September First

Wedding Invites

The next few days passed in a flurry of hospital wing visits, moving speeches to the entire school from the headmaster during breakfast and in depth interviews in said headmaster's office.

Though each and every one of the group (apart from a muddled Lily) would swear it was Bellatrix Black who'd fled from the scene none of them had actually seen her face or could prove her guilt...so Lily's attacker remained free to roam the corridors.

Lily herself was also, for lack of a better word, free having been let out of the hospital wing despite worries from Madam Pomfrey, managing to stumble back into an even more overprotective group of friends. Though the succeeding weeks passed without incident her freedom seemed to mean she was unable to grab even a few minutes alone no matter how hard she tried. James stuck to her side like an over-trained guard dog while the girls refused to let her sleep alone.

Secretly she was glad. She'd never been able to think she'd be scared while in the castle; the place which felt more like her home than the muggle suburb had ever been. With one of her friends constantly by her side she felt safe, barely suffering from the nightmares Madam Pomfrey had warned her about.

"Is that your owl Lil?" Daxia spoke up as a pecking sound echoed around the common room. As it was a full moon the boys had headed out and due to Lily's accident, and Daxia being more overprotective of her girlfriends than ever, they hadn't even had to try to stop the small red fox from going with them.

"I think so," Lily frowned in confusion as she made a move to get to her feet.

"I'll go!" Adiya cut in with a grin, jumping up and letting Merlin (she'd bought and named him as an excitable eleven year old new to the wizarding world) in, plucking the letter from his leg "Here," she said passing the envelope to her friend once the barn owl had been thrown a treat and turned back to the window to head up to the owlery.

"My parents never did understand that the post was supposed to arrive in time for breakfast," Lily chuckled with an eyeroll as she ripped open the small envelope. A groan passed her lips as she read over the card inside "Petunia's wedding invite," she informed them holding the piece of card up.

"No way!" Daxia laughed plucking said card from her friend's fingertips (passing her her mother's letter back) "Mrs Evans and Mr and Mrs Dursley would like to cordially invite you to the joining of the Evans and Dursley families," she read out in an over exaggerated posh accent "Vernon and Petunia will look forward to your attendance on the twentieth of April hey! That's over Easter!"

"Bloody hell they are organised!" Mary exclaimed as she stole the invite from Daxia.

"Yeah it's scary," Lily nodded grimacing when she remembered the endless planning over the summer holidays "And it's over Easter so I can't use school as an excuse not to go," she explained; ever since her sister had flat out refused to allow her an actual part in the wedding (not wanting her future husband or in-laws the chance to properly get to know Lily) she'd been determined to miss it all together "I'll think of something."

"We could come!" exclaimed Daxia with an excitable grin "I've always wanted to meet the lovely Petunia," she added with a wink, she'd been able to meet Mrs. Evans a few times both on the train platform and over the previous summers but Lily's magic hating elder sister had always been absent "Plus it'd be well interesting to see how muggles put on a wedding."

"Didn't know that kind of thing interested you Dax?" Adiya spoke up; being a halfblood she had been able to see an event like a wedding on both sides of the spectrum "They aren't that different."

Daxia shrugged "Maybe there's more fun to be had at a muggle wedding and I'll never know unless Evans lets me see Petunia marry that oaf."

Lily chuckled as she shook her head "Now I know there's definitely no way you're attending this wedding."