes until new year now! Why haven't you been dancing? And the New Years Kiss is getting closer!"

I tried my best to keep a smile on my face while my insides were having an internal war. My grandmother had a way of stirring the pot and being completely oblivious to that fact.

No sooner had she disappeared than James took my hand and dragged me to the dance floor where a slow song was playing.

"Where are we going?"

"To dance!"

I shook my head, "I don't dance."

"I'll teach you come on!"

I spent the next ten minutes allowing myself to be spun under his arm, swayed left and right and dipped low. But by the time the countdown began we had resulted to merely holding each other, my head in his chest, swaying back and fourth.

"TEN!"

I looked up to see him staring at me...

"NINE!"

I gave him a sheepish grin, James winked, 'I suppose we're supposed to kiss now?'

"EIGHT"

I nodded, 'I suppose so,' his eyes were much too pretty for his own good...

"SEVEN!"

In truth, it was all his fault really, if he wasn't taking up so much of my thoughts I wouldn't be in this mess... he knew exactly what he was doing.

"SIX!

We weren't that different, are we? Are we really? (And didn't he just look so good?)

"FIVE!"

Maybe it was the smell of the jacket he gave me that was clouding my vision.

"FOUR!"

He had a very kissable face, I noticed. One that screamed danger but attentiveness at the same time.

"THREE"

'It's a horrible dress you've got on Lily. And yet you're by far the most beautiful girl here.' He told me, smirking that wonderful smirk of his.

"TWO!"

'Were not so different you know?'

"ONE!"

'I know.'

He smiled, "happy new year, Lily."

"Happy new year."

I kissed him hesitantly when the cheering for the new year began. I'd never really seen the lull of new year wedding but now I was starting to get it...

Lily's mother watched her daughter and her fake boyfriend. She knew he was fake the minute his name slipped from her youngest's mouth and yet somehow there are somethings that it didn't take a mother to miss. For example how James Potter wasn't fooling anybody. In fact, the only people the two of them were fooling was themselves...

"Well good evening Lilyflower."

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she turned to face him, "you're not supposed to see the bride in her dress..."

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