Beyond Hogwarts cont; Chapter Thirty-Seven

-=Beyond Hogwarts, cont.; Chapter Thirty-Seven=-

About two weeks later, the Ministry declared a one-day work-holiday for their employees in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; that is, they gave half of the Ministry staff in that department the day off, and then repeated the process with the other half of their personnel on the following day. Lily and James were lucky enough to have the same work-less day, and, after a bit of bantering back and forth, they settled on spending it in Hogsmeade.
   Snow was just commencing to smother the small, comfortable wizarding town, which, in honor of Christmas, was decked out quite happily with holly, fir garlands, strings of icicles, evergreen trees with real, everlasting candles, wreaths, and season-appropriate window displays in the stores. Lily and James, having Apparated to the station instead of into the Three Broomsticks, simply stood at the top of the hill, gazing down at the town.
   “I remember thinking, the first time I was here, that it was a scene directly from a post-card,” Lily sighed, holding her gloved hand out to catch a snowflake. “Hogsmeade does wonders with out-door decorations.”
   “Of course,” James agreed, taking her other hand. “They’re quite proud of the fact that they’re the only village in Britain that can use magical decorations. You won’t see another town with everlasting candles on every other tree.”
   “Come on,” Lily urged, scooping up half a handful of snow and slipping it into her mouth. “I haven’t been here for ages; what say we go down to Honeydukes?”
   James winked. “Race you!”
   He rocketed off with a head start, but Lily was anything but slow, and both of them arrived, panting, snowy, and pink-cheeked, in front of the famous sweetshop, whose windows were filled with displays of genial Father Christmases, brightly wrapped presents, and gold-painted platters that advertised seasonal sweets.
   “Oh, look!” Lily said, pointing eagerly to something that looked like a chocolate that had been rolling around in a pile of snowy, glittering flakes. “That’s a new one.”
   “Frisking Truffles,” James read, glancing at the elegant calligraphy on a sign above the candies. “Inspired by the spaniel. Will roll around realistically in the mouth and will, upon occasion, shake themselves, giving off sugary snowflakes.”
   “They’re truffles! Come on, quick; we’re going inside!”
   Almost roughly, Lily grasped his arm and dove into the shop, greeting the little, wizened man with twiggy hair behind the counter with a dazzling smile. The two of them then proceeded to ransack the entire store for sweets, and, a half-hour later, with their money-bags a good bit thinner, they emerged from the store, each of them carrying a large bag filled to the brim with sweets. Not all of them were magical, either; James had pulled three boxes of chocolate-and-raspberry mousse balls off of an almost obscure shelf, and Lily was contentedly eyeing a gold bag in her pocked that was packed to the bursting point with miniature wand-shaped confections made of thin, twisted white chocolate and dark chocolate strands. Their intention was to place decorated salvers in every room of their house, loaded happily with candies, a move that would most likely be more than pleasing to people of their acquaintance-meaning, of course, Sirius, Peter and the Weasley children.
   “The Three Broomsticks,” Lily suggested, pointing at the pub with the brightly twinkling golden light issuing through the windows. “How about it? It’ll be warm and not as packed as during Hogwarts’ Hogsmeade weekends.”
   “Wonderful idea, old chum,” James grinned, mussing up her hair under the pretense of shaking snowflakes out of it. “But I do want to get some sort of something for Remus while we’re here.”
   “He’s still in bed, isn’t he?” Lily asked, changing their course so that they were steering towards the main street.
   James nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t at all the best of luck for the full moon to be just a few days after we were slaughtered in Plymouth. He tore himself up pretty badly.”
   Lily shivered feelingly. “I would absolutely hate to be a werewolf,” she muttered. “At least he’s got you three. I am so glad that you didn’t leave him to rot when we were kids-you know, when you found out about him.”
   “I am, too. Remus is the nicest person I know and have ever known. Say, he does like Sugar Quills, doesn’t he?”
   “He’s got a stash of them in his room, I believe,” Lily answered. “Why?”
   “Off to Zonko’s, then!”
