Hi all, so I am back to this wonderful fandom with a new story! I am taking a delve into a fandom, an era and a couple that has always fascinated me and it's the James/Lily era.

This is the second part of the story that started in the Beginning of the End and these are the moments in the first Wizarding War and the build up to Harry.

This story will be twenty chapters long and some events/events that do take place might be missed.

Also spelling/grammar...not my best thing. Again keep that in mind when you read...please.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know

I do not receive PMs anymore, if you have a question stick it in a review and I will answer it in the chapter notes.


The End Of The Beginning

Chapter 9-Wedding Bells From Hell

The Wedding of James Potter to Lily Evans, for better or for worse, until death do them part.


Weddings.

They are supposed to be a day of joy, a day of love and coming together and your supposed to eat, drink and be merry. Your supposed to come together and be together bonded until the end of your life and your supposed to giggle with your girlfriends and dance with your friends and look back on the day in sixty years time and think that this, this was the happiest day of your life.

Because that was what a wedding was supposed to be.

Weddings.

What a load of crap that was Lily thought to herself as she stared at herself in the mirror.

Okay, so maybe that was a tad harsh maybe it was a tad harsh to say that it was a load of hippogriff dung but the truth was she was not feeling in a very weddingy kind of mood.

Seriously. Her best friend was dead, her other friend was dead, her Dad was dead, her mother was dead, her sister wasn't going to be there and there was a very good chance that even if the Death Eaters didn't interrupt her wedding then Sirius was more than likely to get drunk and in mourning Marlene set her off again but she was here and she was in the dress and the only thing that she had was her love for James and the fact that she knew that she was going to do this because of her love for James. She loved him heart and soul. She wanted to be his wife and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him no matter how long or how short that life would be. She wanted to spend time with him day in and day out and she wanted to have his children too.

Just…you know…not now.

When the time came, the right time. Fate or destiny or whichever fickle bitch was up there dicking around with the cards of life could take a hike on this one. No way was Lily getting pregnant before the end of this thing.

Knowing her luck if James and her were wiped out suddenly in the middle of the night her baby would end up being raised by her sister and that man she was with (who was wasted in this day and age—he would have made a wonderful witch finder back in Salem) and she would never be able to rest in peace.

But here she was in the dress. A nice dress, a white dress which she would fully admit was Marlene's idea. Marlene who had cackled when she had seen Lily sneak out of James's flat one morning the day they were due to go dress shopping and had said that there was no shame in admitting that she wasn't technically supposed to wear white at her wedding.

Lily had flipped her the finger but it had been Marlene who had taken her dress shopping and the dress that she was in now. The off the shoulder dress with the folds of white that fell to the bottom, the small veil and the white and gold garland of flowers and other things that she had given Lily as her something borrowed (and was now the only thing that Lily had of Marlene McKinnon—the only thing that proved that Marlene McKinnon—indeed that any of the McKinnon's had ever existed at all) was her something borrowed.

It was laughable was it not so tragic.

Sirius and Remus and Peter (she suspected Remus in reality) had teamed up to give her the something blue which happened to be a rather nice sapphire hair clip that kept her hair off her face. She had let the red hair loose as she had often preferred it to be but the combs she knew would come in handy when she took her veil off after the ceremony. Her something old was her mother's earrings that she had pinched off Petunia when her sister had left the house one morning for work. Petty it might be but there was no way in hell that she was going to let Petunia have everything. She had gotten her mother's funeral and her mother's ashes above the mantel in the living room of the big fancy, respectable, sensible house that Vernon Dursley was going to buy his future wife and son (his wife staying a virgin with all her friends alive for her wedding day no doubt). No way in hell was she getting anything else out of her.

Her something new was something that she had treated herself to this time and it was her bangle. She had seen it in the fanciest muggle shop that she could have found in the aftermath of Marlene's death and perhaps a little bit recklessly Lily had found that for once she was not thinking about the money or the fact that she was not bringing much in terms of finances to this marriage, she had found that she was thinking that, that would be a lovely bracelet to own and to wear on her wedding day.

It was like Marlene had been talking to her from the great beyond (or whatever the hell came after this shit show of a life, she had thought viciously at the time—she still felt it now if she was being honest with herself) and so she had bought the thing and it was hers and it was something that along with this garland and her mother's earrings and her sapphire hairclips she could pass down to her and James's daughter one day (or her daughter in law if she was blessed with only sons) and she knew that she would have a story to tell.

A legacy to leave.

Things that she and James had never really had.

She stared at herself in the mirror and she breathed in and she breathed out. She had only had a croissant for breakfast and two sips of tea and she was thinking that it was getting to her. Today…after…eleven AM to be exact everything in her life was going to be different, she was going to be someone's wife, she was going to be Mrs James Potter. Lily Potter. James and Lily Potter.

How was it that eighteen months ago she had chalked down this man as arrogant and rude and uncaring and now she was so head over heels in love with him every second that they spent apart felt like a lifetime. Since when he had she become one of those girls? When had she become one of those girls who cared weather or not the flowers matched up with the shoes.

