Lily looked in the mirror, inhaled.
Radiant white dress, shiny red hair, meticulously applied make-up.
Exhaled.
"Oh, Lily!" Mary Macdonald rushed up to her, hands over her mouth. "You look beautiful!"
Lily grinned. "So do you! Look at us both." They stood side by side in front of the mirror, the light mintcream of Mary's dress complimenting Lily in a very calculated way - they had certainly spent enough time on the matter. "We are absolutely gorgeous."
"Aren't we just? Really, Lily," Mary scrutinized Lily's face with pride, "Potter's going to faint when he sees you."
Lily waved a hand. "That's nothing new. He reckons I'm beautiful when I'm sick, groggy, and gross. He's such an idiot." She was grinning from ear to ear.
Mary watched her for a few seconds before shaking her head. "If my relationships could be even the slightest bit like what you have with James…"
"Oh, give it time, Mary. I'm sure there will be plenty of eligible bachelors hanging around today. Seize the moment, why don't you?"
"Yes, well I'm sure there will be all sorts of people here, good and bad. How many did you invite, anyway?"
"Too many. Between James' extended family and my own…" She let out a breath. "It will be fine. It will all be fine."
Sirius sprinted at the priest and tackled him to the ground.
The two rolled about on the church floor, wrestling, and the priest hissed at him, trying to shove his face away. Sirius gritted his teeth, got an arm round the priest's throat, closed his eyes tight as the priest tried jabbing a haphazard thumb into his eye sockets, tightened his grip some more. The priest was gagging now, and Sirius didn't loosen up. The struggles grew weaker.
"How-" the priest gasped, "did you… know?"
"You're supposed to be a Muggle, mate," Sirius said grimly. "Your breath smells like pumpkin juice."
"Muggles don't drink pumpkin juice?" the priest croaked.
"No."
After a few more seconds, the priest's struggles stopped altogether, his arms going limp. Sirius let go and let out a breath. He stood, dragged the priest out through the church foyer and down a corridor that led to the rest of the beautiful Italian resort. He dumped the priest in an empty room, bound him, snapped his wand. He frowned as he pulled the priest's sleeve back, revealing an emerald snake coiled around a leering skull imprinted on the priest's forearm. Sirius grunted.
After locking the room, he moved on to find the man of the hour. A large room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the stunning goldens and blues of Italian beach, and baking in bright sunlight and clear blue sky. There, his best friend, with messy black hair, glasses, and a lopsided grin, gazed out at the lapping waves. James looked over at Sirius, taking in the wonky bow-tie and scuffed shirt. "Alright, mate?"
Sirius clapped his shoulder and stood beside him. "Grand. Priest was a Death Eater is all."
"Right," said James. Then, "Mate, I'm bloody nervous."
Vernon Dursley drove the little rental car at the speed limit to the very dot. Not a single bar over.
So important to Vernon was normalcy that he couldn't bear to underspeed like a learner, or overspeed like a hoodlum. Such an occurrence would be cause for spectacle, and if there was one thing Vernon Dursley hated above all else, well…
"It is a normal wedding, isn't it?" he said to Petunia, for perhaps the tenth time that day. "No funny business?"
"Yes," said Petunia. She wore a plain blue dress, and her hair was done up neatly. "None at all."
"Good," said Vernon. His mustache, consisting of two hairy slugs meeting at the half-way point above his lip, twitched and tickled his nostrils with every word. "No crackpots? Weird folk, like?"
"Absolutely not. Lily assured me that we wouldn't be subjected to some sort of freakshow."
Hagrid walked along the old-fashioned Italian street, a wide smile on his ridiculously large face. People walking past gawped and stared at him, perhaps due to the fact that he was more than twice their size, but he took no notice. Today, James Potter and Lily Evans were getting married, and Hagrid had to hold himself back from squealing in glee.
His coat was furry, his bow-tie bright red, and the flower tucked behind his ear was a poppy.
And his gift for the happy couple?
At two thirty on the dot, a troupe of Goblins, the Jocund Jibber Jabbers, would march into the chapel at the resort and perform a special song for the newlyweds. They were a high profile singing troupe, and he'd paid top Galleon to book them.
