After depriving myself of writing a Petunia meets Marauders over the Christmas holidays scene for my current main fanfic 'Remember and Forget', and disappointing those lovely people who commented on that story saying they were looking forward to seeing it, I felt a bit bad.

So this is the other end of that absence. To apologise.

For Context: Before the Christmas holidays, James and the others had joked about visiting Muggle Cokeworth and 'improving' Lily's dull, Petunia-filled holiday. After a series of letters between Lily and James, Christmas day has arrived, and James has talked himself out of following through and going to see her.

His friends do not support this idea.

"Mate! We are definitely going!" a whisper cut through James' half-awake haze.

"No." he grumbled, shoving his face into the pillow.

"C'mon! We've got to!" Peter whispered, and James could hear the glee in his voice.

"No."

"Pete, let it go!"

A voice of reason, James thought thankfully, as Remus joined the debate, murmuring sleepily from his bed in the corner. Peter was being pretty insistent that they should go to a certain Northern town to visit a certain ginger girl.

It wasn't really a debate. Peter had been making ever more elaborate and ever more desperate speeches for the past few days about the positives of leaving the Potter house and bribing either an elderly relative or a pliant House Elf to apparate them to the point on the map that Lily had pointed out on the train. To each of these arguments, James had simply responded 'no'.

It wasn't that he didn't want to see Lily. Lily was great, and probably she would, though he knew she wouldn't admit it, appreciate a visit to lighten the burden of her apparently-horrible sister and her isolation from the wizarding world.

Really, Lily was amazing. James didn't think that he could have borne spending even a few weeks away from his friends and magic, though he supposed that spending time with her family might make up for it. Still, it was more than James would have wanted to deal with.

But, it was Christmas, and not only would it be incredibly rude to turn up unannounced on Christmas, but he had a full day of unwrapping presents and eating food and greeting all his family, who were invited, along with his mates, to the usual oversized Christmas dinner.

Lily was great, really, but she was probably not going to be happy to see him, and he didn't want to make her life any harder.

So, he had immediately said no, and he was still saying no, three hours later. It was only now that Remus had decided to weigh in, and James was flagging a little. Peter could be surprisingly persistent. People always seemed to think that Pete was the innocent one, who followed along where Sirius and James led, but he was probably responsible for a fair quarter of their ideas, and could be pretty bloody-minded when he wanted to do something.

But James could be as stubborn as anyone when he needed to be, and he needed to be.

James turned on his side on his bed, hoping that Pete would let him go back to sleep. He wasn't the sort to sleep in on Christmas morning. He had always been a jumping-on-peoples-beds-at-half-five person, who insisted on presents being opened the second they woke up. But if it would get Pete of the subject of their potential visit to Cokeworth, he would sleep straight through to the New Year.

He ought to have known that he wouldn't be allowed to get away with that. As if sensing an opportunity to torment James, Sirius surfaced from his dead sleep, and got himself involved. James knew that he absolutely would not be going to see Lily. He certainly wasn't going to tell them that he had been writing to her, and that he had sent her a letter straight back after her owl had arrived just after midnight.

He knew his friends well enough to know that they would make something out of his staying up waiting for a letter from her. So, he just wasn't going to give them the chance.

"What are we talking about?" Sirius asked, propping himself up on his elbows, yawning.

"We're discussing the best way to get to Cokeworth, to visit Lily."

Sirius looked questioningly at James, trying to gauge his friends feelings on the matter. James, who had rolled back over on hearing Peter speak, shook his head mutinously. Sirius immediately smiled in that way that James knew meant trouble for him.

"So, Prongs? What are we thinking? Brooms?" Sirius laughed, using the nicknames that they had invented years ago. They had stopped using them so much recently, it felt a bit immature and after a particularly close call with almost being discovered by McGonagall, they weren't too keen to advertise nicknames that referenced their animagi – illegal animagi – forms. Sirius, as expected, was the least cautious, and still used the names occasionally.

"No." James muttered, sticking to his refrain, feeling ever more worried that even if he didn't go, they might.

"Would you two stop? Lily would kill you, James is right."

There was some quiet arguing that James didn't hear. He decided to give them a minute to work out what he had realised ages ago. Even if he wanted to see Lily, he didn't want to annoy her, and turning up on her doorstep on Christmas with her magic-hating sister in close proximity. He couldn't help but feel that if he ever met Petunia, and she was as bad as Lily, and Jac, had suggested, he would find it very difficult to be polite. How could you not like magic? Moreover, how could you not like Lily? She was one of the kindest people he knew, not to mention clever, and funny too. Her sister must see that, mustn't she?

