December First

Seventeen year old head girl, Lily Evans directed a large group of people from different houses (who all just happened to be prefects) up several flights of stairs and several stories to the very tip top of Hogwarts, the attic.

Actually, it wasn't exactly what you would call an attic, it was actually just a very, very large room stuffed with thousands of all kinds of different things. And it didn't look like an attic. The floor was made of stone just like in the rest of the castle, the walls had windows, and the ceiling was high and pointed. Boxes upon boxes piled along the walls in different categories.

They started their way down the long hall and as Lily looked around she noticed that all of the decorations seemed to rest to her left and on her right, books, old trophies, yearbooks and large number of other things resided. Looking over to her left, she first saw the winter decorations. Lily had five prefects branch off to start levitating those boxes downstairs with a warning to be careful. Next, there was a huge section of Valentines Day decorations. They skipped right past that and onto St. Patrick's Day and then all the way into autumn decorations that they had just put back up here about a week ago.

Walking past that, they reached their destination.

The Christmas section was the largest section of all of them. Their was about ten to fifteen different very large stacks of boxes all labeled 'Christmas' in glowing red writing.

Lily placed her hands on her hips and inspected the large stacks. As head girl, she was expected to direct everyone in putting up the Christmas decorations and then taking them down again. It had been the same thing with the autumn decorations, so this time she was more confident she could do it. That is, until she saw the boxes. The autumn stacks were no where near the quantity or the capacity of the Christmas ones.

For a split second, she regretted sending the head boy, James Potter downstairs to clear a way for all of the boxes. But she immediately took it back. No, she would never regret sending James Potter away. If he came up here now, he would have his usual trail of friends with him causing havoc and then she would really be in a mess. Thinking about it, they were probably downstairs trying to cause as much havoc as they could with barely anyone in the castle. Today was a Hogsmeade trip day so they had the castle to themselves for a while.

With a sigh, she decided that she at least had to try to tackle one of the stacks.

"Ok, you guys line up and one at a time, levitate the boxes downstairs."

Everyone obeyed and shuffled into a crooked line.

"Fifth years, you get the smaller boxes, sixth years, you get the bigger boxes, and seventh years, you get the biggest boxes. Everyone wait until the person in front of you has walked at least seven yards away before starting behind them."

And so everyone started moving the boxes, following her orders as said. Once everyone was gone, she flicked her wand once and had a particularly large box floating along in front of her.

Lily made her way back down the long hall, being careful not to knock against any of the other boxes on her way. She had almost made it to the door when a tall figure suddenly blocked her way, causing her to immediately loose concentration and drop the box. She nearly fell over the box but caught herself just in time.

It was the head boy, James Potter. He grinned at her merrily, ignoring the menacing glare he was receiving. He acted as if he wasn't aware that she was trying to walk by. He didn't even look at her for a second as he reached up over his head, concentrating on placing something on the top of the door way. Once he had finished, he brought his arms down and folded them across his chest, leaning casually against the doorway with his grin back in place.

Lily thought she knew what he had placed above his head before she even glanced up. Lettuce. Why had he just placed lettuce above his head? She quirked a questioning eyebrow at him.

"It's supposed to be mistletoe," he told her as if he thought that she should already know this.

Lily nodded once. "Ok then, that's...interesting...Move."

She levitated her box forward slowly but he didn't budge causing her to have to drop the box again.

"Lily, this is mistletoe," he told her smoothly, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, "you know what goes on under mistletoe don't you?"

Lily sighed. "Yes, I do know what goes on under mistletoe, but this isn't mistletoe," she gestured to the lettuce above his head, "that's just lettuce."

James frowned at her. "Yes, but it is presumed to be mistletoe so therefore-"

"So therefore you must move," Lily interrupted him. She levitated the box up and straight at him, not intending to stop this time.

He jumped out of the way just in time, narrowly avoiding a collision.

"You know Lily," he called after her, "one of these days I'm going to have real mistletoe but I'm going to have moved on and you're going to be real sorry!"

Lily ignored him and quickly levitated her box through the quickly falling snow and back into the castle.

James Potter had been a nuisance for a while now.

They had never exactly been friends or even gotten along very well in the six years they had been in school together. James and his friends, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew (otherwise known as the marauders) had targeted her more times than she could count to perform one of their infamous pranks. Her hair had been turned green and spiky, her homework had been charmed to declare her love for Sirius Black, she had been chased around school by a group of Slytherin boys who had accidently drank love potion, her bed collapsed when ever she lay in it at night more times than she could count, and she had just recently found out that they had been writing love letters to Severus Snape that were supposedly from her for the past two years.

