June 28th, 1976

The doorbell rings, spurring a flurry of activity. Marlene squeals and adds a final dab of gloss to Lily's lips with a grandiose flourish and unhidden enthusiasm. Lily smiles timidly and rushes to the door, pushed faster down the hall by her companion all the while. Straightening her blouse, Lily reaches for the handle and finds herself face-to-face with one James Potter, who's leaning in the doorway and twiddling a lily in his fingers.

"A lily for the flower," he says in lieu of a greeting, stretching out his hand. She accepts it, blushing and mumbling a polite word of thanks. "Now, do I have to stay and say hullo to the family, too, or d'you want to get out of here?"

"Oh, go on ahead, you two," insists Marlene, positively beaming at him. "I'll see you in a few hours, Lily?"

She nods, carefully training her eyes to Potter's. "Bye, then," she say breathily, taking his free hand as he helps her onto the porch. They both give Marlene a wave as she closes the door—and promptly drop the act.

"You had to give me a lily." She rounds on him, brandishing the flower and prodding him in the chest with the stem. "A lily. Could you be any more cliché?"

He grins, as though Lily's just thanked him profusely for it, and tugs the thing out of her fingers, breaking off the bulk of the stem and tucking the remainder in her hair. "I thought it appropriate. Should I make note of an alternative floral preference for our second date?"

Lily corrects him, glaring (and hoping he hasn't been taking her invitation the wrong way), "You mean, for our first real date—if you ever get one, that is, which I doubt after this. Do you not think I can hop a step on my own, either? What kind of a 1950s chauvinist are you?"

"Oh, Red, you applied makeup for me," continues Potter obliviously, wiping away an imaginary tear. "I'm touched."

"I'd charm it off if we could use magic outside of school," Lily says bitterly. "How'd you get here without Flooing, anyway?"

He finally meets her in the real world, dropping his own dreamy smile. "Don't remind me. I had to walk four blocks from the nearest Wizarding fireplace so I could show up at the doorstep; I thought it would be more believable if I came off as a hopeless romantic."

"You shouldn't have tried to display me as one," she maintains, pulling her hair out of whatever updo Marlene fashioned for it and letting it hang in a simple ponytail (lily intact). "And then I can't tell you off when I'm pretending to like you."

"Ah, well, I think she bought it—you'll want to pick up the pace, you have to go all four blocks now, too," Potter adds, and Lily accelerates from a stroll to a brisk walk. "Why'd you need me as your fake date, anyway?" he inquires after a minute.

"What, didn't I tell you? Marlene's birthday is tomorrow, and she didn't tell me until three days ago—I need an excuse to get her something. It'd look suspicious otherwise, since I'm staying with her and we're supposed to go everywhere together," she fills him in, shrugging.

Potter chuckles. "And you chose me as your date? I'd think Remus is more your type."

"Yes, well, she and Mary are convinced we're in love; no need to persuade them that Lupin wants to compete for my affections," Lily teases. "You're the more believable choice."

"Huh. So a goodbye kiss is out of the question, then?" She smacks him across the chest. "Relax, Red, I was only joking… So do you want Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley?"

Lily contemplates for a moment. "Hogsmeade, I think—for Scrivenshaft's. Flourish and Blott's wouldn't have cards, would they?"

He shakes his head. "Hogsmeade it is, then—we can Floo into Honeydukes."

Disgruntled, she asks (rhetorically), "You're sure it was four blocks away?"

Potter doesn't reply, merely sweeps her into his arms. Lily swats at him, indignant but laughing all the while.

The war doesn't appear to have affected business at Honeydukes. The shop is as crowded as ever when she and Potter stumble out of its fireplace, shaking their clothes free of soot. "Looks like your makeup is ruined," he sniggers, and Lily brushes her cheek with two fingers and pull them away to see just as much rouge as black. She meets his eyes, and he wordlessly passes her a handkerchief.

