Chapter 1

The summer was hot and dry so far, bringing with it hose-pipe bans and longing thoughts of the beach. The sun, as expected, made anyone even remotely British rush outside and set up camp in the sun before returning inside half an hour later with third degree burns.
The change of colour showed the change of season. In spring the world turned green and the plants became colours, in autumn the leaves turn gently to golden brown, in summer lawns turned slowly brown and people turned slowly red.

School did not finished until July so those unlucky enough to still be in compulsory education or who had foolishly decided to stay in sixth-form or college were left staring at the sunny days passing them by from the inside of classrooms. Those sitting GCSEs and A-levels cursed the inevitability of sunshine during exam seasons and prayed that it would last for longer than their first afternoon of freedom like it usually did. University students were somewhat luckier. The spate of sunshine had begun in April, just around Easter time when the intensive revision period began but had held out far longer than the end of exams.

The students of the University of Manchester were particularly pleased about this, none more-so than Lily Evans. Although she commuted into classes from the suburbs of Manchester, she still relished any opportunity to see the city, and when it's pouring with rain as it usually is – it is the rainiest city in the UK after all – it's difficult to see the sights. In the last week that all of her friends had had in halls before returning home, she had been the unofficial tour guide, taking them to places that had been unrealistic to visit in the cold winter months. Parks and cafes and tiny terrifying bars that only the best Manchurian knows about became the centre of their universe.

They stayed out late in small bars hidden down side streets and woke up on the floor of each other's bedrooms and slowly put together the pieces of the night before. For most of them this was one last week of fun and drunken hilarity before going home for the summer and getting to see their families. For Lily this was the last chance to be properly free for the summer, before she had to be at home with no uni friends to escape to.

She had sent CVs out into the world and the world had given nothing back so she had quietly accepted that she was not meant to escape from the dreary world of suburbia and instead would have to smile when her mum suggested an afternoon spent in Waitrose and would have to be polite and gracious when her relatives told her she had grown over the school year and how she should visit more, conveniently forgetting that Lily was still living at home and that all they had to do was pop round if they wanted to see her.

But she would bear it because it was summer and it was supposed to be a wonderful time of freedom and adventure and if you're miserable over summer then that's just your own fault. Even though she wasn't about to experience adventure. Or freedom. Her sister was home too, so freedom really was out of the question. She was home for the last time too, spending the weeks leading up to her wedding with her parents and sister, so she was going to be unbearably emotional. Tearing up at every last thing – last time we go food shopping as a family! Last time we take Molly to the vets as a family! Last time Lily threatens to hurt me as a family! – and then thinking Lily cold for doing nothing more than rolling her eyes. Petunia hadn't quite seemed to realise that marriage is the joining of two families, not the dramatic dissolving of them to make way for a new one. But of course, for Petunia, it was that dramatic. She had had, what she described as, a whirlwind romance and was now finally settling down with the man who had whisked her off her feet. In rational terms, this meant that she had met someone at the office she worked at, they had dated for two years and had decided that, since his parents wouldn't like it if they moved in together without first getting married, they should have a large celebration of their union with meringue dresses and pastel colours and highly pollenated flowers everywhere. Lily thought this was a ridiculous way to go about it. Marriage was wonderful and a wedding is a very happy occasion, but it did not call for quite so many tantrums and folders of swatches in her opinion.

But that was Petunia for you. She was lovely when she wanted to be, the obedient daughter with her parents, the modest blushing bride with sales people and not completely awful to Lily in public, but when something was not going perfectly her way then she could bring out the big eyes swimming with tears, the wrinkled nose, the lip-bite, the convincing hesitation, and she could save any unsavoury situation. Lily wouldn't say her sister was manipulative, but she would say that her parents and the people that surrounded Petunia sometimes had a strong resemblance to putty. It was a good thing her fiancée, Vernon, was such a strong stout man. He was the only person Lily had ever seen to flat out refuse Petunia something. They did later come to a compromise on the issue, whether or not to have seat covers with tassels or without, but it was a good half an hour later and Petunia did not exactly glow as they set out the details of the agreement. All in all, Lily thought Vernon was going to be quite good for her. He was not totally dreadful. He was totally boring and quite rude to Lily sometimes, but Lily thought that was fair enough, given that he was about to be promoted to being the youngest vice president of Gunnings Drills that there had ever been and she was a mere mortal being.