   “Zonko’s?” Lily queried, puzzled. “But-Honeydukes-we’ve got-“
   Paying no attention to her protests, James pulled the door to the pranking store open, leaving it to Lily to follow. He knew exactly where he was going, and he stopped to the left of the one aisle, picking up a small, glass bottle with a lengthy cap. The substance inside was a sparkling white, with twinklets of blue and lavender here and there.
   “What is that?”
   James grinned. “I found this last time I was here. It’s really great; it transforms your nails into this great sugary substance, and they grow as fast as you eat them. Tastes a lot like Sugar Quills. I gave one of these to Bill Weasley, and his mum kept wondering why Charlie was sucking on his brother’s fingers.”
   Quite without elegance, Lily snorted with laughter. “Oh, only you!”
   “I resent that; I thought it was a great gift”
   “Go on, get it. Remus will be delighted, I’m sure. Do you paint it onto your nails, like nail polish?”
   “Exactly.” James banged the bottle down on the counter, and the somewhat plump witch with quite a few spots on her nose at the register jumped. Then, her eyes rolling up from the glass bottle to the customer that had obviously been trying to make a new crack in the counter-top, she stopped short and stared. James had, apparently, not lost any of what Lily, at least, considered to be a quite considerable amount of appeal.
   “Oh, sir, is that all?” she asked breathily.
   “Believe so,” he grinned. “Say, are you new here? I haven’t seen you before.”
   “Oh…oh, yes, sir. I moved to Hogsmeade just a month ago.”
   “Well, you’re working in what is one of my favorite stores,” James said cheerfully. “When I was at Hogwarts, we’d terrorise the caretaker with loads of stuff from here.”
   “You used to terrorise everyone,” Lily put in. ”Filch, the teachers, every single student at Hogwarts, particularly Severus, the poor staircases that had to break through your hexing them to stay still, the castle spiders,-“
   “Don’t forget the house-elves,” James reminded her. “One of them accidentally got in the way of a curse I was testing out. She didn’t stop floating for about a week.”
   “Oh-sir, that will be a Sickle and seven Knuts,” the spotty witch put in, clearly a bit nonplussed, and rather desirable of getting back to something that concerned her and that she knew something about.
   James handed Lily the bag of Honeydukes sweets that he had been carrying and fumbled through his money-bag for a few moments. Coming up with the required change, he handed it to the saleswitch, who was wearing a rather sloppy grin, scratching one of the spots on her nose.
   “Are you two brother and sister?” she burst out. “You don’t look like it.”
   A bit confused, James regained the handles of his own Honeydukes bag. “Er…er, no, we’re not…why, do we act like it?”
   “Oh…well, yes, a bit, sir.”
   “We’ve known each other for a long time,” Lily broke in. Unobtrusively, and with a mischievous smirk, she turned her wedding ring around on her finger, so that the pearls faced inward and out of sight. “He was the madcap that tried on the Sorting Hat twice, and got hit around the head with it for his pains.”
   “Ohhh!” the witch gasped, an expression of veneration on her face. “You’re James Potter!”
   Lily was privately amusing herself by counting the number of times that the girl breathed “Oh!” So far, she had arrived at six.
   “Er-yeah,” James grinned, running a hand through his hair. “People really still talk about that?”
   “Oh, you’re a hero to all the pranksters at Hogwarts! I left Hogwarts last year, and the school was never the same after you left! Did the Sorting Hat really hit you?”
   “It bit me,” James said, with a pained look on his face. “If you have never been bitten by a hat, you don’t know what pinching is.”
   Lily laughed, picking up the bottle of Mrs. Corry’s Sugarcane Nails and slipping it into her pocket. “James, I’ll go on ahead to the Three Broomsticks, if you want to talk awhile.”
   Without waiting for an answer, she unlatched his bag from his fist and swept out of the door, leaving the spotty witch aghast at what she thought was her good luck and leaving James wishing for both a trap-door and Lily’s neck, the latter for strangling purposes. Tearing his eyes away from the door, he looked back at the cashier, who was staring at him with a rapt, dewy-eyed brand of attention.
