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Lily Evans
c/o Potter Cottage
Godric’s Hollow
Private and Confidential
The invitation came on thick parchment, sturdier than the everyday stuff Lily used during her studies. The penmanship of the address was spectacular and would have met the approval of Madam Mathers, her fussy primary teacher that had been notorious for docking marks at the slightest smudge or misshapen ‘r’. It was possibly even more impressive than Lily’s original invitation to Hogwarts.
It had also been delivered by Archimedes, the exact same owl that Lily thought was roosting in his regular nook upstairs. Certainly something had been screeching when she arrived at Potter Cottage earlier this evening.
“Erm?” she asked, waving the envelope in James’ general direction. He might have an explanation.
James’ eyes lit up. “Brilliant! Did I get one, too?”
“Did you get a letter from your own owl?” Lily asked, baffled. That raised even more questions than this mysterious letter did in the first place.
But before James could shed light on why he wasn’t surprised, there was a commotion at the window. Archimedes was back. The Potters kept the upstairs window open for him, so Lily wasn’t sure why he was showing up at the kitchen like a common delivery bird.
“What is going on?” she asked as James eagerly ripped open his letter, no appreciation for the artistry or penmanship.
James ignored her, too excited about whatever this was.
“I was wondering when this was going to show up. Oy! Padfoot!” He turned away from her and shouted up to the second floor.
Sirius came bounding down the stairs seconds later. Lily should have guessed he was involved in… whatever this was.
“I should be getting… Yes, there’s mine!” Sirius came into the kitchen as Archimedes showed up a third time.
Lily was starting to see the shape of this mystery. The penmanship was easier to recognize now that she saw the envelope addressed to ‘Sirius Black’. She’d seen his signature too many times not to be suspicious now.
“What are you two up to this time?”
“If only there was a way to figure that out yourself,” Sirius said acerbically. “Too bad you didn’t get an invitation full of clear and explicit instructions that would catch you on to what’s going on.”
“Padfoot,” James warned. “Be nice. It’s her first time.”
Lily wasn’t sure Sirius Black knew the definition of ‘be nice’. Still, it was good advice, and the only advice Lily could take if the boys were in this sort of mood. She eased open the envelope and shook out the contents.
Then she gawked.
You Are Invited to an Evening of Mystery and Mayhem
Join Us as We Compete to See Who Will Win the Ultimate Prize
Danger and Excitement Awaits
This Saturday at 7 o’clock in the evening
Rain or Shine or Enchanted Snow
Regrets Only
“Does he… does he remember that I’m Muggle-born?” Lily asked Remus. She considered keeping her voice down but wasn’t sure it would make a difference. Sirius hadn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise since they’d arrived.
“Does he remember that half of us took Muggle Studies?” Remus said back, just as rhetorical.
Lily didn’t comment on that. She’d seen some of the assignments for that class and didn’t have faith those learnings were enough to reduce the amount of mystery in their “mystery and mayhem” evening.
“Does he know that’s the same word in the wizarding world?” Lily asked once she finally recognized what Sirius meant by all his references to the “please men”.
“Will you two please be quiet?” Peter asked. “Some of us are trying to pay attention!”
Sirius was glaring at them, too, even if he hadn’t broken from his spiel. James gave her a sympathetic smile, but didn’t come to her defence, so Lily mimicked zipping her lips and tuned back in.
“And so,” Sirius said in long overdue conclusion, “Lady and Gentlemen, tonight is the night that will test our mettle. Tonight is the night we go to the limits. Tonight is the night we do the impossible.
“Tonight is the night we explore Muggle London!”
Sirius had grown up in the only magical household on an otherwise non-magical street. They had all traversed through the Muggle roads on the way to Platform 9¾ at the beginning of every school year. They had gone to a pub in Soho to celebrate when Dumbledore had finally told them about the Order of the Phoenix, not daring to talk about it in the mixed company of the wizarding world.
This whole thing was ridiculous, but Lily applauded and hollered her appreciation along with the rest of them.
“It’s not cheating if we partner up,” Peter told her as soon as the smoke cleared and Lily had stopped coughing.
Lily had not been expecting the smoke.
“I didn’t realize there were rules,” she said.
It wasn’t quite true. There had been plenty of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’, including what to wear (Muggle-inspired robes), who to tell (no one under pain of a very stern glare) and the many, many ways that using a Niffler counted as cheating (Lily suspected there was a story or two behind that one) but no actual guidelines about the gameplay at all. Lily still wasn’t sure what the aim of the evening was—somehow that had escaped both the 3-page invitation and Sirius’ extended pre-amble.
