Prompts: Permission, Useless, Never Say Never – The Fray

Written for: Stretch Your Boundaries Competition by Teddy, Round 1

Summary: James visits Mr. and Mrs. Evans to ask for Lily's hand. Sadly, Petunia makes an appearance with an unexpected threat. Drabble.

Permissions and Threats: A Drabble

A young man with messy black hair and square glasses adorning his hazel eyes appeared out of nowhere in the dark and dingy alleyway. He seemed to be dressed to the nines in a tuxedo, the only thing out of place was his hair, which in vain he tried to pat the tendrils which were standing in all possible directions. But it proved to be useless.

He sighed and contained a groan.

This was not working out the way he had planned, he was supposed to be on time, looking presentable with tamed hair. But his best friend and brother in everything but blood (and even in blood but distantly) had chosen the very day to use all of his Muggle hair gel and he did not have any stock of hair gel or hair taming potion left.

James Potter was a happy man, even with the increasing terror of the dark lord, James was happy. He had the love of his life, who loves him back (James still cannot believe it, and partly is ecstatic), Lily Evans and his three best friends he knows he can trust with his life. He and his friends and girlfriend had just graduated Hogwarts, were the members of the Order of The Phoenix, a secret society functioning to put and end to Voldemort and they were training to be Aurors.

James loved Lily more than anything in the world, he knew they were too young but he also knew that there was no guarantee they would live a long life (even though James did not like to think about that perspective of life, it was true), so if James had no guarantee of what would happen next moment, he wanted to live all the moments of his remaining life with Lily. This was what drove James to ask Lily to marry him. But before that, like a gentleman, he had been trained to be by his mother he needed to ask for Lily's hand from her father.

In all honesty, James was not scared of Lily's father, he was a jovial, open-minded man but when it came to Lily and her sister he could be a bit scary.

So James was decidedly nervous for the evening. And the fact that it did not begin the way he had planned it to be made him more nervous.

He made his way to the moest two storey Evans' home.

If James was feeling nervous just standing there before the door opened he felt a thousand times more nervous after the door opened. Because on the door was Petunia Evans, Lily's elder sister. Who despised anything and everything magic, that included her sister and her sister's boyfriend.

James swallowed, the snitch sized knot in his stomach grew to the size of bludger.

'Damn,' he thought to himself, 'I thought Mr. and Mrs. Evans would be alone at the house,'

"What are you doing here?" Petunia asked, pronouncing 'you' with disgust, "And why are you dressed like prom?"

James's mind went back to the night Lily and he had dinner with Petunia and her fiancé, that had been a total disaster.

"I came to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Evans," James said, finding his voice, "I thought they'd be here."

"Oh James," Mrs. Evans says from behind Petunia, "You are here! I thought I told you to call me Rose? Come on in,"

Things went smoothly after that; though it sounded unbelievable to James he got permission to marry Lily from her father, after a bit of grilling, of course. Petunia had listened to the conversation in complete silence and James was sure that she would say something to object or insult. But she didn't.

After James took his leave from Lily's parents, to go and ask Lily the big question, Petunia stopped him in the doorway, "Potter, wait," she said, with a dignified sniff, "I want you to know that you will keep my sister happy and not hurt her, if I hear she came home crying because of you, you know I will kill you."

And with that she turned and left. He wondered briefly if he had imagined the conversation.

He remembered Lily telling that Petunia would never care for her well being, ever, but as James stared at the retreating figure of his girlfriend's sister, he believed that one should "never say never", anything is possible...