Death Eaters cause massive wreckage in South London…
Seven year old arrested for attempted murder of Muggle next-door neighbours…
Ministry of Magic employee suspected of leaking valuable Ministry secrets to You-Know-Who.
Entire Muggle family tortured to death…
The abandoned Daily Prophet was scattered across the floor of the seventh year girls’ dormitory, forgotten by its reader. Alice Thatcher was lying on her plush four-poster bed in the dark dormitory, an impenetrable cloud of happiness providing her with enough glowing warmth to drive the icy Darkness from her mind. Another sudden grin manifested itself prominently across her face.
What a glorious day this is! she thought happily. I must tell Lily when she gets in. I wonder where she has gone to…
Her exuberant thoughts were interrupted just then by the loud slap of shoes on stone. Speaking of Lily…If she didn’t know better, Alice would have guessed that the sharp footfalls meant that her best friend had had another explosive row with ‘that arrogant toerag.’ To be fair, things between Lily Evans and James Potter had changed drastically”for the better”and the two of them hadn’t argued in ages. Not publicly, at least.
Maybe they will have their own happy day, as well, Alice giggled to herself.
Lily finished storming up the stairs and threw open the door to the dormitory, huffing all the while. She flung her bag on her bed, spilling books, parchment, and quills all over the place, and then caught sight of Alice’s beaming face and stopped short.
“Oh, Lily!” Alice exclaimed, jumping off her bed, before Lily could even say anything. “The most wonderful thing has happened”Oh, I’m so happy I could sing!”Frank asked me to marry him tonight!” Alice proudly held out her arm to Lily. Perched on her left hand was a tiny, exquisite diamond ring.
Lily felt all of her anger ebb away as suddenly as a pricked balloon. Who could possibly stay angry with Severus Snape after hearing news such as this? Her mental groan became a shrill cry of happiness.
“That’s great, Alice,” Lily squealed, taking Alice’s hand to examine the ring. Alice giggled excitedly and the girls embraced.
“I’m so happy for you! I can’t believe that my best friend is getting married!”
The two girls let out another round of extremely energetic shrieks.
“How did Frank propose? When is the wedding? How many people are you inviting? Where will it be held?” The questions tumbled one after another from Lily’s mouth.
Alice laughed giddily.
“We’re to be married within the first week of July, almost immediately after commencement. It’s going to be a fairly small wedding at our church with just family and close friends. You’ll come, of course?” Alice questioned Lily a bit anxiously.
“Of course I will!” Lily exclaimed.
“Would you be my maid of honour, Lily?”
“Oh, Alice, I’d love to!”
Another couple of squeals and a tight embrace, and the girls were off, describing to each other in depth their own picture of The Perfect Wedding.
“I’m glad you’re having a summer wedding, Alice,” said Lily. “That’s the best kind.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Alice responded. “A spring wedding wouldn’t be so bad. Everything is just blossoming and coming to life”it would symbolically be a nearly perfect setting for the start of s new life in marriage.”
“How poetic, Alice.”
“Oh, you stop teasing, Lily Evans. You’re too cynical to get married, anyway!”
“I am not cynical!”
“You are! Well, you’re better than you used to be, anyway. James has almost completely reformed you, Lily.”
Lily spluttered her offences, but Alice continued.
“He has. You are much mellower and much happier than you were a year or so ago.”
“Are you saying that I was a surly, rampant beast, then?” Lily asked indignantly, even though she knew that she probably had been.
“You said it, not me.”
“Alice!” Lily thwacked Alice with one of her feather pillows. Alice, of course, retaliated, and a massive fight ensued, littering the dormitory with feathers and giggles.
“Ok, ok!” Lily shouted, gasping for breath. Alice had wrestled Lily’s pillow away from her and backed her into a corner of their dormitory. “I give up, I give up!”
“Good.” For good measure, Alice thumped a pillow over Lily’s head one more time.
Once they had settled back down on Alice’s bed, Alice turned to Lily and asked her quite seriously, “Do you think that you and James will ever get married?”