Peter shot her a look that said he thought she was smarter than that. “Of course there are rules. You want to win, don’t you?”
“I’m not even sure what we’re playing,” Lily admitted.
“It’s a scavenger hunt. Scavenger hunts have winners. And I plan for us to be those winners. You’re a Muggle. Erm… former Muggle.”
Muggleborn, to be exact, but Peter already looked like he was ready to swallow his tongue, so Lily let it ride.
“Okay, let’s see what this thing is all about,” Lily said.
Peter took out the original letter from his back pocket. Lily could see that the last page now had wording on it instead of the frustrating blankness of the original delivery. She peered over and Peter hurriedly clutched the parchment to his chest.
Lily huffed. “It was your idea to work together.”
“It doesn’t make a difference. Sirius stopped giving us the same clues after… erm… well your copy isn’t the same as mine.”
“What?”
She took out her own parchment and sure enough, it looked different than the one in Peter’s hands. He was still holding it awkwardly so she couldn’t clearly see, but the lines were different lengths.
“Didn’t you just say this was a scavenger hunt? What type of scavenger hunt only has one item?” she complained. Then, peering closer at the list, she added, “Is this in code?”
“It is. Sirius just thinks it’s more fun to use riddles instead of telling us outright what we’re looking for. The next clue will reveal itself once you find the first one.”
Of course Sirius had found a way to make this even more complicated. This all would have been more useful information than the long speech Sirius gave at the beginning of the night, but what else could she expect from Sirius Black.
Lily studied the clue a bit longer and then stuck the parchment back into her robes. “Let’s do this.”
An hour in and Lily felt like she might be starting to get the hang of this. Sure, she would have preferred to be paired with her literal boyfriend, or even Remus, who’d been her study partner for so many years at Hogwarts. But Peter was determined and it was nice to have some company, even if they’d spent the first half hour squabbling about who was going to help who first.
“I’m telling you Merlin was sorted into Slytherin. We should be looking for something with a snake.”
“And I’m telling you Muggles don’t know that. We’re exploring Muggle London. We’re looking for a clue about King Arthur. A round table? Excalibur?”
It had been so long since Lily had read TH White. She struggled to remember any details now.
“There you are!”
James’ voice rang through the air, breaking her concentration. Lily jumped; she’d been so caught in the game that she hadn’t even noticed him approach.
“There you are,” she said.
“Are you two cheating?” James asked, looking accusingly between Peter and Lily.
“No!” Peter said, panicked.
“Of course not,” Lily said. “Peter here was just nice enough not to abandon me all by my lonesome in Muggle London.”
James didn’t seem to notice the slight accusation in her voice. Lily wasn’t stupid; she knew this evening wasn’t a date night and she wasn’t expecting to spend the entire time glued to his side, but some warning—any warning—about what the evening would entail would have been nice. Not being abandoned would have been nice. If Peter hadn’t stuck around, she’d probably still be hanging out awkwardly on Charing Cross Road, trying to figure out what type of mayhem Sirius was expecting.
“We can’t cheat,” Peter said. “The clues aren’t the same.”
“The clues are different, but the answers are the same. They’re just in a different order,” James said. “To stop you from cheating.”
“That was one time, and Remus and I swore we wouldn’t do it again.”
“Never mind that,” James said, rather than point out that Peter had tried the exact same stunt with Lily as soon as he thought he could get away with it. “I’m here to steal Lily away.”
“Steal me away?” Lily asked, shaking off his grip on her arm. “Am I the answer to one of the clues?”
“What?” James asked, mouth agape.
“The next item on your scavenger list, maybe? A Muggleborn witch? Is that why we’re in Muggle London?”
“What, no!”
“Why else are you trying to steal me away?”
“Because I… want to spend time with you?” James didn’t sound like he was entirely sure that was the right answer.
“You left me alone. Thank goodness Peter was here to help a poor soul out.”
She might have been laying it a bit thick. Lily was slightly annoyed with the situation, but she’d half-expected something after reading ‘mischief and mayhem’ on the invitation. Still, it wouldn’t do to let James off easily. Some sort of warning would have been nice.
“It’s London! I didn’t abandon you in the back woods of Transylvania!”
