Chapter Fourteen: The Wedding Dress
***
Friday, 30 March
Two months, twenty-five days
***
Lily was sitting at her desk, reading through a report. It was a little after seven, and this report was the first in a long list of tasks that she simply had to complete before she could leave. She thought to herself, circling a mistake on the page in green ink and correcting it in the margin, that she could maybe use a coffee, and contemplated taking a break for one.
But then there was a knock at the door, and the thought of a strong shot of caffeine flitted away from her mind. Lily looked up and was surprised to see Adeline standing in the doorway, looking fit to burst with excitement.
"Adeline," she said, the surprise and displeasure evident in her voice. "Whatever are you doing here?"
"Well, Miss Evans," Adeline replied, stepping into Lily's office and glancing around in distaste before lowering herself into the chair in front of Lily's desk, "I tried contacting you at your house, but no one replied to the fire. However, while getting myself a drink, I spotted your fiancé, and he told me that you were probably at work. I looked up your place of business in your file, and here I am!"
"Uh-huh," Lily said slowly, removing her glasses and setting them in front of her. "And what was so important that you couldn't wait until tomorrow's meeting to tell me?"
Adeline smiled tightly, the sheer thrill of this clearly killing her. "The dress has arrived, Miss Evans."
Lily blinked. "It has?" she asked, her voice unusually hushed.
Adeline squealed like a schoolgirl with a crush and leaned forward. "It has!" she clarified jubilantly. "It is at my office at this very moment." She paused, eying the stack of papers sitting on Lily's desk, just waiting to be looked over. "But I can see you're busy, so…you're right, it probably can wait until tomorrow." She rose carefully, eyes glinting.
Lily was already pulling on her coat. "Let's go," she said.
Work could wait.
She'd come back to it.
***
"Sirius, I don't think anything is wrong with Remus."
Sirius sighed, agitated, and followed James to his cubicle. "Come on, Prongs. He keeps being all nice and stuff, and it's weird."
James slid into his seat and looked up at his friend, amused. "Just because you're not a particularly nice person doesn't mean other people can't be," he said plaintively, taking a quill from his pocket and scribbling his name atop a notepad.
Sirius leaned against the wall of James's cubicle, fingering a note from Peter resting on his desk. "Yeah, but he's not acting, like, normal nice. He's acting weird nice. The type of nice that is kinda scary."
James smirked. "Oh, please elaborate," he said sardonically.
"Okay, yesterday," Sirius began, starting to get really excited, "we were having dinner, right? And he kept asking me if I wanted another drink."
"Well, what were you drinking?"
"Tea with rum!"
James made a face. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"That is kinda weird."
"I know! Doesn't he always say that me drunk is 'a little too much fun'?"
James nodded. "He does say that." After thinking a moment, he filled in a blank on his report and loaded up his quill with ink. "Hey, I've got a business proposition for you."
Sirius raised his eyebrows. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. Lily and I were talking the other night about…maybe, possibly…" He let the sentence trail off, and Sirius waited for him to finish.
When he didn't, Sirius prodded, "Yeah?"
"Publishing my Stalking Lily Evans journals."
Sirius paused. "Are you serious?" he asked, his voice low and a little hollow.
James shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Well, yeah. Could be fun. I mean, I'd change the names and stuff, and I wouldn't write under my real name. I don't think my parents could live with that level of shame."
"No!" Sirius exclaimed vehemently, taking James aback a little. "No, you can't change the names!"
"Why not? I don't necessarily want everyone to know how much of a prat I was back then."
Sirius snorted. "'Back then.' It was four years ago, Prongs, get over yourself. No, seriously, if you change the names, it'll…take away the honesty that is the story of your and Lily's relationship."
"The honesty?" James repeated incredulously. "Sirius, my relationship with Lily is based entirely on an intricate web of lies, okay?"
"Oh, so, I'm confused…why are you marrying her? 'Cause aren't marriages supposed to be based on truth and respect and all that stuff?"
