Previously in the Darklyverse: At graduation. Lily confessed to being present for Elisabeth's and Millie's deaths. James and Lily got engaged. Although she intended to pursue a career in International Magical Cooperation, Lily gained some experience Healing by shadowing Madam Pomfrey.

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August 11th, 1978: Lily Evans

Not for the first time, Lily kicks herself for giving herself away at graduation as having been there with Elisabeth at the Death Eater ambush last year. It felt right at the moment to hold herself accountable for the colossal mistake that resulted in two of her friends' deaths, and maybe it was. Maybe she did right by Elisabeth and Millie the only way she had left, even though she realized after the fact that the Ministry was going to demand information about who else was involved that Lily couldn't share in good conscience. (Over and over, she told the Aurors that the only people involved were herself, Liz, and Millie—that Liz was the one who obtained the information about where to go when they were ambushed, and Lily didn't know from whom she got it. Her friends didn't deserve for Lily to make the decision for them to drag their names into her own legal mess, and she couldn't turn in the Slytherins that Dorcas had overheard, either, if she didn't want them to turn right around and accuse Dorcas and the others.)

But she hasn't just gotten herself into trouble with the Ministry, who spent over three hours interrogating her about her involvement in the deaths. She's placed a target on her back, and now, she makes her every move in fear that she's going to be ambushed again and wind up dead faster than you can say Avada Kedavra.

At the damage control meeting they had after graduation, Dumbledore said he thinks it's unlikely that Lily will be attacked immediately as a consequence of what she said. Even knowing that one of the Slytherins will likely report this back to the Death Eaters, they probably won't risk blowing their covers by attacking her in broad daylight, and since she's staying with Sirius rent-free and her name isn't on their lease, information about where she's living isn't readily available.

It'll be trickier after the wedding, of course, because it'll be obvious to outsiders that she's moved in with James, even if her name isn't on the deed. Lily refuses to go fully into hiding—she won't stop living her life and trying to help others—but Doc promised to help them set up their new home with first-rate defenses, and she prays that that will be enough to hold off any Death Eaters who may come calling. In the meantime, she's holding off from applying for any jobs, like the seven N.E.W.T.s she worked so hard to achieve count for absolutely nothing.

Why did she have to give away her involvement in the Order? Why did she and her friends and Dorcas hatch that plan in the first place?

Because she had to do something, says a small voice in her head. Because she was holed up in the castle while Muggles and Muggle-borns just like her were out there dying, and she couldn't stand it.

With nothing better to do, she's thrown herself into wedding planning, sampling flavors of frosting and jamming out to potential bands for hire in all the hours that James is at work. Sirius is still around all the time—like he was expecting, his family has blackballed him from getting a Ministry job, and he hasn't had any luck applying to work for any shops or trying to find someplace that he can put his Transfiguration abilities to good use—and he goes with her and Marlene to look at dresses and laughs at her when she trips over the train of the third one she tries on.

Remus (also as of yet unemployed) spends most of his days at Lily and Sirius's place, too. Officially, both James and Remus have moved in with Alice uptown. They'll keep this arrangement until Lily and James get married, when the two of them will get themselves their own place somewhere, though it's unclear whether Sirius will keep his own flat or take James's spot in Remus and Alice's. (Lily imagines that Alice isn't too keen on rooming with both Remus and Sirius given that they're together romantically.)

But if Lily's days are dull verging on frustrating, her nights more than make up for it, because that's when she does work with the Order of the Phoenix.

A lot of what the Order does is attempt to infiltrate the Ministry, the Death Eaters, and those who have been placed under the Imperius Curse to gain intelligence about who's working for the other side and anticipate their activities before they happen. One of the first things Lily did after graduation was to break the Imperius Curse on a member of the Wizengamot, with whom she subsequently built a relationship so as to gain information from her about what the Death Eaters wanted.

