AN: This is my first story so please please review and let me know what you think! Thanks xx
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
"Again?"
"Seems like it."
"Really though, they're the Marauders aren't they? Can't they think of something original."
"Obviously not. Don't worry though Lily, I'll bet they're just saving all their new pranks for next year. The last year at Hogwarts is sure to be their best yet."
Lily Evans, sixth year Gryffindor Prefect, and her best friend Mary MacDonald were standing in the entrance to the Great Hall, observing the scene before them. The infamous Marauders had struck again, targeting the Great Hall at its most frequented time of the day, dinner. The hundreds of students sitting at their house tables were laughing and cheering appreciatively at the thousands of Cornish Pixies that had been released into the hall. The electric blue little creatures were flying around the Hall, wreaking havoc and creating a mess. For some reason, the Slytherins sitting at their table at the side of the hall seemed to be getting particularly targeted by the Pixies, with most of the creatures swarming around the students there, throwing food and clinging on to the Slytherins robes. Lily could make out the frustrated expressions of Avery and Mulciber, two Slytherins for whom she held much contempt, swatting at the little beasts, trying to get the Pixies off of them. Lily could not help but privately congratulate the Marauders on their ingeniousness. Not only had they gotten the great amount of Pixies into the castle, but then also ensuring they would only direct their antics to the Slytherins really was quite smart. Added to that, they had already run this prank before so the teachers would have by now been well aware of their methods for achievement. Yet they still managed to succeed.
"Although, this one is a classic," said Lily with an amused expression on her face. The more of it she watched, the more hilarious the whole situation seemed to become. The professors were now running about the Hall with their wands out, trying to subdue the Pixies, but were unfortunately not having much luck.
"What's that Lily? Don't tell me, you, a prefect approves of our little shindig here?" said a voice from behind.
Lily and Mary spun around only to find the four culprits grinning back at them. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, the Marauders. They looked incredibly pleased with themselves as they stared past the girls into the Great Hall, looking at the mayhem they had caused.
"Honestly Lily, you really shouldn't congratulate us, you're not setting a good example." Sirius continued saying, turning to face Lily.
"Sirius, Remus is a prefect too. I think he's setting a worse example." Lily laughed at the look on Sirius's face as he realized what Lily had said was true.
"Ah yes, but you see Evans, Remus here is also a Marauder," explained Sirius, clapping his mate Remus on the back, "and his duties for that particular organisation are just as important,"
"Or even more important," Peter butted in.
"Yes, you're right Pete. His duties for the Marauders are perhaps even more important than his duties as a prefect. He has to keep up to the good marauder name." Sirius finished explaining to Lily and Mary who looked at the four boys with amused expressions. Laughter was still issuing from the hall, indicating that the Pixies were all yet to be captured.
"But you've already done this prank earlier this year." Mary said to the boys, drawing their attention back to them.
"Well, Miss MacDonald there is nothing better than a fan favourite to celebrate the last day of exams," answered James happily. The sixth year exams had finished that morning with Charms. Of course Lily should have expected some sort of celebration to ensue.
"So Lily, are you going to give us a detention; be a stand-up prefect?" James asked, grinning down at Lily, knowing what her answer would be.
Lily laughed, her eyes sparkling at James, "I really should be trying to help put this in order right now, but honestly I just can't be bothered," she said motioning to the mayhem behind her. James and Sirius grinned at her, pleased with her attitude towards hard work and responsibility.
The six friends all turned to watch as the teachers continued their fight for control of the Pixies. Many of the Slytherins were now looking quite harmed. Out of the midst of the mayhem one figure was making it's way towards the doors. Lily recognised the person as Amy Campbell, one of Lily and Mary's dorm mates and a close friend. Amy rushed up to the entrance covered in food and drink that had been thrown at her from the pixies.
"Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew! Look at what you've done!" exclaimed Amy, pointing at them with a glare etched on her face. The intimidating façade was ruined however by the large drip of gravy sliding down Amy's face. The boys burst into laughter, and even Lily and Mary could hardly conceal their amusement.