James rolled his eyes. "Well, once we're married I'll tell her the truth about everything. That way she can't run away from me." He sighed and set down his quill. "I think I'm done for the night."
"You want to get a drink or something?" Sirius asked, grabbing his jacket from the chair at his desk.
James considered this proposition as he shrugged on his own jacket. "Nah," he decided. "I think I'm just going to go home. Have a sandwich, go to bed, you know."
"Okay. It'll just be me and a bottle of whiskey, then."
James grinned. "Just like every other night."
***
"Do you want some tea or something?" Remus asked Hestia, leaning into his pantry in search of any other kind of beverage. He didn't think he had anything, on account of the fact that he hadn't been grocery shopping in quite a few weeks, but he thought he'd look anyway.
"No, thank you," Hestia said, her voice sounding distant since she was standing in the living room and Remus in the kitchen with his head in his pantry. "Actually, I can't stay very long."
Remus closed the pantry door and joined her in the living room. "Sit down," he said, motioning to the understuffed sofa. She did so, and he sat in the chair nearest her.
"Yeah, I needed to ask you something, though," Hestia said, tucking some of her hair behind her ear.
"Go ahead," Remus replied, suddenly wishing he had something to do with his hands.
Hestia sucked in a breath and straightened in her seat. "I have a meeting with Dumbledore in thirty minutes," she said, trying to hide the anxiety in her voice without success. "I don't know what it's about. He just sent me an owl a few days ago and asked if I would be available to meet with him today. I took the day off work, and, you know, here I am." She expelled a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and asked, very softly, "Do you…do you know anything? Just so I can be better prepared, you know?"
"You can't ever really be prepared for Dumbledore," Remus smiled.
She laughed shakily at that. "Yes, I know."
"I don't know what he'd be meeting with you about, though," Remus told her. "Honestly, I don't."
Hestia nodded slowly, and she seemed to be thinking about something. "That's not the only reason I came here, though."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She sighed. "Remus, why do you always insist about talking about Sirius whenever we're together?"
He was taken aback. "He's my friend," he replied instantly.
"Yes, I know that. And I'd like to be his friend, too."
Remus paused. "So…what's the problem?"
Hestia sighed again, this time in something like exasperation. "Because, Remus, I'd like to be more than friends with you."
****
Lily felt like she was five years old all over again.
She twirled in front of the full-length mirror in her wedding dress, watching the white silky fabric of her skirt flare out around her like a flurry of snow and then swish back into place. She practiced curtsying, even though she didn't know why she'd ever curtsy. She introduced herself to herself as Mrs. James Potter, then Mrs. Lily Potter, then Mr. and Mrs. James Potter, then as Lily Evans-Potter, even though she thought hyphens in names were simply atrocious, not to mention kind of ridiculous. She Transfigured the dead daisies from the kitchen table into a bouquet of white roses and walked across the room to simulate her walk down the aisle.
Lily giggled a lot as she did all of this.
She had gone home from work early, but had brought all of her work home with her, so it wasn't like she would be behind or anything. The dress had just looked so suffocated in its white plastic bag, and she couldn't just let it sit there. Dresses that pretty had to be let out to breathe.
Besides, she had to make sure it fit. She didn't want it to be too big in the chest or too small in the waist or something on the day of the wedding. Lily didn't think it was good wedding etiquette to walk down the aisle in an ill-fitting gown.
And Lily prided herself on her etiquette.
She sighed happily and started posing, practicing for the photographs. Did she look better from the left side of the right? Should she wear her hair up or down? Should she be holding her bouquet or should she utilize her hands in a different kind of pose?
As she was considering jewelry, she heard a 'crack' sound from the living room and James's voice calling, "Lily? Is that you?"
James wasn't supposed to be home!
James was supposed to be working late, like she was!
He couldn't see her in the dress!
"Don't come in the bedroom!" she yelled.
"Why?" His voice was even nearer and she knew that he was right behind the door.
She'd left her wand in the kitchen where she'd Transfigured the flowers, so she couldn't lock the door.
