Remus and Peter agreed not to leave the Potter manor until after James was back from seeing Lily to Cokeworth. No one told Sirius about the arrangement, but it didn't need to be said that they didn't want to leave him on Christmas Eve in the big old house with only the Potter parents, both of whom seemed a little less rosy this morning than usual.

"If we're lucky, you'll miss my parents altogether," Lily said to James as he set her trunk next to where they stood on the Potters' veranda. "They're expected back today, but it's still so early, we might have a chance to get you back unnoticed."

"Miss them?" James asked, slipping an arm around her waist, one hand on the trunk, ready for her to apparate them both to Cokeworth. He had insisted she show it to him so he could get there, off the Floo network and on his own in an emergency. "Why should I miss them? What's wrong with me?"

She stood facing him, pressed close, picking invisible lint from the shoulders of his dark wool coat. "Nothing at all. And there's nothing wrong with them either but - but I don't feel like you've been sufficiently prepared, and neither have they. The only wizards they know are Severus and Hogwarts teachers. And really, James, how many Muggles have you met?"

"Loads," James beamed.

"Outside of street corners and train stations," Lily pressed. "How many Muggles have you known personally, well enough to be inside their houses?"

"Uh, none," James admitted.

"And beyond Muggles," she went on, "how many working class families' homes have you been in, magical or non-magical?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not some snob, Lily. I know not everyone lives in a manor or a Grimauld Place. Peter's house is old, but it's so overcrowded it doesn't feel grand. And Remus's parents have proper jobs. They're librarians. Nothing posh."

She groaned and rolled her forehead against his chest. "You don't even know, Potter."

James scooped her face from his chest and turned it up to look at him. "Come on now, how much more preparation do I need? I've already had the pleasure of overhearing you getting bawled out through the telephone machine by Petal - "

"Petunia - "

"Right. So I don't expect too much there," he said, smoothing her hair from her forehead. "And your parents will be in good moods, fresh from their holiday in Switzerland - "

"Who said they were holidaying?" Lily interrupted. "They were at a funeral for Dad's mate from school. And they're not rushing back to have Christmas, but to miss Christmas. Dad had to agree to work the graveyard shift at the mill tonight in exchange for getting time off for the funeral."

James didn't know what to make of the term 'graveyard shift' but he did understand the word 'mill.' "Your dad's a miller? Well, isn't that quaint."

She was laughing again, tousling James' hair the way he liked it. "It's a steel mill. A massive, filthy, noisy industrial steel mill. He's a hot metal crane operator."

James frowned, as if thinking very hard. "Hot metal crane operator. I know what each of those words mean but - "

Lily boosted herself onto her toes to kiss his cheek. James twitched at the light touch, turning his mouth toward hers, bending with her as she lowered herself back on her heels. But she only laughed gently and said, "You're not ready. It's alright. We'll apparate in, make sure you get a good enough sense of the place, and then you'll go back. There's no rush to make you part of the family."

James's posture stiffened. "Tell it to my parents."

"I did."

"You did," James echoed, and this time, when he bent toward her face she didn't laugh, but leaned up and into his kiss. Her stomach took on that swooping, uncontrolled broom ride lightness again as James sealed his mouth to hers for the first time that morning. She hopped against him, rising higher, closer, her hand finding the groove of his spine through his heavy coat. His hands were in her hair, cool on her scalp, tilting her head to deepen the kiss, taking her breath, urging her to cling to him. How many times would she have to kiss him before this ecstatic feeling stopped coming?

"Oi," someone whisper-yelled. It was Remus, leaning out of the doorway. "Get on your way, James. Mum's expecting me before noon."

Still in James's embrace, their mouths barely separated, Lily turned on the spot, and they were gone.

This, it turned out, was foolish. Lily's apparation was perfect, and brought them to stand with her trunk on the concrete walk through her parents' tiny front garden, the one crammed with tyres and old, partially rebuilt motors. But she arrived there in the arms of a boy the size of a fully grown man, dressed in a fine, almost formal coat like the boys of Cokeworth never wore. His hair was disheveled and his face was flushed, breath quick, lips red from having reluctantly just finished kissing her. If they would have had a moment to orient themselves, to stand apart in the cold, crisp morning and let it dampen their air of being newly in love, the entire visit would have gone more smoothly. But they hadn't.

