A very pale and sickly Lily Evans walked towards the Gryffindor Common Room, hacking her guts out as another wave of nausea overtook her. She'd had to miss Charms. Charms. Oh, the pain. The sheer unfairness of life. How did anyone expect her to get better when she had to miss her daily dose of Charms?
Spluttering out the password, she nodded gratefully at the Fat Lady as her portrait swung open, clambering into the welcoming little room beyond and trying to compensate for the sudden lack of Charms with the image of her four-poster bed, waiting for her several floors above.
The scene before her rendered her muscles to a halt, slowing her until she finally stopped in her tracks like a dead weight, her eyes widened in surprise.
Peter Pettigrew's chubby form was stuck in one of the windows, his arse proudly displayed to the empty common room, legs flailing, the muffled sounds of his pleas for help whipped into oblivion by the violent winter wind.
Remus Lupin was chasing after something rolling across the floor, the object/creature/thing in question fizzing and exploding so violently that scorch marks had been blotted across the floor, the prefect himself covered in a black, sooty substance, each breath being released in a rapid pant as he tried to catch up with the object.
Sirius Black hollered from the stairwell leading to the dormitories, yelling in dismay and grunting at regular intervals, presumably grappling with something that didn't want to be grappled.
And last, but definitely not least, the messy-haired James Potter was clinging to the ceiling of the Common Room, determinedly trying to attach something large, pulsing and red to it. How he had managed to charm his hands and feet to act like suckers, Lily had no clue, but his hair was flopping down towards the floor, exposing his forehead in its entirety, his glasses threatening to drop down and crash into the floor. If Lily hadn't been utterly shocked by the four insanely different things happening at one time, she might have laughed.
Her entrance was heard by all. Simultaneously:
"Lily!" cried Remus, letting the sparking, exploding thing roll under a squashy armchair as he froze.
"Evans!" Sirius exclaimed, pausing his battle with whatever-it-was to gawk at her, only half of his face visible, the rest of his body hidden by the stone stairwell.
"Evans!" James almost dropped the red, pulsing thing, his head jerking, his glasses finally falling and smashing onto the Common Room floor.
"Lily?!" Peter cottoned on, his leg flailing multiplying by a hundred. "Lily!"
"I'm too ill for this." The redhead grunted, dazed, shaking her head as if trying to shake herself out of a dream - nightmare? - and turning on her heel. "I'm really too ill for this right now."
Lily Evans stumbled out of the Common Room before any of the Marauders could utter a word, let alone an explanation. What she needed right now was a bathtub full of Firewhiskey…
