Fic: All Tied Up, Chapter 5: Aftermath
Title: All Tied Up
Chapter 5: Aftermath
Rating: G
Word count: 1,013
Genre: romance, humor
Ships: L/J
Status: WIP
Notes: NOT the last chapter!!! Short again. Sorry guys.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters, objects, settings, and plots are the property of J.K. Rowling. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise associated with Harry potter. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the writing of this fanfiction.
Back to Chapter 4
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It’s late when Lily and James make it back to the Gryffindor common room. The room is empty except for a small table by the fire, around which three figures are huddled. The moment the figures hear the quiet thud of the painting closing behind Lily and James, all three heads jerk up.
There is silence as Lily and James cross the room, hand in hand, under three expectant stares.
“Well?” Sirius finally demands.
James glances at Lily, a hint of mischievous glee in his eyes as he draws the moment out. Then he holds up their clasped hands, the diamond on Lily’s finger glittering in the dim firelight.
Sirius lets out a loud whoop, echoed by Remus, who adds a relieved, “Thank Merlin!”
“‘Thank Merlin,’ Remus?” Lily arches an eyebrow, then feels all the air ‘whoosh’ out of her lungs as Sirius leaps over a sofa and throws himself on them in an exuberant hug.
“You’ve no idea what he’s been like the last few weeks,” says Remus, rising from his seat and tugging a grinning Peter up with him.
“The last few years!” Sirius pulls back enough to pitch in. “Maybe if he marries you, he’ll stop going on about you so much.” He grins at Lily to take the sting out of his words.
“Not likely,” mutters Peter. Remus elbows him, but he’s laughing.
Lily laughs too, then lets out a startled noise when Sirius presses a loud, congratulatory kiss to her cheek. Sirius laughs at her expression, then he does the same to James just to bother him and laughs even louder. James shoves him away with a shouted insult and wipes his cheek with the back of one hand.
“You’re as much of a slobbery dog in human form as you are when you’re actually a mutt, you pillock,” he mutters, wiping his hand on his pants. Lily grins at them, then gets the breath knocked out of her again when Remus and Peter follow Sirius’s example and tackle them.
“Hey!” shouts James when he and Lily both stagger under their weight. “You’re going to crush my future wife before I get the chance to marry her, and then you really will never hear the end from me!”
After that, there is a lot of pushing, shoving, and shouting. Lily barely manages to wiggle out of the tangle of limbs before it tumbles to the ground. Straightening her robes, Lily bends over the wrestling boys and announces her intention to head upstairs.
“Wait!” James calls. “No, no, wait! Truce! Fifteen seconds, you, you...” Laughing, James partially emerges from the pile. He reaches out and grasps Lily’s hand, tugging her down for a kiss before being yanked away by his friends with a shout.
Grinning, Lily wiggles her fingers at her trapped and protesting fiancé, then stops as the flash of light on her ring catches her attention.
Over her finger tips, she suddenly catches James’s intense gaze as he watches her admire the ring he’d only just put on her hand and her breath catches for a second.
“Awwwwww!” Remus calls. “Look he’s all twitterpated.”
“Twitterpated!” Sirius and Peter echo in a laughing shout, and then James is pulled back into the shoving, kicking pile they’ve made of themselves.
Lily laughs, then, struck by a wicked thought, edges closer to the boys and says, “Good night, James! I loooooooooove yoooou!” Then she turns and skips up the stairs, ignoring James’s demands for help (“As you’re the cause of this, you troublesome, instigating woman!”) and the renewed ribbing of his friends (at a much louder volume).
She’s still snickering to herself when she reaches the entrance to her dorm and has to take a moment to compose herself before silently opening the door and tip-toeing into the room. It turns out she needn’t have bothered because the moment she closes the door, the room is lit by a casually amused “Lumos!”
Lily blinks in the sudden light. “Alice,” she glares, “what in Merlin’s name are you doing?”
A quick glance around shows that it’s not just Alice but all of Lily’s roommates who are waiting up for her.
“You only miss curfew for two reasons Lily,” says Evelyn.
“You’re doing rounds as Head Girl,” Karen chips in.
“Or you’ve been coerced into going out with the Marauders,” adds Phyllis.
“But today,” says Alice, “you didn’t have rounds. And three-fourths of the Marauders have been slumped pathetically around a table in the common room all evening. So we all want to know. Just where have you been all evening, you naughty thing, you?”
Lily folds her hands behind her back and smiles, her expression just a little coy. “I haven’t the faintest idea what any of you are talking about,” she says.
“You’re lying,” Alice sing-songs.
“Why would you say that?” Lily asks, voice sweet and eyelashes innocently fluttering.
“You think after living with you for six and a half years we don’t know when you’re lying?” Phyllis asks, rolling her eyes.
“What are you hiding, Lily Evans?” Evelyn demands.
“Nothing much,” Lily replies, grinning broadly now. “Just that I’m going to be changing my name in the not-too-distant future.” She pulls her left hand from behind her back and wiggles five fingers and a flashing diamond ring at her roommates.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Downstairs, the Marauders have settled into chairs by the fire to interrogate James after completing their celebratory wrestling match. The room is silent aside from their quiet, teasing voices until suddenly, from above, there is the sound of loud, prolonged screaming.
The boys are on their feet almost instantly in reflex, hands reaching for wands and half turning toward the stairs. Then all the screaming turns to...squealing? And there is a loud, rhythmic thumping, like feet stomping or...jumping.
Sirius drops back into his seat with an exaggerated eye-roll. James and Remus breathe sighs of relief.
Peter slouches back into his seat too. “Birds,” he mutters, shaking his head ruefully.
“Too right, mate,” Sirius agrees, clapping Peter’s shoulder hard enough to shove him forward in his seat. “Too right.”
On to Interlude II