"Ah calm yourself, Campbers," laughed James.
"Yeah relax. I'll clean you up," and with a flick of his wand Remus cleared the girl of all the food covering her, returning her back to a normal and perfect state of cleanliness.
"Well then lads, shall we press on? I am quite hungry now." Sirius said rubbing his stomach and looking on at the other boys who all were nodding.
"Wait, where are you going?" asked Lily.
"Yeah we're hungry too. We can hardly go and eat in there," said Mary, looking in again at the Great Hall.
The four young men looked at each other, having a silent conversation in front of the girls. It was obvious they had all seemed to agree on something as they turned back to the girls.
"Ladies, you are in for a real surprise."
"A genuine Marauder secret."
"Prepare to be amazed."
"Don't expect this kind of thing to happen every time."
And all at once the four boys turned and started heading for a door off of the Entrance Hall. Lily turned to her friends, raised her eyebrows at them and on receiving equally questioning and bewildered looks, shrugged her shoulders and followed the Marauders through the door they had gone. They followed silently until they eventually came to a stop in front of a painting of a bowl of fruit.
Lily had realized on the walk down that she was also feeling quite hungry, and hoped wherever she was going would be quick so she could go and get some food.
Sirius turned to face them as they all stopped in front of a painting of a fruit bowl.
"Watch and learn ladies," he said whilst giving them his most pompous smile, and then, quite dramatically, he raised his hand, leant forward… and tickled the pear.
Lily could not help herself but burst out laughing. After all that build up and all the Marauders could show them was a painting with a pear that laughed and giggled when tickled. James's eyes flicked to Lily's and he grinned at her.
"Just wait," he whispered to her.
Suddenly the pear turned into a doorknob, and upon turning it, Sirius pulled open the painting which had turned into a door. Now quite serious, Lily followed him through.
"Welcome to the kitchens," said Remus, spreading his arms out when walking in to the kitchen. The girls all exclaimed in surprise as they entered the kitchens, about a dozen houselves immediately running to them.
"Hello Sirs!" said one houself in a squeaky little voice.
"Hello Mipsy,"said James, "Could you perhaps bring us and these lovely ladies here some dinner to eat?"
Instantly the houselves all scurried away to retrieve the food.
Lily looked around the room. It was the same size as the Great Hall and she realized that it was laid out the same way, with four long tables running the length of the room and one last one at the end running the other way, the professors table. House elves were scurrying about moving the pots and pans and cooking many meals. Lily realized that the Marauders' interruption at dinner must have caused the houselves extra work to prepare more meals for the students upstairs.
"So what do you think?" Peter asked the girls.
"Oh yes, you're all very smart for finding this place. Well done. Is that what you want to hear?" Amy asked scathingly.
"Please Campbell, don't insult us so," said Sirius, clutching his heart with a hurt look upon his face.
"Did we not just show you one of our best kept secrets?" asked Remus.
Amy rolled her eyes in their direction but couldn't quite keep the smile appearing on her face at the boys' silly behaviour.
"How about some butterbeers for everyone?" asked Peter, going to collect eight bottles and handing them out to everyone.
"Yeah, great idea Pete! How about a toast too?" said James raising his bottle. "To the end of exams!"
"And to Cornish Pixies!" added Sirius. They all drank with much happiness. Lily observed her friends and could not believe how much her life had change this past year. She would never have thought she would be celebrating the end of exams in the presence of the Marauders, and most especially James, at the start of the year. Her friendship with James had taken such a drastic change. She had once thought him and his "followers" were the worst people in the world, the scum of the earth. She became infuriated with him every time he spoke to her, she could recall many times where she had happily wished he would go away and never come back. His unyielding declarations of love that he had thrown at her at every opportunity had not improved her opinion of him at all. In fact for a time during their fifth year he had pestered her daily, his love announcements had been at their most annoying, frequent and sensational. She sincerely thought she would never want to be friends with him. But through their sixth year, for some reason she could not label, his announcements of love had stopped, he did not pester her, he would not bicker with her. He had almost withdrawn himself from her life entirely, only saying polite greetings and conversations to do with their school work. Gradually they had all grown closer, until now where they were all sitting in the kitchens, talking happily over the dinner the houselves had provided them. Looking at James now she wondered why he couldn't have been this nice throughout their whole school years. She had immensely enjoyed these last few months getting to know him and the Marauders.
