Priori Incantatem [HARRY POTTER FANFICTION]

Chapter 44: Common Views

Chapter 44: Common Views 

The weeks following their engagement proved to be very eventful for both Lily and James. They'd both agreed very early on that they didn't want to wait to get married, and, at Lily's insistence, they'd decided not to have a big wedding. Neither Mrs Potter nor Mrs Evans was precisely pleased when they heard that, but both absolutely put their feet down when their children announced their intention of getting married next month. Mrs Evans thought that they ought to wait and have "a proper wedding" next June, and she and Lily had rows on the subject until they compromised on an October wedding. 

Even with October only two months away, Mrs Evans was still determined to convince her daughter to have a larger wedding and had taken to leaving bridal magazines on Lily's bed and enlisting the help of any and all of Lily's friends to persuade her to change her mind. But Lily, visions of Petunia's pink-swathed fiasco of a wedding still dancing in her head, was adamant, and Mrs Evans was forced to relent. 

And both Lily and James continued to keep busy with their new jobs. James and the others were still in a very intense stage of their training, and Lily was completely immersed in her work for the Classified Charms and Spells Division. Still, both were excited about their wedding date and saw each other nearly every day to plan. James had asked Sirius to be best man, and Lily finally decided, after much debate, to choose Alice as her maid of honour. Both Alice and Sirius were very pleased to be asked; Sirius just accepted the role of best man as his due, and Alice was delighted at the idea of experiencing a wedding, since she hadn't had one of her own. 

Kathleen had begun her new job with The Daily Prophet and was finding it a bit less exciting than she'd thought it would be. Instead of writing exciting exposes and gossip pages, she was mostly working on the obituaries, a job that depressed her enormously. Remus still hadn't had any luck finding a job, which made him even more morose than Kathleen. Theirs was not a happy flat, and Sirius strongly advocated sending Peter over to live in quarantine with them so that they wouldn't depress the rest of the population. Of course, he had to make this statement when Alice and Lily weren't around as they tended to shoot him filthy looks (in Lily's case) or kick him in the shins (in Alice's). 

On Wednesday afternoon, Lily was at work; she had been in the experimentation area helping to revive Bilius Weasley after yet another partially successful attempt at the Spiralling Spell they were still working the kinks out of and had just returned to her desk when she saw it. A perfectly ordinary and commonplace envelope lying on her desk that bore her name and no other direction. The odd thing about it was that an owl carrying the inter-office post had arrived a short time ago and Lily was certain that this envelope hadn't been in the bunch. 

"Jane?" Lily leaned over to address her neighbour. "Did you see an owl drop any post on my desk?" 

"No, dear, I didn't," Jane, a kind middle aged witch, replied. "Are you expecting something?" 

"No, I was just wondering when this envelope on my desk had come," Lily replied, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. This was beginning to look more and more like a secret admirer, and the last time Lily had had one of those, the whole nasty business had culminated with Gilderoy Lockhart serenading her in the Charms corridor. 

Resigned to her fate, Lily tore open the envelope with a feeling of dread then breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the handwriting. Dumbledore. Thank Merlin it wasn't that git Lockhart or any other git expecting her to swoon because they'd written her an anonymous note. 

As she scanned the letter, however, Lily's feeling of relief gave way to curiosity and apprehension. 

"Lily - "It read.