After looking for James in the common room, the boys' dorm, the Quidditch field and the Great Hall Lily was left with the Library, as unlikely as that seemed. She pushed open the heavy wooden door and started looking around, trying to spot the familiar head of messy black hair. In stead she found Remus Lupin sitting in a corner table by himself with piles of books and parchments surrounding him. The honey-haired youth had a silly smile on his face and he was chewing on his quill absent-mindedly. Lily smiled at this sight: lately the boy had seemed even quieter than usual and somehow somber. It was good to see him happy about something.
"So, what has you smiling?" Lily asked when she got close to Remus. The boy jumped a bit and pulled the quil from his mouth. He looked at the girl and smiled a bit nervously, a blush spreading to his otherwise pale face.
"Oh, hi Lils", he muttered shyly. "Didn't see you there."
Lily did notice that her question was being ignored but decided not to push.
"By the way, you shouldn't chew on your quils, you have ink on your lip. Do you know where James is? I've been looking all over for him", she asked instead.
"Haven't seen him, but Sirius said he was gonna meet him near the kitchens. He just left, if you run you'll probably catch him", Remus said, rubbing his lip slightly with a slender finger.
With a brief thanks she was off, jogging through the near-empty stone hallways to the direction of the kitchens. After a few minutes she turned a corner and nearly ran into two boys. She was about to bark at them for loitering in the halls when he realized she had caught up with Sirius, and found James at the same time. The red-head was just about to greet them when something caught her attention and after a perplexed moment made her burst into uncontrollable giggles. The two boys stared at her, confused.
"Sirius Black, is that ink on your lip?" she finally managed to gasp.
James continued to look perplexed at her behaviour but the other boy turned an uncharasteristic shade of pink and covered his mouth, blocking from view the blot of ink on his lower lip, a stain quite curiosly mirroring that on a certain werewolf.