"Thank god," she laughs. "I'll just be a minute; I should go clean up in the loo…"

Five minutes and one raw-scrubbed face later, she emerges from the restroom to find her "date" perusing a shelf of sugar quills. "And I thought you were supposed to be a troublemaker," she greets him, grinning; he doesn't bother turning around. "These are the oldest trick in the book."

"Can't be innovative if you don't know the basics," Potter retorts, grabbing a handful. "Reckon McKinnon will want anything here?"

"Maybe," Lily fathoms—to be perfectly honest, she doesn't know Marlene well enough to buy her anything too personal. "Does she have any nut allergies that you know of?" He shakes his head. "She like caramel or plain chocolate?"

It takes only ten minutes to buy Marlene a sampling of chocolate flavors—but Potter takes nearly an hour after that to browse the new merchandise. "You're like a six-year-old," Lily chides playfully as they leave—though he's bought nothing but the quills. "The epitome of a kid in a candy store, except you're almost of age."

"What can I say?" He grins and drapes an arm around her. "I just like to bring out my inner youth."

They head up the street to Scrivenshaft's, Potter's arm still around her (much to her chagrin). Its business starkly contrasts Honeydukes's; when they enter, they're the only customers in the shop. The manager ambles over to greet them from behind the desk, where he leaves behind a tattered book upside-down to mark his place. "Anything I can get for you fellows?" he drawls.

"Do you carry cards here?" she begins to ask, but Potter interrupts.

"Where do you keep your stationery?" The manager pays heed to him, not Lily (perhaps because Potter sounds so much more assertive) and points his thumb behind him and to the left. "Thanks," Potter adds, winking, and steers Lily in the indicated direction.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm writing a birthday card, not a letter, Potter."

"Ah, but she'll like it better if it's personal—and those sayings in most cards are a cop-out," chides Potter.

"You're rather reluctant to let me make my own decisions today, aren't you?" Lily snaps, scanning the shelves for something tasteful.

Potter shrugs. "Occupational hazard of playing your boyfriend."

She sighs. "You're not my boyfriend."

"You say that now…"

Though she's tempted to stalk off and get a card herself, she eventually settles on a simple cream parchment with a baby-blue border. "So inconvenient that they're packaged by tens," Lily grumbles. "Would've saved a few Sickles just to get a card—"

Potter is quick to present a handful of Sickles to her. She pulls back and puts up her hands, insisting, "Oh, Potter, that's really not necessary…"

"I made you buy stationery; it's only fair that I pay the difference. My allowance is too big for me, anyway: I'll barely notice after this, I swear."

With an exasperated sigh, she takes five Sickles out of the mound in his palm and thanks him quickly, neglecting to mention that he's saved her the embarrassment of having to pick out something less expensive. When she exchanged her pounds for Galleons last summer, she hadn't realized that her budget would have to cover half this summer, too.

She pays up front and borrows Potter's quill to write something to Marlene, soon finding herself at an utter loss for words. "What am I supposed to write when I've only been hanging around her for two weeks?" Lily groans, mostly to herself.

"Wish her happy birthday, thank her for opening her home to you, tell her you've enjoyed getting to know her…" rattles Potter. She calls him a smart aleck under her breath, but still, she's grateful for the ideas. "Just make sure you say it in your words, not mine," he mentions as she struggles to control her (usually atrocious) handwriting.

"Right, like I'd ever want to sound like you," she mutters, but she makes sure he notices her forgiving smile.

Letter done, Lily suggests that they Floo back from Honeydukes again, but Potter stops her, a bright look in his eyes. "Why not head to The Three Broomsticks for a quick butterbeer?" he invites. "On me. We've got to stay long enough to look like we're on a date, you know, and it can't have been more than an hour yet."

Checking her watch, Lily notices that they've been here for an hour and a half already—but they've got to stay probably at least another hour to make it appear believable, so with nothing to lose, she takes him up on the offer. The pub is as convivial as ever, and Potter flatters Madam Rosmerta just as Lily expected. "Butterbeers for myself and the flower," he requests with a debonair grin, and Rosmerta winks at him before sauntering off to get them.

