Chapter 35

In the months leading up to the wedding, James and Sirius settled themselves into their new house and continued to teach Anastasia how to talk and walk. Lily and Remus stopped by frequently to help out or just to say hey. James and Sirius managed to establish themselves as psychotic teenagers with a daughter who liked blowing things up in their new neighborhood, but they were immediately liked.

The furniture problem had been easily averted as Remus suggested that they just get a moving truck and pretend to move things in while really using a levitating charm. That way the could pretend to be lifting it while not really doing anything. And once they had moved their things from the Potters' house to their own, they simply transfigured things into furniture, like the rock into the couch. The did, however, decide to go out and buy a widescreen television with an excellent sound system. It was James's firm belief that technology and magic were not meant to be mixed.

Both James and Sirius loved their house. Anastasia had her own room, which gave the two boys freedom to do whatever they wanted to do in their own room. The kitchen was filled with tasty, but not always healthy, food and the table was usually covered in some assortment of crap. Recently it had been applications for James to be accepted into a school to train Aurors.

Now it was nearing the wedding day and both Sirius and James were starting to freak out. They wanted everything to be perfect and that was driving them crazy. Lily had been uncertain as to what to wear and Remus was complaining about wearing a tux and freaking out about being the best man. Anastasia didn't like her new pink dress and Mrs. Potter kept on changing her mind as to which one she wanted to wear.

They were uncertain as to how they would get enough food. While James was a good cook, he had other things that needed to be done. Mrs. Potter could cook but refused to cook for such a large group and important event. Caterers cost a lot of money for them and they didn't want to spend it on that. Everything was adding up to a lot of money. The napkins in themselves cost about 25 and the flowers were 62. All in all no one really had any reason to panic. Things were running smoothly.

Until the week before the wedding.

Sirius got sick from going shopping for a dress for Lily. She had procrastinated on buying something until then and had decided to go shopping on a cold, snowy day. So Sirius had gone with her and had told her which one looked the best, which was a green one that had a sash around the waist and went well with Lily's emerald eyes and auburn hair. However, not only didSiriusend up spending a lot of money to help Lily pay forher dress,Sirius got a fever and a cold out of that trip.

"Are you going to be well in time for our wedding?" asked James as he sat beside Sirius who was in bed.

Sirius coughed and then shrugged. "I don't know. I'd better or else I think I'll cry."

James smiled slightly at that and got up as he heard the door open. It was probably Lily and Remus. They had promised to stop in that day to go over some last minute planning. "I'll be back."

-dun dun dun-

The rest of the week went by and it was the night before the wedding. Sirius was still ill, only it had gotten worse. He had a really high fever now and was sometimes delirious. James knew that it was an incredibly bad idea to get married while Sirius was in that condition so he hadcalled the church andhad postponed the date ofthe wedding for the time being.

James spent most of his time sitting next to Sirius, hoping that he would get better. At the time being, he had a fever of 103 and was tossing and turning in his sleep. The door opened behind him and he turned around to see Lily and Remus entering. Lily had Anastasia in her arms and stayed near the door. "Is he doing any better?" asked Remus, coming to stand next to James.

James stood up and shook his head. "If he's doing any better I can't see the difference."

Remus patted him on the back and then pulled him out of the room. "You need to get out of the house, mate. You've done nothing but sit there next to Sirius. You don't need to catch what he has. Come on, why don't we go out and…I don't know, shop. That'll be fun. We could take Anastasia and go find something nice for Padfoot for when he wakes up."

"I don't want to leave Sirius alone, though," James said after thinking about it for a moment. "Plus, I hate shopping."

Lily shook her head slightly. "I'll stay here and watch him. You two need some time together. Go on, and have fun. I'll make sure things don't fall apart here. You should go to the muggle mall in town."

Remus nodded and bodily dragged James out of the house after grabbing Anastasia from Lily's arms. Lily made sure that James wasn't going to attempt to run back into the house and then walked up the stairs to supervise Sirius. When she walked in, she saw that Sirius was awake and staring around him. When she entered, Sirius looked up and smiled slightly.

"Hey, Lils," he said, his voice sounding raspy and unused. "Where are James and Ana?"

She smiled and sat down next to him. "They went out with Remus for a while. They'll be back after a while."

Sirius smiled and coughed. "Are you ever going to just marry the guy?" he asked, sounding sly.

Lily blushed and shrugged. "If he asks me I'll probably say yes. Until then, though, I'm just his girlfriend."

Sirius laughed and coughed again. This time it took a while to stop. Lily looked around and found a pitcher of water. After pouring it, she handed it to Sirius who accepted it and drank it up greedily. "How long have I been sick?" he asked after draining the glass.