   “Er,” he managed. “So…ah…what’s your name?”
   “Oh!” the witch squeaked, fluttering. “Oh, oh, oh!”
   Fifteen minutes later, James tore open the door of rhe Three Broomsticks, slid into the chair next to Lily’s, and pointed at her almost menacingly.
   “You,” he wheezed. “You-did-not-“
   “Didn’t what?” Lily asked innocently. “She seemed eager for someone to talk to, and goodness knows you’re interesting-“
   “She tried to enamour me,” he groaned. “No, that’s not the right word. She tried to seduce me.” Letting out a small snort of laughter, he buried his head in his arms. “I couldn’t help it; it was funny!”
   Lily’s amused smirk widened into a very benevolent acceptance of hilarity. “You did not laugh at her. Tell me you didn’t laugh at her.”
   “No, not to her face…” He looked up. “I did once I got out of there, though. You would have laughed to see me; I was almost pounding my fist on the ground.”
   “She couldn’t have been that bad,” Lily encouraged him.
   “Oh, she wasn’t…er-well, she’s actually rather good-looking, if that’s what you mean-but holy Merlin…”
   “Here,” Lily interrupted, banging a parcel onto the table. “I bought you something to cheer you up.”
   Dubiously, James turned it over, fiddled with the string a bit, and then tore it and the bright red paper aside to reveal a very handsome dark red silk tie.
   “Oh,” he nodded. “Nice. Are we going anywhere in the near future where I’d need this?”
   “No,” Lily reassured him, picking up the tie and pressing the end of it, “it’s just that I found this rather funny.”
   Immediately after she had finished her sentence, a loud and long, not to mention unrestrained, peal of laughter burst from the tie; it almost shook with laughing so hard. The group of gossiping middle-aged witches at the next table started most comically, glared at the pair of them, and, self-righteously, turned back around and pointedly ignored them.
   “Is this to make up for the laughing I couldn’t do in Zonko’s?”
   “Yes,” Lily giggled; “did you see their faces?”
   “I certainly did,” he reassured her, “and I think I’ll go get us drinks.”
   Suavely, he stood up, ran a hand through his hair, and strolled past the table of the formerly indignant women. Grinning quite innocently, he passed them, gave his order to Rosmerta, the pretty red-haired witch who had, it seemed, always worked in that particular pub, and swept past them again, still with the can-do-no-wrong smile on his face.
   The four snobbish gossipers had really begun by glaring at him, but by the time that he passed by for the second time, they all looked royally confused, as if they weren’t quite sure that he was the same person that had so rudely made a quite offensive and loud noise in the middle of a public area. The half-glare of one of them was particularly amusing, Lily thought; she had one nostril lifted in disgust, her eyebrows were lowered, and her mouth was grinning happily back at James, as if it had forgotten that it was supposed to coincide with the rest of her face.
   “I want a camera,” Lily whispered as soon as he sat down. “It isn’t a good idea, going out with you and without an apparatus that can produce photographic evidence.”
   “I am just magical that way,” James stated, uncorking her butterbeer. “And you-AARGH!!”
   Peter had Apparated into the pub, and had managed to materialize directly on James’ lap, making James upset his own butterbeer and letting it spill onto the table, from where it dripped onto his lap in a manner reminiscent of quite a strong waterfall.
   “Wormtail!” he howled. “What on earth!-”
   “Oh, no,” Peter groaned rather pitifully, jumping to his feet, “I miscalculated-I was going to appear a foot away from you…oh, Merlin, I’m sorry-“
   “It’s all right, Peter,” Lily interrupted, waving her wand at James’ robes, which instantly resumed their former butterbeer-less and slightly damp condition, the latter owing to the snow outside. “What’s wrong?”
   To all appearances, Peter looked as if he had just walked through an intense snowstorm; his light hair was frazzled, there was snow embedded into his robes and cloak, and his eyes were red and bright.
   “I can’t tell you now,” he said hurriedly. “I-you’ve got to come. Albus wants to see you.”
   Wonderingly, Lily rose to her feet. “Peter, what’s happened?”