They were still holding each other, eye to eye, laughing softly at nothing, when a car door slammed. There in the street, looking down on the garden, stood Petunia, bags of shopping in each hand. A great hulking man was closing the boot at the back of the car, pocketing the keys and arguing a point about fuel efficiency with no one. Vernon Dursley was still here.

"Well, well," Petunia said, beginning like a bad teleplay, "if it isn't our perfect, ever innocent Lily and the fancy man she's been hiding away with while our parents were abroad. Should have known it was something like this."

James and Lily had separated at the sound of the slamming doors. James was stepping toward Petunia as if to take the shopping from her. "Hello, Petunia. Lily's told me so much about you. I'm - "

Petunia jerked the bags away to pile them into Vernon's already heavily loaded, beefy arms. She was refusing to acknowledge James, cutting short his introduction. "Just had to, didn't you Lily? Used your witchery to find out the news about Vernon and me, and then had to come and steal what thunder you could from it." She finally sneered in James's direction. "He'll be one of your kind, won't he?"

Lily flinched. "Petty, there are certain things you shouldn't say lightly outside the family - "

"Oh, you don't like me to use the word 'witchery' in front of Vernon?" she said. "Believe me, I'd much rather not have to speak that word either. But you can give up hiding any of that. Vernon is family now. Don't act like you don't know."

"Honestly, Petty, I have no idea what you're on about. Did something happen?"

"We're engaged," Petunia shouted across the garden. "Vernon proposed while we were in London to fetch you. You know that, and it's why you sabotaged that perfect evening by disappearing, and why you've turned up on the front step now shamelessly groping - whoever this is."

Lily vaulted over Petunia's nastiness, hopping onto her level on the street and crushing her in a hug, twisting back and forth, cooing in a sing-song voice. "Engaged? At last! Congratulations, Petty. How wonderful for you."

Petunia didn't return the hug, but she didn't resist it either, letting Lily hold and move her. "Look," she said, in a small, sulky but somehow satisfied voice, "there's a ring."

Lily snatched at her sister's hand, stooping to see the very sensible white diamond solitaire ring in a band of yellow gold.

"Vernon, it's beautiful, classic," Lily said, in all earnestness.

"Yes, isn't it," Vernon muttered.

"That's Vernon," Lily said. "Hardworking, responsible, always so good to our Petunia. And I'll finally have a brother. I've always wanted one."

She moved to hug him too but Vernon drew himself back, cringing behind his wall of shopping bags. Petunia linked her arm through his as best she could. "Give him space, Lily. News of your witchiness hit him rather hard," Petunia explained. "He thought he knew you, but - well, naturally, he may never look on you the same way again."

Lily hung her head, genuinely sad. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

James snapped, skipping up onto the low embankment to stand in the street with them, taking Lily's arm. "Now wait just a minute. It's not right to speak as if there's something wrong with - "

"James, don't," Lily said. "It's a sibling thing. Please."

Petunia huffed. "James, is it?"

Lily nodded. "James Potter. He's in my year at school. Head Boy."

Petunia rolled her eyes. "Oh, he just has to be."

A voice was calling from the small kitchen window in the front of the house. "Petunia!"

She brushed past Lily, Vernon following, hurrying into the house with the things their mother had sent her to fetch.

"Well," Lily said as her brother-in-law-to-be turned sideways to get through the front door with his load. "If Mum is at the kitchen window, she will have seen you, James. Prepared or not, you can't just go. Are you ready to meet more Evanses?"

James took a deep breath. "Once more unto the breach."

Lily startled. "You know Shakespeare?"

James shrugged one shoulder. "Why wouldn't I?"

She squeezed his arm, taking up the recitation of the King Henry's famous speech, "The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge, Cry - "

James was reciting the battle cry from the play with her as they crossed the garden. They spoke the final line in unison as they arrived at the front door, "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!"

They managed to be laughing as they stepped inside.

With Vernon, Petunia, and Cheryl Evans all sorting through the shopping, the kitchen was too crowded to enter. James and Lily stood in the doorway, waiting, James watching as Lily watched her mother: a hard, thin woman with a dull blond ponytail, wearing a grey pullover and a pair of pajamas bottoms as she bossed Petunia around the room.

All at once, Cheryl turned around, shouting, "Lil-lay! Oh, there you are, darling. Come through."