She shrugged again. "About a week," she said. A wave of emotions passed over his face.

"The wedding?" he whispered.

"You're too sick," she responded.

"How do you figure?"

"You have a high temperature, you look like shit, and your voice is so raspy that we wouldn't be able to understand you when you say 'I do'."

"I could too say 'I do'. See there? I said-I look like shit? What do I look like?" he asked.

She laughed and then replied, "You're face is pale, you have shadows under your eyes, you look like you've not slept well for months, and your hair is unkempt and too long."

He thought about that for a moment then indignantly said, "Hey, my hair is always long."

"Exactly."

-doodely doo-

"Why are we shopping?" asked James, frustration in his voice.

"Don't you want something pretty for your daughter and something nice for your fiancé?" retorted Remus.

"Well, yeah, but what does it matter if Sirius dies from his high fever?"

Remus sighed in frustration. "Sirius is not going to die."

"If you say so," he muttered and led the way into a baby store. They browsed without really caring, but Remus found a really cute shirt and pant suit and James found a pretty blue dress that they absolutely had to buy for Ana, who was asleep in her stroller.

"What should we get for Sirius?" asked James as they left the baby store.

Remus shrugged and then nodded towards a music store. "He likes music. Maybe you can get him a nifty cd."

"Hmm, which cd did you get him?" asked James as they entered the store.

" New Way to be Human by Switchfoot," answered Remus as they began to browse through all of the cds.

"Oh. We could give him the Beautiful Letdown, also by Switchfoot," suggested James. Remus looked at the cd that he held out and then he picked up a P.O.D. cd.

"Satellite is an awesome cd, though," said Remus, holding it up for James to see as he perused for a different one. James shrugged and then wandered around into other sections, pushing Ana as he went.

"Think he would like the Beatles?"

"I doubt it," Remus answered, looking through Relient K's cds.

"Can I help you?" a saleswoman who looked thoroughly bored asked James. Her gaze was filled with mild interest.James rolled his eyes and slightly while shaking his head."Are you sure? You look like you need something."

Jamespicked up the not-so-subtle hint and glared at her, now completely annoyed. "I'm sorry, but I really do have everything I could possibly want right now. You see, I'm in love with the most incredible man on the planet. And he loves me too. Infact, would you like to meet our daughter? We love her both dearly. Who knows, maybe I'll bring him here to find a cd and you can meet him then."

The saleswoman looked like she had swallowed a lemon and walked off with as much dignity as her embarressment would allow. Remus, who had stayed away during the confrontation due to the fact that he wasnot in the mood to deal with annoying salespeople, walked over, a smile spreading on his face.He chuckled athis friend. "That was a bit...I don't know, blunt?"

James shrugged andresponded, "Serves her right, trying to get a date out of me. Anyways, let's forget aboutthat not so happy confrontation and decide which cds to buy."

"Well," thought out Remus, "what do you think we should get?"

Jamesthought about it carefully and then suggested, "We should get him the P.O.D. cd and the Switchfoot cd."

Remuslooked at him and smiled. "That's the first brilliant idea I've heard from you in a long time!"

James looked insulted by that, but didn't argue as Remus led the way to the counter, where they bought the cds from a very disgruntled salsewoman. They left the store, and after careful deliberation, decided that they should return home before Lily got bored out of her mind and they spent too much money. They walked back to the house, talking about random things and entered the house, getting Ana out of the stroller and laying their purchases by the door.

"Lily?" called James. She didn't reply, but they heard her talking in Sirius's room. Intrigued as to why Lily would be talking to someone who was supposed to be asleep, they walked up to the room and opened the door. She was sitting there to Sirius, arguing with him about knowledge and ignorance.

"How can you say that? Knowledge is power, power corrupts. So how is that better than ignorance?" Lily snapped.

"Well, you're trying to take the easy way out with ignorance is bliss. However, if we want to be successful in the slightest bit, then we have to know something," retorted Sirius.

"Well, I agree that we have to have some amount of knowledge, but that doesn't mean we need to be building bombs with our knowledge. We could be using it to help people instead of blowing them up."

"But some people deserve to be blown up!"

"Like who?"

"Snape."

Remus and James burst into laughter. The last thing they expected was for Sirius to be wide awake and arguing with Lily about something completely pointless. "How about knowledge is okay as long as you don't let it take control of everything," suggested James, eager to avoid a bad argument.

Lily and Sirius thought about that for a moment. It didn't seem to suit either of them. James sighed. "At least agree to disagree."

They both smiled and said, "Agreed."

A.N. yep, I support Lily's side in that argument. That was an argument that I had with one of my cousin's friends. Very interesting person, if wrong. Lol. Anyways, please review and tell me what your view on that is...and the chapter. Please. Thank you!