   “I can’t tell you now!” he repeated, glancing around at everyone else in the pub, who was staring at them. “Hogwarts. He’s waiting for us there. We’ve got to go-now.”
   From the way Peter looked and spoke, Lily knew that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, it had to do with the Order. Quickly slipping the tie into her money-bag, she handed James his Honeydukes sack and picked up her own. “Let’s go, then. We’ll have to walk?”
   “Yes,” Peter nodded, leading them out of the pub. “I’ve been Apparating all over Hogsmeade, looking for you two.” He carefully stepped over a snowdrift and held out a hand to Lily, who was trying to figure the dimensions of the snow-covered hole. Gratefully, she took it, and managed to jump across without losing the large bag of sweets. “Albus said not to say anything until we’re inside his office, so I can’t tell-anything.”
   “Bloody hell,” James grumbled, over-stepping himself and landing with a thump in the snow. “Lily, hand me your bag; I’ll Apparate back home and leave them there. I’ll catch up with you two in a second.”
   “We’ll tell Albus where you are,” Lily reassured him. “Got the bags?”
   For an answer, James disappeared with a small pop, and Lily and Peter turned to each other.
   “We’d better run,” he offered. “Can you run in snow?”
   Lily nodded. Lifting her robes up to her knees and throwing her scarf out of her way, she flew as well as she could towards the castle, Peter on her heels.
   They reached the stately castle doors in good time, but James had not re-appeared behind them. Peter cast one last look at the snowy grounds interrupted by only two pairs of plowing footprints, and shook his head. “He said he’d catch up, and he will. Come on, let’s go.”
   He pointed his wand at the doors, shouting “Alohomora!”, and, laboredly, they swung open, leaving just enough space for them to slip inside. As soon as Lily and Peter had set foot on the stone floors, however, the doors slammed shut again, presumably to keep the cold out.
   “Come on,” Peter directed, heading quickly up the great staircase. A bevy of fourth-years stared curiously at the pair from under their hats, but they shuffled aside to make room for them. Lily nodded at them briefly before continuing to stride towards Albus’ office.
   The corridors of Hogwarts were so much like home to her, Lily mused, running her hand along the stone walls. Times of simply walking to classes and studying in the common room floated back to her; this had truly been a wonderful school to spend six years of her life in. She did wish that she could have stayed longer, that there were more advanced classes that were available-like a university, or a college. Hogwarts was simply a comforting, homelike, welcoming castle, with endless historical tokens throughout its walls. A bit less than half of the portraits were over five hundred years old, and the armor displayed in the corridors was armor that had actually been used in tournaments by former Hogwarts students and teachers, who had subsequently, upon their deaths, given their armor to the school.
   As the two of them headed for the tower in which Albus kept his office, they passed Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, who stared at both of them in amazement and then jumped as he recognized them, waving excitedly at two former Gryffindors.
   “Well, someone remembers us!” Lily commented to Peter as they turned a corner and hurried up a staircase.
   “Oh, yes,” Peter answered, cracking a smile for the first time since he had found them, “the pranks of the Marauders and their consorts will live on after their deaths.”
   “Hogwarts will find some other students to terrorize the school. I personally think James is training Bill Weasley in the art of becoming the prankster king.”
   “Is he?” Peter asked.
   “Yes. I intend to give Molly a crate of tranquilizers for Christmas.”
   A half-smile on his face, Peter stopped in front of the sinfully ugly gargoyle in front of Albus’ office. “Jelly Slugs,” he ordered, and the statue jumped aside to reveal the door.
   “Come on,” he panted, jumping onto the moving staircase. “Say, have you seen James anywhere?”
   “No,” Lily answered, not at all out of breath. “Do-do you think he’s all right?”
   “I don’t know. But Albus has to see you; you can’t go racketing off to search for him.”
   “I am not going to go racketing off,” Lily huffed, stepping off of the staircase. “I’m not attached to him at the hip, thank you!”
   “That is very good news, Mrs. Potter,” Albus replied, a hint of a smile in his voice.