When the sun was properly up, the boys decided that it was an acceptable time to go and get their presents. James was mostly looking forward to this, but he knew that one present sat under that tree, which both his parents and his mates were pretty insistent should remain under the tree. It was tiny, and wrapped beautifully, and it was from Lily. Still, presents were presents and it was hard not to be excited about it. He noticed as his parents, having apparently heard the inevitable noise of four boys moving through a very old house, emerged from their room that the prospect of Cokeworth had not been raised again. Not sure whether to be thankful that they weren't discussing it anymore, or worried that they weren't discussing it anymore, he continued down the stairs and headed straight to the main living room where the presents had been piled up under the tree. When everyone was assembled, the presents were distributed into individual piles with the flick of a wand. James felt a rush of affection for his parents when he saw that Sirius, Peter and Remus all had as many as he did, wrapped in the same paper his parents had used for his own. They had made sure that they didn't feel like guests, especially Sirius. Both Remus and Peter had been working on their parents for months to get them to let them spend Christmas with James' family, but Sirius was a resident, he was as much a part of this house as James, and his mum had worked so hard, ever since James had sent a letter to his mum mentioning Sirius' parents and their attitude, to make Sirius feel comfortable in the Potter household.

"Don't be too long, dinner will start at one, but the family will be here sooner." His mum called after the four boys as they climbed back up the stairs, each of them laden down with a bundle of presents. 'The family' was how Mrs. Potter referred to the wider portion of her husband's family. There weren't a lot of Potters, to be fair, but the few that there were made up for limited numbers with personalities. There was Uncle Elpheus, whose laugh was closer to a scream and who had been known to turn dull conversationalists into ducks. Aunt Isadora, who always smelled like liquorice and who lived on a canal boat. James wasn't embarrassed by his family, they were the right side of eccentric, and could always be relied upon for entertainment value. He was looking forward to Christmas dinner among them. Still, he was glad that there were a few hours between then and now to play a few games of miniature Quidditch with his new model pitch, and eat enough chocolate to make his dinner absolutely sickening.

"Pass it! You idiot, he's waiting!" James yelled, as one of his chasers whizzed towards the hoops, towards Sirius' defence, despite the presence of a teammate. This was their third game, and James was already proving as skilled at miniature Quidditch as the real version. He used to have a toy pitch, but it had gotten lost or broken long ago. Peter and Remus, having lost the coin toss, had gone to get food and were just getting back, having taken a little longer to try and hide their supplies from a frantic Mrs. Potter. They reached the room, and tipped the food out on the bed, next to where James was sitting. He took one of the tall glasses of pumpkin juice that Pete was balancing, and focussed back on the game. He just about choked when he took a gulp and realised it was decidedly stronger than pumpkin juice. When he looked around, Pete just shrugged.

"It's Christmas!"

"Fair enough…" James nodded and took another drink. After all, he was right, it was Christmas.

It was about an hour later, and an indeterminate number of 'pumpkin juices' later, James was feeling the spirit of the season. He had played at least five more games of mini-Quidditch, he had eaten enough chocolate to make him feel sick, and now he was leading a chorus of carolling. None of his three friends were very gifted at singing, but they made up for it with volume. It would have been hard for James' mood to be deflated, he was feeling extremely merry, but then, just as he was starting another carol, Peter managed it. With a glint in his eye, he turned breezily to Sirius, a smirk on his face.

"So, when do you think that we can leave?"

"I don't know, Pete!" Sirius said, in mock-nonchalance, that even in his inebriated state, James could tell was rehearsed. However, thanks to said state, James wasn't in full enough possession of his wits to avoid the obvious trap and he loudly responded.

"What d'you mean leave? Where do you lot think your going?"

"To see Evans, obviously… what's the place called? Coalworth?" Sirius asked, smiling out of the side of his mouth and looking at James with interest and amusement.

"Cokeworth." James supplied immediately, muttering as he blinked furiously, feeling unreasonably embarrassed.

"Right, yeah… The question is not so much when, as how?"

"What d'you mean?" Peter asked.

"Well, we're not exactly capable of apparating herself, I doubt Evans' house is connected by Floo and brooms could take all day."

"Hmm… fair point. This requires a bit of thought. What if-"

James realised, in a sort of delayed reaction, that they were acting as if he had agreed to this, as if he was in any way going to allow this to happen. He was not.

"Wait… no! We're not going anywhere!"

"Oh, c'mon!" Sirius whined, and threw a dark, irritated look to Peter and Remus.

James immediately launched into a rather mumbling, slightly tangential speech about the reasons not to go to see Lily. All the things he was saying were, more or less, the things that he had reasoned to himself earlier. It was rude, it was Christmas and it might annoy Lily. He didn't want to be seen as rude, he didn't want to ruin Christmas and he certainly didn't want to annoy or upset Lily. So, for those reasons and many more besides, he would not let himself be talked into going.

As he picked his cloak off the hook at the back door and handed cloaks to his three friends, he nodded vaguely to himself. He was sure that this was a good idea. He wasn't sure whether it was the several extra drinks that he had taken in the interim, or just the fact that it was so obviously a brilliant idea, but suddenly, going to Cokeworth on Christmas day seemed like the best idea he had ever had.

And that included the time he had first thought of flooding the corridor to stop them having to go to a Charms class last year for which none of them had done the very important and very elaborate homework.

That had been a very, very good idea, which should have indicated the brilliance of this one.