"Just…just don't!" Lily said frantically, reaching for the comforter on the bed and pulling it hastily around herself, but James was already turning the doorknob and stepping inside.
He stopped, right in his tracks, in the doorway, his hand still on the knob. His face was frozen in an expression of almost comic shock. "What are you wearing?" he asked after a few moments.
She bit her lip. "Nothing," she said.
"Lily, I have seen you wearing nothing," James told her, his voice very serious, "and it has never looked like that."
She almost laughed at that, but sighed instead. "Now I have to get another dress," Lily said, annoyed. Then another thought occurred to her. "Or I could put a memory charm on you!" She gathered the ample skirt in her hands and started to exit the room to retrieve her wand from the kitchen, but James grabbed her by the elbow, effectively stopping her.
"Okay, why would you need a new dress?" he wanted to know. "This one's…this one's fantastic."
Lily shrugged. "I don't need a new dress anymore," she responded. "I'm going to memory-charm you. Just let me go get my wand—"
He gripped her arm again, not enough to actually hurt, but enough to stop her. "No memory charms, either. I like my memories."
"I'm not going to take all of them."
"I know. But I like this one a lot."
Lily sighed. "James, it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding."
"So? We've got okay karma."
Lily fought a smile, unsuccessfully. "What does karma have to do with…anything?"
"Well," James reasoned, "we've done a lot of good things for the world, right?"
"Like what?" Lily played along.
James thought about it. "I'm an Auror," he pointed out. "I help people. And you…you volunteered for that soup kitchen that one time."
"Ah, right," Lily smiled, sighing reminiscently. "My crowning achievement."
"The point is, Lily," James said, "that bad luck is stupid."
Lily raised an eyebrow. "'Bad luck is stupid'?" she repeated.
He shrugged, released her arm, and sat on the bed. "I don't really know how else to put it," he admitted, proceeding to take off his shoes. "I think you look beautiful, and I'll still think that on the day of. So does it really matter that I saw you a little early?"
"Kind of," she said stubbornly.
He smiled. "You don't really think that."
"Well," she said, sitting down next to him on the bed, "it's kind of like looking at your Christmas presents before Christmas, you know?"
"But you still like the presents on Christmas," James pointed out. "You still want to play with them."
"Yes, but you don't have all the excitement and the anticipation that you would normally have. Plus after you look at them you have to wait longer to play with them and then you get anxious."
James paused. "Are we still talking about your dress?"
"I'm not sure."
****
Remus and Hestia both sat in silence for a good while.
In fact, twenty minutes passed before either of them said a word.
Hestia glanced at her watch and rose from her seat, pulling her handbag over her shoulder. "I should go," she said softly. "I'm going to be late."
"Yeah," Remus agreed, standing as well.
She walked to the door, and he followed, opening the door politely for her. She stepped out into the hallway of his building, looking at the floor but not moving. Remus stood in the doorway, his hand holding the door open. He didn't move either.
They both just stood there, for another minute or so, neither of them looking at the other.
"I—I really should go," Hestia spoke up, her voice still very soft as she adjusted her purse.
"Yeah."
"So…" Hestia said slowly.
"So…"
"Listen," she said. "Don't tell Sirius."
Remus shook his head several times. "No, no, I wouldn't…I couldn't tell him something like that."
Hestia nodded solemnly. "Right," she agreed. "Right, well…I'm going to go."
Remus nodded, too, and flashed her a weak smile, which she returned.
She finally turned on her heel and walked briskly down the hall, her head down.
****
A/N: Again, apologies on the lateness. There are 14 school days left until summer vacation, so everything is sort of piling up, and I haven't had much time. But, while I know this chapter wasn't the epitome of excitement, it's definitely a connecting chapter, and you can't expect much of those.
There are only a few more chapters left (!!), which you can probably tell by the date up at the top. And that means the more exciting things are coming up, and soon, including…
In the next chapter…
--Lily and James compile their guest list
--Remus and Hestia have a conversation about what's going to happen with them that actually involves talking
--Someone dies. Seriously.
So, until then…
Review. Now. =)