Dinner was in full swing at the Hogwarts Great Hall. Which meant that Marlene, Mary, and Dorcas were barely halfway through recounting and comparing notes on the gossip of the day. Lily was bored out of her mind. Lily loved her friends, she loved their enthusiasm, loved being around them, but she couldn't care less about who was caught staring at who, who was dating who, and who was snogging someone who wasn't their significant other. But Lily knew that letting them get out all the gossip would mean she wouldn't have to hear about when she wanted to go to bed. So, Lily pretended to listen to them, shaking her head in disbelief when asked her opinion, while she really pondered how the house elves had gotten such ripe strawberries when they weren't even in season, when she caught the words Harley Davidson through the roar of the great hall. Lily's curiosity was peaked. The words were not unfamiliar to Lily, she often helped at her father's mechanics shop on break, but to hear them at Hogwarts was bizarre. She turned looking for the conversation and found that sitting a few feet down the table from her were the marauders. Remus was simply staring down at his plate pushing his food around, Peter was watching James seemingly wondering what his reaction would be, James was looking towards the ceiling as though this was a frequent discussion he would rather not have, and Sirius was waving his fork in the air while talking about motorbikes.
"They did a whole spread about Harley Davidson. And Prongs this seems to be the bike I have been waiting for. It's got one of the largest engines on the market. I've got to get one of them, Prongs," Sirius was saying.
Lily blinked, her mind processing the absurdness of this conversation. Slowly she turned towards the boys and asked, "You want to buy a motorcycle?"
All four boys turned to look at her in surprise.
"Err, yeah, Evans, I've been looking at getting a motorbike" Sirius replied wondering where this was going.
"And you want to buy a Harley?" Lily asked.
"The magazine said they were the best, Evans, and you know only the best for me," Sirius said.
Lily paused for a minute, considering Sirius. She then said, "You want to buy that yankee pile of rubbish they call a motorcycle?"
All four boys stared, gob smacked, at her, before Remus burst out laughing, causing Peter to laugh nervously.
Sirius dramatically brought his hands to his chest as he exclaimed, "Evans, you wound me"
Lily simple snorted in disbelief.
"Tell us how you really feel about motor-bike-cycles Evans" James says with a small smirk.
"I don't have a problem with motorcycles, Potter. Merlin knows I've broken enough of their engines down over the years. I have even considered buying one myself, though never the yankee piles of rubbish, you want Sirius. There are so many of them on the market today, and so many that are better, faster, and cheaper than a Harley. I can hardly see what the appeal might be. I mean it would be like buying a, oh, I don't know, a Swiftstick when you could get the new Nimbus cheaper," said Lily.
"But they are Harley's are the height of cool Evans. I've seen them on the muggle posters and in the muggle telly. I don't just want any motorbike. I've been trying to find spells to make them do cool things. Imagine if I could get it to fly," Sirius said.
"You want to make a motorcycle fly?" Lily replied in disbelief.
"Wouldn't it be awesome?" Sirius said.
"I take back what I said, you should totally get on the yankee bikes, then if you ruin it with your experiments it will be less of a tragedy," Lily said. She shook her head in disbelief and turned back to her dinner before she caught sight of the girls staring though she had become a three headed dog.
"What?" Lily asked looking at them.
"When did you learn brooms?" Dorcas asked.
"Well, you all talk about it enough that it would be impossible for me not to know it" Lily replied
"When did you learn motor mic-jaggs?" Mary said.
Lily looked at her then pointed to herself saying "Muggleborn".
"When did you start having cordial conversations with the James Potter and Sirius Black?" Marlene asked.
"Don't you all have to discuss how Sarah Burgenssion is oblivious to her boyfriend cheating on her, or why that one Hufflepuff can't stop crying over her beau, or something?" Lily said. This was all it took for them to pick back up on the gossip rundown of the day and allowing Lily to escape back to her thoughts. Only now she was wondering less about the strawberries and how exactly one would get a motorcycle to fly.