Prompt: Jily celebrate their pre-wedding by doing something fall related
Lily laughed as Sirius flung another spoonful of pumpkin guts at Remus' head– only for Remus to retaliate by dumping the entirety of his newly carved pumpkin over Sirius'.
"Of course yours would look perfect," James complained, looking over at her pumpkin from where he sat carving his own. According to him, it was clearly a snitch, and he was flying behind it about to catch it. But he'd taken a lot of ribbing from the whole lot of them– saying it looked more like an old hag trying to snatch a flying flobberworm.
Lily eyed her own pumpkin, which boasted a carving of the Hogwarts castle. "What can I say? I'm a natural," she teased with false arrogance and a flip of her hair. This earned her spoonfuls of pumpkin innards flung her way by everyone in attendance.
"She's only good at it because she's done this every year since she was like two. She has the unfair advantage" complained Sirius, whose own pumpkin carving of his animagus form had come second only to James' in it's undecipherable outline. The large dog had been mistaken as a desk, centaur, or most notably, two banshees on their way to class– by a comment from Peter. "And," he added, "These muggle pumpkins are tiny! No room to show off my work or add in the details I'd planned on! Truly Hagrid's pumpkins put these puny ones to shame." The group of assembled friends gave a collective eye roll, but laughed with a warm fondness at Sirius' dramatic proclamation.
Mary had opted for a traditional Muggle jack-o-lantern, and Marlene had followed suit– though adding a few embellishments to hers. Remus had placed second, in their unofficial pumpkin carving competition, with a depiction of a wolf, stag, dog, and rat, racing through the forest under the full moon.
"Remind me again why we are sitting here, carving pumpkins, the week before your wedding? Your spring wedding?" Marlene intoned, as she attempted to remove the pumpkin goop, deposited there oh so lovingly by Sirius, from her long blonde hair to no avail. "Shouldn't we be… I don't know– making floral bouquets or charming some lilies to sing a wedding march or something?"
"They're not going to be the center of our decorations! You'll barely notice them. They'll blend in with the other flowers and decor I've picked out. And you know full well why I wanted to have pumpkins decorating the venue," Lily chided.
"Shared love of pumpkin juice," James teased with a wink, clearly recalling when she'd dumped an entire goblet full of the stuff down his robes when he'd tried to ask her out in fifth year.
"Ugh, yes. Because you and James are sickeningly in love and sappy about it," Marlene groaned with a dramatic roll of her eyes. "And the idiot proposed to you in a pumpkin patch, unplanned, I might add– and he didn't even consult your best friends about it!" The ending was punctuated with a glare sent in James' direction, which he easily shrugged off. "He didn't even get you a ring!"
"Well, at the time, no," Lily allowed, "But I will admit, he more than outdid himself when he did give me a ring." She glanced down lovingly at the solitaire surrounded by a halo of smaller diamonds, a gesture that had become commonplace for her ever since James had slipped the ring on her finger.
She looked up to find him already looking at her, the love and happiness shining in his eyes tempting her to burst into happy tears again– much as she had when he'd presented her with the ring the first time. She would never get tired of that look. Never get tired of him. Overcome with love for the man she was set to marry, she couldn't even be bothered to hide the silly grin that spread across her face to match his own.