"I'm not a flower," Lily gripes.

He brushes a few stray hairs behind her ear and secures the lily in place in her loose ponytail. "Of course not, Red, you're a color," he agrees, like it's the most natural conclusion in the world. He takes her cheek in his hand but lets go quickly at the look on her face. "Oh, before I forget to ask, have you and Marlene made any plans as far ahead as a week from Wednesday? July 7th."

"I don't think so," Lily says, shaking her head. "Anything you had planned?"

"I have concert tickets—The Peverells." Her eyebrows crease in a frown: he's not trying to take her on a proper date, is he? Potter misunderstands, though, and unnecessarily reminds me, "'Moontrimmer?' Honestly, Red, how could you forget our song?"

"We don't have a song," she reminds him blandly. "How many tickets?"

A slight blush rises in his cheeks. "My dad knows their manager."

Lily gapes at him, realizing. "Are you joking? Unlimited free tickets?"

"They're not free, Red, they're just… heavily discounted," says Potter hastily, his blush darkening. She beams. "I was only going to bring the blokes, but I thought you and Marlene might like to come…"

"We'd love to come," she accepts immediately.

He smiles bashfully and ruffles his hair. "It's not until ten o'clock, and it'll be at least a couple hours, so I was thinking we could all make a night of it at my place. I don't think—have you ever been to my house before?" Lily shakes her head. "All right—well, Marlene will know how to get there. Bring a change of clothes, and meet me there at eight, all right?"

Rosmerta comes back with their drinks as Lily nods her agreement. The next hour henceforth passes uneventfully, full of their usual banter, before they prepare to leave. She tucks Marlene's gift and an envelope from Potter—two concert tickets and a "many happy returns of the day" note included—into the handbag that Marlene forced Lily to bring for the occasion.

To prevent the four-block walk, they Floo straight back to Marlene's this time, and Lily puts on the dreamiest face she can muster. "Bye, love," says Potter affectionately in parting, and Lily can tell that only the warning in her eyes is stopping him from adding a peck on the cheek.

Quickly, before the McKinnons realize they're back, she tells him, "Thanks for doing this for me today, Potter." He smiles and tips his head to me, and then he's back in the hearth and out of sight.

When she finds Marlene again, Marlene beats her to the punch. "Did you make any further plans?" she asks impatiently, and Lily shakes her head, trying to look appropriately disappointed but hopeful. "Make sure you do," she advises, "and let your guard down more next time. You know, Lily, usually, I never see you more alive than when you're with him."

She doesn't answer, wondering why Marlene's claim doesn't sound that far off from the truth.

xx

Lily's not quite prepared to face the entire McKinnon family when she stumbles, bleary-eyed and frizzy-haired, upon all seven of them at nine o'clock in the morning. Though she's staying in their house, she's had precious little interaction with anyone but Marlene for the past two weeks. Her parents have told Lily that they respect Marlene's friends' privacy, and her siblings, from the looks of it, get out of the house as much as Marlene does and otherwise keep to themselves.

Uncomfortably, she tugs down her too-small nightshirt and cracks an unconvincing smile. "I can come back," she offers rather awkwardly. On second thought, it probably would have been wise to get her cereal fix after getting dressed, in case something like this happened.

The McKinnons seem to have other ideas, however. "Oh, no, don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're a guest in our house and perfectly within your rights to eat breakfast whenever you choose," hastens Mrs. McKinnon, pulling up a chair as she speaks. "We were just giving Marlene her gifts—you're welcome to join us."

"Gifts?" Lily smiles—wider than usual in this house, even tired as she is—looking straight at Marlene. "In that case, I do think I'll be right back…"

She dashes into their shared bedroom and rummages through her trunk for the bag from yesterday. Finding it, she unceremoniously dumps out the gift-wrapped assortment of chocolates and cards (well, letters, really) from herself and Potter. Before she braves the kitchen again, though, she dons her (modest) robe and runs a brush, albeit in vain, through her hair. It's worth the extra few seconds.