A week before the wedding Lily was informed she was to be a bridesmaid.

"I'm sorry?" she said, her fork half-way to her mouth. She was certain she had misheard. She must have been eating her shepherd's pie with more concentration than she thought.

"I said I need you be a bridesmaid." Petunia huffed, looking at her with pursed lips as though trying to imagine Lily in lemon coloured thing she had would have to wear.

"Are you sure?" Lily asked. She wondered whether this was an elaborate joke or whether Petunia was having some sort of fit. She half expected her to laugh and shout 'gotcha!' But she didn't. She sat examining Lily, waiting for a response.

"We'll have to see if you can fit into Maisie's dress." Petunia mused. Her brow was furrowed as if she were contemplating the solution to world poverty.

"Okay?" Lily found herself saying. At this point it seemed wiser just to accept it. "What happened to Maisie?" she asked, hoping that she had merely had a prior engagement and hadn't been bumped off because she had suddenly sprouted spots or gained weight.

"Her Gran died. The funeral's the same day as the wedding." Petunia said is so briskly and so without emotion that Lily wondered if she had heard what had come out of her mouth.

"Well is she okay?" Lily asked.

"Yes, yes she's fine. Well Maisie is, her Gran isn't obviously. But it does mean that we are one bridesmaid down and everyone else I could ask are all arriving too late for the rehearsal. So you'll have to do." Lily looked at her mum who raised her eyebrows at her in a look that said, 'don't start anything.' It was a look Lily was very used to ignoring.

"Thanks Tuney, I'm honoured." Lily tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice more for her mother's sake than Petunia's. She wasn't sure her mum would be able to deal with two feuding daughters as well as one insane one.

"Good. I'll have you try it on later." She said briskly, returning her attention to her plate of celery and raw carrots. She was maintaining a strict diet up until the wedding. Lily thought it was half the reason she was acting so batty. The other half was that she was just naturally batty.

Lily did end up fitting into Maisie's dress, luckily. She was a size smaller than her, so Petunia told her, but for some reason the dress seemed to fit just right. It was knee length and strapless and chiffon and a shade of yellow that didn't clash too badly with Lily's hair. Petunia of course commented on that smugly. Lily just smiled, glad that she wasn't going to be the one to give her another headache.

Lily went to unzip the dress but Petunia stopped her.

"Wait! You have to make sure the headpiece will look alright too." She said as she plunged a hand into a paper bag and pulled out a shiny glittering contraption that Lily really didn't want to have to wrap around her head. It might come alive mid-ceremony and attack them all. But the light in Petunia's eyes and the smile on her lips made her keep quiet and bend slightly so her sister could arrange it just how she wanted on the redhead's head.

Petunia spun her around to face the mirror and Lily saw that it didn't look as much like a robot alien as she thought it would. It was a pretty hairband with jewels that matched those on the belt that Petunia was tugging around her waist. All in all, she didn't make an awful bridesmaid.

She turned and smiled at Petunia. They didn't always get on, Lily was far too sarcastic about things which were far too important to Petunia, but sometimes they could act like normal sisters. Petunia wasn't massively affectionate so when her bony arms wrapped themselves around Lily she let them and hugged her back. Then her sister moved away and started pulling the accessories of her.

She had originally not been a bridesmaid because her mum hadn't pushed Petunia to make her one. Lily wasn't awfully upset about it, it meant less faffing about with Petunia's dress and less flapping about making sure she didn't need anything, but surprisingly her dad had put up quite a bit of fuss.

"But you're sisters! How can these friends of yours be more important than your sister!" he had said, standing to his full, although sometimes comically not all that large, height and pacing around the living room.