   He was standing in front of one of the largest portraits in the room, a silver-framed rendering of an elderly witch in a midnight-blue gown and swept-up hair to match the frame. Lily almost smiled at him in welcome, but was drawn up short by the veiled, exhausted, cheerless look in his eyes.
   “Thank you, Peter,” he nodded, conjuring up two blue velvet armchairs and inviting them to sit. “Lily, my dear, was James with you?”
   “Yes; he just Apparated home to drop off some bags. He said he’d rejoin us as quickly as possible, but he hasn’t yet-or we haven’t seen him.”
   “I see.”
   Albus moved silently to the chair behind his desk, but he remained standing. Looking at Lily over his half-moon glasses, he sighed.
   “Marlene McKinnon,” he said tiredly, “is dead.”
   Lily half-rose from her chair, oblivious to the antics of her scarf, which fell onto the carpet as she stood. “What?”
   “I’m afraid so.” Albus bowed his head. “Her house was found, this morning, with the Death Eaters’ emblem above it. Her entire family had been murdered.”
   “Merlin,” Lily whispered, her thoughts whirling. “Were they-was it because of Benjy?”
   “We do not know,” Albus said calmly, “but that is the most likely reason.”
   Lips white, Lily’s hands fell to her sides. “I’d hardly realized that something like-like that was so dangerous.”
   “In this day and age, anything and everything is dangerous. Incidentally, that brings me to my request. I asked you here for a particular reason.”
   “Do-d’you want me to go?” Peter asked nervously, stepping towards the door.
   Thoughtfully, Albus removed his glasses and polished them with his sleeve. “That may be for the best. Please find the Anatomy classroom and ask Joseph to step up to my office.”
   Obediently, Peter withdrew, letting the elegantly carved wooden door fall shut with a soft click.
   “What is it, Albus,” Lily wanted to know. Slipping a strand of hair behind her ears, she fixed him with a would-be-serene gaze. “Whatever it is, can’t Peter hear? He’s in the Order, after all.”
   “There are some things that you may not have told your closet friends and that do not necessarily concern the Order. I do not know what you have told Peter.” He paused for a moment, pacing back and forth behind his desk, now and then looking up at Fawkes, who was perched imposingly on a gilt telescope, molting cheerfully. “Have you, for instance, spoken to him about your necklace?”
   Restraining a start, Lily’s hand crept to the hollow of her neck, where the chain lay, hidden underneath her robes and black sweater. “I haven’t, no. James and I haven’t told anyone about it. We didn’t think it would be-wise.”
   Relieved, Albus sat down again, motioning to her to do the same. She remained standing, however; her mind was in too much of a tumult to let her relax in a chair. Albus still looked as kindly benevolent as he usually did-to her, at least-but that did not prevent an anxious, twisting feeling from making itself felt in her stomach. Albus knew much more than she did about this battle-no, not a battle; by now it was a war-and she knew that he did not wholly hold with her decision to keep the necklace. He had not, after all, offered to relieve her of it simply because he fancied a new bit of dangerous magical jewelry.
   “I agree. That was certainly the wisest thing to do. However-Lily, I am aware that the necklace belongs to you, as I essentially gave it to you in your first year. But, in light of the recent deadly circumstances, I must ask you to return it to me. It will be put away in a safe place, where no one, especially not Lord Voldemort, will be able to find it.” His blue eyes met her own forest-green ones, and they had a hardness to them, a crystalline shimmer of ruthlessness that was not directed at her. “We cannot allow him the chance of possessing it.”
   Lily knew, as soon as he began speaking, what he was going to ask her. Just as swiftly, however, she had also known what her answer would be. Her necklace was a part of her; it had made her what she was. It had shaped her future, and it had controlled her past. She had discovered parts of her own being that she would never have known about had it not been for that small, concentrated piece of magic-courage, real courage, not the kind that would let one face up to bullies. Determination, fortitude, strength, the resolve to go through with impulses, and love. Love. Her travels to Albania had taught her how to love. She would never, not if she lived as long as the Grecian gods, have let James Potter close enough to let herself truly think about him, to dream about him, to fall in love with him.