As for actual battles to fight, James and Sirius just finished working with Sturgis Podmore to develop a spell that alerts them to Unforgivable Curses being cast and directs them to the locations of those curses in real time. Dumbledore and his recruits were especially excited about this, having worked on it without full success for apparently what was a long time before the boys stepped in to help. The curse-identification spell takes a lot of the guesswork and long timelines out of the fighting, allowing Order members to instantaneously Apparate to the sites of the crimes and, well, fight—try to deliver justice.

So far, Lily has been on four raids, and the lives of seven Muggles and Muggle-borns have been saved. The Ministry isn't happy with them, of course: if the Order intervenes and it results in the Death Eaters losing the fights and leaving the scene, they aren't able to make arrests, identify the Death Eaters, or get more information about their colleagues out of them. But two of the four raids resulted in the Death Eaters responsible being Petrified or Stupefied, allowing them to contact the Ministry and hand over the guilty parties.

It alarms Lily—a lot—to realize just how many Death Eaters are out there doing Voldemort's bidding. It seems like no matter how many they stop or catch or turn in, there's an equal and growing number of them still out there to continue their work and cost Muggles and Muggle-borns their lives. The Order is badly outnumbered, and Lily shudders to think how few people would be working for them if she and her friends hadn't stepped in when Lily was in sixth year. Still, they seem to be holding on so far, with no deaths in the Order since Lily joined it.

That's not to say that they haven't come close. That night, Fabian Prewett Apparates into Lily and Sirius's living room bleeding out profusely from his abdomen, staining red everywhere, visibly struggling to breathe. The curse-identification monitor is being kept at Doc and Marlene's flat; they're all taking turns hanging out on call there so that there are always a few people ready to pick up and go if something happens. Tonight was Fabian's turn, along with Dorcas Meadowes and Hyatt Pertinger.

"Doc sent me here," Fabian croaks as Lily and Sirius abandon their dinners and rush to his side. "Said that—Lily is the best at Healing."

If Lily's little bit of experience shadowing Madam Pomfrey and healing the boys' cuts after full moons makes her the most experienced member of the Order at Healing, then she's about to have a lot more anxiety about the fate of the Order than she already does. "Try not to move," she says hastily. "Let me go get my wand."

Dorcas and Pertinger appear in the minute it takes Lily to retrieve her wand from the bedroom and come rushing back out. "We couldn't take him to St. Mungo's if we wanted to keep our identities hidden," says Dorcas apologetically. "I can help, if there's anything you need me to do."

As Lily runs her wand tip along the torn skin of Fabian's stomach, her wand is shaking right along with her unsteady hand. "Take his hand," she says.

Dorcas does so. "What next?"

"That's it. Make sure he knows you're there."

Dorcas nods, kisses Fabian's forehead, and holds on. Gradually getting herself under control, Lily lets her wand flow over Fabian's abdomen until, eventually, sweat stops dripping from his forehead and his skin isn't so hot to the touch. "That's everything I know how to do," she says finally. "If there's any internal bleeding I didn't catch, we'll know it in a few hours if his organs start to fail, but hopefully that won't happen."

"Thanks, Lily," says Pertinger. "Sorry to just barge in, but…"

Fabian's eyes flutter closed again, and his head falls limply to the side. "It's no problem," says Lily, even though she's terrified, perhaps even more so now than she was when she was still stabilizing him. "We'll keep him here overnight, if that's all right."

Sirius says, "Lily and I can take turns watching him overnight. James and Remus would probably help, too."

Dorcas shakes her head and says, "No need. I'll watch him."

"You sure? You've got to be exhausted from dueling, and—"

"I'm good," she insists. "If I start to get too tired, I'll wake one of you up."

"We'll wait up with you for a while," Lily offers, and Sirius nods vigorously.

