Summary: Lily, Sirius, James, a party full of Muggles and surprisingly few ghosts. My contribution to the Seven of Quills challenge.

Disclaimer: The characters don't belong to me. You all know that. You all know that they belong to the wonderful author that we all know and worship, J.K. Rowling.

Author's Note: This is in response to the SevenOfQuills list fic challenge. For challenge elements, see the first part.

Thank you to everyone who posted (all five of you). Trinity/Padfoot's Biggest Fan (Yes, a half-naked Sirius is very appealing); Rainsong (Thanks for all the kind words! And shhh about the homepage!); Black Ice; thistlemeg (That's one of my favourite lines, too. I hope your math test went well. Petunia's around . . . somewhere. I got the challenge from an e-mail group I'm on.); child of shadows (Yes, I think it is from a commercial. Which one, I couldn't tell you, though.)

Also, I have Support Services. That means that, if you want, you can put me on Author Alert and receive notice when the next part is up, even if you haven't paid yourself.

Posted: Sunday, May 5, 2002


A Ghost Story
Part 2/3

One hour and five drinks later (only two of them had been Lily's), James, Lily and Sirius were standing by themselves in a corner. Of course, in Sirius' case, it was not by choice.

"I'm bored," Sirius whined for the umpteenth time. "Please can't I go do something? Anything? We're at a party. You can't not socialize at a party."

"You can and you will," Lily said. Her voice had an amazing amount of steel in it considering she was well on her way to being smashed.

"Jaaames." Sirius dragged out his friend's name. It was pathetic, really, to hear someone Sirius' age whine like that. It was too bad Sirius didn't agree. "Make her stop. I wanna go do something."

Fed up with him friend's constant moaning, James finally intervened. "Oh, let him go do something, Lily. At this rate he'll drive us insane by the end of the night."

"No. If he goes and he does something, he's going to do something to expose us," said Lily.

"No I won't," Sirius said. "I'll be the perfect Muggle. If anyone asks anything about me, I'll just make something up. And I won't use magic. Trust me."

"Trust you? Trust you?" Lily's voice was edging on hysteria. "The last time I trusted you, you ended up naked and covered in blue paint!"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Relax. I wasn't all the way naked, and I'm not blue anymore, now, am I?"

"That's even worse! What if someone starts to wonder how you removed the body paint so quickly? What are you going to say then?"

"The only people who saw me . . . well let's just say they're in no condition to accurately tell the colour of my skin."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" Lily moaned.

"Hey," Sirius said, sounding indignant. If Lily and James didn't know him better, they would say he was offended. "I never go back on my word."

"Except for those times that you do, eh, Padfoot?" James asked jokingly.

"Well, those don't count. I never break a promise when I mean it," said Sirius, grinning.

"That's my point. How can we tell if you're serious or not?"

It was a true indication that Lily was drunk, despite still being able to act and speak as if she were sober - all of his friends had long, long ago learned never to say the word 'serious' in Sirius' presence.

Luckily, as Sirius had had a couple drinks himself, James was able to speak quickly before his friend could reply in his usual, irritating manner. "What if he swears on the Black Shadow?"

Sirius' mouth dropped open and his beer nearly slipped out from between his fingers. "What?" he gasped.

"You break your word tonight, and Lily gets possession of the Black Shadow for the rest of the year."

"I suppose that would do." Lily looked at Sirius speculatively. There was a chance he wouldn't accept the terms, not with his precious motorbike on the line.

Suddenly completely sober, Sirius straightened his back and looked Lily square in the eye. Solemnly, he said, "I swear that if for any reason I perform any magic or reveal to any Muggle that I am a wizard before I leave this party tonight, you - " he gulped - "will receive possession of the Black Shadow for the rest of the year."

Lily held his gaze for another fifteen seconds before majestically decreeing, "Deal."

"Great." In no time, Sirius was off. Lily and James lost sight of him before a minute passed.

Of course, despite his intentions, good or otherwise, Sirius being Sirius, he couldn't stay out of trouble for long. It was James who found him in the middle of a group of girls, spinning one outrageous tale after another, most of them untrue.

Unfortunately, Petunia happened to be one of the girls. James quickly hurried Sirius away and then went to tell Lily that her sister was there.

"What?" Lily screeched when James, in low undertones, explained the situation to her. "He did what?"

"He didn't say anything too bad," James said, defending his friend. "And it's not like he did it on purpose or anything. He didn't know your sister was there. Oh, she's looking for you by the way."

"Oh that's just great," Lily muttered before pushing her way through the throngs of people to find her sister.

She passed one of the former hula-girls who had apparently been inspired by Sirius. Her hair was now a wash-out shade of blue. Lily didn't want to know what she dyed it with - or what she would think in the morning.

On the other side, a haughty brunette was talking to her friend. She was wearing a long, black fur coat and what looked like a thousand pounds worth of jewellery. Unfortunately, expensive jewellery doesn't always equal nice jewellery and most of the pieces she wore looked gaudy.