But she was nineteen and she was nearly twenty and she was nineteen and she was nearly twenty and she had known more in the eighteen months since she had left school that glorious summer when Voldemort had been a pipe dream, something on the horizon that they didn't take seriously, that things were bright and beautiful, in the past eighteen months she had learnt more about love and life and loss and grief and agony and the sting of death and the pain of betrayal and the curses and what it took to kill a man, to watch a man kill, to watch someone die in front of you weather it be quick or weather they be screaming in agony, than she had ever learnt about anything else in her life ever.

She was not a child anymore.

Lily didn't think she had ever been a child really.

And now she was about to be a wife.

There was a knock on the door and she turned to see Molly Weasley her red hair loose down her back her belly round with the early signs of pregnancy (another boy she was sure of) and her body tired and her posture one of exhaustion but her eyes bright and she took in Lily and smiled softly coming into the room and shutting the door behind her.

"They are all ready for you sweetheart" was all she said and Lily nodded twisting her ring on her hand and trying to be brave.

Suddenly it wasn't about Marlene or Mary, or Voldemort, it was about the fact that she was about to be married and her mother and her father and her sister weren't here to see it. Two were dead and one had made it very clear that as far as she was concerned Lily was as good as. It was her wedding day and she was alone.

It was her wedding day and she had nobody.

Molly Weasley with the skill of a mother seemed to pick up on that and she crossed the room and despite all the gown and the veil and the shimmery dress in the sunlight she managed to get both her hands around Lily and she squeezed her tight.

It would never occur to Lily that nearly fifteen years from now there would be a boy with green eyes on a hospital bed feeling Molly Weasley's embrace and thinking just like her, that it was as real and as caring as if it was by their own mother.

"Oh darling" Molly Weasley said as if there was decades between them and not just a few years. "You look wonderful, now don't cry because it will spoil your make up. Your young man is looking very handsome, all of the Order are here too. You and James have got a lot of people fighting for you in your corner, even my boys have decided to be well behaved today."

Here Lily snorted out a laugh that was a bit more wet than she wanted it to be.

"There should be a lot of people here" she said finally and Molly nodded.

"I know" she said and she said it in such a soft way that Lily knew she was thinking about her brothers, Gideon and Fabien and she opened her mouth to speak—though what she was going to say she didn't know but then Molly pattered her once on the arm and Lily nodded and took a deep breath in and a deep breath out and turned her back on the girl in the mirror and walked down the stairs of Godric's Hollow to where Remus was standing because with Sirius as the best man it was an obvious choice to all but Remus (who had gotten rather emotional bless him) to walk her down the aisle.

Dumbledore was going to marry them but Lily as she walked through the sea of people watching her had only eyes for the one man standing at the top of the aisle, hair a mess as if he had just ran his hair through it, tie slightly crooked, glasses on the bridge of his nose and his smile so wide that suddenly she wanted to sprint up the aisle to join him.

Sirius was stood next to him and for once the joy was back on his face, she wasn't foolish enough to think that the grief was gone from his heart but the joy was back and even if it was only for today that was something. Remus next to her beamed and kissed her on the cheek looking younger, happier, free and she kissed him back winking at Peter who winked back at her too.

James took her hand in his and she bent to give little Nymphadora Tonks (Sirius's little colour changing haired cousin—whose hair was a bright pink in contrast to her dress—and Lily got the impression that might be deliberate) her bouquet. Little Nymphadora Tonks gave her a look that told Lily that she did not know what to do with the flowers nor did she want them but she stayed there patiently waiting as Lily and James got married and Lily Evans became Lily Potter.

Somewhere between the I Do and the kiss she felt like she was being watched, a pinpoint gaze that she remembered well and she turned as she and James faced a storm of applause her eyes searching.

It didn't matter what disguise he was in she knew he was here.

She thought she saw a face she didn't recognise looking at her with betrayal in his face and heartbreak in his eyes and though he was now a blonde for this occasion and taller than he had ever been in real life, Lily Evans now Lily Potter looked Severus Snape dead in the eye for a split second.

Something in the blonde's face seemed to crumple and with a nod he was gone out the side door that had been open to let the butterflies in (immediately everyone was distracted by the Weasley boys who had all made up their mind to catch one) but Lily watched him for only a second longer. She turned back to her husband with a smile and didn't think of her oldest friend who despite the danger to his life, had been the only one who had turned up her wedding from her old life.

Everyone else either hated her or was dead.

She turned back to James though because with him she was going to have a new life full of new adventures (if that didn't sound too cheesy to say) and so as they walked back down the aisle to applause she found that she was grinning because she knew that her life was going to be long and it was going to be good and it was going to be filled with love and that…well….that was really all that mattered when she thought about it.

She knew James agreed.


And there you go, I hope you enjoy that one.

Next Chapter-Lily and James go on their honeymoon and while they are gone the death toll ramps up. Sirius gets some bad news and comes to a shocking realisation, Sirius based chapter.