It was so exciting. He knew James and Lily would be ecstatic.
"It's about time," grumbled the old lady. She was nestled into a sofa so comfortably that it was difficult for Isabella Greengrass to discern where the sofa ended and this old hag started. "We're going to be late."
"Sorry, Auntie Tilda," said Gregor, Isabella's brother. "Let's get you on your feet, eh? We've got a wedding to get to."
"We've probably missed it by now," said Auntie Tilda, not moving. "What's the point?"
"No, no," said Gregor, a valiant smile sticking to his face. "We still have plenty of time."
"Eh?"
"We-" Gregor cleared his throat and spoke louder. "We still have plenty of time."
"None of you kids speak clearly, that's the problem," she grumbled. "You slur your words, one dragging into the other. Speak properly, boy."
Gregor grimaced, scratched his blond hair, and turned to Isabella.
"Don't look at me," she said. "You're the one who volunteered to come get her."
"Well, what choice did I have? We're only related to James through her! Otherwise I doubt we'd have even been invited."
"And would that be some sort of tragedy?" asked Isabella. "It's going to be a Muggle wedding. No magic allowed. James Potter, having a Muggle wedding! As if the boy could insult his bloodline any further."
"Why do you even want to come, Izzy?" asked Gregor, grabbing Tilda's hands and trying to tug her to her feet. "Doesn't sound like you're very keen."
Isabella, rather than answer the question, gingerly took one of their aunt's hands from Gregor and joined the effort to pull the cow off the sofa. "I wonder if there's any point in even bothering to make this wedding Muggle friendly. This old thing looks enough like a troll to break the Statute of Secrecy."
Auntie Tilda's lined face squinted up at Isabella. "You'd be a very pretty girl without that ugly expression on your face all the time."
Isabella dropped the hand and walked back to the door, ignoring Gregor's shout of surprise. "Let me know when you're done, Greg."
In Hogwarts she'd been told she was the prettiest girl in the school, and after Hogwarts she was often told she must be the prettiest girl in Great Britain. Her shoulder length hair, as dark as black could ever get, and angular, high browed face gave her the visage of exquisite royal beauty. She knew this. Yet she still found herself feeling the slightest bit sensitive on the matter. For no matter how pretty she was, it hadn't been enough to keep him around. Today, she would heal that wound.
Today, she was determined to get back Sirius Black.
Anna Simmons had known Lily Evans since they were toddlers. Though they'd lost touch when Lily had gone off to some exclusive boarding school in Scotland at eleven, they'd recently re-connected after a chance encounter at the grocery store. Quickly becoming just as fast friends as they had been at five years old, Anna was sure that Lily valued their friendship.
Why then had Anna been tasked with bringing Lily's insane cousin to the wedding, right after her flight had landed?
Most stories she had heard about Ernest Evans, with his weird little house in Italy, made him sound insane, and the other stories had reassured her that 'insane' would be an understatement.
Anna walked along the unkempt lawn, for there was no footpath, to the front door of a house that more closely resembled a gardening shed. Though she knocked on the door quite gently, it felt like the wood might burst and splinter at her touch.
"Ah, hold on! One moment!"
"Ernest?" Anna called. "May I come in?"
"Hold on, hold on," came the harried voice again.
"Lily told me to specifically ignore you if you tell me to hold on, Ernest."
"Lily's barmy."
"Ernest, I'm going to come in now if that's alright with you."
The door opened and a man in his mid-twenties, with hair that stuck straight up and bright green eyes, looked out at her intensely. "What's your name?"
"Your pants!"
He wore no pants. A fluffy pink robe that grazed the floor covered any unspeakables, and his socks were pulled high above his shins. Beneath the robe he at least had on a white dress shirt and a bow tie.
"I am not going to call you Your Pants."
"Anna," she said, looking back down the street to make sure none of his neighbors were about. "My name's Anna, but you need to put some pants on! We have to go now!"
"One moment," he said again. Then he turned and disappeared into the house once more. Inside it was just as messy as Anna had expected, and she had expected it to be extremely messy. Papers and bottles and maps covered every surface, strings stretched between all the walls like tripwires at waist height. Strange drawings, photographs, and newspaper cut-outs were the only thing that appeared with any consistency, as they were absolutely everywhere. It was the most baffling collection of things under one roof Anna had ever seen.
