But long story short, it was the story of one green dress, two bracelets, three cigarettes, four (and a half) rejections, five detentions, six glasses of vodka, seven scars, an eight-letter phrase, nine tries, ten laps, eleven slices of chocolate cake, twelve games of rugby and thirteen characters. It was the story of how Lily Evans and James Potter came to be, among other tales.

Could there be anything more futile than the gold of a galleon and the promise of business? Well, perhaps everything is a futile device, words and bones and memories, but with him they were futile devices that sustained her in the present, immortalized and permanent, hung in the Louvre.