A/N: Just a quick note, this chapter is October, 1976. As I've said, this is a long story, and fully outlined comes to 526 chapters... Yes, that's a REALLY LONG STORY but I will not abandon it and I hope to keep it going at as steady of a pace as possible. Buckle in for the ride!
-C
It was October when James ordered the very first Quidditch practice of the year. He hadn't bothered with trials... The current team had been together for three years and won the Quidditch Cup each year. If they hadn't been so dominant, Professor McGonagall might have made him actually hold trials, but she really couldn't complain when his methods worked so well.
Lydia found herself bleary-eyed and eating breakfast so that she didn't pass out, even though she knew she was going to be late for practice. Remus was there, as Sirius and Peter were sleeping in and James was already at the pitch, and so Lydia and Remus had a bit of time alone, which was rare to come by.
"Marmalade?" Remus asked politely, finishing spreading some on his own toast. Lydia shook her head, picking at the porridge she'd dished up for herself. He frowned at her. "Is that all you're going to eat?" Lydia merely shrugged, trying not to blush under all the attention from him. "Lydia, I hardly ever see you eat."
"Obviously I eat, or I'd be dead," she sighed, wishing he would drop her eating habits.
In truth, it was the only way she could manage not to feel like she was starving all summer, making sure she didn't eat too much during the school year. She didn't want her stomach to have to go through growing and shrinking all the time.
But Remus didn't need to know that. In fact, she'd rather he didn't.
"Barely," he sighed. "Please eat more than that," he said urgently. "Please, I'll be bothered all day if you don't."
Lydia shifted uncomfortably in her seat, knowing that he'd only said it that way because he knew that she would do just about anything he asked of her. But if she ate too much food she'd be absolutely sick. She looked up at his amber eyes, though, and sighed heavily.
"Fine, pass me a banana or something," she grumbled.
Remus cheerily grabbed a banana and passed it over to her. Compliantly, Lydia peeled the banana and sliced it so that each slice landed in her porridge.
It had been a bland porridge, anyway.
He seemed satisfied about her eating at that, perhaps because it was more nutritionally sound, perhaps because he knew that was all he was getting out of her, and then he turned to companionable conversation, which Lydia would have been far more thrilled about had she been some semblance of a morning person, rather than desperately trying to stay awake and be half-sane for practice. She hated when James made her run extra when she was already miserable.
"How are classes?" Remus asked. "You're in Arithmancy, right? Lily's been complaining about it all the time."
"Yeah, I am," Lydia replied. "It's fine. Lily's just bad with numbers."
Remus chuckled softly, although it could equally be what Lydia had said or the zombie-like way in which Lydia had said it.
"Sirius loves that class," Remus said softly, watching Lydia as she sipped some pumpkin juice.
She put down her juice and snorted, "He's awful at it."
Perhaps that wasn't fair of her. It was by far her best subject, she'd been top of the year since they'd started taking it, and everyone was terrible compared with her.
Remus shrugged and smiled a little.
"He loves it anyway," he said in an almost sly way that Lydia would have been surprised at had she been awake enough to fully appreciate it. "Don't tell me you're not going to finish that," he then said disapprovingly, because Lydia had begun to push away the remainder of her banana porridge. She huffed.
"But James will yell at me if I'm late," she whined.
"I'll vouch for you," Remus said kindly. "It will be all my fault and he can yell at me to his heart's content. Now eat."
Lydia could hardly argue with that and so she managed to force herself to finish the porridge while Remus talked to her, keeping her company rather kindly as she knew he had a thousand things that were better uses of his time. Still, she debated over whether to eat faster so as not to anger James or eat slower to have an excuse to spend more time with Remus. Her head was spinning from her options.
Still, all too soon her porridge was gone and she smiled up at Remus sadly.
"Guess I'll see you later," Lydia said. "James will want me at practice, after all."
Remus nodded, waved goodbye, and Lydia marched out to the Quidditch pitch, muttering to herself about how ridiculous it was that she and everyone else had to wake up early for Quidditch practice just because James managed to procure so many detentions that they couldn't do it in the evening like everyone else.
That's not to say that they got evenings off. No, in fact, any evening James hadn't procured a detention that wasn't already booked by another team was up for practice, meaning that the Gryffindor Quidditch team was sometimes practicing nine or more times a week. If dedication was all it took to win the Cup, James Potter would have won it all by himself every year.
Alas, it took an actual Quidditch team to win, with actual Quidditch practices, and once James found out everything he could about each of his players he was determined to milk them dry. That included Lydia, who had joined the Quidditch team in her third year because Mary MacDonald said it was fun, and she sorely regretted it from the moment James took over captaincy in their fifth year.
"Late, Rowe," James barked.
"Remus detained me," she said with a blush, ignoring the knowing giggle of Mary, who was blocking shots from Gaynor Akerman, a fifth year Chaser.