   Also, if she really wanted to be honest with herself, she resented quite firmly the idea that Albus did not trust her with the keeping of the necklace. She had managed to keep it out of harm’s way for eight entire years, part of which were spent under the eye of Tom Marvolo Riddle himself, and what right did the elderly headmaster of a school have to tell her that she couldn’t look after herself and what she was wearing? The controlling attitude was what she disliked, and no one, especially someone without a particular claim on her, was going to tell her what to do. No one.
   “Albus, I’m fine,” she said tightly. “I have kept it safe for eight years, and I can continue doing so. I know what I’m doing.”
   “I see,” Albus sighed regretfully and somewhat sadly. “However, should you change your mind, my offer to keep it for you still stands.”
   “I won’t take you up on it,” Lily answered. “And I know I’m being very rude, but I never will.” She paused for a moment and shook her hair back from her shoulders. “Do you despise me now?”
   “I certainly do not,” he smiled. “I do not agree with the choice you have made, but it is yours to make unless the Ministry interferes. No-“ he held up a hand as she opened her mouth heatedly-“I do not intend to invoke the Ministry in this of my own accord. If they approach you, they will have done so without any aid from me. You are a very stubborn young lady, Mrs. Potter, and I wish you all of the best.”
   “Yes, I know I’m stubborn,” Lily laughed. “I’m worse than anyone else I know, I think, except perhaps Severus.”
   She stopped speaking suddenly, and the weird silver mist in her eyes glowed with an inspiration. “Sir-Albus-if Severus wanted to-would you accept him as a member of the Order?”
   Albus stared at her, perplexed, and she knew exactly what he was thinking-Severus Snape would be one of the last people he would have expected to make such a request.
   “Has he-asked you to speak to me about this?”
   “No,” Lily said honestly; “he shot me down when I suggested it. I only thought-maybe, someday you would offer this to him. He isn’t happy; I know he isn’t, and he won’t ever come to you; he’s too proud for that. But if you asked him to, as a favor, I think he might welcome the idea.”
   After quite a long pause, during which Albus rearranged a few books on his desk and absently fingered a feather that had fallen from Fawkes’ tail, he stepped around his desk to Lily, placing a light hand on her shoulder.
   “You are a friend to be admired, my dear. If Severus is in any real need, I will approach him.”
   An unbidden smile, thankful and sporadic, broke out on Lily’s face, and she flung her arms around the older man’s neck in a grateful hug.
   “Thank you,” she whispered, “so much.”
   She left Albus’ office soon afterwards, wondering where James had managed to get to. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to rush out of Hogwarts; she ambled peacefully down the corridors, fingering familiar cracks in the wall, fiddling with the magically un-faded tapestries, and appraising the beautiful, elaborate, diverse old picture-frames that hung around every painting. Here and there, she ran into a clump of students, the occupants of which were either jabbering about a recent class or hurriedly flipping through pages of large, memorable textbooks, muttering something about the fourteen battles of Northumbria in 1843 that influenced the exact wand movements of the Confundus charm, and she passed a few of her old teachers-Flitwick, for one, still as short as ever, and the Herbology teacher, Professor Groves-as she crossed the large, marble-enriched entrance hall.
   Sighing, she stepped nimbly over the threshold of the castle and began the cold, snowy walk to Hogsmeade, coming to terms with the Apparating ban and taking cheerful pleasure in walking over the white grounds again. Much too quickly for her own liking, she reached the end of the Apparating ban, without running into James anywhere along the way. With a wrinkled nose, she Disapparated, appearing again moments later in her own home.
   James was still here; his voice was clearly audible through the open doors of the large living-room. Bartemius Crouch, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had taken this time to drop by, she realized, and he was trying to persuade James to join something or other, judging by the “Profitably, Mr. Potter, this would be a wise career choice,” and “…one of the most honored wizarding positions in the Ministry, you know…” sentence fragments that were occasionally audible. Correctly deducing that now was not a time to interrupt, Lily shed her cloak, scarf, and shoes, picked up the two bags of sweets that were sitting underneath the cloak hooks, and slipped into the kitchen.
