Rules of Engagement
James and Lily loved everything about their life. They had wonderful friends, fantastic mentors from their school days, and loving families…if you didn't count Lily's sister Petunia and her boyfriend Vernon Dursley. It was sad really. Petunia hadn't been exactly thrilled when Lily had first invited James Potter over for tea the summer before her seventh year, but ever since, Petunia seemed to hate him more and more with each visit. After all, what did the rest of the Evans family know about this wizard except that he and Lily had gone to the same school who knows where for the last six years. But Lily tried not to think about Petunia too much. If Petunia didn't want to talk to her anymore, that was Petunia's problem, not hers. She hadn't done anything wrong.
The autumn of 1978, just months after the two of them had graduated from Hogwarts, had been as perfect as one could ever hope for. James took Lily down by the river on the outskirts of Spinner's End, and they had sat on the grassy bank, dipping their toes into the water that would soon be too cold to do anything of the sort. They had talked about how much they had missed each other since graduation in June, how their families were coping now that they essentially had adult children still living with them, and where they thought they would try for jobs. James had a strong dislike for the Ministry of Magic. He thought the whole lot of them were bumbling bureaucrats with less common sense than a pack of wild dogs. Lily had laughed at this, her green eyes sparkling in the fading light.
"Well then, what is next for the young Mr. Potter?"
"Oh, I don't know," he had replied, with a most convincing hesitancy. "I was thinking I might contact Professor Dumbledore. You know what they were saying at school," he paused for a moment, apparently choosing his words very carefully, "about You Know Who getting stronger, gathering followers? I was thinking, Dumbledore must have a plan or…something. I could help!"
"But Jim, that's bound to be really dangerous! What will your parents say?"
"I've already talked it over with them. They said if that's what I really want to do, they won't stop me." James' voice was quite calm.
"Oh, Jim!" Lily had exclaimed. "You know I support you in your decisions, don't you? You know that I'd do anything to make you happy? Oh Jim, please don't—"
James stood up quickly then, and Lily couldn't go on. His sudden change of position seemed to render all speech impossible. She rose as well, thinking that she had upset him.
"Lily, do you trust me?"
"Of course I do Jim, but—"
"Do you love me?"
"James Potter! You know I do! What—" Lily's next words caught in her throat and she struggled to keep her breathing even as James dropped to one knee and pulled out a small, black, velvet-covered box from his back pocket.
"Lily Evans, I love you with every fiber of my being. Will you marry me?" James asked, sounding as though he was trying to catch his breath as well. Tears welled suddenly in Lily's eyes, but she was smiling down at him.
"Oh Jim, of course I will!" And suddenly all the air seemed to return to the river bank. Lily was crying. James was laughing. They were hugging each other as though each one would never let the other go.
"C-can't wait to tell Sirius," James finally managed after several long minutes of laughter and tears.
"Come on, then! Let's go back to my house and you can use my owl. Nimoo hasn't had much work since we came back from Hogwarts. I'm sure she'd be glad of a chance to stretch her wings a bit. And we can tell my parents!" Lily's eyes still glistened with happy tears.
"They already know."
"What? But…how?"
"Wizarding tradition," James said simply. "When a young wizard wishes to marry a witch, he must ask the girl's parents for her hand. Kind of old-fashioned, I know, but my parents are very traditional, and they would have killed me if I'd asked you before I'd gone through the prescribed routine: Ask the parents, then the witch, lest her father beat you with a switch." James recited the old wizarding adage with an air that suggested he'd heard it many times before.
Lily smiled and said, "Jim, my parents are Muggles. I seriously doubt my dad would take a switch to you."
"Yeah, well, a guy can never be too careful, you know?" He smiled. "I suppose I just wanted to keep all of my goal posts covered."
"You're so sweet, Jim. You know that don't you?" Lily ran her fingers through James' permanently messy hair.
"We still need to go tell them you've accepted my proposal, though. Come on! Let's go make Petunia squirm!"
"Jim!" chided Lily, "I will not allow you to talk about my sister like that, even if she is rather unkind about us."
