The Wedding
Voldemort's rise to power brought with it so many bad things that, at the time, we found it hard to focus on the good things. But the good times were still there. I for one will never forget the day when James and Lily showed up at Sirius' flat, announcing that they were getting married. This happened only a few months after we had left Hogwarts, and I had moved permanently in with Sirius – another happy moment.
James naturally asked Sirius to be his Best Man, I had never expected otherwise. What I hadn't anticipated though, was Lily asking me to be her "Maid" of Honour. She thought it would be fitting, since Sirius and I were a couple, but I had to remind her that almost no one knew about us. In the end, I convinced her to choose her friend Mary instead, but I was still very touched by the gesture. I ended up performing as one of James' groomsmen, along with Peter.
This meant that I got to be part of the groomsmen, and their first responsibility – and in the case of James the word "stag-party" took on a whole new meaning. Sirius and I hosted it; Peter helped with the decorations. We had decorated the entire apartment with antlers, pictures of stags and does, but even though some of our guest (members of the Order, mostly) thought they were missing, we hadn't used hunting trophies as we found them too morbid – after all we wouldn't have felt comfortable partying if James' head had been on the wall, dead, and staring at us.
Even though we Marauders were the only ones to understand the theme's full meaning, the other guests found it quite hilarious too, which was of course what we intended – to brighten their spirits in that troubled time. Everyone thought it such a shame that James felt sick and had to lie down for half an hour, coincidentally at the same time as we started playing "pin the tail on the stag" – on a real live stag of course. James was a bit jumpy after he came back from his "nap", and didn't sit down for the rest of the party. Other than that, he seemed to have a great time.
The wedding itself was a splendid affair. The Potters, though old and in poor health by then, knew how to host a party, and seeing as it was their only child getting married, then went all in. To be fair, they probably would have gone all in as well, if Sirius and I had been ready to declare our love to the world, but so far only the Marauders, Lily, the Potters and my mother knew. Everyone else thought we were just a pair of bachelors sharing an apartment.
The first part of the wedding was very interesting. Seeing as all of Lily's family were Muggles, and most of the more distant relatives didn't know Lily was a witch, we started with what I guess was a traditional Muggle wedding (having never been to one, I find it hard to say if it was completely ordinary). Lily and her parents arranged most of this, including clothes for all of the guests, as only very few of the wizards and witches knew what to wear.
However, the following party (which in the Muggles' invitation was said to be only for the closest family) was as magical as it could possibly have been. Though a small party of only about 20 people – mostly members of the Order – every detail was perfect. The only Muggles present at that part of the party were Lily's parents. Her sister and her fiancé had been invited, but they had declined, not wanting anything to do with "that sort of people".
It was a fabulous winter wedding; the grounds around the Potters' manor house were covered in snow, and icicles hung from the roof all around the house. The party was held outside in a pavilion that had been magically heated so that none of the guests felt cold – but without the snow melting. We all changed into our dress robes, and Lily changed into a marvellous, white, silver and light blue dress, that was an entire ice-landscape in itself. I've never seen any dress that stunning.
James had insisted on buying both Sirius and I new dress robes for the occasion, and since none of us really had any money to buy them ourselves, we had accepted without too much resistance. Sirius was of course stunning in a set of deep blue dress robes, but he would have looked stunning no matter what he wore. My dress robes were mostly black, but with trimmings of amber, which Sirius insisted made my eyes stand out nicely.
As the party went on, and the firewhisky was found, some of the order members suddenly forgot all their worries and found their good moods. As I'd never really been able to get really drunk, I got to watch them becoming more and more incoherent and uncoordinated in their movements. Sirius took his responsibility as Best Man seriously, so he took it upon himself to get James as drunk as possible, and he helped him along by becoming equally plastered.
He managed to make James pass out a short time before daybreak. At that point he himself was too drunk to stand up, and was shamelessly hitting on every person in a radius of ten feet of him, including the Potters' dog, so I decided it was time for us to go home. I excused us to Lily, and somehow got Sirius home and in bed just in time for the sunrise.
Needless to say, we both slept in that day, we didn't get up until the sun was down again, and we were planning to just stay at home and enjoy each others' company, while Sirius tended his aching head. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to. We hadn't been up for more than half an hour before we received word from Dumbledore that we were needed for Order business – there had been a Death Eater attack during the day, more than twenty Muggles and two wizards were either injured or dead. Our moment of happiness was over, and we were brought abruptly back to reality.