   A disgruntled Mr. Crouch took his leave a few minutes later, and Lily, busily rooting rather loudly through cabinets to find elegant-looking platters, looked up briefly as James entered the kitchen.
   “Hullo,” he greeted her. “Sorry I couldn’t come back; Barty’s been talking to me about joining the Auror division of the Hit Wizard Squad. And then I saw your things hanging up, so I figured you were home.”
   “Oh.” Lily sat back on her heels. “Yes. Albus didn’t keep me long.”
   “Have you heard about Marlene?” James asked somberly, sitting down next to her. “McKinnon, I mean.”
   “Yes; that’s just about the first thing Albus said to me. Her entire family was killed, he said.”
   “That is sick,” James spat, wrapping an arm around Lily’s shoulders. “Voldemort is sick. Killing an entire family just because one member of it was innocently flying above one of his bloody battles-“
   “Assuming he thinks that that’s what happened,” Lily reminded him.
   “Everyone else does!” James protested. “There’s no reason for him not to think so, and no one in the Order would have any reason to want to leak. We’re all in danger if one of us does that, and we know it.”
   “True.” Lily hesitated for a few moments, and then decided against telling James about the rest of the conversation in Albus’ office just then. “Why did Crouch want you to join the Hit Wizards? I mean, you’re already a Ministry employee, and there’s no use in taking someone from the Ministry to put them back into the Ministry…or is there?”
   “Crouch wants a stronger policing force,” James explained. “He’s completely opposed to any idea of not using force against force, so he’s getting Aurors and ex-Aurors together for this. See, he thinks that all the Aurors are really doing is going on raids-and he’s not completely wrong-so he wants a group of people he can count on to be on hand if there are, say, any known Death Eaters roaming about Exeter.”
   “Oh.” Lily mused over this for a while. “Did he say anything about me?”
   “Er, not really…” Uncomfortably, James ran a hand through his hair. “He…ah, he has this fixed idea that you have this faint association with undesirable people, and he doesn’t want anyone like that on the squad.”
   “What a pleasant man,” Lily commented. “D’you know, that really does make me want to buy him a Christmas gift, complete with huge ribbon bows and everything.”
   “Yeah, I know. He’s a bit of an idiot. But he knows what he’s doing. Most of the time,” he amended, upon receiving Lily’s glare. “And I think he’s talking about Snape and Malfoy. Remember that great little interlude we had with Malfoy, back when he tried to blackmail us?”
   “It was loads of fun,” Lily deadpanned. She sighed, shaking herself rather irritably. “Say, want to help me set out our candy messes? Slenka’s upstairs, cleaning.”
   “Sure,” James agreed, pulling out a few silver platters and letting the others fall onto the floor with a loud combination of clanks and crashes. “I, for one, vote for the new Frisking Truffles to ensconce themselves in the library.”
   “Very good idea,” Lily approved. “We’re in there quite a lot, anyway. And the raspberry-chocolate mousse balls-where do we want those?”
   “Dining-room,” James pronounced. “So that I can steal them on my way to the kitchen.”
   Laughing, Lily got to her feet, pulling candies by the million out of the two bags. “Come on, then; let’s deck the house, shall we?”
   By the time Sirius dropped by, at four in the afternoon, displays of every sort of delectable sweet were established in every room of the house, and a wreath of evergreens and crystal bells on the front door was happily clanging out the tune to “Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly”. And Lily and James were, triumphantly and quite contentedly, pitching Fulkins’ Festive Flammable Fudgelets into the heart of the large living room’s fire and Summoning them back out again after about five seconds, by which time the rolled fudge bits were slightly and delectably melted and contained sparkling gold, red, and green insides.
   “Padfoot!” James waved, gesturing to an empty bit of sofa. “Pull up a chair, what?”
   “It’s not even December yet,” Sirius observed, obeying just the same and drawing his wand out of his pocket. “Bung me one of those. Listen, Frank said something about Marlene McKinnon; have you two heard…”