James turned around after laughing at something Mary had said, and caught Lily staring at him. He gave her a big grin, and surprisingly, a wink. Although she did not know why, Lily's grin became more pronounced when he did this. She distinctly remembered the last time he had winked at her had been at the end of their fifth year and she also remembered her rather vicious reaction to it, very different to the feeling she was now experiencing as she continued to look at him. Lily dragged her eyes away from his penetrating gaze, and tried to re-join the conversation of her peers. It had now moved to the way the Slytherins had reacted to the Pixie attack earlier, but Lily found she was unable to contribute, too distracted by the surprising moment she had just shared with James. Lily looked back over at James and noticed that he too was looking quite subdued, very unusual for him who was normally the centre of the conversation. It appeared he was deep in thought, staring at his plate intently.
After a while the eight Gryffindor sixth years had all finished eating and a boisterous conversation was taking place that concerned Sirius and his ability to woo Professor McGonagall.
"Padfoot, mate, I need to stop you right now before you make a bet with Mary here," said Remus, trying to diffuse the rapidly escalating conversation.
"But I could do it Moony! You know I have a way with the ladies. I could make an easy couple of galleons here!" Sirius exclaimed.
"You'd regret it Padfoot." Peter tried to persuade him.
"Ahh well," Sirius sighed, shaking his head at Mary's knowing look she was giving him.
"Come on," James chuckled, "shall we head back?"
They all said their agreement and rose from the table they were sitting at. After profusely thanking the houselves, and refusing the food they tried to shove at them, the group of friends started making their way up to Gryffindor tower. As they were walking back along the low corridor from before, Lily found herself walking beside James and naturally fell into step beside him.
"So how did you like our great secret?" he asked her.
"Oh it was alright, it kind of ruins a bit of your mystique."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I was always so impressed when you would have lots of food and drink with you, but it's really pretty easy to get, what with the houselves practically begging you to take it and everything."
James laughed. "Yeah I suppose you're right. Maybe we shouldn't have shown you. I wouldn't want you thinking we are not as amazing as everyone believes."
"Oh I would hardly say the Marauders are amazing. Just a bunch of big-headed twats who run around, making the occasional joke and prank, which are really only funny the first time around." She grinned at him teasingly, her emerald eyes sparkling. He looked down at her walking beside him and smiled back at her.
"Oh Lily, you have such a harsh tongue. Can't you just be pleased we showed you a place that has constant access to food?"
"Yes, I suppose it is a good bit of knowledge to have about Hogwarts. So how did you guys find it anyway?"
"Ah, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that. It's kind of an embarrassing story." He looked down at his feet as he said this, bowing his head down. Lily's eyes lit up with interest.
"Well now you have to tell me."
James looked at Lily and saw her eyebrows rise in expectation.
"Fine," he said with a slight smile on his lips. "So it was back at the end of fourth year. We were celebrating the end of the exams and I suppose we had a bit too much pumpkin juice." James looked up to meet Lily's sceptical expression.
"Butterbeer; we were drinking butterbeer then," James conceded.
"Do you expect me to believe that James?" Lily asked with a laugh.
"Alright fine. I suppose we had had a bit too much Firewhiskey to drink. Now don't ask me where we got that because I don't want to ruin your favourable opinion of us." James stopped as Lily's laugh interrupted his explanation.
"My 'favourable opinion'. Good one James." She laughed at him. James looked down beside him and met Lily's smile with a grin.