She still hadn't gotten over that one.

But now as head girl, she attempted to put up with their tricks better than she used to. Plus, with James as head boy, he had to be more discrete about his pranks, meaning that there were fewer and fewer everyday.

The entrance hall had about twenty five to thirty boxes piled high and all of the prefects sitting on the grand staircase.

Lily looked at them open-mouthed. Didn't they see the boxes in the attic?

"Excuse me," Lily called over all of the noise.

Everyone looked up at her with blank expressions on their faces.

"We need to get this done people, so will you please come down here?" Lily sighed and everyone groaned and stood up. She turned to a box and tore it open.

The box held a large assortment of Christmas tree ornaments. She pushed it aside, telling a Hufflepuff prefect to go ask Hagrid if he had any trees yet. The next box she opened was filled with jingle bells tied together with velvet ribbons. She pushed the box towards a couple of Slytherins and told them to have fun.

Before she could open another one, James walked in carrying a very large box in his arms. He set it down in front of her and grinned.

"Phew...That was a heavy one." he winked at her before strolling away to stand beside Remus Lupin who was also a prefect.

Lily rolled her eyes, and smirked when the inside of the box revealed long strings of garland. If Potter was trying to impress her, he was going to have to do better than this.

"Potter, help me sort through the boxes," she called over her shoulder before handing a box of bows to her best friend, Daniel Pish.

His six foot figure grinned at her impishly. He pushed his silky black hair that hung just below his earlobes back with one hand. "Having fun?" he asked her jokingly before taking the box under one arm.

Lily rolled her eyes. "Oh yes, of course," she said sarcastically just as James decided to walk up.

She shoved a box toward him as Daniel walked away.

The rest of their day consisted of going through a lot of the boxes. They made it through about fifty small ones before the rest of the school decided to come back from Hogsmeade. They decided to stop and save the rest for tomorrow, Sunday, when everyone would most likely be in their beds resting their hearts out all day.

After taking the empty boxes back up to the attic, they made their way back down to dinner where the rest of the school resided.

Lily stepped into the great hall with Daniel looking for a place to sit. They decided on the Ravenclaw table (Daniel's house). She didn't have a lot of other friends, and only one close one, Daniel. He, like her, was also a muggleborn. They had grown up together--he lived across the road--and he had always been there for her.

Unlike Lily, Daniel hadn't been surprised when he got his Hogwarts letter on his eleventh birthday, having always known that his mother was a witch.

But Daniel was her only close friend. She didn't not have a lot of friends for a bad reason; she had never been raped or abused or anything like that, she was just a quiet person who liked to keep to herself a lot.

So they settled themselves in at the Ravenclaw table, Lily ignoring the glares she was receiving from most of the girls around them as she slid into the bench beside him. The glaring was normal though; Daniel was not a bad looking guy.

Over at the Gryffindor table, Sirius, Remus, James, and Peter all sat together, joking lightly.

"So what's going to be our grand Christmas prank this year?" Sirius voiced.

Every year they did their biggest prank of the year at Christmas time. It was always something very extravagant that had the marauders written all over it.

James shrugged. "I'm not sure...but it can't be anything too obvious that it was us again, remember this," he poked his shiny gold head boy badge that was pinned to his chest.

Remus nodded. "Let's see, last year we sent everyone a toilet seat for a present...remember they all had a good laugh before they realized that we had actually taken them off of all the toilets..."

They all snorted into their dinners. It had been quite funny until Professor McGonagall had caught them (for some reason they hadn't thought to not sign their names in the 'from' section) and made them put all of the toilet seats back on by hand.

"It does have to be extravagant though, this being our last year and all," Peter put in.

They all agreed. Yes, this year's prank had to be extravagant yet well hidden as to who was behind it all. Of course everyone would know it was them, but for anyone to be able to punish them for it, they would have to have some evidence.

They would think of something, they always did.

A/N: Oh my God, I just read that over and it sucks! I won't blame you if you don't come back but please do! It's going to get better in the next chapter, and longer. Thanks for reading, and please review!

Next Chapter: They continue decorating the school, Sirius hits on Lily, and the marauders come up with the ultimate prank: The mistletoe.

Thanks,

-Elvenmuggle