Vernon and Petunia moved into the lounge, leaving Lily and James alone with Cheryl. She hugged Lily with rough enthusiasm, as if they were quidditch teammates. "Happy Christmas, Lily," she said rather briskly. "Now dish about this boyfriend."

Accustomed to this kind of extremely direct address, Lily answered unfazed. "Yes, Mum. This is James Potter - "

Cheryl was already nodding. "Potter. That's Head Boy to your Head Girl. Right. Makes sense, I suppose. Probably inevitable, though I had hoped - any road, you must be a good student then, are you James?"

The conversation was proceeding too quickly for James to pause to be modest. "Yes, Madam."

Cheryl laughed but not unkindly, her voice breaking into a hoarse, smoky cough. "Madam indeed," she said, opening a hatch in the top of a white metal cube and beginning to pack it with her husband's dirty clothes. "You're serious at school then? No history of messing about?"

"Erm, well - "

"Are your parents still together, James?"

"Oh - yes. All the time."

Lily tried to take over. "The Potters live in the countryside. Lovely old house. They've very kindly been hosting a bunch of us from school since classes let out."

Cheryl raised her eyebrows. "You mean, since you gave your sister the slip in town."

Lily was speaking quickly, plaintively. "Petty and Vernon left me stranded at the station for six hours while they went off and got engaged. I don't blame them for forgetting me in all the excitement. But I already apologized, and there won't be a repeat - "

"Later, Lily. Later," Cheryl said. "At least there was no harm done. Not with your knight in shining armour waiting to sweep you off to his ancestral estate. Isn't that right James?" Cheryl's voice had taken on a sarcastic monotone punctuated by the sound of the door of the metal hatch falling shut. She cranked a dial on the front of the cube and the room was noisy with a sound like a garden hose spraying into an oil drum.

James raised his voice to speak over it, his tone still light. "Oh, strictly speaking, we're not actually a noble family. No knights. Not anymore, at any rate," James said.

Cheryl laughed, mostly at Lily's spectacular cringe. "Does your dad work then?"

"At his age?" James said. "Oh no."

"And your mum?"

There was something rather terrifying about the way Cheryl posed the question, leaning one hip against the metal box, her chin tucked, her eyebrows pulled together as she waited for his reply. James wasn't sure how to avoid setting off the trap, but he couldn't refuse to answer either.

"She," he began, looking to Lily for signs of impending disaster, "she looks after Dad."

Lily's show of disaster came too late, a hiss through her teeth as she pivoted in a circle.

"What?" he mouthed at her.

Cheryl set her empty plastic laundry basket down on the kitchen table with the loudest thud she could muster. "Our Lily is a talented, promising girl. She can be anything she wants. Her future is blindingly bright," she said. "I'm sure you know that, James. I'm sure you know she is suited for better things than following some man to his house in the country while she's still in her teens to give him pretty, magical babies and 'look after' him. I am positively certain you know all this, James Potter. Do you?"

James was flustered for just a moment. "I - I - yes, of course I know that. Lily's the best girl at school. The best girl anywhere. The best person anywhere. No one would expect her to just - "

Lily threw herself between them. "Mum, we've only been involved for a few days. Honestly, there's no need to be so - "

"Alright, alright," Cheryl said, stepping toward James, taking his hand, at last, and shaking it. "It's nice to meet you, James. I'm sure you're lovely. But you've caught me on a bad day. We were on the train all night, and Mitch is going to be working or sleeping for most of Christmas, and I'm still processing my other daughter's relationship bombshell and - "

"It's okay, Mum," Lily was saying, her arm around her mother's shoulders, rubbing her palm against her arm.

"Well, Mitch has already gone to bed. So at least you've missed meeting Princess Lily's adoring daddy while he's in a bad mood," Cheryl said.

James let out a long, noisy breath. "Yeah."

Lily and Cheryl laughed at his too obvious relief. "Don't think you're getting out of it for long though," Cheryl said, wagging a finger. "Come back the day after Boxing Day. Everyone should be well-rested and you can meet Mitch then. It will be nicer than this. We'll have clean clothes, and I'll cook for everyone."

James was nodding. "Yes, thank you. I'll be sure to come. Lovely to meet you, Madam - er - Mrs. Evans."

Cheryl pounded him on the back. "Right. You and all. See him out, Lily. The poor sweetheart."

