The Light

Chapter 66- The Wedding

Chapter 66- The Wedding

May 1979

The gazebo was exploding with laughter, reaching the low peaks and bursting through the slits in the marquee. Spring lay thick and sweet on the air, blowing free dandelion tufts for the bride and groom. Light trickled in, hoping to catch a glance of the beautiful young couple, who were swaying on the dancefloor, unwilling to break away from one another. Their light shed on everyone present, and their happiness was palpable on the air.

If you were to ask James Potter when he fell in love with Lily Evans, he would not be able to answer you straight away. It wasn't that he didn't know- he did. James could recall every small and insignificant detail off of the top of his head about the very first moment he realised it, and the many times after that he fell a little bit deeper.

It was just that there were so many moments beyond that first night, when he laid in his bed in the Gryffindor dormitory, too scared to sleep because the butterflies in his stomach were fluttering more erratically than the stars he could see through the big window.

It was the time Lily had smiled at him, hesitantly but genuinely, from across the classroom when he had defended her blood status, claiming that it didn't matter, and what did Mulciber know? She was more a witch than he ever would be a wizard- her grades alone were proof to that! He'd gotten a black eye for it afterwards, and she had taken him to the Hospital Wing and stayed to make sure he was alright.

Although no one had ever been punished for it, Mulciber had turned up to breakfast the next day with swollen skin and a multi-coloured rash that not even Madam Pomfrey could cure. James had his suspicions and he seemed right about them for when he looked at Lily, he saw her innocently cutting up her bacon as though nothing was out of place. The smirk curling her lips was barely visible and the butterflies in his stomach went wild.

Could butterflies do backflips? He imagined them doing backflips.

It was the time he had found her crying by the Black Lake because her sister refused to associate with her and had called her a freak. James had only met Petunia once, during the summer after their seventh year when Lily's parents hosted a get-together. She had been there with her fiancée, a large elephant-like Muggle by the name of Vernon. They hadn't been there long when a snide comment was passed and James' wand slipped, causing Vernon to go head-first into the cheesecake.

He had stood up and said calmly, "I'm terribly sorry for ruining your desert, Mrs Evans."

"Oh," Mrs Evans replied, shocked into speechlessness. "I've never really liked cheesecake all that much anyway..."

When they left, Lily was holding onto James' hand tightly. She had been uncharacteristically quiet and he tried to gauge her reaction as he apologised, but she just stopped and looked at him.

"You're bloody brilliant," she'd told him bluntly. "You know that?"

James hadn't known how to reply and so he didn't say a word, just let Lily continue to drag him down the street and the butterflies started up again.

There were so many moments he could account to his love for Lily Evans, but this one, right here, twirling in her arms after she'd just become Mrs Potter... this one had to top them all.

Their wedding was an irrevocably simple affair; a little white marquee bathed in the spring sunlight at the bottom of the garden at the Potter Manor. All the Order members attended, along with their parents and although there weren't actually that many people, there was enough happiness to encompass them for eternity.