She was motioning to the back of her head where her hair was caught up in two delicate solid gold combs encrusted with red rubies. "It was an engagement present from Samuel. Aren't they wonderful? They're worth five hundred pounds each." She paused, then gave her friend a superior smirk. "What did Vernon give you, Petunia?"

Lily stopped. "Pet? Vernon proposed?"

Petunia turned around and her friend waltzed off. Her sister's hair was blonde, one of the reasons Lily hadn't recognized her more quickly. She stared hard at Lily, her hazel eyes flickering between anger and something else Lily couldn't identify. "We are announcing it at dinner on Friday."

"Congratulations."

The two sisters stared at each other for a minute, not saying a word. Finally Lily asked, "What did you do to your hair?"

Petunia fingered her bleached locks. "I dyed it. What do you think I did?"

"Why did you dye it? It looked better before."

"Vernon likes me as a blonde better," Petunia said stiffly.

"Oh." Lily would have lapsed into silence again, but Petunia then demanded, "What are you doing here?"

"It wasn't my idea. We ran into Sue and she invited us. Then Sirius let it out that we weren't doing anything tonight and we couldn't say no. Not without being rude," Lily said earnestly. She wanted to let Petunia know that she wasn't trying to ruin her life.

Petunia's eyes darkened and she pursed her lips. "Yes, I ran into Sirius."

Lily groaned. She had almost forgotten that. "He didn't do anything that bad, did he? He promised!"

"He was making up all kinds of stories, about how he was an international spy, that he was the star of this up and coming film that's coming to the cinemas next months, about how he had a book coming out -"

"Oh," Lily exclaimed, interrupting Petunia's rant. "Thirteen Ways to Destroy Your Enemies and Amuse Your Friends? Yeah, actually that's true. He wrote it under a nom de plume, of course, but he did write it and it's coming out just before Christmas."

The knowledge didn't impress Petunia. "I don't care," she hissed. "What will people think, that I associate with people like that?"

"Firstly," Lily said, starting to lose patience, "he's my friend, not yours. Secondly, everyone knows not to take Siriusly serious." Something seemed to be wrong with that and she frowned. Then she repeated herself, making sure she spoke slowly and deliberately. "No one takes Sirius - Sirius - everyone knows not to take what he says at face value. He doesn't expect people to believe the stories he makes up. It's all for fun."

Tipped off by her confusing speech, Petunia sniffed Lily's breath, then wrinkled her face up in distaste. "You've been drinking!" she accused. "I'm going to tell Mum you've been drinking."

"Sod off, Pet. You tell Mum that, and I'll tell her you're sleeping with Vernon."

Petunia gasped and Lily knew her guess had been correct. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Most people wouldn't care if their adult children were drinking, or sleeping with their fiancés, but not Mrs. Evans. When they were younger, Petunia and Lily had had to endure frequent lectures on the evils of having sex before marriage. Of course, both sisters ignored her, but if she ever found out, there would be trouble. It wasn't pleasant to be on the wrong side of Mrs. Evans, to say the least.

"Go away. I don't want you here. You're ruining my life," Petunia said bitterly.

"Well, I don't want to be here either," Lily said, but even she had to admit it wasn't a very good retort. She left.

It took half an hour of being unable to find Sirius and James before Lily began to worry. Asking around, no one could remember seeing either of them for some time. That in itself was a bad sign; Sirius attracted attention wherever he went. He couldn't help it. It was a talent.

Finally, she saw Sue. "Hey, have you seen James or Sirius?" Lily asked.

Sue looked at her blankly. "Who?"

"You know, my boyfriend and my friend." Lily was more than a little impatient.

"Oh." She was distracted when a boy Lily didn't recognize started to nibble on her neck and Lily had to clear her throat to catch Sue's attention again. "They went off with Mike and some other guys."

"They did what?"

Sue didn't recognize the dangerous note in Lily's voice. "Yeah, Mike took them back to the old Dubois house. He's gonna freak them out."

She might have said more, but Lily didn't hear her. Pushing through the crowds, she quickly found Petunia.

"What are you still doing here?" Petunia demanded.

"I need a ride," Lily said desperately.

"So?"

"So I need you to drive me."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because your friends" Lily made the word drip in disgust "decided to frighten James and Sirius by taking them to a haunted house, of all places. And unless we get there fast, they're going to slip up and all your friends will find out they're wizards."

Petunia looked around, furiously, but no one close by looked like they had overheard. "Don't say that word!"

"It'll be a lot worse if we don't get there soon," threatened Lily.

She still looked unhappy, but recognized the truth in Lily's words. "Fine," Petunia said.

They grabbed their coats and on the way down to the car, after first making sure there was absolutely no one around, Petunia asked sourly, "Why didn't you just hocus-pocus yourself there?"

"Because I'm drunk," Lily said frankly. "And you should never drink and Disapparate."

End Part Two