On Monday morning, the mail arrived at precisely eight o'clock. Lily was sat amongst her friends at the Gryffindor table, and she waited patiently for her mail. In the clamor of one owl delivering an excessively large package to Nadia, Lily almost didn't realize the letter that dropped next to her plate of eggs and toast. Only when the delivery owl nipped at her sleeve did she notice.
She could tell who had written the letter by the handwriting on the envelope, and so she tilted it away so no one else could read it. She opened it slowly, hesitantly. Part of her hoped that her request had been met with mocking and derision. But the responsible part of her, the prefect and (hopefully) future Head Girl in her, knew that she had an obligation to Slughorn.
The letter was brief. It addressed her as Miss Evans, which was surprisingly polite. Lily suspected they didn't know her blood status. The letter went on to suggest a meeting place Lily had never heard of and which was most certainly highly dangerous, where they could negotiate on Saturday evening. The author made it clear that no other circumstances would abide.
Lily wondered whether she shouldn't just go to Dumbledore.
"Hey, Evans, who's the letter from?" asked James, who sat across from Lily.
"My mum," she muttered.
James peered at the envelope, which Lily had let fall onto her plate. James picked it up and examined it more closely.
"I didn't know muggles had family crests," said James. He pointed to the broken wax seal, which was carved into a miniature of a coat of arms.
Lily ignored him. She re-read the letter, pondering her options. When she looked back up at James, he had an odd look on his face. He didn't press the point, though. But as everyone walked out of the Great Hall, he leaned down to whisper in Lily's ear.
"You're not writing to the people threatening Slughorn, are you?" he asked.
"I'm not doing anything stupid, Potter," she said. It wasn't a lie – at least not yet.
"Answer the question," he insisted.
"I did. Would you care to monitor all of my mail, or just the things you think you're entitled to know?" Lily whispered harshly.
"I think we all have a right to know if you're putting yourself in danger," he said.
Lily shook her head. She said, "I'm handling it, okay?"
And then she hurried to catch up to Alice. She didn't want to hear any response Potter had. Most likely, she was getting herself into something very stupid and dangerous. But she didn't need Potter to tell her that, and she certainly didn't want him to be the one helping her get out of it.
Peter Pettigrew eagerly awaited the mail on Tuesday morning. Yesterday's delivery had disappointed him, and he now counted six days now since he had sent his last letter. A response was due by now, certainly.
He watched the cascade of owls fly into the Great Hall. Peter's eyes marked where each one was headed. Each time one headed for the Gryffindor table, his breath caught in his chest a little bit, like seeing a waiter finally come out with his food. But each time, the owl went to someone else.
Sirius never received any mail, so he watched the morning ritual with cool detachment. Remus received a letter every so often from his parents, but it was infrequent enough that he, too, watched the mail be delivered without much interest. James, however, who was aggressively interested in other people's business, watched the flow of letters toward the Gryffindor table with rapt attention. When a letter made its way into Lily's hands, his posture stiffened and he suddenly looked concerned. Peter made a note to ask him about it later.
The stream of owls trickled off. Only a few still hovered in the air, and Peter despaired receiving a reply today. But then, finally, the very last owl dropped a crisp white envelope in front of him. Peter smiled like it was Christmas morning. His friends noticed his glee as he reached for his letter.
"What's got you so excited, Pete?" asked Sirius.
"No one, no one," muttered Peter.
He tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter within. Dark purple ink curled into lovely, tiny handwriting. Natalie wrote in a mixture of print and cursive, but Peter was able to discern each word without difficulty.
She addressed him as Peter, unlike his friends. Her letter started by mentioning how her family, her crazily large family with more little brothers than Peter could keep track of, was doing. Their apothecary brought in as good of business as ever, but her mother's vegetable garden was withering by the day. Natalie had started doing more managerial and accounting work at the apothecary over break, and she told Peter all about how much she was learning. Then she apologized for the long rant about technical things she was sure was dull as dishwater. Peter grinned the whole way through her run-on, enthusiastic sentences about overhead and expenses.
Natalie devoted the rest of the letter to remembering some of the things she and Peter had done over break. "And remember the snowman we built?" she wrote at one point, "I swear it reminded me of my uncle Henry." She mentioned one day when Peter had helped her stock items in the apothecary. He remembered wanting so badly to kiss her right there in the back of the store but not having the nerve. He was glad, at least, that the moment had stood out in Natalie's memory as much as it had in his own.
When he finished reading the letter, he looked up and noticed his friends leaning in and grinning at him.
"So…Pete," began James.
"Don't be an arse, Prongs," said Remus.
"I wasn't going to! I was just about to ask our dear friend what's got him looking like a first year in Honeyduke's," said James.
"Isn't it obvious, dear fellows?" said Sirius importantly. "I do believe our friend Pete has himself a girlfriend."
"No, I don't," said Peter. He lamented, in that moment more than any other yet of his young life, his utter inability to lie.
"What's her name?" asked Remus. "How'd you two meet?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Peter tried again.
His friends all exchanged knowing looks. Thankfully, though, they let him keep up the charade for now. Peter strongly suspected that they would pester him about it at some point in the future. But quite frankly, he didn't care. He spent all of herbology that day crafting his response to Natalie's letter in his head.
Sirius Black, as a rule, did not send letters to anyone. And his parents, as a rule, never sent letters to their least favorite son. Therefore, he got mail in the mornings about as often as Dumbledore got laid. Which was to say, almost never.
However, on Wednesday morning, Sirius would have to let Dumbledore hear the good news, as Sirius received a letter as he munched on some toast. He looked at the envelope twice, checking that its delivery to him hadn't been a mistake. But the name "Sirius Black" had definitely been written on the envelope's face. Flipping it over, Sirius suddenly had an expression like someone had farted in his kippers.