Lily, still flushed from her recent pillow encounter, grew redder still, not expecting the question. “I don’t know. I’ve thought of it, of course, but…It’s never really come up in conversation between the two of us…”
“Hmm,” said Alice thoughtfully, her face pensive.
“Why? Do you know something I should, Alice?” Lily asked her friend, taking in the suspicious look upon Alice’s face.
“Lily, do you really think that James Potter and I would be discussing your marriage? Ever?”
“Well, no,” Lily admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.”
“Humph.”
“But I would very much like to be married, though,” said Lily said with a distant-eyed sigh. “Someday.”
“You will be, Lily,” Alice said confidently. “You deserve some happiness in your life.”
“Don't we all?” asked Lily heavily.
“I wonder if we will live to see the end of this war?” Alice mused, worry apparent in her soft voice.
“Of course we will!” exclaimed Lily fiercely. “We will bring the end!”
“Do you really believe that, Lily, or is that just for bravery’s sake? What can we possibly do that will change the tides of You-Know-Who’s war?”
“There must be something more active that we can do to help. We’ve already begun by simply speaking of resistance. Our time for valour will come, Alice, I’m sure of it.”
The girls sat in contemplative silence for a moment or two before Lily broke it by yawning loudly.
“Enough talk of war,” she said brightly. Her face transformed into a huge smile. “You’re getting married, Alice!” Alice laughed giddily while Lily broke out into a horrible rendition of “Chapel of Love.”
“I’ve let you gloat, Alice,” said Lily playfully. “Now tell me how Frank proposed!”
Alice giggled again. “Oh, it was extremely romantic, Lily! We snuck out-”
“Again!” Lily exclaimed, amused.
“-and went to Honeydukes in Hogsmeade,” continued Alice, ignoring Lily. “Frank bought me an enormous box of chocolates full of chocolate sherbet fizzes, turtles, kisses and such. I thought it was so sweet; Frank even fed me a kiss or two,” Alice giggled.
Lily tried very hard to resist spouting some sarcasm, but couldn’t help letting out a gag. She laughed and ducked a swipe from Alice.
“You’re insufferable!” exclaimed Alice, trying to sound put out.
“I’m sorry, Alice.” Lily sobered immediately, and Alice continued on. “There was this huge square-shaped chocolate in the middle”I had never seen a boxed chocolate that large, so naturally I was suspicious, expecting another exploding truffle, you know”so I went to open it, and it just crumbled in my hand. I knew then that Frank had tampered with it, but then I saw this gorgeous diamond ring just sort of hovering in my hand where the box had been. And then Frank got down on one knee and slipped the ring on my finger and said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. And he asked me if I’d mind horribly spending mine with him-”
“You said yes, of course,” Lily teased.
“Of course,” Alice laughed. She was twirling her delicate diamond around her finger as she spoke. “Then I said that I would love more than anything to marry him, and we, well-"
“Okay, I can guess what happened next, you don’t need to tell me! Snog fest!” And they were off again. It was at least another hour before they ceased laughing and chattering, finally running out of things to say.
For being at the top of our class, Lily is just so adorably clueless sometimes, Alice thought sleepily, turning to her side and surrendering her conscious mind to the world of pleasant dreams.
The seventh year boys dormitory wasn’t nearly as silent as the girls. Sirius, Peter, Remus and James had deemed it absolutely necessary to throw an impromptu stag party of sorts for Frank Longbottom.
“Woo hoo!” whooped Sirius, just returning from Hogsmeade, bearing gifts of butterbeer and assorted sweets. “Our man Frank is gettin' hitched!”
Whilst the inhabitants of Hogwarts School were nestled comfortably inside the safeguarded castle walls, the Dark Lord and his followers were planning their next brutal attack. The Light would be demolished, and there would be no hope of them regaining their strength. To the Dark Lord Voldemort, the end of the war and the crowning day of his victory were within sight.