She gathers the gifts in her arms and hurries back into the kitchen, cutting Marlene off before she can protest. "Happy birthday—and don't tell me I shouldn't have."

She blushes, unwrapping the chocolate first. "Thanks, Lily—when were you in Honeydukes, of all places?"

"Come on, Marlene, did you honestly believe I was on a date with Potter yesterday?" Lily reaches out to stop her when Marlene mistakenly grabs Potter's letter instead of Lily's. "The other one first."

"So I shouldn't have owled Mary about you coming to your senses?" Lily shakes her head, grinning, and Marlene's voice falls as she starts to read. "Bollocks… with her mouth, the whole school's going to think you two are an item by September…" Lily's distantly concerned about just how many people will have the wrong idea about her and Potter come September first, but she pushes it out of her mind for the time being.

Two of Marlene's siblings, Margaret and Michael, begin to snigger uncontrollably. Lily rolls her eyes pointedly in their direction, sparking giggles from the two youngest, Matthew and Meredith. "Behave yourselves," warns Mr. McKinnon, but his wife is smiling at Lily.

"Don't mind them—you know how children get," Mrs. McKinnon says patiently. "Matthew's going to be a first year in September; from what I gather, Professor McGonagall is dreading his arrival."

Lily smiles back politely as Marlene refolds her letter. "Thanks, Lily—I'm glad you're staying with me, too." They share a rare moment before she adds, "What's the second letter for?"

"From Potter—he gave it to me when I saw him yesterday."

"Black enclose anything?" she asks, quieter now. Lily shakes her head, but Marlene's disappointed look only lasts a moment before she tears open the envelope. As the concert tickets fall into her lap, she drowns out her siblings' conversations with excited screams. He's the closer friend, giving her the more extravagant present, but Lily still feels a pang of something like hurt at Marlene's decidedly more enthusiastic reaction to Potter's gift.

They leave soon after, once they've had a chance to eat and change. Lily takes a while to clean up in the bathroom first; she had no clue how to properly remove all the makeup last night, so she enlists Marlene's help in washing off the remnants today. "Remember what I said with Mary about how mascara could do you good?" Lily nods, at which Marlene scolds her for almost getting makeup remover in her eyes. "I retract that."

"Glad to hear it," Lily says, laughing, though this time she's careful not to move her head.

They Floo to Doc's flat; Lily's getting so used to Floo powder that she barely notices the dizziness anymore, she realizes as she's straightening up. The place is your typical bachelor pad—mismatched and minimal furniture, with sparse clutter and excess junk. The couch and a patch of the coffee table are tidy, though, suggesting that he's at least tried to clean the place up for them; it's hard to judge just how much effort he put into it, though, since Lily can't be sure how dirty he usually is.

"Marbles!" Marlene's father speaks in a smooth, low voice, and Marlene is clearly ecstatic to see him. "Happy birthday, honey. And you must be Lily?"

"Lily Evans," she confirms, giving them a moment to embrace. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dearborn."

Doc sighs—rather histrionically, she might add. "Nonsense. Call me Doc; everyone does. Or at least Caradoc, if you're fond of formalities."

"If you insist, Mr. Dearborn."

He laughs (a great belly laugh that rumbles across the room and brings a smile to Marlene's eyes) and waves them away from the hearth. "Come on in, you two; don't be shy. Make yourselves at home."

Doc doesn't seem to be one for small talk. He skips the formalities and sneaks his conversations in between his actions; he's less concerned with how his daughter's year has been than how her birthday will be, and as such, he doesn't ask how they've been but how they are. His novel honesty is becoming, and Lily's decidedly a fan of it just a few minutes into the occasion.

