Lily Larson was clearly the daughter of Calvin and Isabella Larson. Anyone that had once known her parents or had even heard about his antics twenty years ago when he was a student in Hogwarts would be able to tell that in almost no time. It wasn't that she looked like either of her parents; honestly, she didn't. Noah looked a bit like his father, as did Conor. Miri and Bailey looked more like their mother. Lily was a mix of the two, with her dark hair belonging more to her father than to her mother, and various aspects of her face coming from both of them. Her brilliant blue eyes were a mystery, though, and her mother would often say that she had no idea where her oldest daughter got them from.

Her father had been a legend back in his time at Hogwarts. Not only had he been Prefect and Head Boy, he had also had perfect attendance, perfect OWLs and almost the best grades anyone had ever seen come out of Hogwarts (Hermione Granger had beat him by only a few stray points here and there by the time she had graduated, so their family had an unspoken but agreed upon dislike of her). Despite that, he had been known for his pranks and devilish jokes. His most famous trademark had been his bright pink hair - until he had changed it for her mother, Bella. The two of them had gotten married during his Seventh year and her Sixth year.

Twenty years later, and they had five kids together. They hardly ever fought, and the only time she had seen her father mad at her mother was when her mother's father (her maternal grandfather) had died and Cal had refused to go to the funeral, prompting a battle between the two of them that lasted until well after the funeral. Usually the two of them got along better than most married couples did, and her father never missed a chance to gleefully rub it in Hermione Granger's - now Weasley's - face that his marriage and kids were better than hers. Miri got better grades than her kids, Noah was more athletic than her kids, Conor was more outgoing than her kids, Bailey was cuter than her kids. Most of all, he liked to say that Lily was better at life than her kids.

Her father was a funny guy, and she could always be counted on to go and talk to him when she needed to sort out her problems. She loved her mother, but she had a special connection with her father that none of the other kids seemed to have, which made it all the more sad that they never got their Cal/Lily time any more, what with his work picking up and her growing up. One thing that she couldn't talk to him about was the fact that she was engaged to his best friend's oldest son. It was just too weird of a subject; her parents and his parents didn't even know that they had been dating, much less getting engaged. She knew that her father would have been ecstatic to hear the news, and her mother too, but for some reason, she wanted to keep it under wraps for right then.

Emmett had been a sweetheart about the whole thing, about her confused feelings and her mood swings about telling her parents. He had been there ever since she could remember, back from when they were both kids and they had been thrown together in playpens while their parents caught up. It was only natural for Lily to fall for him, she supposed, and her parents probably wouldn't have even had a problem with the fact that they were engaged at seventeen and sixteen; hadn't Cal and Bella gotten engaged at the same age, and his parents before that? The tradition of ages and houses had remained the same since well before Cal's parents' time, in the Larson line, she guessed. It was only a pity that Noah hadn't found a girl yet.

It was a cold, clear night, and it was Christmas Eve. Lily should have been at home with her family, watching movies on their Muggle TV, but she had crept away some time during the afternoon, when her mother and her younger sisters had been baking cookies. Miri and Bailey seemed to get on better with Bella than she did, as did Noah and Conor. It wasn't that she didn't like her mother, she absolutely adored her, but it was like her father: while her mother loved her, she didn't quite get her. Which was why Lily was lying outside Hagrid's old hut, in the pumpkin patch, staring up at the sky and watching her breath cloud in front of her in tiny white puffs.

Every so often, she would lift up her hand so that the ring on her left ring finger would sparkle. She only ever put it on when she was alone at times like this, for fear that someone would see and rat her out to her parents. It was a nice ring. Lily loved it; it was just something that Emmett should have known she would have loved. Despite the fact that her personality was more like her father's, she had inherited her mother's liking of things that were simple and not too over-the-top. The ring itself was a simple silver band, inscribed with 'Tiffany' on the inside, which was a Muggle jewelry store that was very famous in America. The diamond was only three fourths of a carat, and it was in a simple princess cut. It wouldn't have had to have been huge and flashy for her to have accepted it from Emmett.

The only thing that depressed Lily more than anything was that this was their first Christmas without Noah and without her father. Noah had died of a Death Eater attack last year, and Cal had been taken away by the Death Eaters because he had been 'spreading propaganda.' It was a load of crap, and anyone that knew Cal would know that. It didn't do well do dwell on the past, so she tried to push thoughts like that to the back of her head and focus on the fact that she still had Miri and Conor and Bailey and her mother, no matter how bad things were getting at the time.

Lily didn't think that she would ever be able to pinpoint exactly why she was so unwilling to tell her mother and father about her relationship with Emmett. Maybe it was because she was a rebel, and she didn't like to go with the flow, and falling in love with Emmett was something that her mother and father had been probably planning on since she was in diapers. It was funny; she had found a list one time that her father had made as a joke, naming all of his kids and who he wanted them to marry. There had been asterisks and arrows all over the place, showing that it would be okay if this kid got switched, or this kid married this kid, and so on and so forth.

Of course, her name, Lily, had been right next to Emmett's, since they had been closest in age. Noah was supposed to marry Fiona Locke, since they were the next closest in age, with Noah being eighteen and Fiona was twenty. Cal had put Miri down for marrying Molly's son Christian, who was the same age as her. She just couldn't see the two of them together, though, despite the fact that their personalities were very similar. Maybe too much of a similar thing would be bad, but they wouldn't be able to work out. Conor was going to marry Alena Galliano, the son of Cal's friend from school, Aiya. And finally, little Bailey was going to be paired off with Sawyer Weasley, the thirteen year old son of the infamous George and Katie Weasley.

Her father had certainly thought all of that through, and although Lily didn't agree with most of his ideas, it had been something entertaining to read. Noah had blushed a little when he had heard that he was supposed to marry Fiona, which led Lily to think that he might have had a crush on her. Miri seemed disinterested in the list as a whole, and Conor just laughed when he heard that he, the most outgoing of the whole family, was supposed to have shy, quiet Alena for a wife. That would have been opposites attracting for sure. Bailey had just shaken her head about Sawyer, claiming that they were too good of friends to ever start dating.

Lily was broken out of her thoughts by a gentle touch on her shoulder, and she heard a familiar soothing voice shortly after. She put one hand on Emmett's, and turned around to smile at him. "Hey, babe," she said, leaning up to give him a short kiss. "I'm just thinking. What are you doing out here?" she asked, quizzically, before letting her impulses get the best of her and leaning up to ruffle his curly locks. She loved his hair; it was one of his most attractive features, if she had to pick one. It would probably go in the order of his hair, his smile, his eyes, his arms, and then everything else, if she ever made a list. Not that she had.