The wax seal had been shaped into the Black family crest.
He tossed aside the letter. He didn't want to give anyone, even himself, the illusion that he cared. At all.
But James, in all his infinite loyalty and nosiness, opened the letter that evening while Sirius was in the shower. When Sirius emerged from the bathroom, his wet hair dripping in his face and one hand securing a towel around his hips, James waved the letter in the air.
"Your crazy cousin's getting hitched," James said.
"Which one?" replied Sirius. He made a point to seem less interested than he would in a quidditch game played by slugs.
"Bellatrix. To some bloke named Rodolphus Lestrange," said James.
"I've met him. He's a blood-supremacist fucker," said Sirius. "Throw out the letter."
"You sure?"
"Do I look like I care about my family?"
Sirius was seldom more serious than when he talked about his distaste (to put it lightly) for his family. James recognized the look on his best friend's face, and so he crumpled the letter and tossed it expertly into the rubbish bin on the other side of the room.
"Showoff," muttered Sirius.
"Showoff who's going to win us the quidditch cup," corrected James. "I'll thank you to show some damn respect for your captain."
"I've got your bloody respect right here," said Sirius, suddenly grinning at his friend's antics.
Sirius grabbed a pillow from the nearest bed (Frank's) and tossed it at James's head. It was a perfect shot, and James's glasses were knocked askew. James reached for the pillow to toss it back at Sirius, but then he stopped.
"Oi, Padfoot?"
"Yeah?"
"Maybe go get dressed, yeah?"
"Oh, right."
By Thursday morning, Fran had all but forgotten about the letter she'd sent her mum over the weekend. And so her initial reaction when an owl dropped a letter in front of her was the usual joy she felt to hear from home. But as she opened the envelope, she remembered what she had written to her mum on Monday. She suddenly had little desire to read her the reply.
"Get a letter from home, Fae?" said Nadia.
Fran nodded, put the letter aside, and took a long drink of pumpkin juice.
"Aren't you going to read it?" asked Nadia.
"In a minute. Lily, weren't you about to tell some joke you heard the other day?" said Fran.
As Lily told a joke about an old blind wizard and a billygoat, Fran noticed Nadia looking at her out of the corner of her eye. Fran put her arm around her girlfriend's waist to pacify her, but both of them seemed acutely aware of the unopened letter on the table.
Fran waited until they were in Charms before she finally opened it. She figured that in all of the chaos that class usually entailed, she could keep the letter's contents relatively private from Nadia.
The thing was, she had no way of knowing her mum's reaction would be bad. But the nature of these things was for Fran's mind to jump to the worst possible scenario and start guarding against it. But putting off reading the letter wasn't going to change what was in it, and so after Professor Flitwick finished his instructions, Fran opened the envelope.
She read it so quickly the first time she didn't even register what it said. Upon a second, slower reading, her heart fell to somewhere around her kidneys, and her kidneys fell to somewhere between her knees and her feet.
"Fae?" said Nadia, having noticed her girlfriend's reaction. "Everything all right?"
Fran smiled at Nadia. She folded up the letter and tucked it in her pocket. "Everything's fine."
By Friday morning, everyone was growing restless for the weekend to arrive once more. James and his friends were rowdier than they had been all week at breakfast. They loudly debated Gryffindor's prospects for the quidditch season, speculated about Peter's apparent girlfriend back home, and teased Nadia and Fran about becoming the old, married couple of the group. Granted, the two of them had only been together a few weeks, but they were the only ones in a relationship. The status of old married couple, by default, fell to them.
James had sat himself near Lily; he'd been doing so all week. Lily had received two more letters from the same person she had on Monday, and she remained just as cagey about it. James hadn't pressed the point after a few words about the second letter. He figured if he had any hope of helping, it didn't lay in nagging the girl endlessly. He'd learned his lesson all too well about pestering Lily too much when he wanted something.
Halfway through breakfast, James wondered whether he could ask Lily what she was doing over the weekend without it sounding like he was asking her out. He was spared further thought on the matter by the arrival of the morning mail. A brown owl, one James recognized as being his father's, landed in front of his breakfast with a letter in its talons.
"Hello, Archimedes," he said, scratching the owl behind its neck.
He pushed forward the rest of his food for the owl to munch on, and then he opened the letter. It looked like it was from both of his parents, as the top half was in his dad's handwriting and the bottom half was in his mum's. Ordinarily, they took it in turns to write him. He wondered what occasioned a message from both of them.
His dad's language was brief, as per his usual style. He told James about several attacks throughout the countryside that hadn't been in the papers. The death tolls were depressingly high. His father went on to speculate about the growing numbers of Death Eaters and about sightings of magical creatures Voldemort may have recruited to his side.
James's mum's part of the letter was no cheerier. She mentioned a spy who had just been rooted out in the Wizengamot and who apparently had done some severe damage. Then she detailed several information leaks that had had fairly fatal consequences for a handful of muggleborns in hiding. She finished by mentioning that she and dad were in excellent health, that she hoped James was in kind, and that she wished him good luck with quidditch and his classes.
P.S, the letter ended, Whatever happened to that girl you used to talk about so much? You hardly spoke of her at all over break. Your father and I have been wondering, but he thought it indelicate to ask.
James couldn't help but laugh a little at the thought of his parents debating whether to ask him about Lily. Looking up at the redhead in question, he knew that he was in just as deep as he had ever been. But his parents' words about the attacks on muggleborns picked at the edges of his mind. James wondered what kind of future Lily had in the wizarding world, if this was what they would be going into in a little over a year. He wondered whether her future, whatever of it may exist, included him.