Petunia was sat on the sofa with crossed arms and legs and pursed lips. Lily was sitting beside her and they were both wearing the same disbelieving expression. It wasn't that hard to believe though really, their dad not understanding sibling relationships. He was an only child himself. But it was ridiculous that he thought that his daughters wanted Lily to be a bridesmaid. He knew them and he knew that they had grown apart since Lily was eleven and had won a scholarship to the private school up the road. Petunia thought she had turned all posh and pretentious and had refused to talk to her more than necessary. Lily had decided it wasn't worth the effort to persuade her otherwise.

So why their dad was insisting they were the best of friends and that Petunia would be heartbroken not to have Lily in her wedding was beyond either of them.

"But dad, Lily doesn't want to be a bridesmaid." Petunia said calmly. Lily could tell she was holding back a dramatic sigh. She was probably saving it for later.

"Yeah, and Petunia has so many friends that she wants involved and I'm already involved enough, I mean I am her sister," she said, trying not to look too bitter about it, "and she's already asked me to sing something at the wedding. She doesn't need to make an extra effort to involve me to remind me I'll always be part of her life." Lily reasoned. She tried not to vomit on her own sickliness. Petunia shuffled about next to her, avoiding looking at her.

Their dad frowned at them both in turn and then seeing how casual they were about it, how they were quite happy to sit there and reason through why it was ridiculous for Lily to be a bridesmaid, he shook his head and took a deep breath.

"If I had a brother," he said and both the girls restrained themselves from rolling their eyes. He always brought this up when they weren't getting along and by now they knew the 'if I had a brother' speech by heart. "If I had a brother," he started again, "I would treasure him. He would be my best friend. He would have been my best man at my wedding, he would have been your favourite uncle and I would have appreciated him! Not like you two who don't seem to understand that you are the only sisters you are ever going to have and you act as if you're dispensable! You're sisters! You should appreciate each other." He finished with a snort of breath

Lily and Petunia pointedly looked away from each other. It was a tad bit ironic that in a moment when they were being told to act more like sisters they were united in not wanting to do so.

Their dad sighed. "Fine. If you don't want your sister in your wedding then don't have her there. But you'll regret it." He said dramatically enough that Lily and Petunia both put their hands over their mouths to stop themselves laughing, but their mum who was sitting out of their dad's sight, who had burst into silent giggles.

"What are you two laughing at?" he asked as Lily started shaking with laughter. Their mum let out a loud peel of laughter and their dad turned around in what Lily presumed was disbelief. It said something about their relationship that he only had to look at her to calm down and join in with her laughter.

It was good that Lily's parents were able to keep each other laughing because in the week leading up to Petunia's wedding there weren't a lot of moments that naturally turned to laughter. On the Tuesday Petunia thought that her veil had a hole in it. There was a good half an hour of wailing before Lily pointed out that the thing that Petunia thought was a hole was actually just the gap in the lace edging where it would clip onto her hair. On Wednesday they found out that Petunia's maid of honour was only going to be able to make it up on the morning of the wedding. Petunia screamed and wailed, the first two of her bridesmaids to arrive swarmed around her and Lily came out of her room expecting there to be blood and mayhem and instead found Petunia sitting on the sofa with a cup of strong sweet tea with Miranda using a magazine to fan her and Andrea was on the phone talking calmly and determinedly to who Lily later figured out was Carolyn, the maid of honour.

"Yes, we understand that you are unable to get train tickets before Friday, but is there any other way for you to travel up here? Yes, yes I understand that Carolyn, but this is your best friend's wedding." Andrea's voice was so patronising Lily had a hard time not taking the phone away and smacking her. She spoke slowly and clearly and Lily could pretty much hear Carolyn sighing. Lily had met her a couple of times and she actually seemed a reasonably nice person, which had been a big surprise considering she was Petunia's friend.

"Carolyn, Carolyn, Carrie, really is that necessary? If you can make it up here on time then that would be wonderful," Andrea smiled sweetly whilst kicking a shoebox across the room, "But of course if it is really impossible, then maybe you could try extra hard to make up for it? Well I don't know, I think that's the sort of thing you should have come up with."