Lily fled the house, grabbing at a handful of James's sleeve and towing him along behind her, his leather-soled shoes clicking against the kitchen linoleum. They passed through the door to the garden where she spun James's back into the wall. It happened so quickly and with such determination James expected them to be apparating somewhere else. But instead, Lily just collapsed against him as he leaned on the wall, her feet between his, her arms around his waist, and her face in his chest.

"Stars, James, I am so sorry," she said. "I knew it would have been better if we'd missed them."

"None of that, Lily," James said, gathering her hair between his hands as if to tie it up. "It would have been indecent if they weren't a bit cross with the stranger you disappeared with for three nights."

"Do they have to assume the worst, though? Honestly."

"The worst?" James said, rocking slightly from side to side, rolling his shoulders against the bricks. "The worst was my parents telling you to let me get you pregnant with the Chosen One to keep the world from devolving into war. No, your mum was well within her rights to assume the worst."

Lily laughed wearily into the front of his coat. "You don't have to come back on the twenty-seventh to have a meal with us. Not if it's going to be more of this."

"It's not. That's what your mother said. And even if it is," James paused to lift her chin with his fingers. "If it is, it will still be worth it." He pressed a soft, warm kiss to her lips. "Worth it." And another. "Worth it."

After the final kiss, Lily opened her eyes to look up into James's. His hand was on her cheek, and the look on his face was achingly sweet. They were parting for the first time since the prophecy in the cellar. He was going to leave her in another town. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat and withdrew the grey glass orb, holding it between them, letting it show her thoughts. James understood, and let go of her face to brush the cold glass with his fingertips.

There was a word in Lily's mind: "Soulmates." She didn't speak it. Maybe she didn't have to. Madam Potter had said soulmates had less pain in their intimate relationships. That might have been true when the soulmates were together. But it meant there was more pain when they were apart.

They looked away from the prophecy orb and into each other's faces again. Lily saw that there was a word in James's mind as well - not one, actually, but three. They were different from what she wanted to say, but had much the same meaning. She watched his expression, seeing that he was about to speak them as he left her.

She lifted a finger and held it over his lips. "It's just our second day together, James," she whispered. "Don't say it yet."

"But it's true," he said.

"Just wait," Lily insisted. "It doesn't matter how long. It will still be true."

It took much too long for Lily to come back into the house, alone. By then, Cheryl was sat at the table with a cup of tea and a cigarette as the washing machine spun.

Lily sat in the chair next to her. "Are you happy about Petty's news?" she began.

Cheryl blew a jet of smoke toward the ceiling. "Well, we couldn't convince her to work at anything but filling an office clerk job, and she has no love for it, so she may as well start a career as Mrs. Dursley instead. Vernon's no prince but he's alright. Dependable."

Lily hummed and took a Christmas shortbread from the tin on the table.

"At least Petunia is out of her teen years, and she's not going into marriage already up the duff," Cheryl said, flicking a column of hot ash from her cigarette into her saucer. "Not like some of us."

"But your life with dad turned out alright, hasn't it Mum?" Lily asked, sweeping her shortbread crumbs into a pile.

"Of course it has," Cheryl said. "But think what might have been. Your cleverness, your shine doesn't come from nowhere, Lily. I once had a future with every bright possibility in it too. But then I fell stupidly in love - not that my love was stupid, but I went about it all wrong. Don't do that, my darling girl. Not even for the headiest of Head Boys."

Lily lowered her voice. "Would you say Dad is your soulmate?"

Cheryl snorted a laugh. "Sure I would. On an anniversary card, maybe at Valentine's if he behaved particularly well. I'd say it. Though it hardly matters after twenty-something years together, now does it? Doesn't matter what I call it. Here I am."

It wasn't the kind of answer Lily wanted. She smiled anyway, rising from her chair. "I'll take my trunk upstairs."

Petunia kept the bedroom so neat Lily felt like there was no place for her or her things in it. She reduced the size of her trunk and stashed it under her bed before falling hard onto her pillow.

In an instant, James filled her mind. She shook her head into her pillow. "Don't think about him. You've wasted enough of the time you should have spent this holiday studying for NEWTs mooning over James Potter. Focus, Evans. Don't be stupid."

But these words were like someone else's, the words of the Lily Evans she used to be before - when did it even start?

And she spent the rest of the morning lying in bed, looking out the window, beginning in first year, examining every moment she'd ever had with James, looking for the soulmate in all of it.