Disclaimer – I do not own Harry Potter
"Rem!" Lily calls excitedly as Remus opens the door to his cottage. Just for a change in things, Lily came to his place in an effort to not jinx themselves. It's the last day of the summer hols before they begin seventh year and so far, nothing bad has happened since the Powermatch eight months ago. Lily will be staying overnight and then heading to the Hogwarts Express with the Lupins who she is yet to meet.
"Hey Lils," Remus greets with a bright-eyed grin. The two share a brief kiss before he brings her into the loungeroom where his parents are. "Mam, Nhad, this is Lily. Lily, Hope and Lyall Lupin," Remus introduces.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr and Mrs Lupin. Remus has told me all about you two," Lily tells him, smiling nervously.
"It's lovely to meet you too, dear," Hope tells her, walking over and giving her a hug.
Lyall just looks her over for a minute, "So you know about Remus'…condition?" He asks. Hope and Remus exchange worried looks which do not go unnoticed by Lily. She swallows anxiously and nods. He just 'Hmph's and walks out.
Remus sighs when Lily looks to him in confusion, "Dad doesn't understand why you'd want anything to do with me, let alone be with me, if you know I'm a Werewolf. I don't think he really believed me when I said you know."
Lily frowns and hugs him tightly, "I want everything to do with you."
He smiles and hugs her back, "I know."
The door suddenly opens again and a bald teenager walks in.
"Mornin' all," He says.
Remus rolls his eyes and huffs, "Morning Bob."
"Erm, isn't that –"
"The Ravenclaw that Peter hangs out with? Yes. Yes, it is." Lily looks confused as Remus leads her further into the house. "He lives down the road, Mam recognised him when Pete brought him over at 9 ¾ on the 1st. Insisted we start having more to do with the family no matter what Dad and I say. And when Nhad and I begin agreeing on something, that's when you should listen. Now Bob just comes over whenever he likes and Mams all happy that he feels so at home." Remus rolls his eyes again. They watch as Bob went over to the kitchen, sat down, and made himself a sandwich.
"Evanfs, wha're you foing her?" Bob asks mid-bite.
"Oh – err – just visiting a friend. Well, not a friend perse, fellow prefect more like. Erm, study partner, if you will. We –"
"Are shagging and don't want Potter to know?" Bob asks. Lily turns beet red as she starts stuttering repudiations. Bob swallows his mouthful, "I'm a Ravenclaw, Honey. I'm not going to fall for some half-assed lie. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. I owe Remus a secret kept anyway."
Lily raises an eyebrow at Remus who seems relieved, so she assumes he's telling the truth. She clears her throat, "Thank you."
Bob shrugs, "You know, Ghandi always said, 'What goes around, comes around."
"Erm, I don't think Ghandi sai-" Lily begins to refute, but Remus just shakes his head. "Lovely to properly meet you," She says instead as Remus begins leading her away.
Remus shows her to the spare room so that she can put her trunk away. "Sorry about that," He tells her.
"I can't tell if he was kind of sweet or if he was the devil in disguise."
"He was, the devil in disguise."
The next day finds the Lupins and Lily at the train platform where Lily and Remus stand at an appropriate distance apart, but unwilling to go any further.
"This is it. Another term, hiding."
Remus frowns, "We could tell them, you know. I'd take any heat from Prongs for you."
"I know you would, but I don't want to put you in that position, not while you're living with them." Remus sighs and nods. Lily smiles at him gently, "One more year and we're out of there, Babe. One more year, and we can be anyone we want to be."
Remus smiles back and nods, "One more year."
"C'mon, Moonpie. It's our last year! You gotta join in!" Sirius pleads.
"Exactly, it's our last year. The last thing we need is to be expelled! James, you're head boy, you're supposed to be setting an example," Remus tells him sternly.
"One game of Truth or Dare, Moons. Just one game," James requests.
Remus continues glaring at them for thirty seconds before he rolls his eyes and joins the group on the floor of the common room in a circle. The group which includes the Marauders, Bob, Marlene McKinnon (A Gryffindor in their year), Mary McDonald (Another Ravenclaw but in the year below them. Also, Lily's best friend and the only one to know about she and Remus dating), Frank Longbottom (Gryffindor form their year that they've decided to include more because his girlfriend, Alice, graduated last year) and, to Remus' intense surprise, Lily Evans.
"They roped you into this as well?" He asks her.
She shakes her head, "No, Mary did."
"You know, Ghandi always said 'Same dif.'" Peter snickers at Bob while Remus and Lily rolls their eyes in unison.
"Dude seriously, are you okay?" Mary asks him.