She moved cautiously through all the clutter, peering at the walls and strings hopelessly, knowing that nothing could make any of this intelligible to her.
Ernest was in the kitchen, which was, obviously, piled with dishes. Then he walked off into another room, quickly emerged again with a different bow tie on, and left to a third room.
Anna recognized a picture on the wall then, and stopped. "I know that place. That's Lily's parents' house."
Ernest appeared by her side suddenly with pants in one hand. "You've found the starting point." His voice was low. "All of this, everything I've come to understand about the world, comes from this photo."
"Erm…"
He looked at the picture nostalgically, and when he did he seemed almost like a normal person. "I was a fledgeling photographer back then. I'd snap my camera at anything at all. Visiting my aunt and uncle's house that day, with darling Lily off to her boarding school, it happened."
"What happened?"
"I've come to refer to that moment as The Enlightenment. Anna, magic is real. And my dear cousin Lily can do it!"
She looked at him for a few seconds, before sighing and walking away to look at the other pictures. "Get those pants on, Ernest. We're going to be late."
"One moment," he said yet again, hurrying off to disappear once more into his room.
Anna looked at her watch and huffed. At this rate they would have to drive well past the speed limit if they were to make it in time.
"Brown bow tie or yellow?" he called.
"Pants, Ernest! Just put on some pants!"
Sirius found Mary standing by the church doors, open wide to the rest of the resort, smiling and greeting the guests trickling in early. "You seen Remus?"
"He's around here somewhere, I think I saw him in the lobby. Hello." She waved to an elderly couple Sirius didn't recognize, then glanced back at him. "Everything going smoothly?"
"Yeah, I'd say so. Few small hiccups." Sirius shrugged. "Priest was a Death Eater."
"What?"
"Yeah. Ah, Remus!" Sirius spotted the brown haired boy in the courtyard below, chatting to a man wearing a suit and tie. He hurried down the steps and joined his friend, as the man nodded and walked away. "Who's that?"
"The resort manager," said Remus. As always, there were shadows under his eyes, though the tired look on his face seemed more pronounced than usual. The two boys had shouldered much of the burden provided by this monumental task of a wedding. So many magical and Muggle folk in one place was proving a logistical nightmare. "We have more tables and chairs arranged in the reception hall than the catering staff thought they could provide. I can hardly tell him we summoned most of it."
Sirius laughed. "If stock of tables and chairs are our only problems, Remus, I think we're doing alright."
"Also someone charmed the cake to sing love ballads, made a whole commotion, so the cooks had to have their memories wiped."
Sirius frowned. "That's…"
"Fine," said Remus, running a hand through his hair. "It's fine. They've gone back to cooking, and the cake's stopped singing."
"Will-" Sirius scratched his chin, "Will it start singing again, do you reckon?"
"No."
"Good. Problem solved."
"It's very unlikely, at least."
"I like those odds. Now, we need a new- Hello," he smiled warmly at Frank and Alice Longbottom, recently married themselves. "How are we doing?"
"Splendid, thanks," said Alice, waving to the two boys.
"Look at you, Black," Frank said with a chuckle. "Not even two years out of Hogwarts, and you're wearing a suit and tie, looking altogether responsible. The adult world has ruined you!"
Sirius laughed and waved him off, and he watched the couple climb up the church steps before speaking again. "We need a new priest."
"What?" Remus frowned. "What happened to the old one?"
"Death Eater." Sirius put his hands on his hips and looked around the courtyard. "But I think one of the Prewetts, the Squib boy, I think he ended up joining the clergy. Any chance you can get in contact?"
"Which Prewetts?" Remus asked. "Cadmus and Phillipa's lot?"
"No, younger generation."
"The Irish ones?"
"No, no, I think they live in Manchester."
"Oh, Titus and Maria. Their boy is Luke."
Sirius snapped his fingers. "That's the one. Luke. You need to find him."
"Sirius, I'm quite sure he's younger than we are."
"And I'm quite sure Muggle priests don't just pop up out of thin air, two hours before a wedding. You need to- Hello," said Sirius, his smile more akin to a grimace. "Hi, Auntie Tilda."
