AN: So, anybody who's read The Stag and the Doe start to finish has already read this one, but I decided to post each chapter as a new story so I can keep them all but stop adding them all onto one long fic (read Author's Note at the end of tSatD if you're confused). Anyways, if you haven't read this before, enjoy!

Edit: To those of you who've favorited this but not reviewed, or read but not reviewed, could you do me a teensy favor and leave me a comment? Thanks for favoriting it, but I'd love to know why you did. Thanks guys.

Forks

"C'mon James, almost there..."

"You could help me, you know," James grunted from the landing above her. "You have alot of heavy shit."

"You offered to take the stuff that goes upstairs upstairs and I'd do the downstairs stuff. You're not going back on your word are you James Potter?"

"Of course not Lily dear," he said in a falsely sweet voice.

She smiled to herself as she pulled things out of boxes and arranged them in the living room, humming softly. She heard the banging of heavy boxes above her, the occasional pounding of feet up and down the stairs, and frequent grunts from James.

Delicately she laid out countless picture frames, some of them dusty, but she brushed them off. She stopped to look at each one of them, smiling and stroking the glass with her fingers.

Pictures of her family, Petunia exempt, smiled up at her. Since her eleventh birthday, Petunia had refused to be in any pictures with her sister. Her mum and dad grinned and waved, both wearing looks of interest that the picture being taken, they were told, would be able to move. Beside the photo she put a still picture of her and her sister, when Lily was ten. They were so happy... but her sister wasn't part of her life anymore.

She moved on, placing pictures all along the coffe table, the burreau. She stopped to look closely at a photo of 'the Marauders', all grinning devilishly at the camera as though they were plotting something. The photo was taken in their fourth year so, knowing them, they probably were. Sirius stood cooly, smiling his admittedly very sexy smile from the frame next to it, Remus in the next one, and a small picture of Peter in the one to the left. Finally she set down the last picture, one that had been taken only a week ago, of her and James grinning broadly at the camera. He was holding her hand tightly, and she remembered that that had been the moment he had asked her to move in with him.

She moved onto the little kitchen, bringing in boxes of cutlery and dishes, a mix of hers, James' and new ones.

"Are you sure..."

She counted out nineteen forks. Nineteen. That was alot of forks. She wondered why they had bought more when James' mum had given them more than enough forks for two people?

"...that you don't..."

Then again, was nineteen even enough?

"...want to help me? This desk is heavy."

She stopped counting cutlery and sat down on the floor, her back resting against the wall. She had just turned nineteen, in fact, they had just come back from her mother's house a few hours before from her birthday dinner. Then it had been straight to the little town of Godric's Hollow with the moving truck. James had complained about using a truck when they could just magic everything in, but Lily had insisted they put out a good first impression on their neighbors. Suddenly appearing with all their stuff wasn't, she told him, considered normal to muggles.

She hid her face in her hands. True, they had been going out for two years and he had more than proven his love for her. But she had a sudden, horrifying thought that maybe she wasn't ready to move in with him. Maybe nineteen wasn't enough after all.

"Lily?"

She felt familiar strong arms wrap around her, his breath on her neck, and before she knew it she was sobbing into his shoulder. He was stunned - all he could do was hold her, giving her a soft, comforing squeeze every once and awhile.

Finally he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away from him, looking into her watery emerald eyes, her tear-streaked face.

"Whats wrong?"

She closed her eyes and shook her head, rubbing her cheek with her hand. "We need more forks, James," she whispered.

"More forks?"

In any other situation the look of pure confusion on his face would have been funny. "We have nineteen forks, sweetheart, I'm sure thats enough. We could invite the whole order over and still have enough. Maybe it's the knives we should be worrying about?"

She gave him a very small, very watery smile.

"I don't know if I'm ready for this, James," she said quietly.

"Ready for what?" He looked concerned, by the look of the little wrinkle on his forehead. He squeezed her hand.

"This, everything. Were only nineteen, James! It's just such a huge step for me."

"It's a huge step for me too, Lily, but we'll pull through, we always do."

"What if we don't pull through sometime, though James. We can't keep evading things our whole lives, I can't live like that."

"We don't have to live like that Lily, not our whole lives. It won't always be like this."

"We're being chased by Voldemort every corner we turn, Dumbledore can't help us forever. The fact that we're both in the order, both living together, both so young... it scares me." Fresh tears brimmed in the corners of her eyes.

"Dumbledore has put protections on this house that you can't even imagine, Lily, did you know that?"

She shook her head. The supposed protections were quite new to her. Why hadn't he told her?

"He has put spells on this house that even Voldemort couldn't imagine. Let me ask you something, do you trust Sirius?"

Had he asked her that three years ago, Lily's immediate answer would have been 'no way in hell'. But since their seventh year, Lily would trust him with her life. She told him that, and he nodded reassuringly.

"Sirius is the only one who can betray our whereabouts. Our house is unplottable and invisible to anyone but us, Sirius, and anyone Sirius has told. Most of the order doesn't even know. For Voldemort to find us now, Sirius would have to tell him where we were, and you know he wouldn't do that."

"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" She looked into his hazel eyes and he smiled sadly.

"I didn't want you to worry too much. If I had told you, would you not have been scared that the problem was worse than you thought?"

There was too much truth in his words for her to argue, so she said, "So you moved all that stuff up there by yourself when no one could see the house anyways?"

He nodded and she smiled.

"You did that for me?"

"I'd do anything for you, Lily Evans. Anything. I'd jump off a cliff for you."

"I would never ask you to do that," she said, affronted.

He laughed. "I know, sweetie, it was a figure or speech. But if you asked me to, I would be more than happy to oblige..."

She punched his arm. "Stop it!" she cried, laughing quietly.

"My point is, I love you more than anything Lily. You are my life. If anything happened to you, I would make sure I met the same fate. That way we would never be apart. If you could ever even question that..."

"I wasn't questioning it," she said quietly.

"I know, I know." He stuck his hand in his pocket as he often did when he was thinking, or nervous, or both. She thought nothing of it.

"I love you, James," she said suddenly.

"I love you too," he said, retracting his hand from his pocket. "Will you marry me?"

She was so shocked she couldn't even wrench open her mouth. She looked soundlessly at the ring in his hand, then at his unreadable face. If she expecting anything, it was not this, not on their moving day, not when they were only nineteen...

"Of course!" She had never been more sure of anything in her life. Never been more sure that that was absolutely the right thing to do. Marrying James Potter, she knew, would be the best thing for her.

He grinned, laughed, and pulled her into a tight hug that turned into a soft kiss. She smiled.

"Gee, thanks, now we have wedding plans to make on top of everything else!" she joked. He gave her a mock apologetic grin and shrugged.

"It won't be too hard. I know I can talk the Hogwarts elves into helping us out with the food. The guest list can only be a select few of course..."

"Because we'll have it here, right?"

He smiled. "Right. In the yard, it's big enough."

"Alice can help with decorations -"

"- and Sirius can help with... well, I actually don't know what he can help with, but he'll be the best man anyways."

"We can have the wonderful white wedding I've wanted since I was a girl."

"And maybe, if we're really lucky, you can keep the forks."

AN: Maybe you could tell I came up with this idea while I was eating lunch. Review, review, review, please and thanks.