“Poor, defenseless me,” Lily sighed. “Abandoned by my own boyfriend, all because he didn’t want his best mate to think he was cheating.”
“Have you met Sirius? He’d be unsufferable.”
James wasn’t wrong about that. Lily smirked.
“I can’t in good consciousness contribute to a situation where Sirius might call you a cheater, not now that I know there’s explicitly a rule against cheating. I’m sorry, James, but I respect you too much.”
She lay a sympathetic hand on his arm.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to take separate paths. See you when you’re finally at the finish line!”
“What clue are you on, then?” Remus asked as they both reached for the street sign.
“Fifth,” Lily said.
“Seventh,” Remus said. The quirk to his mouth meant that he was proud of being ahead and trying not to brag about it.
“Do you know how many clues there are in total?” she asked, trying to make some mental calculations of what she would need to do to catch up. Maybe partnering with Peter hadn’t been the best course of action.
“It’s usually ten or twelve,” Remus said. “You’ll know for sure when the answer brings you to the Leaky Cauldron.”
Lily stopped her calculations and stared at him. “You know the answer to the last clue already?”
“It’s always the Leaky Cauldron,” Remus said. He lifted his eyebrows to let her know they were both in on the joke. A scavenger hunt where they all knew the answer to the last clue was a little much.
“Look,” he continued, placatingly. “I know this isn’t your idea of a great time. No one will blame you if you just want to go directly to the pub. The rest of us will be there in no time at all.”
He almost had her. She was so used to Remus sounding sensible and friendly that she forgot he was voluntarily friends with the same hooligans her boyfriend hung out with.
“Nice try,” she said. When he smirked, Lily knew she was on the right track.
“I had to give it a shot. Seriously though, Leaky Cauldron is the last clue but if you go there without finishing the rest of the list you will never live it down.” Remus smiled. “Or maybe I’m lying. Maybe I’m trying to make sure you definitely lose. You’ll never know.”
Lily narrowed her eyes and glared.
Then she remembered that she was a witch and while there had been many rules put forward for the night (and more still that were apparently unspoken) going wandless wasn’t among them. They were finished Hogwarts and no longer confined by the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery.
”Accio Scavenger Hunt List!” she said.
It flew from Remus’ hands with only the slightest rip to the parchment.
“Hey!”
But before Remus could do anything more than protest, Lily had transfigured it into a paper airplane and sent it flying across the overpass with a giant arm swing that was more to keep any Muggles that might have been second-guessing what they saw than a necessity for the spell.
“Evans!” Remus growled, but Lily was already off in the other direction.
“See you at the Cauldron!”
“Oh Lily, my darling, the most perfect woman for me,” James said as soon as he spotted her. “I need your help.”
“Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you, Potter?” Lily asked, arms crossed over her chest. She could use the distraction. Her latest clue was the hardest yet and she’d been banging her head over it for the last few minutes.
“Only if it’s not working,” said James with what she was sure he thought was a charming smile.
“What do you want.”
“I need your help. Obviously. I mean, you were the cleverest witch in our year while I was just a poor, wretched thing that barely scraped by with seven N.E.W.T.s.”
Lily rolled her eyes. Even when he was pretending to beg, James couldn’t help but brag.
“I’m surprised your parents let you back in the house after that disgraceful showing,” she said dryly.
James scowled, but stayed on topic. “The thing is, it’s not just a Muggle question. It’s a foreign Muggle thing. I don’t what to do but I thought surely, surely you’d be able to help.”
He took out his list and showed her the next clue. Lily only just held back a snort when she saw what he was on about.
A Parisian Osculation
It wasn’t even Sirius’ handwriting. James had clearly bespelled the parchment to override his actual latest clue. He hadn’t even used the right ink colour.
“Hmm…” Lily said, pretending to think. She bit her lip in faux concentration, delighting in the way the motion captured James’ gaze.
James drew her off to the side, a little enclave off the main street. They wouldn’t get in anyone’s way, but more importantly it gave them a bit of privacy.
“A trip to Paris does sound lovely,” Lily said.
“I’m not sure that’s what ‘osculation’ means.” James leaned in closer.
He knew, of course. And he knew that Lily knew. That Valentine’s Day in fourth year was seared into his brain, just as much as it was hers.
Lily wasn’t sure there was a single person in all of Hogwarts that had forgotten the plague of lip-shaped paper cutouts that had flown through the hallways and pestered students and professors alike with audible smacks on their cheeks that year. The red lipstick stain left behind had challenged Madam Pomfrey herself.
