Priori Incantatem [HARRY POTTER FANFICTION]

Chapter 59: The Birthday Party

A/N: Here's another chapter fo you guys :) Also, I'm putting up a competion: I need a really good cover for my next book. It's about the maurauders. The winner will receive a shiny prize (I haven't decided what yet)

GET DESIGNING YOU LOVELY LOT :)

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Chapter 59: The Birthday Party 

July 31, 1981 

Lily stepped into the kitchen and closed the door, shutting out the party sounds coming from the sitting room. She sighed in the newfound silence and went about the business of retrieving birthday cake and candle from their respective hiding places. The sight of the birthday candle, a red wax "1" with a wick that put most sticks of dynamite to shame, brought a smile to Lily's face; James had picked the candle out and it was genuinely huge. Too huge for the cake, really, but James had argued that since Harry would only get one candle on his cake this year, they'd best make that one candle count. The fact that said candle was easily twice as big as the one that had graced Neville Longbottom's cake yesterday was merely a coincidence. Or so James insisted - 

"Lils?" James stuck his head in the room. 

"Ack!" Lily exclaimed, startled. "Merlin's beard, don't DO that!" 

"Sorry," James grinned unrepentantly. "Just thought I'd let you know that my parents are here." 

Lily abandoned the cake preparations and followed her husband into the sitting room where Mr and Mrs Potter were greeting the rest of their guests. 

It was a small party, only the very closest of friends and James' parents, and on a much smaller scale than she'd imagined her baby's first birthday, but to Lily it felt like one of the Marchbanks's famous balls of old. It had been a very long time since she, James, and their friends had had anything to celebrate. 

The spring and summer of 1981 had been long and bloody for the wizarding world. Death Eater attacks, which had been dwindling, picked up again as Voldemort's followers seemed to grow in number and confidence. Muggle borns and anyone with known anti-Voldemort opinions stayed away from public places at night and episodes of Muggle baiting had become so frequent that even the notoriously oblivious Muggle population was aware that something was going on. 

Lily and James, along with the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, had continued to do what they could, but recent events had crippled the Order badly. The spy they'd known about for so long seemed to be able to access new levels of information and often managed to put a stop to Order missions before they could even start. If not for Albus Dumbledore, Lily was convinced, the Order would have shut down entirely. 

Dumbledore continued to receive information from his various sources and managed to do a considerable amount of good with it. He also persisted with his interest in Harry and Neville's safety, arranging even more guards and spells for both the Potters and the Longbottoms and popping by often to check up on them 

"Excellent!" Mrs Longbottom's strident tones rang out as she strode over to the professor with a serving dish and plates, the vulture atop her hat quivering in her haste. "You both must have some toad in the hole," she ordered. She dumped a large portion of it unceremoniously onto two plates and thrust them into the Potters' hands before marching off in search of her next victim. 

"Maybe we ought to warn them," Alice whispered in Lily's ear. The pair of them watched with horror as Mr and Mrs Potter dug in. Mrs Longbottom had arrived on Lily and James' doorstep bearing a large dish and declaring "One can't have a party without toad in the hole." This latest pronouncement, Lily was sure, had nothing to do with the fact that Mrs Longbottom had served an identical dish of toad in the hole the previous day at Neville's birthday party, which hadn't been eaten then either because it was, as Sirius put it, "bloody disgusting."