The wedding date was set for early September so that Lily and James would have enough time to both organize the ceremony and find a place to live. Lily was worried that the pregnancy would be showing too much by then, but Mrs. Potter assured her that there were charms she could put on the dress to avoid drawing attention to Lily's bump. Besides, she said, Lily was only about five months along, and the bump still wasn't terribly noticeable.
Mrs. Potter was a particularly welcome presence to Lily, who felt the loss of her own parents now more than ever. Despite her poor health, she had quickly stepped into the role of a mother to her pregnant daughter-in-law, and spent the weeks leading up to the wedding cheerfully engrossed in the planning that Lily had been all too happy to hand off. Free from too many logistical concerns, Lily was able to focus her attention on developing a new series of reconnaissance charms- a task that had been suggested to her by Dumbledore shortly before her graduation from Hogwarts. Meanwhile, James felt like a blue-arsed fly, running around after two women who were supposed to be taking it easy, and deliberately appropriating as many of their daily tasks as he possibly could.
Despite James's best efforts, however, his mother's activity levels only increased as she realized she could delegate the more mundane aspects of wedding planning to her son. Lily and James laughed together one evening as they questioned whether it was their wedding or his mother's, but no one would deny Mrs. Potter's success in the events-planning department, not even Mrs. Potter herself.
The wedding itself was elegant, but small, as no one wanted to draw the attention of any death eaters. Sirius was the best man, and Mary O'Reilly, one of Lily's best friends from Hogwarts, was the maid of honor. All the marauders were there, several members of the Order of the Phoenix (an underground organization in which James and Lily were becoming increasingly involved), a small handful of Hogwarts professors, former classmates, distant family members and friends, and, of course, Mrs. Potter. Lily had invited what remained of her own family—Petunia and Vernon—but neither showed up to the wedding.
However, in spite of this disappointment (or, perhaps, because of it), the day was a huge success. After a tender moment with Mrs. Potter, who had cried slightly while telling her just how ravishing she looked, Lily had walked down the aisle with Remus, greeted by countless gasps of admiration, and surrounded by dozens of enchanted feathers. And after the ceremony itself was over, the reception had been filled with music, laughter, and dancing. In fact, it was almost a completely perfect evening, barring Sirius's drunken best man speech. That had been an oration more akin to a eulogy than a congratulatory speech, and had included close to twenty-five different deer puns, which Lily noticed, principally, because Peter and Remus had made the mistake of swearing one another to a drinking game, and both had passed out (loudly and noticeably) after pun #14. Lily made a point of patting James on the back and quietly thanking him for being the responsible one, taking immense pleasure in the face he pulled as he fidgeted with his champagne glass. He may not have written the speech, but the drinking game had definitely been his idea.
After the wedding, the young couple moved into a small Tudor-style house in Godric's Hollow, a few streets down from James's parents' home. Their honeymoon period was spent between long, laughter-filled hours in bed, and various renovation projects. The house had been left in a general state of disrepair by its previous owners, and though James had pressed to buy one of the newer houses in town—one that wouldn't require so many repairs—Lily had fallen in love with the place. So James had resolved himself to the task of fixing the little house up.
Lily found herself giggling one afternoon, as she peeled wallpaper in the room that they planned to turn into the nursery. A loud metallic crack, followed by a string of expletives, had come from downstairs. James had spent the past couple of weeks craning his neck on a ladder, determined to fix the cracks on the living room ceiling, and had finally moved onto the plumbing. Lily went downstairs to see what kind of mess he'd gotten himself into. She found James in the kitchen, crouched under the sink, with his wand gripped between his teeth. He was trying to staunch the flow of water that was gushing out onto the floor from a couple of broken pipes.
"Do you need a hand?" Lily asked him.
"Nope, I've got it all under control," James said, his words slurred by the wand in his mouth. "I just miscast a sealing charm, nothing to worry about. If I can just..."
James loosed his grip on his wand just enough that he could use his tongue to spin it round and point it at the pipes. He squinted his eyes in hard concentration before Lily realized what he was trying to do and grabbed his wand off of him.
"Absolutely not! What do you think you're doing?!"
"Trying to cast a sealing charm without flooding the kitchen?"
"And lose all your teeth in the process?"
"I wouldn't have lost my teeth," James retorted.
"Name one person who's successfully cast a spell with their mouths."
James squinted once again in concentration, but after several moments it was clear that he didn't have an answer.
"Like I said," said Lily, "Toothless husband."
James grumbled something that Lily couldn't entirely make out as she put his wand down on the countertop and went to fetch their entire supply of towels.
After helping James mop up most of the water, and casting a sealing charm of her own that she felt confident would hold for at least the next few hours, Lily told James that she was going to call a plumber.
"But that's just unnecessary," James said. "I can fix it. I fixed the bathroom sink, these pipes really aren't that much worse."
Lily looked at her husband. Despite his current frustration, it was clear to her that he was trying hard to maintain his usual cheerful disposition. But there were dark circles under his eyes that she hadn't noticed before, and she wondered if exhaustion, more than stubborn idiocy, was the reason for his bad decision-making.
"I know," she said softly, "but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should." "Besides," she added, sensing the reason behind the under-eye circles, "I think you should go and see your mum."
James sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He had been over to visit his mother every day, even though Sirius had agreed to temporarily abandon the freedom of bachelorhood and move in with Mrs. Potter after James moved out, but it had been several days since Lily had last seen her and James hadn't spoken much about how she was faring.
"Yeah," he said finally, "I should do that." James shot her a half-hearted grin. "Who knows what kind of torture Sirius is subjecting her to?"
Lily laughed. "He's probably giving her a dramatic reenactment of whatever Muggle soap-opera he's been watching recently."
"Oh Merlin's Beard. You're right. He's developed an unhealthy obsession with that... oh, what's it called? Crown Street? No, that's not right."
"Coronation Street? Oh God. Well, in that case you'd better hurry."
Lily opened the door for him, and James kissed her, giving her a soft smile. As she watched him walk away, she caught herself hoping against hope that everything was better than it seemed.