"He'll have to confirm that later," James said disapprovingly, and one might have thought in that moment that James was the responsible one and Remus an incorrigible troublemaker. "I want you up at the hoops, give Akerman some time to work on passing with me. I'm putting the Bludgers out now, too."
Lydia glanced over at Melissa and Gena, the Beaters, and noted that they were very disappointed by this news. The girls were the smallest Beaters in the school, but they'd proven themselves worthy of their role time and time again, able to keep up with the Bludgers in a way no one else could, with killer aim and surprising strength for their size. Still, Lydia knew they found the job exhausting, and if they weren't trying to get Sirius Black's attention by spending so much time with James, they probably would have quit ages ago.
Not wanting to be made to fly laps, however, Lydia pushed Melissa and Gena from her mind and mounted her broom quickly, kicking off the ground and soaring up toward Mary.
"Do you have the replacement Quaffle?" she called to James. He gave her an annoyed look, which meant that she was obviously supposed to have assumed that he had it, and when she reached Mary at the posts, Lydia rolled her eyes. "He's a bloody tyrant. Can we start an uprising, already?"
"I can hear you, Rowe!" James screeched.
She raised her eyebrows. All of the Marauders had unnaturally good hearing, and Sirius's had gotten especially good of late. She thought they might have done something to magically enhance the sense, but as she'd not found a permanent spell for such a thing, she really was stumped.
"Anyway," Mary giggled, "how's Remus?"
Lydia blushed again, taking the Quaffle and tossing experimentally between her hands. She didn't want to talk about Remus, not when James could so obviously hear her, but Mary wouldn't relent until she did.
"He's fine," Lydia replied casually, flying a bit away from Mary and trying to decide how she would attempt to beat her friend on this particular morning. "He… he looked healthier."
"Did you to snog?" Mary teased. "That would put a bit of color in his cheeks."
If Lydia thought she was blushing before, it was nothing to how flushed her whole face became at the thought of her and Remus locked in a tight embrace, lips eagerly exploring each other, desperately snogging.
"MacDonald, Rowe, get your arses in gear or you'll be doing an extra hour of practice!"
"We have class, you dolt!" Lydia growled.
"We'll schedule it during your dinner break," James cried.
Clearly, he wasn't playing around, if he was willing to sacrifice his precious meal time to make Lydia and Mary suffer for not working as hard as he thought they ought to do. Lydia decided that buckling down was the best option.
Mary and Lydia had done the same exercises together hundreds of times, and then hundreds more. James not only wanted Lydia to perfect her technique in scoring, which was very good but not as good as his, but he also wanted her to be their primary defensive player, which was her best skill. In this way, Lydia could almost read Mary's mind on what was needed at their own goalposts, and she was able to defend more effectively than any other Chaser in the league.
This was James's own stroke of brilliance, because in dire moments, they basically had two Keepers instead of the one, which made them close to invincible.
Still, James was never wholly satisfied, so Mary and Lydia were constantly becoming more and more in tune with each other both very proud of their skill in this area, and really anxious not to be yelled at and punished by James for mistakes.
Because a small mistake could be forgiven, but a mistake that led to a loss would be punished for months on end. And Lydia and Mary neither wanted to deal with such a thing.
As Lydia did figure-eights and attempted to score on Mary, she contemplated the ways in which this connection benefited them in non-Quidditch pursuits as well.
After Mary had been used as wannabe-Death-Eater target practice, for example, Lydia was the first to recognize that something was very, very wrong with Mary. She'd mentioned it to Lily, who did a bit of Lily Evans snooping, and it was then brought to the attention of Professor McGonagall, who was able to confirm that Mary Evans had been used for practicing Unforgivable Curses.
Lydia hadn't been praised as the hero in that situation, as Lily had been taken as the hero in that situation, but Mary knew it had been Lydia, and had thanked her profusely for getting her help.
"So," Lydia finally said when they were in the locker room, changing into less sweaty robes, "How's Artemis?"
Artemis was Mary's best friend, not Lydia, in spite of the constant understanding of each other. Because in spite of their connection, Mary and Lydia did not share secrets. Lydia actually wasn't sure if Mary and Artemis shared secrets, but she assumed they did, because everyone had to share secrets with someone. Even if it was just one person.
"Same as always," Mary said with a laugh.
She then went on to talk more about the crazy party Artemis had thrown over summer holidays, which Lydia had been hearing about for the whole month they had been back at school. Lydia tuned it out, then, not needing to hear about the antics of the Marauders for the millionth time. Besides, she had a day to get through, which included a lot of homework before going to sleep.
The day was an average day like every other, and Lydia found herself in one of the armchairs by the fireplace that evening, trying to focus on her homework.
