A/N: I originally wrote this as a response to a three-year-old open challenge posted in the forums by Stalker of Stories. It's set in a slight AU. In this AU, there are several years between the Marauders' graduation and Lily's and James's deaths. Wormtail is also not quite as despicable. After all, James and Sirius did let him hang around them, so he can't have been all that bad. So at this point in the story, he's not yet a spy for Voldemort, and while he's not exactly riveting company, he's not evil. Enjoy!
It was a Thursday, a rainy April afternoon. Sirius and Remus were sitting in Sirius's living room. Remus had his nose in a book. "As usual," thought Sirius. None of his books held any appeal to him that day. He stared glumly out the window, trying to see the street through the rain pounding on the glass. Suddenly, the best idea in the world occurred to him.
"You know what we should do, Moony?" he asked excitedly.
"If I guess, will you let me keep reading?" Remus replied absently.
"Probably not. This idea is too good. Whatever crummy book you're reading can wait. I can't."
Remus snorted. "Well, that's certainly true. And for your information this book is NOT crummy." Remus laid it aside.
Sirius raised an eyebrow in disbelief as he caught the title—Flying Fish: The Golden Years of the Raging Ramoras—but not even Remus reading a Quidditch book could distract him for long. "OK, here it is. We should have a reunion party!"
"A reunion party? But Sirius, the four of us see each other practically every weekend!"
"Yeah…but not at a party!"
Remus groaned inwardly. The was a good reason he didn't go to parties; he generally hated them.
"Listen, mate, I know you usually hate parties, but we'll be planning this one! It'll be just people you actually like. I promise."
"Well, I guess you're not coming, then." Remus teased.
"I'll take that as a sign you're in! Who else should come?"
"Wait a minute, Padfoot. I thought it was just the four of us," objected Remus.
"Well, I guess we kind of have to include Lily now, don't we."
"She's a sweet girl, though. She'll be fun to have around."
"But then we'd have a huge gender imbalance. So she'd better invite some friends, too," Sirius added hastily.
"Padfoot," Remus started, "This has got to be one of the most obvious ploys to get female attention you've come up with yet! Why don't you just pick up a girl at a pub the way the rest of us do?"
"'The rest of us'? Moony, when was the last time you went to a pub? And let's not even mention the last time you talked to a woman—a single one." asked Sirius, smiling.
"Point taken." Remus conceded. "So Lily can invite some girlfriends."
"Yes! Girls!"
"You want to host it here? We're pretty well set-up."
"I was wondering about that," said Sirius. "I thought James and Lily might want to have it at their place, but I don't know if they're done unpacking. It's a good thing Lily's family are Muggles; I don't know what my parents would say if I moved in with a girlfriend before marriage!"
"Come on, Padfoot, even your family would understand moving out of the house where your parents died."
Sirius gave a cynical bark of laughter. "Like anyone in my family would die of old age. Please, they're far too Dark to let that happen to them. Think of the disgrace!"
Remus didn't really know how to answer. Talk of Sirius's family could stall any conversation, and James's parents' deaths weren't much to laugh about either. It was best to go back to the party. "You know, if we're getting the four of us together, we really ought to get Gideon over there. He and I became fast friends last year. We could make it a whole House affair! We'd just be missing that one girl…"
"Oh yeah! Her! Whatever happened to her? Last I remember, Sprout was carrying her out of Greenhouse 4 and the examiner told us all to get back to our OWLs…So anyway, whaddya say? Next weekend?"
"Padfoot! It's the full moon next weekend!" Sirius grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry, Moony. You'll want a week to pull yourself together after that, eh? So let's say…a month from now. Then it'll be May, so we should have good weather."
"We can only hope so…" As Remus looked out the window again, he couldn't help feeling a little nervous. He had never been much one for parties.
It was a Saturday, a rainy May evening. Remus was running around, trying to get the house into a reasonable state. Sirius had gone out hours ago, "to get provisions", but still wasn't back. Remus was about to see if he had his mirror on him, when he heard the side door opening. "About time!" He called.
"Remus?" A sweet voice rang through the hallway.
"Oh! Lily! Sorry, I thought it was Sirius." Remus said as Lily came through the kitchen into the living room.
"Looks like I was right to come over. You've had this party planned for how long again? And yet…" she let her sentence hang unfinished, and merely gestured to the room. "I brought snacks, by the way. I left them in the kitchen."
Remus looked at her appreciatively. He considered how lucky it was that James had come to his senses—and Lily had admitted her attraction to the bad boy in him. Remus remembered well the night Lily had moved in on James. He wondered if she'd learned to hold her Firewhiskey any better since then…
"Um…Remus? Where does this go?" Lily held up a red, lacy undergarment not designed to be worn by a man.
Remus shook his head. "I'll put it in Sirius's bedroom."
Lily raised her eyebrows. "Been experimenting, has he?" She barely finished the sentience before bursting into giggles.
Remus couldn't keep himself from joining in. He loved the way Lily always cracked herself up. "Not to my knowledge, but I don't check often. Which is more likely: that it's his, or that he remembers the name of the woman to whom it belongs?"
That really set Lily off. Her green eyes crinkled to the point of closing, she threw back her head and gave a full-throated guffaw.
As a result, Sirius opened the door to a beautiful, yet intriguing sight. The first thing he saw as he entered his own home, was a cascade of red hair, falling gracefully over a smooth back to brush across a pair of slim hips, but his eyes were drawn to the side of those hips by the a flash of bright red in the hand that rested on them. Remus was standing facing him, an amused expression on his face, his chest shaking with quiet laughter. He looked up at Sirius. Sirius dropped the bags he was carrying. Remus shot a quick impedimenta at the bags as they fell, knowing there were bound to be some glass bottles in them. Lily turned around and held up the red lace.
"Remus was just telling me about your fashion sense," she giggled.
"I'll have to thank him for that later." Sirius replied, attempting to play cool.
Remus was a little surprised. Sirius usually made light—even bragged—about his romantic exploits. He'd certainly never seemed embarrassed before. But then, Lily was a woman, and maybe that made things different. Remus had never had sufficient romantic adventures to know for certain.
"Where's James, anyway?" Sirius asked.
"He'll be along later. He decided that today he absolutely had to alphabetize our books as he unpacked them. I knew you'd need an extra pair of hands cleaning this place up. I brought snacks, too."
"Speaking of," said Remus, "let's get yours into the kitchen, Padfoot. It's nearly seven already. We can unpack the snacks and have a quick bite."
The three friends picked up the bags Sirius had dropped and went down the hallway, into the kitchen. Remus picked up a black, shiny bag that crinkled as he touched it.
"What in Merlin's name is this?"
"A Muggle snack. Popcorn covered in what they claim is cheese powder."
"'What they claim is cheese powder'?" repeated Sirius, quizzically.
"Well, my Muggle friends and I were always convinced its addictiveness could only be caused by something much stronger. We suspected cocaine." Seeing the puzzled look come back to his face, she added, "A Muggle drug. Nasty. It's like…drinking flitterbloom tea at first, but the next day you feel like you've eaten a doxy egg. Erm…so I'm told."
The young men laughed and Sirius reached into the icebox to take out some leftovers for dinner. Under Lily's direction, Remus started arranging tortilla chips, another of her contributions, in layers with cheese. With an accio kidney beans, she herself started making the bean dip. They passed the time setting snacks into bowls, putting the ale in ice buckets and enjoying each other's company. They were all eager for the doorbell to ring and the party to begin.