This chapter's pretty long in comparison to the previous one, the chapters will probably be about this length from now on.

I don't own any rights to anything Harry Potter.

Enjoy!


October


"The seventh years are throwing a Halloween party in the Room of Requirement for everyone fifth year and up," James whispered to Sirius, just loud enough for the surrounding students to hear. A slight buzz filled the Transfiguration room as the word spread. McGonagall pursed her lips as the room got more and more excited.

"Please, when you are quite finished, return to your essays. If you do not finish them in class I expect an essay twice as long done for homework," she said curtly. The room was instantly silenced and everyone dropped their heads and returned to scratching their quills across their parchment. Moira was nearly done and didn't particularly care either way. It was unlikely that her friends would want to go the the party. She glanced to the left to her roommate, Anna Smith, and her boyfriend Gilderoy Lockhart, who was shamelessly glancing at Anna's paper. Neither had so much as looked up from their essays as the rumor spread. She considered the possibility of going with her other roommate, Artemis MacAlary, but there was a good chance she'd be arranging a seance or something equally as odd for the holiday with her strange boyfriend, Xenophilius Lovegood. It was better if Moira just didn't go. Marlene would probably want her to go, but she always had to take care of her at things like this. No, no good could come of Moira going to the Halloween party, nothing at all. She glanced over her essay, barely reading a word, knowing it was in no need of revision and rose at the same time as Remus. They each placed their papers on McGonagall's desk. She glanced up briefly and gave a nearly imperceptible nod and the two went on their way. Once outside in the corridor Remus and Moira both headed to the Great Hall, discussing how they felt about the essay and wondering aloud how long they thought each of their friends would take to finish.

"James and Sirius would probably be out soon if they stay focussed, but Pete," Remus trailed off. It was well-known that of the four friends, Peter Pettigrew was sort of the useless one. Nice enough, honestly, a decent prowess in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but hardly any execution skills.

"I was surprised they made him Prefect," Moira said honestly.

"Pete makes a fine prefect!" Remus responded defensively, but he didn't say it quite like he meant it.

"Sorry, it's just that I thought you would've been made Prefect," Moira continued, forgetting how protective people could be of their friends, considering she didn't have anyone she felt strongly about outside her own family.

"Well, I am still Prefect, but with- erm- my mum being sick all the time I really couldn't fulfill all my duties, Pete sort of fills in. With James and Sirius being such trouble makers, the pickings in Gryffindor's boy fifth years were a bit slim," Remus said with a slight laugh, acknowledging that it was alright that Moira had unintentionally insulted his friend earlier. "He is smart though, in theory, he has some good ideas he just can't always follow through with the method itself. What about your friends?"

Moira scrunched her face up a bit; in all her time of being on casual speaking terms with Remus they had never really discussed her 'friends.'

"Artemis is real hit or miss on these sort of things. She's obviously one of the most brilliant in our year, but so brilliant she often gets a bit- er- lost, I suppose. Sometimes she misses the whole picture. Then Anna Smith could probably finish in a decent amount of time if she didn't wait for Lockhart to finish copying her paper. At least he's smart enough to know how to paraphrase rather than copy word-for-word," Moira responded plainly.

"I think he's smarter than you give him credit for. He's just lazy and opportunistic, I bet you by the time we graduate he'll figure out how to get through his whole life like that," Remus responded half joking, half annoyed that he was probably right.

The Ravenclaws of Moira's year were not exactly her cup of tea. She got along with them just fine, but they were all a bit arrogant about being as intelligent as they were, as if the Ravenclaw patches on their robes displayed their genius level IQs. She found that that was a generational thing. She got along very well with some of the older Ravenclaws like Edgar Bones and his girlfriend, Susan, who had seemed to have gotten over themselves before she had arrived at Hogwarts. Everyone feels a certain prestige at first when they're sorted into their preferred house. By now, though, most of her older friends had finished Hogwarts, seeing as there were only one year left above her. Moira also enjoyed the company of the younger Ravenclaws when they would ask her for help with homework. They all agreed she was the best at explaining the work because she seemed to be the only one in her year that hadn't forgotten what it was like to be a lost and confused first year and how hard everything had been in the beginning for everyone, regardless of house.

Honestly the best thing to have happened to Moira was the addition of electives to her schedule because she was able to have more classes with the friends she had made in the Slug Club, like Lily Evans and Remus. When they finally reached the Great Hall, Remus went to make his way towards the Gryffindor table, but before he did he asked Moira if she was going to the Halloween party that night. Under the flickering candle light casting odd shadows through the mouths and eyes of floating Jack-o-lanterns Moira didn't think twice before she said, "Yes." Maybe some good could come of this party.