"Anyway, pressing on with my story. So we had had a bit to drink and I suppose we were feeling a little tipsy. Sirius got the idea that we should grab my cloak and go for a walk around the castle."
"Wait, what cloak?" interrupted Lily.
"Er… just my cloak, you know, to keep us warm. It was cold in the castle." James said quickly.
"But wasn't this at the end of exams? It wouldn't have been that cold then." Lily persisted.
"Do you want to hear the story or not Lily?"
"Yes, yes go on."
They had now reached the Gryffindor Common Room. The others all bade each other good night as Lily and James sat on the couch by the fire to continue their conversation.
"So we left to go for a bit of an explore, only, well I suppose I started seeing things." On seeing Lily's amused expression James tried to explain further. "No, not seeing things. I dunno. Can't explain it. You know how it is when you have too much to drink?"
"No James, as a matter of fact I don't." Lily said pompously, thrusting her head high into the air.
James burst in to laughter. "Lily, don't even try and say you've never been drunk. I know what you girls get up to in your dormitory. For Merlin's sake Lily, I saw you attempting a drinking competition against Petey not three weeks ago, right in this very room after we had won the Quidditch Cup. That was a good attempt by the way. I know Pete's small but the kid can hold a lot of liquor." James stopped whilst Lily tried to compose herself, but was left with a very guilty expression left on her face.
"Shut up James, I'm not supposed to have been drunk before, being a prefect and all," she said ashamedly.
"Oh don't worry about it dear, it's all just a bit of fun. We've all been there… just as I was explaining."
"Oh yes. Please continue with this little story of yours.'
"Yes so as I was saying, I was incredibly drunk…"
"Do you realize that before you were saying that you were only slightly tipsy, and now you're saying you were incredibly drunk?" Lily interrupted.
James decided not to acknowledge Lily's insightful accusation. "Anyway… we made our way down to the basement, which is the corridor we were in before. I think Sirius was trying to find the Hufflepuff Common Room, trying to find Lucy Patricks. He wanted to tell her how they needed to go find a broom closet somewhere..."
"James, that's awful, Lucy is really nice." Lily gave James a disapproving look.
"I know. Sirius." James said his name as way of explaining, which Lily seemed to accept, giving James a smile and nod to continue.
"So we were walking along this corridor and apparently I started talking to all the paintings. Oh and by the way, I only know all this from Remus. He hadn't had as much to drink and was trying to keep us in line. Good bloke that Remus. So at every painting I would stop and have a conversation. Er… quite intimate conversation I suppose you could call it. I can barely stand to walk down that corridor any more than is necessary. The shame I feel facing those paintings. The things they know." James stopped here to shake his head, deep in thought with a somewhat disgusted look on his face. Lily however was laughing quite happily at his agony and shame.
"Pressing on, I then started to er… stroke the paintings. To quote Remus I "really started to get a connection with a few of them". Anyway next thing is I'm tickling that pear which turns into a door and all of a sudden we're in the kitchens. Good thing too because those dear houselves were able to sober us right up, otherwise we might have been wandering the halls for quite some time. I can only imagine the amounts of paintings that escaped from my harassment." James looked up to see Lily laughing at him, her emerald eyes sparkling. A small smile appeared on James' face, betraying his feelings of shame and regret.
"So that's it. My embarrassing story of how we found the kitchens."
"That's not too bad James. At least it was only the paintings. What if you had started harassing other students?"
"Yeah you've got a point I suppose."
Lily yawned loudly signifying to her how tired she really was. She had been working hard the last months towards the exams.
"I suppose we should probably be getting to bed." said James, but Lily could not help but notice that he did not at all look like he was eager to go to his bed.
"Yeah, I'll see you in the morning then." Lily stood up and looked down at James who was still sprawled out on the couch, a rather contemplative look now on his face. "Night James."
"Goodnight Lily." He said to her quietly as she walked off in the direction of the dormitories. Sometime later, James finally pulled himself to his feet, images of Lily's beaming smile continuing to play on his mind.