Chapter 4

                                    

                                          
James and Lily's rushed wartime soulmates wedding plans were coming together quickly. It would be a small ceremony at the Potters' manor house. Dumbledore would officiate. The Order of the Phoenix would be the guests. Marlene would stand up with Lily, the lads with James, and Lily's Muggle parents would get pictures when everything was finished. She was eighteen, didn't need their permission, but had decided not to risk telling them anyway.
                          
A few days before the wedding, the lads were called upon to go to the Potters' manor to settle their wedding clothes. Their attire was nearly identical, dark and formal. Serious black, they were calling it, trimmed with elaborate old-fashioned white neckties that looped and knotted in spectacularly intricate ways around their collars and down their fronts.
                          
Dressing alike played up how different they all looked. Peter, short and stocky, his eyes darting, as if hopelessly distracted by the fancy details of the new clothes. Remus was tall and rather stately in his, so very thin, the white of his shirt playing up the lingering redness of the scars on his face. Sirius was lean and strong with long, dark waves of hair falling over his high collar. And James, out of a school uniform, dressed in something other than a quidditch team T-shirt, in his glasses, his hair arranged more smoothly than usual, he looked older, like he might be able to pose as someone's husband.
                          
James's father, Monty Potter, had been sent into the drawing room to oversee the fitting. It was a purely honorary role, with two tailors who'd come from town showing the lads how to dress properly, and altering everything to fit perfectly. In practical terms, Monty had no greater role than giving the lads permission to open a few bottles from the liquor collection before dozing off over his brandy.
                          
"There's no one better to dress than young people," the tailor wizard called Renz said. "Schoolboys, you're all so perfect." He batted Peter's hands. "Even this twitchy little one who won't keep his paws down. Perfect."
                          
"Yes, will you look at these lines," Renz's co-tailor Toby said, pinching the fabric falling from Remus's shoulders. "This one is so grandly tall, and the angles on him. He's a perfect mannequin."
                          
"He is?" Sirius said.
                          
"Oh, don't be jealous," Renz said, poking Sirius's shoulder with the tip of his wand. "You're still the pretty one. Yes, flip that hair again."
                          
Sirius happily obliged.
                          
Renz had turned back to James, tugging hard at his sleeve. "For stars' sake, someone get our groom another drink. He's so stiff I can hardly mark him up."
                          
James rolled his shoulders and shook out his fingers. "Sorry."
                          
"No need to be sorry. Poor lamb, off to be married already. Who wouldn't have nerves. How old are you, anyway?" Toby said, filling a little glass not meant to be filled so high.
                          
"It's legal," was all James said, stiffening again.
                          
Toby rolled his eyes so hard his voice sounded in an almost feline growl.
                          
James had taken the glass from him and raised it to his face when the alcohol vapor hit him, burning his nose like a potions class accident. "Whoa. No, not for me," James said. "I've got double Arithmancy with Lily first thing in the morning. Need to stay sharp."
                          
Toby groaned again. "Arithmancy, oh yes, practical skills." With a spin and a slight slosh of the drink, he was facing the rest of the room. "Well someone's got to drink this, now it's poured. Not me, I'm on the clock, sadly," he said, licking the spilled liquor from his fingers. "Oh my. Yes, it'd be a crime to waste good stuff like this. What is it, Mr. Potter, three or four hundred years old? Aged in hollowed out Leviathan horns? Must have cost a fortune, eh Mr. Potter?"