The Potters marry on a hot day in June, in a little church in Godric's Hollow. It's a small affair, some Order members who aren't on duty and most of the MacKinnons and the Longbottoms and some faces you recognize from school. You're surprised to be invited at all, really.
By this time, 1979, it's the height of the war, and you've been working in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures since you left school; it's not been long enough that you hate it yet, but the initial elation has worn off and you've grown slightly weary and your older colleagues give you patronizing smiles as you pass them, as if they know all too well the unhappiness you'll face soon enough, by the time you've reached their age.
Lily walks up the aisle to Here Comes the Sun. It's fitting, on a day like this, and it reminds you of childhood. The happy chords sound almost foreign on the ears now, but the choice seems defiant, as if they refuse to let the war ruin this day. Their special day – James and Lily are somewhat religious. It shows in their vows, and every line they quote or passage they site feels laden with double meaning.
It's not just you either, everyone in the pews can feel the war threatening to suffocate them and spoil the day, like a great weight sitting right on their chest. Peter Pettigrew won't stop fidgeting on the pew in front of you. Lily is tearful when she recites the words she's written, and strangely it makes her look all the more beautiful. James looks as besotted with her as the day she hexed leeks to sprout from Norrie Edgecombe's ears in Potions.
There's sadness to James too, as he reads his vows. A strained quality to his voice that makes you remember his mother and father aren't here to see him get married – in fact, the only one of their parents who is still alive is Lily's father, who walks her up the aisle with difficulty and coughs nastily into a handkerchief throughout the ceremony. You can't think he has much time left (his skin has that grey quality to it that Grandfather's had).
The reception is held in the large garden of the Potter estate, a huge white tent has been erected with a band and a dance floor and the sickly sweet smell of lavender threatens to give you a headache. Marlene MacKinnon, the bridesmaid, tells you that James will sell the manor soon. The only reason he didn't do it right away was so he could give Lily her perfect day. Something about that doesn't necessarily seem true, you think as you remember the James Potter from the first few years of school who was chubbier from being overfed and only learned to swear when he became friends with Sirius Black and who went home for every holiday, without fail. He was adored. He was spoiled. He was so loved. He misses them.
You mentally scold yourself. Why must you find the negative in everything? Even at a wedding? Lily's father is dying, James' parents are dead, and Remus Lupin looks like he'll be next. You fidget uncomfortably with the hem of your old blue dress robes. Blue like their lips, blue like the bruises that blossom easily so easily on their skin. Didn't Lily have a sister named Violet? You wondered where she was…
"Did you like it?" A slightly slurred voice pulls you out of your thoughts, and you realize you had been staring at Pettigrew, who looks perturbed as he slouches at the table across from you.
You look up and see the voice belongs to the best man, who is swigging from a flask as he sits down next to you. How ironic. Dark is his hair and Black is his name and dark are his eyes and voice and smile and laugh. Everything about him is just so dark.
He's dead already. You can see it in his eyes. Most of the members of the Order have accepted what will happen to them dutifully, but he wants it, goes looking for it. That's what Caradoc tells you anyway, when he comes home to the cramped flat you share in central London, injured and shaken and clutching a cup of tea. Sirius Black's been dead ever since he crawled out his mother's gnarled womb.
"Like what?" You reply quickly, because you're older now, not a schoolgirl, and you want to show Sirius' words don't affect you like they used to. They won't. And all the thoughts of war and death have learned to fly through your head at a mile a minute.
"My speech," He says casually, draping an arm lazily across the back of your chair. "I was bloody nervous of course, but I think Lil's dad liked the story about the Veela in Berlin."
You can't find it in you to give a laugh so you just sort of smile instead. "Did you really go to Berlin?" You ask.
"Of course," He grins. "Just after seventh year. We wanted to have a trip before... all this." He gestures towards the top table, where James is feeding Lily a forkful of cake, as if to say before he got trapped by the ball and chain in that sort of way that men do. You know he really means before the war and the Order. "And I've always wanted to go there anyway."
"Oh, that's right, you can speak German, can't you?" The reply is instant and innocent but it causes an awkward pause where the unspoken words, because of Gellert Grindlewald and your bigoted family that brought you up and abused you and fucked you up, linger awkwardly.
If it makes Sirius feel uncomfortable he doesn't show it, because he just says, "Yeah, a bit," and makes a crude joke about Bratwursts that makes you laugh. It's been ages since you last laughed like that. He could always make you laugh.
"What about you?" He asks, once you've both wiped the tears from the corners of your eyes. "I think your cousin told me you're at the Ministry."
The mention of Doc makes you tense - he's on duty tonight, investigating something to do with Death Eater activity in Bristol (he never tells you much, insisting it's too dangerous). "I work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Mainly communicatively with Merpeople but sometimes Grindylows too if we're short staffed. There's a Kraken in the North Sea at the minute, giving the islanders and the Merpeople on the coast of Skye lots of hassle."
He's grinning and you suddenly feel heat rise in your cheeks. "What?" You ask. "It sounds silly, I know, but lots of-"
"No, no," Sirius interrupts. "It's not that. It's just – well – you haven't changed much."
"Haven't I?"
"No, you haven't. You ramble when you're passionate about something." Seeing your embarrassed grimace he backtracks, "In a good way, I mean."
"I ramble and I work a boring office job," You say. "Is there anything else you'd like to berate me for?"
"It's not boring, surely, if it interests you so much," says Sirius, before he takes a swig from his flask and offers it to you. "I remember that old book you used to carry around with you. The one about Mermish – you must of read it at least fifty times."
"Good thing too. I'm fluent now."
He laughs. "You always had it. You were reading it that night."
There's no need to ask what night he's referring to. His grey eyes bore into you. He's drunk. Something else tells you the idea of fumbling about with you in bed will make him feel like he's seventeen again and there's no war quite yet.
You tear your eyes away from his and observe Mr. Evans sitting by himself, looking uncomfortable in a modest suit of brown. He fiddles with his table favor, a little toy snitch, and frowns as it flies past his head.
"Firewhiskey makes you nostalgic, then." You say light heartedly, realizing you had been gulping your own drink steadily. It's more of a statement than a question but it makes Sirius snort either way.
"War makes people nostalgic." He replies with a shrug, and you almost flinch at the W word, thinking of Doc in Bristol with nothing but a wand and ratty old robes to protect him. "And horny. The amount of elopings and babies I've been told about in the past six months is mad." It earns a hollow laugh from you.
There's a comfortable silence for some time in which you listen to Remus Lupin and Alfred Smythe quietly debate over something in muffled tones. Sirius slides his hand smoothly under your silk robes and rests it on your thigh. His hands are big and warm and if you close your eyes it almost feels like your beside the Black Lake and the buzzing of snitches flying overhead is really the hum of bees and butterflies softly roaming the grounds at Hogwarts.
You try to catch up with his drinking, because when will you get the chance to do this again, in this way, on this night, with him? You remember Doc's angry words on Sirius, "That bastard wants to get himself killed.", and it makes the throb between your legs even more frantic and your cheeks flush in the way they do when you are in your cups.
So, when the wedding goers start to yawn and there's only Marlene McKinnon left on the dance floor and the bride and groom have gone to bed hours ago and the band stops playing, you are both stifled with tension and longing and now is the time to go and go now.
You put your hand in the place where Sirius' wings aren't to steady yourself as he drags you from the table and, although in your right mind you'd never Apparate on the side of someone drunk, you wish so badly to forget the war and death and violent violet dead men's eyes you grip his arm and squeeze your eyes shut and only open them again when you're underneath him on a couch in some flat in Kensington and the warmth of his body makes you feel like you're both seventeen again.