Once again, Moira was wrong. If she started taking bets against her own hopes she'd probably be rich. Remus, for once, was impossible to talk to. He was distracted and detached and hardly helped the conversation along, making Moira regret showing up to the Halloween party at all. Most of the people at the party had arrived drunk and she was stone-cold sober. After the tenth conversation between Moira and Remus died she finally decided to give up an find Marlene.

She hadn't made it very far when Sirius swaggered over to her. Despite being completely rejected by Remus, Moira couldn't help but smile as Sirius approached. He had been giving her with little compliments here or there ever since their train ride together. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't pleased with the attention. Sirius and his friends, were easily the best looking boys in her year and perhaps the ones above and below too, but they kept to themselves. This drove the girls of Hogwarts crazy because none of their affections were ever reciprocated. The Gryffindor boys seemed to always have a project to work on and other than a few flirty conversations, winks, and smiles they never gave any girls what they really wanted. Moira was especially glad for any attention since she had started wearing makeup and taming her mane and had gotten a lot better at functioning without her enormous glasses on. Anna had told her that focusing on looks rather than intelligence was shallow and made her look stupider than she already was. Not Anna's words exactly, but it was all very heavily implied. It took everything in Moira to not comment on Anna's boyfriend, who knew more about hair care products than any of the subjects taught in school. There were few things Moira hated more in people than hypocrisy, but it wasn't in her nature to point out people's flaws, or start a fight with someone she didn't care enough about to keep the fight going. It would be a complete waste of her energy so she just pursed her lips and turned back to the mirror to finish drawing in her abnormally light eyebrows.

"Well, well, Moira McKinnon, don't you clean up well?" Sirius said with a sparkle in his eye as he gave an appraising look. She faked a curtsy and smiled, "You don't look half bad yourself Black."

"Now, now aren't we on a first name basis yet?" Sirius asked, eyes wide leaning towards Moira. She was starting to realize that Sirius was probably drunk, though she had never been too good at noticing until a person was half-gone. Rodger and Dave had gotten away with drinking plenty of times and Moira hadn't known until well after when Rodger would tell her.

"You called me by my full name," Moira pointed out.

"Yes, I like how it rolls off the tongue 'Moira McKinnon,' but you can call me Sirius," he grinned toothily as his hair fell into his face. A quick flick of the neck and it was all back in place, and the grin didn't drop for a moment.

"Sirius," Moira said slowly as Sirius moved even closer. She hardly had time to come up with anything else to say before his lips were on hers. And then there was a lot more than lips on hers. It was like kissing a dog, all sloppy and wet. She pulled away slowly and smiled despite the amount of slobber on her face.

"I'm going to go get another drink" she tried to say casually, but the disappointment crept up in her voice. At least Sirius was too drunk to hear it.

It all felt wrong on so many different levels. It was her first kiss and though she tried not to build it up, something so simple tends to hold a lot of importance in a girl's life. Then there was the unmistakable taste of firewhiskey on his breath and the fact that she kept thinking of Remus. Even though Moira had never kissed anyone before, she was pretty sure that thinking of someone else was not the proper thing to do.

She sidled over to the drink table and eyed the Cauldron Brew. It was a strange combination of sherbet, juice, and liquor. It had a nice salmon tinge to it, but the half melted sherbet made it an odd consistency. Moira glanced around the room at all the girls with glasses full of the odd mix; they all looked like they were having fun. She thought of what her mother had told her about how love potions could be easily mixed into communal drinks, but then she remembered an article in Witch Weekly denouncing that as a myth seeing as alcohol tended to make most love potions invalid. Remembering this she decided to take the risk and conjure a goblet.

About half-way through her first goblet, Moira noticed Lily approach. Lily eyed the fruity mix in Moira's hand, but didn't say a word. Lily was good about that, having plenty to say, but knowing when not to say it.

"How many have you had?" Lily finally asked, after mulling over several more blunt conversation starters.

"Just this one," Moira said after her last gulp.

"Well, don't have too much, or you'll regret it," Lily responded while sweeping her gaze over the crowd. Moira followed Lily's gaze to a few older Hufflepuffs who had definitely had too much. Lily's lips were pursed, but still she kept her mouth shut.

"What's up with you? I was expecting you to come in here and shut this all down," Moira asked tactlessly, was the Brew already starting to set in?

"I'm allowed to have fun too!" Lily snapped back rather weakly.

