A Note: I honestly have no idea if/when I'll update but this was fun to write and I love to play with these four so hopefully soon. Obviously this is extremely AU seeing as it's PresentDay!Muggle!AU but I hope you enjoy and please review.

…

"So then we grew a little and knew a lot

And now we demonstrated it to the cops"

- Flowers in Your Hair

…

Marlene was sitting on her bike, one foot on the curb, and chewing gum when Lily went outside to meet the first day of summer.

"And so she returns from boarding school." Marlene blew a bubble with her gum and let it pop before she spoke again. Anyone else would have tried to speak but Lily knew her best friend and knew she would never let an opportunity to tease her best friend get away. "Hope you didn't find any rich friends to replace us poor, public school kids."

"Missed you too, Marl," was all Lily said because that was all you could say when you were talking to Marlene. She hopped onto the front of the bike and stuck her hand backwards. Marlene spit out her gum and then pedaled, hard, like she wanted to get away from something. Lily popped the gum into her own mouth. It had lost most of its flavor but it tasted like Marlene's cherry lip-gloss and the faint flavor of bubblegum.

"How had everyone been?" Lily continued, clutching the handlebars behind her for dear life. She had written some letters but only Mary had replied in any sort of consist manner – Marlene hadn't written back at all and Dorcas found it funny to try and write the dirtiest letter she could, most of time with the subjects being Lily and a certain James Potter.

"You know," Marlene was barely panting, even though she was lugging both of their weight. "Mare wanted to re-paint but we talked her out of it. So she put up curtains. Most ugly curtains I've ever seen, but whatever. Oh, and Doe invited the Marauders."

"Shit." Lily had hoped she could get through the summer without seeing them, which was a long shot because all of her friends had be-friended them back in Freshman year during her first year at boarding school. Which she had been hesitant about because they had been insufferable in middle school and, from seeing them over past summers, hadn't gotten much better.

The Marauders, a self-proclaimed gang, was a group of four boys who were in their year at school. Gang was a harsh word for them, though, for the most illegal thing that they'd ever done was spray-painted the side of a building one time and had quit that practice after the cops caught them. Lily didn't really mind them, she had to admit that they amused her on occasion, but James Potter, the so-called ring leader, had an insufferable crush on her and hadn't been able to get it through his thick head that she wasn't interested. Sometimes she wondered if her friends hung out with them simply to annoy them.

"Are we going to the gas station first?" Lily asked, already planning out what she would buy. The inside of one of the gas stations had been renovated to be merely rows of every kind of candy you could imagine, all at a cheap price. She had missed it over the year but Marlene grunted a no and swung the bike, hard, into the next turn.

…

Their clubhouse was really Mary's flat but sometimes Lily liked to pretend that Mary still had a functional home life and so it was her that dubbed it the clubhouse. It was small, one main room with the living room and kitchen and then two smaller rooms being the bedroom and the bathroom. But they'd all chipped in for some cheap furniture and it was decorated with music posters and dirty dishes and the remnants of four teenage girls who spent the majority of their summers there.

Lily had asked Mary about being kicked out of her house at seventeen, once. She told her friend that she could get the courts involved, since she was technically a minor, but Mary just laughed, and told her that some things just work best for some people.

Lily wasn't thinking that, though, as she spit her gum into the grass and ran up the front steps. She was thinking that she hadn't seen these idiots all year and she missed them.

She pushed open the door, slowly, half expecting someone to have propped a bucket of water onto the top of the door or some other dumb trick to welcome her home. Instead, she saw the clubhouse in more or less the same way that she'd left it, with the slight addition of some truly hideous flowery curtains. Mary was cooking something in the tiny kitchen, the only thing she'd ever complained about when it came to her living quarters, which was something she always seemed to do. Sirius was leaning out one of the windows and smoking, James was chatting with Peter, and Remus seemed to be playing solitaire. Doe, however, threw herself at Lily and the redhead had to take a step back in order to support the girl's weight because Doe was tiny, but it was still a shock.

"Put that out," Marlene snapped at Sirius as she walked in the door and Lily was a bit shocked because Marlene had smoked in this room more times than she's breathed in it, but Marlene and Sirius had a thing that Lily has never really understood and so she doesn't question it.

"The window's open," he replied, taking a drag and letting it out, as if only to annoy her.

"Doesn' matter, Black, we'll still all die of lung cancer."

Lily felt like laughing because if there was one thing she knew about this group, it was that there was no way that they'd make it long enough to die of any sort of cancer because they lived fast and vigorously and completely and she knew it was to make up for the fact that they were destined to die before their time and it was an awful thing to think, but she knew. None of them were destined for any skills except living hard and fast and dying like a martyr.