"What an intense question –"
"It really wasn't –"
"I had an odd dream last night that I woke up this morning as a tree. What the? And you know what caused me to be a tree?" Everyone shakes their heads with varying levels of curiosity and exasperation. "Magic Squirrels!"
"Are magic squirrels even a thing?" Marlene asks.
"NO, they most certainly are not a thing!" Remus replies heatedly.
"Well Xenophilius Lovegood said –"
"Oh, well if Xenophilius Lovegood said so, it must be true. Not like the guy is the living definition of delusional or anything," Remus interrupts, some of the group snicker at the insult while Lily looks disapproving.
"Why don't we just play the game?" Peter timidly suggests.
A few rounds later, the inevitable comes up.
"Mary, truth or dare?" Sirius asks.
"Dare," Mary replies, a challenging look in her eye that has Remus face-palming before the dare has even been set.
"I dare you to kiss Marlene."
"Seriously, Padfoot?" Remus asks him, removing his hand from his face in order to glare at his friend.
"What? I'm just spicing things up a little."
"We're all adults now, will you grow-up?"
"What's the point of being grown-up if you can't act childish every now and then?" Sirius asks him.
"It's fine, Remus. Marls, I'm game if you are," Mary says to the shock of everyone.
Marlene rolls her eyes but nods so the two kiss briefly. Sirius seems very happy with himself.
"Right, let's make this more interesting," James decides.
"How so?" Frank asks, frowning in concern.
James gets up and goes to the common room desk, grabbing paper and a pen. "Padfoot, can you grab the donkey and the peacock?"
"Erm, sure?" Sirius replies, going to the dorm. It's as he gets to the bottom of the stairs that understanding dawns on him, "Oh, oh Prongs that's going to be hilarious," He says, hurrying up to grab the requested items.
"Donkey and Peacock?" Lily asks Remus who sighs.
"They were money boxes. But we…converted their use. We all put a possible target into the donkey and a prank idea into the peacock and then pull them out at random. Makes things more interesting," Remus explains. Lily looks disapproving again but simply shakes her head without comment.
"Right but, in this case, we're going to put truths in the Donkey and dares in the Peacock so that they can't be tailored or altered, and no one will know who came up with them," James explains as Sirius returns.
"This sounds like a recipe for disaster," Frank says, but still takes the paper and helps pass it around.
"Everyone write down two each to start with and, if it doesn't work, we'll go back to what we were already doing."
Everyone gets writing and then puts their slips of paper into the appropriate box.
"Right, Remus, you go first," Sirius tells him.
"What? Why me?"
"Because you haven't had a go in ages."
Remus rolls his eyes but pulls a dare from the peacock. "Seriously?" He asks, reading it. Everyone looks at him expectantly. He huffs, "Sneak into the potions classroom and take a pickled Newt's eye. Lily, you've gotta be against stealing, back me up here."
Lily smirks at him, "Professor Slughorn does have an abundance of them."
"I don't even know what a pickled Newt's eye looks like! We all know I flunked My Potion OWL, right?"
"So, Evans can go with you," Sirius says with a shrug.
Remus huffs again, "Fine," He says as he gets up. Lily gets up to go with him.
"I cannot believe you are willing to do this," Remus mutters.
"What, don't want to be alone with me, Babe?"
Remus narrows his eyes at her while opening the door to the potions room and going to the ingredients shelf. "All right, where's this Pickled Eye thing."
Lily inspects the shelf, frown growing with every irrelevant jar she checks. "Not where it usually is."
Remus putters around the place as she searches, eventually looking through Slughorn's desk.
"Remus!" Lily chastises when she sees what he's doing.
"At least I'm not planning on taking anything. Not from the desk anyway." Lily rolls her eyes at him and keeps looking through the jars. Remus opens the door to the small desk cabinet and finds a crystal ball inside. "What's Slughorn got a crystal ball for?"
Lily walks over to him, "A what? Slughorn hates divination. Thinks it's all wishy-washy crap. I mean, he's not wrong. No one can predict God's plan. But that's beside the point."
Remus decides not to address the comment; Lily's strong Christian beliefs vs Remus' Paganism has been a minor point of contention in the eight months they've been together. "It looks more like Snow Globe," Remus realises, "There's a model Hogwarts in it but there's all this fog covering it." For a moment, Remus thinks he sees some dark face in the fog, but blinks and it's gone.
"Let me see," Lily requests. Remus grabs the Crystal Ball, pulling it out. Lily goes to take it, but the moment both their hands touch the ball, there's a blinding flash of light.
When the light fades, the Potions classroom is empty and the crystal ball falls to the ground with a loud and solid thud.