But Lily was one of the few who knew who was to blame for the chaos and one of the fewer that knew the incantation that had brought the pesty things to life. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forget those words.
“I’m the Muggle expert here, aren’t I? I think you should listen to me,” she said, staring deeply into his eyes.
“Or, I could venture an educated guess,” James murmured.
His lips were close enough to brush now. Lily gave up teasing and leaned in.
A Parisian Osculation – a French kiss.
That was a clue Lily was happy to solve.
“I should have known!”
It wasn’t the first accusation Sirius had thrown their way. Lily was getting rather used to his voice sharply being thrown down hallways or piercing through the silence at Potter Cottage. She no longer jumped back the way she did the first few months, but she and James still broke apart.
Lily patted her hair to make sure it was all in place, then brushed a few stray locks out of James’ face. He wrinkled his nose and messed his hair back up again, the same as he always did.
“This evening is about having fun and testing the limits of our cleverness, not for canoodling in a dark alley where anyone could see you.”
“There was a clue,” Lily said, feigning innocence.
James’ eyes widened in panic at the betrayal, but Sirius didn’t look surprised at all. “I should have guessed. Well, as the person who put together this whole event, I can definitively say you are on the wrong track.”
“We had to explore all options,” James said.
“Explore somewhere else. Shoo.” Sirius flicked his hands at James, motioning for him to get moving.
James hesitated until Sirius added, “I just ran into Remus and he’s already on his second last item.”
Sirius knew her boyfriend as well as Lily did herself. That lit a fire under him and James actually scampered.
“He didn’t even ask what clue I’m on,” Lily complained.
“He wouldn’t exactly be concerned about losing to you, now, would he?”
He sounded so blasé about it that Lily actually scowled. “Why? Did you give me special clues?”
If this was all an attempt to set Lily up when she was just finally starting to feel like she was fitting in, Lily was going to scream. She’d been having fun tonight, despite not knowing what to expect. She thought they were all having fun.
But Sirius scrunched up his face. “No, because you’re clever. No one’s going to take it too hard if you win the prize tonight.”
He turned to her and looked her in the eye. “I know I’ve been a right ass once or twice, but Prongs was onto something when he asked you out. You should know we’ve all come around.”
Sirius was the only one that had ever grumbled about her presence, at least in Lily’s earshot. Maybe she should call him out on this, but here he was extending an olive branch. Lily knew when to be gracious.
“Thanks,” she said.
Sirius nodded, clearly finished with the feelings portion of the night. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a familiar looking piece of parchment. Lily recognized the frown he made as he unfolded it as his concentration face.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked forgetting about being gracious. “You made yourself a list, too? You are competing against us?”
Sirius looked at her with scorn. “I’m no cheater. Prongs made my list.”
James made the list.
James and Sirius had conspired to put together this evening, with a random order of personalized clues with a common key of answers they both knew and here they were, running around like mad men, participating all the same. Lily wasn’t sure if they were pretending not to know the answers already or if they had sabotaged each other’s games. Both were equally likely.
Lily thought about how many hours the two of them had spent preparing the riddles, the amount of work that went into enchanting the parchment. It couldn’t be easy to set up the conditions so the next clue would reveal itself only when they touched the riddle’s answer. It had to be harder still to make the parchments tamper-proof.
She thought about the speech that Sirius prepared, the way that the group kept running into each other despite ostensibly having all of Muggle London to wander around. The amount of planning and effort the two boys had put into this had to be astronomical. And here they were, pretending to play along, only kept in check by a gentleman’s agreement to not cheat against each other.
The whole thing was more than a little ridiculous and Lily loved every moment of it.
The final clue did lead to the Leaky Cauldron in the end. Lily was happy to note that she wasn’t the last to arrive, either.
“What is this elusive prize, anyway?” she asked after making James go get her a drink while they waited for the rest of the group to trickle in.
“Bragging rights,” Sirius said.
“We went through all of this just to brag?”
“Do you want to be humble?” Sirius asked, skeptically.
“I want a trophy. A real one, next time. Something big and gold.”
“I can give you chocolate and probably not spiked with Bertie Bott’s earthworm-flavoured beans,” said Sirius.
Lily laughed. “Bragging rights it is!”
If she started planning now, Lily would have plenty of time to figure out how to take full advantage of those bragging rights next time around. Because next time, she was definitely going to win first prize.