Lily was on the floor at Lydia's feet, pouring over a Potions essay that Lydia had been putting off. After all, her Arthimancy was so much more interesting. But she wouldn't be able to put it off forever, and she kept glancing anxiously at Lily as she worked on the essay, hoping that it would give her a stroke of inspiration on her own essay.
Suddenly, there was a disturbance in the common room of a completely uncommon sort.
Sirius Black was in the corner with James and Remus and Peter, the four of them with their heads together as always. That wasn't the strange bit.
The strange bit was the fact that Sirius seemed to be getting more and more upset about something, to the point where people around them were starting to stop whatever they were doing and watching the building strangeness at the Marauder table. Lily even put down her quill with a frown and looked over at the Marauders for a long moment, prompting Lydia to set her book down and to the same.
Sirius was very red in the face at this point, speaking in a low but urgent tone to Remus. It seemed as though they were... fighting?
Remus seemed a bit alarmed, but otherwise calm, which was Remus through and through. Very little could rattle the bookish Marauder enough to make him raise his voice, and whatever was bothering Sirius was obviously not among those things.
"Can you hear them?" Lydia asked Lily, who had the better hearing out of the two of them. Lily shook her head, narrowing her eyes a little and trying to decide whether or not she could read their lips.
At this point, though, Lydia saw that Remus motioned over to the fireplace and the other Marauders looked over at the girls with their curious, confused expressions and all intense whispering at that table ceased.
After a moment, Remus muttered something to the other Marauders and Sirius grew pale almost instantly, then turned bright red, spat something that seemed vicious by the look on his face, and then got up abruptly and started to storm off to his dormitory.
"Sirius, c'mon," James called after him and Sirius turned around sharply and glared at his best friend, causing the room to grow almost eerily quiet.
"No," Sirius said harshly. "No, James, I'm not sitting and listening to this. I won't."
"Sirius, I'm sorry," Remus said, truly looking incredibly abashed for whatever he'd supposedly done. "I know that-"
"Don't say another word," James said sharply, looking over at Lily and Lydia, who were watching them intently, interestedly.
"What are they talking about?" Lydia whispered as Sirius continued to storm out of the room, this time unhindered by his friends.
"I'm... I'm not sure," Lily said slowly, picking up her quill again and frowning at it. "But I'm getting the feeling that they were talking about you."
Lydia couldn't quite fathom why they would have such controversy over her, but she also couldn't imagine Sirius behaving so strangely after talking about Lily.
It bothered Lydia slightly that in spite of knowing the Marauder's secrets she still couldn't decipher all of their strange moods and behaviors. Sirius, Sirius was the one who really seemed a mystery lately. His behavior was growing increasingly bipolar and sporadic since the train ride, and Lydia was finding it both intriguing and exhausting to deal with. She never knew if he was going to yell at her or be sweet as pie, and trying to anticipate was driving her crazy.
"I should probably check on him," she heard James sigh, and she watched him pick up his wand and go upstairs after Sirius, noting that Remus and Peter were squirming uncomfortably in their seats, probably still thinking about whatever the fight had actually been over.
"I'll be back," Lydia muttered, putting down her book and walking over to the boys where they were sitting, noting that the rest of the common room appeared to have gone back to their usual and previous activities.
"Lydia!" Peter squeaked nervously. "Hi."
"Hi, Peter," Lydia said, clinging to his greeting as an excuse to sit down. "Is... is Sirius okay? I don't think I've seen him so upset about something in a while. Well, unless you count the train."
Remus flinched a little at the mention of the incident on the train and Lydia got the sense that the two outbursts were somehow related. She nodded a little to herself and looked down at the blank bit of parchment in front of them that looked strangely familiar.
But that was crazy, because parchment all looked more or less alike... didn't it?
"He'll be all right," Remus finally said. "I... He's just a bit tense at the moment. He'll be fine."
Something about the weak way Remus offered up this assurance meant that it didn't ring true to Lydia, but she just nodded, glancing over at the armchair where her book sat and wondering what she was supposed to say or do next.
"He's... he's just been a bit off lately, so I was worried," she said slowly. Artemis came downstairs and settled with Lily on the floor in front of the fireplace. "I guess I'll leave you to your homework again, then," she finally said, not knowing what else to say.
"Right, homework. Right," Peter squeaked, and Lydia looked at him with concern before going back to her chair and hearing Remus smack Peter lightly as she walked away.
"Those bloody boys," Lydia sighed. "Those boys are going to be the death of me. Peter's being weird."
"Being weird, or being weird for Peter?" Artemis asked without looking up from her Herbology book.
Lydia frowned slightly, trying to decide as she settled back into her chair.
"Just being weird, I suppose," she admitted.
"Then I wouldn't be too worried," Artemis said firmly. "Anyway, I think they're just stressed. A lot's going on, you know, with seventh year and everything. Even the Marauders have to make sense underneath all their strangeness."
And Lydia supposed that Artemis must be right, she just wished that she knew what sense they were making.