"How's the life of the rich and privileged?" Doe asked and Lily really wished she didn't go to boarding school a lot of the time because somehow the concept of a scholarship was beyond her friends' comprehension and they all thought she was rich now, even though she was probably poorer than any of them.

"Don't start, Doe."

Sirius put out his cigarette and stood up. "Where's the bathroom?"

Marlene led him down the hall. She didn't return after a few minutes. Lily raised an eyebrow and Doe just sighed and motioned at Mary, who just closed the oven and was taking a few deep breaths.

"Not my bed. They can take the goddamn shower, but not my bed, please Merlin, I beg you."

Lily looked back at Doe who seemed to feel like explaining because she threw herself down on the couch and began, "They're shagging. And they don't know that we know but it's kinda obvious." She shrugged.

Lily sighed and took it in and she had to admit that it made sense because Marlene and Sirius kind of had a lot of anger at the world and the only way they could take it out was through each other. She never pretended to understand their relationship – they were best friends and worst enemies and it only made sense that lover was added to that list because if anything, those two needed to relieve some tension.

Lily took a breath. "So has anything actually changed here? Besides… that."

"We won the end-of-the-year soccer game against the boys' team," Doe bragged, accepting the soda that Mary offered her and moving onto the arm of the couch, even though they'd told her a thousand times not to sit there.

James looked up quickly. As the captain of the boy's team, he seemed to think it was his duty to defend them. "You got lucky."

Lily was a bit surprised because that was the first time that James had spoken and it struck her that he might be a little uncomfortable. She didn't know if the Marauders had ever been to the clubhouse before, she didn't know what her friends got up to when she was gone, and it was so obviously not their place that she felt almost bad for the Marauders, suddenly, in a way she thought she never would.

"Rem got valedictorian," Mary offered, quietly. "And into the University of Cambridge."

"Seriously?" Lily was amazed, she'd been at boarding school for the past four years and hadn't gotten into any top colleges. "What do you wanna major in?"

"Biology," he said, right away, blushing. "I wanna work doing research for medical companies."

"Wow, Remus. That's…"

"Hey, look, I hate to cut in but we're actually not just here to catch up," Doe did look a little ashamed at interrupting their talk of colleges, Lily didn't know where she planned to go and felt a little embarrassed for that.

"We're not?" Lily looked around at the others, none of who looked shocked at all by this news.

"We got in," Doe said, leaning forward, unable to contain her excitement. "I'm not even kidding. We did it. We got into the Order."

"No way," Lily breathed, softly.

"Yeah. We did it."

…

The second day of summer, Lily woke up on the couch in the clubhouse and for a second she thought she was back in her dorm at boarding school and so she pulled a pillow over her face to block it out, but then she realized that the other girls were Mary and Marlene and Doe and so she got up.

The boys all left together last night right after Lily texted her mum to tell her that she was staying over. All the boys but Sirius and Doe didn't even complain, she just pulled off her shirt and bra and told Lily and Mary that if they had any complains about her sleeping naked, they could take it up with Marlene and Sirius.

But when Lily sat up, she found Doe curled at the other end of the couch and Marlene spread out on the floor as if she'd been there the whole night and Mary was the only one who was actually awake and was cooking breakfast.

Lily got to her feet and moved over by her friend, suddenly realizing how little she knew about Mary. "Why do you mother us so much?" she asked, softly, knowing that she needed to hear the answer so she could try and understand her quieter friend.

"Because…" Mary said, flipping over the pancakes she was making, and then she talked quickly and quietly and Lily had to strain to hear each word. "Because I wanna know if I can do it, if I can love someone, because I don't know if I can sometimes. Because I worry about you guys and I want you to be happy because you're the best people I know. Because you're all I have. You and Marlene and Doe might have other friends and you have your families, of course, but I only have you three." She shrugged.

Lily took a breath and then leaned forward and hugged her friend and she was about to say something but she realized that Mary was still talking.

"Because we joined the Order and we could die, Lily, we could. I know that. And I don't want any of you to die but I think I'd be okay if I did as long as you were alright. And I know you hate them, but the Marauders aren't that bad and they're not you three, but they're something. You have to take all the love you can get in this life, Lily, it's not going to come to you. I didn't get love from my family and so I had to find it but I found it a million times better in you three and in the Marauders and you're my family and I'll say it a million times for you."

Lily took a breath. "Yeah, we might. But I wouldn't regret a second and I know that Doe and Marl wouldn't either. We're not going to let you sacrifice yourself. We're gonna go out there and raise hell and if we're too much for the world, then we'll go out together." She squeezed her friends shoulder. "We'll go out in one big stand with police cornering us with guns quivering and maybe we'll let Marley make a speech because she loves shit like that but we'll be together."

Lily would never know just how wrong she was.