The old, rather large woman wore a wide brimmed hat with a black feather sticking out of it, and she squinted at him, face filled with a sublime contempt that only the elderly could muster, before disregarding him completely and moving on. "Muggle wedding," she muttered. "What is the world coming to?"
"Hi, Sirius."
He stifled his groan, and nodded to the Greengrass siblings. "Hi, Isabella. Alright, Gregor?"
"Not bad, mate," said Gregor, clapping Sirius' shoulder and taking Tilda by the arm. "Come on, Auntie, this way."
"Get off me, stupid boy."
"So," said Isabella, lingering behind and looking at Sirius casually. Her arms snaked behind her back, and she bit her lip. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yes, it has," Sirius said shortly. He turned to Remus. "Find him." Then he turned and walked back across the courtyard, eyes searching for the next problem he'd have to solve.
Remus smiled awkwardly at Isabella Greengrass. Her gaze moved from Sirius' retreating figure to Remus, looking mighty unimpressed.
"So," he said. He cleared his throat. "How are you?"
She rolled her eyes and walked off after her brother and aunt, catching up to them by the church steps and leaving Remus in the courtyard.
He nodded to himself. "Yep." Then he frowned and snapped his head back to Sirius' retreating form. He scratched his head. "The priest is a what?"
But of course, there was no reply.
Letting out a breath, Remus nodded again. "Luke Prewett… Now, where in the bloody hell are you?"
Truthfully, Remus wasn't in much of a position to add yet another responsibility to his leaning tower of responsibilities. He couldn't possibly have the time to do this, but who could he delegate to?
He spotted a boy with a round face and watery eyes wandering the courtyard aimlessly, and slowly smiled.
"Pete! Oi, Peter! C'mere, I've got an important job for you!"
Peter ran a hand through his hair as he rushed about the resort. "Luke bloody Prewett," he muttered. He put his ear to a door. Nothing. "As if I don't have enough on my bloody plate." He moved to the next door. Nothing. The next.
A banging, like bone on wood.
Peter tried the door. It was locked, so he blew it off its hinges - time was short.
"You bloody idiot," Peter said to Walden Macnair, storming in and glaring at the bound and gagged man on the floor, still banging his head against the wall. "You absolute dunce."
He removed the binds and gag with a flick of his wrist, and Macnair slowly got to his feet, rubbing his head and wincing.
"A priest, Macnair? Really?"
Macnair spread his arms and gestured at his outfit. "I think I did a pretty convincing job, all things considered."
"Except you got caught." Peter closed his eyes and massaged his temple. "Do you know how much I'm risking by even setting you free? This is my best friend's wedding!"
Macnair snorted and made to walk past him. "He's not your friend anymore, Wormtail."
Peter stuck his arm out and tried to look menacing. It was difficult through watery eyes. "You need to get out of here."
Macnair took hold of Peter's arm and pulled his sleeve back with a snarl. "You see this? Hm?" The snake and skull seemed to pulse on Peter's arm, as though it knew they were looking. "A mark of your commitment, seared upon your flesh for life. We're Death Eaters, Pettigrew. Now let's do some killing."
"I know the commitment I made, Macnair," Peter said quietly. "I have a job to do. Your presence here is compromising that job. You think I'm having a change of heart, even as I set you free? No, I know exactly where my priorities are. If you plan to get in the way of them, then the Dark Lord shall hear about it."
Macnair sneered at him. "Look at this. You're so much more courageous with your friends so close. To compare you with the sniveling coward who pledged his loyalty a year ago would be night and day."
"You need to get out of here," Peter said again. "Dumbledore will be at this wedding, Macnair. Do you really want to crash it?"
"Okay, Pettigrew," said Macnair, looking amused. "I'll leave. But I still have my doubts about you."
"Feel free to doubt away," he snapped. "Now go."
"Oh, right." Now Macnair looked almost sheepish. "Black snapped my wand. Would you mind doing the honors for me?"
So, most reluctantly, Peter dumped Macnair at the airport, before apparition-hopping all the way to Manchester to look for Luke bloody Prewett… wherever the hell he was.
A/N: This will probably be a three-parter, because one whole chapter would have been outrageously long