Since Lily and Marlene can't use their wands during the holidays, he insists upon doing everything without magic, too, sometimes going out of his way to find the blatantly Muggle way. Instead of salad or sandwiches for lunch, Doc chooses reheated soup with homemade smoothies for dessert; as such, after they eat, cleanup involves wiping broth off of the stovetop and fruity vanilla ice cream off of the cabinets. "I tell you, these things weren't available when I was growing up," he defends (though neither Lily nor Marlene is accusing him), scrutinizing his blender. "I told my sister she shouldn't have gotten it for me, that something like this would happen, but she insisted that the technology was too fascinating to let it slip by…"

"You must've had a stove growing up, though, Doc," doubts Marlene, grinning at Lily as she wrings out her rag in the sink and sets it to the counter for a fresh attack. "I mean, the blender is one thing…"

He shrugs helplessly. Lily asks, mopping a pink glob off of the refrigerator, "How in touch with the Muggle world do you stay? A fair bit, of course, since your flat is Muggle, and then you still talk to family…"

"You're Muggle-born, Lils?" She nods—Doc was quick to adopt a pet name for her. "I keep up with Muggle culture, since I run into them where I live pretty often and I've got to look natural. But as far as close Muggle ties go—only my parents and sisters know about magic, because of the Statute of Secrecy, so I don't have Muggle friends apart from them. It's one thing to say hello to the woman in the flat next to yours, quite another to invite her into your flat for afternoon tea when you haven't the faintest idea how to use a kettle without the help of charms. I don't know some witches and wizards do it, marrying Muggles—since by law, you can't reveal yourself for what you are until after the wedding. Not only do you have to cover most aspects of your life up while dating, but you have to win back the trust of your spouse after… it's a huge breach of trust, hiding something like that from your loved one."

"Huh," Lily muses. "You said you only keep in touch with immediate family?"

Doc purses his lips sympathetically. "Big extended family? That's always a toughie—I write to my cousins to stay in touch and call occasionally, but you've got to be careful about how much they know about you. Most Muggles wouldn't believe you if you told them you were a witch, but you don't want your family thinking you're crazy if they realize there's something up. I tell them about my friends and coworkers, but they probably think I'm a bit shady; none of them know exactly where I work, or where I live, for that matter."

"Do you see your cousins at all?" Lily follows up, carefully training her eyes to her work. Her stomach is suddenly churning (and not from the soup, however old): neither Doc nor Marlene needs to know that Lily has sixteen cousins, or that it already kills her not to tell them about Hogwarts.

"Sometimes—always at their places," admits Doc. "But never for too long, since you're watching your tongue all the time. I'm sure you know all about this already, from family gatherings these last five years?" She nods again. "Again, you don't have to completely cut yourself off from them, but you have to be careful not to get so close that they realize anything's amiss. Aren't you glad you were raised in wizarding families, Marbles? Saves you the heartache of so much secrecy," he adds offhand to Marlene, who looks to be following the exchange avidly. Lily is surprised at how callously he talks about their family situation—in Marlene's place, Lily would be fairly uncomfortable keeping that wound open.

"Bit disorienting, knowing I have this whole other family that doesn't know about me," she says gruffly. "I mean, what would I talk to them about if I met them? I could never pass as a Muggle. All I ever talk about are O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, Quidditch, getting my Apparition license, the war…"

"Surely I haven't raised that one-dimensional a daughter," Doc cries, flicking water from his towel at her.

Marlene squeals and ducks, nearly toppling into Lily. "You forget, Doc, that Mum and Neil raised me—I only live with you, what, two percent of the time?"

"They must be doing a wretched job of it for the other ninety-eight," he replies, shaking his head and setting back to work. "Are the other four complete brats without my influence? Merlin, I haven't seen Maggie since long before she got into Hogwarts—I've never seen Matt or Mer out of diapers!"