Five minutes later, Lily dragged Jim up the porch steps and burst through the front door of her parents' house, calling, "Mum! Dad! Petunia! Where are you?"
"What's all the noise about, Lily?" Petunia had called from the living room. As she came into the hallway, Elizabeth and Bert Evans came in from the back garden. "What are you doing here?" Petunia asked James, pointing a long, bony finger at him, her voice filled with as much venom as she could muster.
"Jim's asked me to marry him…and I've accepted!" Lily told the room at large. She beamed at her parents. Petunia looked quite shocked.
"My little Tiger Lily!" cried Elizabeth, "Going to be married, and to a wizard no less! Isn't it wonderful, Bert? Our little Lily!" She threw herself on her husband's shoulder and hugged him before descending upon Lily and James.
"Congratulations, Lily, my dear," Bert said, remaining quite composed. Lily's dad was never as open with his emotions as her mother was, but he was grinning from ear to ear nevertheless. As Elizabeth moved on to James, he too hugged his daughter.
When Elizabeth finally released James, she said, "Petunia, don't you have anything to say to your sister and your future brother-in-law?"
"I'm leaving."
"W-what?"
"I'm leaving," repeated Petunia. "I'm moving in with Vernon. He's got a flat of his own now and he's asked me if I'd like to come live with him. We'll probably be moving out of London fairly soon though. When we start our family."
"But, Petunia, see reason. You're just sixteen years old, and you hardly know—"
"I'VE BEEN FRIENDS WITH VERNON LONGER THAN LILY'S BEEN WITH THIS SORRY EXCUSE FOR A MAN! AT LEAST VERNON'S GOT SOME AMBITION!"
"DON'T YOU SPEAK TO YOUR MOTHER LIKE THAT, YOUNG LADY!" exploded Bert. "YOU MAY BE OLDER NOW, BUT SHE IS STILL YOUR MOTHER, AND YOU WILL SHOW HER THE RESPECT SHE DESERVES!"
At that Petunia turned on her heel, furious, and stormed up the stairs. The four of them left in the hallway heard her slam her wardrobe door and as quickly as she had gone upstairs, she was coming back down, yelling again as she flung open the front door and charged out onto the top step, dragging her suitcase behind her.
"YOU NEVER APPRECIATED ME! IT WAS ALWAYS LILY THIS AND LILY THAT! WELL, I'LL SHOW YOU! YOU JUST WAIT! YOU'LL WISH YOU HAD PAID MORE ATTENTION TO ME WHEN I WAS AROUND! GOODBYE!" And with one last contemptuous glance at the four of them, Petunia stomped off into the twilight.
Author's Notes: The Harry Potter Lexicon states that Lily was born in "an unnamed mill town" and that it is the same town in which Severus Snape was born and lived. I have adopted the street on which Severus Snape lived (Spinner's End) as the name for the town. An explanation of Lily's owl: I figure that Petunia and Vernon had to develop their hatred of owls in the house from somewhere, and giving Lily an owl seemed the best way to accomplish this. My theory is that Bert and Elizabeth Evans really wanted a way to keep in touch with their daughter while she was away at school, and obviously they couldn't do this by Muggle Post. So, when Lily got her letter in 1971, they bought her an owl in order to communicate with her. The name Nimoo is taken from Arthurian legend. Nimoo was Merlin's apprentice. According to one version of the legends, she trapped Merlin in a prison of rock. I'm pretty sure that even having grown up a Muggle, Lily would know this name. Given its connection to such an important figure in magical history, I'm sure she would have embraced it as her owl's name. Elizabeth and Bert Evans are my own original characters. The Harry Potter Lexicon also states that Petunia is about two years younger than Lily. While this is an inconsistency between the Lexicon and "The Prince's Tale" (DH chapter 33), I think Petunia's behavior in "The Prince's Tale" fits better if she's younger than Lily. I'm assuming about a two-year age gap between Petunia and Vernon's ages as well, which would make Vernon the same age as Lily and James, and therefore legally independent in the Muggle world.