Lily rolled her eyes, asked if Petunia needed anything, was shooed out of the way by Miranda and slinked off to hide in the kitchen with her mum and a large pot of tea.

The wedding couldn't have come sooner. Well, no, it could have come before all of the drama and panic that only ended in giving Lily a migraine. But when it finally came it was not at all as bad as all the pre-wedding drama would have indicated.

Petunia looked lovely, Carolyn arrived early enough to help her get dressed and to fuss about her as she sat waiting for the wedding car to arrive. Lily took a back seat and let the other bridesmaids deal with Petunia's wedding morning panics. They came every ten minutes and usually ended in another layer of lipstick and a puff of perfume. But then they were at the church and Petunia was smiling her way down the aisle and Lily was at the end of a long trail of bridesmaids following behind. She managed not to cry as Petunia and Vernon exchanged vows, but on glancing at her parents she saw that they were making good use of a large box of tissues her mother had managed to fit into her handbag.

At the reception Lily found a lovely spot next to a table full of champagne where she watched the guests fill in. She had been placed next to her parents on the seating chart and that was perfectly fine with her. Vernon had a few cousins that Petunia had teased her about and Lily half expected to find herself at a table full of stout moustached men. The food was wonderful, the speeches were tamely sweet and the first dance was a short awkward affair. Luckily for Lily by the time it came for her to sing almost everyone had one eye on the door to the kitchen, so nobody really noticed how dull the song was that Petunia had asked her to sing.

Petunia came up to her just before the end of the night, slightly tipsy and with the biggest smile on her face that Lily had ever seen.

"Lily," she said, putting her hands on Lily's shoulders slightly harder than a sober person would have, and in a more friendly fashion than a sober Petunia would have.

"Yes Tuney?" Lily smiled at her sister, gripping her waist to stop her toppling over.

"You – you might not – " she started and then looked confused, shook her head and looked up at the disco ball above them.

"Tuney, are you alright?" Lily asked, laughing at her drunk sister.

"Fine. I'm fine." She said grinning. "You however," she said and her face took on a more sombre expression, "You are not as bad as I thought you were." Her voice dropped and she spoke in what she evidently thought was a whisper.

"Right. Thanks for that Tuney." Lily said dryly.

"It's alright Lily. It's alright. And hey!" she swung an arm out, narrowly missing knocking a hat off one of her new in-laws as they walked past, "Maybe this time next year we'll all be at your wedding!" She finished with a manic look on her face.

Lily looked at her carefully, unsure where all this good-will was coming from, but then Petunia burst out laughing.

"That's funny. That's very funny," She said giggling, "because for you to get married, you'd have to - have to -" She couldn't hardly finish her sentence because she was giggling so much.

"Have a boyfriend?" Lily said somewhat sadly.

Petunia's eyes became very bright and she smiled like a mad-woman, "Yes!" she cried before shrieking with laughter.

Lily smiled to herself. It was good to know she could still make her sister laugh. Petunia tottered off to find Vernon and Lily moved over to the table full of nibbles and champagne. Food and alcohol. The best companion for the single little sister. It's not that she was always the bridesmaid and never the bride, this was the first wedding she had ever actually been to and she was only nineteen, but there was something quite sad about seeing your sister so secure of marital happiness without even being in reach of your own.

She smiled and waved as Petunia and Vernon left in a shower of rice. They would be jetting off to Crete, to a hotel that Vernon had decided on and had refused to tell Petunia about. It was supposed to be a surprise, but she had such trouble with not knowing what to pack he ended up telling her everything. Maybe he wasn't so immune to her after all.

The night had started to get cold and Lily's mum and dad were leaving. She climbed into the backseat of the car and let her eyes settle on nothing as the dark road slipped by outside. She went up to bed almost as soon as she was in the house, pulling her pajamas on faster than should really be possible. It was nice being able to change out of the fancy dress, but it was also nice knowing that she had something fancy to put on if she ever wanted it. It wasn't that bad a dress after all. She put it into a clothes bag and hung it on the side of her wardrobe.

The day was over and she could relax. No more panicking, no more Petunia, no more noise, no more excitement.

Nothing.

For the entire summer.