Marlene's laugh rings out purer than it ever has in the dorms. "Mike's shaping up to be a little bit of a troublemaker—McGonagall's afraid of Matt coming to Hogwarts because of him, and Mike's only going into his third year, you know. Mer's a little angel, of course, but don't even get me started on Maggie, she and Mike make quite the pair…"

They go on for a while, until the kitchen's cleaned up and they've retreated to the living room. Doc's trying to light a fire with a Muggle lighter—and failing, to a large extent, especially since he initially sets fire to a bit of leftover Floo powder—and Lily's just starting to feel comfortable when he freezes, dropping the lighter into the hearth. "Bollocks," he curses, straightening up and whipping out his wand. "I'm sorry, Marbles, but I have to take this—it's Dumbledore, he sent out the highest alarm—I'll be back as soon as I can, all right? I'm so sorry—"

His Disapparating crack resonates through the room and is shortly followed by Marlene's breathy sigh. "Of course. Dumbledore." Lily raises an eyebrow, and Marlene explains moodily, "It's not Auror work, I don't know much about it—some kind of renegade program fighting the Dark Arts. The Ministry's too corrupt and politically correct to do it properly, and my father just had to be one of the ones to take matters into their own hands…"

"Hey." Marlene looks up at Lily, the faintest red rimming her irises, and Lily says, "He can't help it if there's an emergency. Why not invite a few friends over? Wait it out with them. Or just go back to your mum's, if you prefer—"

"Mum doesn't know about the program," she says sharply. "Knowing Doc, he'll stay after whatever crisis there is and help the Healers… it could be two, three in the morning by the time he's back. If he's back."

Lily realizes from her tone of voice that this "program" is more serious than she had expected—and that sleeping it off is out of the question. "I—I'll owl Potter," she offers, looking for parchment. "See if he knows where Black is—"

"No!" barks Marlene abruptly, stock-still. Lily sits back down, and Marlene loosens a little. "No," she repeats, much softer this time. "Just you."

Lily offers a weak half-smile. "You know," she confides after a pause, "whenever the Prophet reports on an attack, I wonder how long it'll be before I see Severus' name in print."

Marlene shoots her a look that's almost sympathetic. "Whenever there's an attack, I wonder whether Black's family were involved before I wonder whether Doc's all right—how sick is that?"

"It's not sick," Lily says. "You care about both of them, but you see Black much more than—"

"So it's perfectly normal that I worry more about the bloke I'm shagging than the bloke who raised me," she proposes bluntly.

Lily doesn't point out that Marlene herself said hours ago that Doc hadn't raised her. "I should hope that you care about the bloke you're sleeping with," she mutters—to her chagrin, she receives no response. "Why are you sleeping with him?"

"Convenience? Desire?" She laughs shrilly and wrings her hands together. "I don't even remember why it started—I know why it did for him, at least. A few days earlier, he'd found out that his cousin Bellatrix had become a Death Eater—that's what they're calling his followers, you know, Death Eaters—and I found him in a right state in the library—the library, of all places, Lily, come on. And I asked what was wrong and he just—he grabbed me and…"

Lily gives her a moment, absorbing the news (and hoping that she'll still be able to study with a clear head in the Hogwarts library from now on). "Why'd you kiss him back?"

Marlene cracks a bitter grin. "It was right after Christmas break. I love my brothers and sisters, Neil's wonderful, but Mum and I have our ups and downs—we were on a down that holiday. And no matter how hard they try to make me fit in at home… and to come back to school after a week of that and suddenly have this warm body there that wants you is…" She gives a ragged sigh and slouches. "I break it off when times are good, but he always comes back. I think—we both need him to come back."

Lily wants to advise her to fix it or end it, but they're not yet in a place where Marlene would heed her advice. So she pays back her confidence: "Have I ever told you that I think it's Severus's fault my sister hates me?"

They talk like this well into the night, well past midnight, well past any last chance of not getting to know each other, since Marlene insists on waiting up for Doc. By the time Lily drifts off to sleep, Marlene is still slumped on the couch, eyes wide open and looking numbly ahead.