They set Fabian up on the couch; Sirius gives the women the two armchairs and settles himself down on the floor with his back against the bottom of the sofa and his knees drawn up to his chin. "It's about to get a lot crazier with the curse device working," says Dorcas quietly. She keeps looking at her watch, then at Fabian, then back to her watch, and Lily wonders if she's waiting on tenterhooks to see if Fabian's condition will regress. "It was so frustrating last year, always showing up after the fact when the victims had been killed and the Death Eaters had… I'm glad we can be more proactive about things now, but still, it's going to mean we'll be in a lot more danger than we ever have been. If the Death Eaters even so much as see our faces, they might place who we are and come for us. I know that's why we've got the masks, but… well, Lily, you know what I mean, after you revealed yourself at your graduation."

"Still can't believe I did that," mutters Lily, but Dorcas says—

"Nuh-uh. Don't feel bad. Don't do that. You did a very brave thing—yes, a stupid thing, but a very brave thing, too—in honor of someone who fought hard and deserved better than what she got. And not just Elisabeth—Millie, too. We should never feel guilty for honoring our losses. Never."

"Besides, we'll protect you," says Sirius. "James will die a thousand times over before he lets something happen to you."

"I just wish I could work," Lily says. "I feel like I'm going mad cooped up here with nothing to do but plan the wedding."

"You can't say that Order work isn't plenty interesting," Dorcas points out with a small smile. "If you're feeling that frustrated, you could talk to Dumbledore, pick up more shifts. We've got no shortage of attacks to respond to."

"But I get it," says Sirius. "I'm going nuts not working, too. And I feel bad about mooching off of James." Sirius has his inheritance from his uncle, of course, but James has been paying the rent on the flat so that Sirius doesn't entirely run out of money dipping into his savings in the coming months. He's supporting Lily, too, as well as Remus, who as a werewolf is finding it almost impossible to get a job.

Just as he's saying this, there's a resounding crack, and James himself appears on the rug in between them. "Oh, hey, Dorcas," he says, but when his eyes light on Fabian on the couch, he pauses. "Wait…"

"Death Eaters," says Lily by way of explanation. She stands up and kisses him good evening; when she takes her seat again in the armchair, James scrunches down next to Sirius on the floor. "He should be fine, but we'll need to keep an eye on him through the night."

"I'll help," says James immediately. "I'm glad he's going to be okay—he is going to be okay, isn't he?"

"He should be, but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I'm not Madam Pomfrey or anything, you know."

Dorcas stays late into the night, grabbing the first shift to watch Fabian when Lily, James, and Sirius are ready to head to bed around midnight. Back in the bedroom, Sirius falls asleep first, snoring quietly, while Lily turns to James and nestles her arms more comfortably around him. "Do you think it's silly, us getting married with everything that's going on around us?"

"Silly? No. Honestly, I think we all rather need something like a wedding coming up to keep us going—give us something good to look forward to. People are losing each other so much these days that I think it's really nice when two people find each other instead."

Lily nods, digesting this, and then says, "Marlene agreed to be my maid of honor, by the way. I warned her that Sirius is best man and she said she'd be okay pairing off with him at the wedding, but I'm worried it's going to trigger her to get upset again, just when she's been starting to come to grips with everything that happened there."

"She'll work through it," James says confidently. "She's tough, Marlene. She's going to be okay."

Is James forgetting all the time that sleeping with Sirius practically destroyed her?—the way she fell apart when she found out about Sirius and Emmeline, or how she still hasn't let go of her grudges against Sirius and Remus for being together? Still, James is right: Marlene's no weakling. Maybe, after everything that's happened, and after the perspective that being more active in the Order has given them, Marlene will be able to push through anything painful at the wedding.

At least, Lily hopes Marlene will, just like she hopes that Mary won't be too terribly triggered by seeing Marlene there as Lily's maid of honor. This wedding is supposed to be a celebration where everyone can finally let their guard down for one moment in time, and Lily certainly hopes that no drama will get in the way of that.

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A/N: Thanks very much to Vicky Lopez for agreeing to beta read for me! We'll be starting by retroactively making changes to Book Two, so at some point in the future I'll upload the revised chapters.