"How many have you had?" Moira questioned.

"None."

"Well then, join the party." And with that, Moira conjured another goblet and filled both with the Brew. With some hesitance Lily took the goblet.

"Cheers, then," she said clinking the edge with Moira's and downed the whole thing in one chug. "I'm glad someone warned me not to wear a costume to this," Lily said after starting he second goblet.

"Why would you wear a costume?" Moira asked curiously looking at Lily over the top of her own goblet.

"That's what muggles do on Halloween, they dress up like monsters and witches," Lily answered.

"Well that doesn't seem very nice," Moira responded, thinking how she'd feel if someone ever dressed up as her. Looking at herself in the mirror most days was bad enough.

By the time Marlene found Lily and Moira, they were dancing in the middle of the group singing along to one of the muggle songs that was playing. They had each finished six goblets and had convinced each other that if they stopped moving they'd probably end up on the floor. They screamed Marlene's name in unison, as well as anyone else in their favor that walked by. Moira and Lily were the perfect drunks together, each with their fair share of stresses from the day melting away with each sip of the Brew. The two of them had plowed straight through tipsy into nearly blacked-out, and they dubbed themselves best friends. At the point where all filters, inhibitions, or any real common sense were long gone Moira decided to stagger off in search of Remus while Marlene entertained an uncharacteristically talkative Lily.

Moira had some serious tunnel vision, like nothing existed outside the incessant music blaring in her ears and whatever she happened to be looking at ahead of her. Find Remus, find Remus, find Remus, ran through her brain like a broken record and finally she found him. Remus. Unfortunately she didn't notice that Sirius and Peter were leaned up against the wall right next to him. Damn tunnel vision. She was about to start talking to Remus when an arm snaked around her waist and a breath, hot on her neck spoke, "Come back for more, babe?" She watched Remus stare holes into whomever it was with his arm on her waist. Her vision wobbled a bit as she tried to focus on the face next to hers. Sirius Black. Sirius. Remus. And Pettigrew standing just to Remus's right. Oh. Oh well. Sirius slipped a wet kiss onto Moira's cheek while she stared at Remus, while Remus stared at Sirius. With a roll of the eyes Remus pushed himself off the wall and stormed off.

"Wait- I- erm," Moira couldn't form any words, let alone sentences to make Remus stay. Peter contemplated the situation for a moment then chose to follow Remus. Moira wondered where James was for a fleeting moment before she realized she needed to detach herself from Sirius.

"Forget about him," Sirius said with an angry undertone, looking off in the direction Remus had gone. Moira wasn't completely sure the statement had been addressed to her. She pushed Sirius off of her and said a forceful goodbye. Now was probably a good time to get back to Marlene and Lily.

Finding them was easy because Lily was yelling at James Potter.

"Leave me alone Potter!"

"Aw come on Evans! Why do you hate me so much? Merlin, is this still about what happened first year? Has Snivellus been telling you lies about me again?" Both parties were clearly drunk and Marlene was trying really hard to calm Lily down.

"You being a total prick has nothing to do with Severus!" Lily screamed in response. Her hand was gripping tightly onto her wand, knuckles white. Knowing the damage Lily could do, and having lost all skills of logic possibly hours before, Moira chose to step in to help Marlene.

"Alright, alright," a booming voice said. Rodger and Dave stepped into the ring of curious students. Dave put a hand on James's chest and said something quietly that made James relax and look at the floor. Rodger put a hand on Lily's shoulder and said "Look Evans I know you don't want Prewett hearing about this. I think it's time for you to get back to the dorms," Rodger said gently, knowing just how to deal with angry drunk girls, "You too," he said looking angrily at Moira.


Dave and Rodger ended up having to drag Lily and Moira back to their perspective towers because the last of the alcohol they had consumed really hit them after Lily and James's fight.

"Damnit Mor, what the hell were you thinking getting this drunk? Have I taught you nothing?" Rodger asked heavy with disappointment and the dead weight of his sister.

Her head lolled on her shoulders when she barely whispered, "Sorry Rod."

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," Rodger responded huffily. They finally managed to get both girls up to the landing in front of the door to Ravenclaw tower. Dave was eager to deposit Moira at her house because carrying Lily would be infinitely easier with Rodger's help.

The bronze eagle on the door opened it's beak slowly and spoke a simple riddle in a cool, metallic voice, "What is it that no man has yet see, which never was, but will always be?" simple, that is, if Moira had not been nearly passed out on her brother's shoulder.

"The hell is that?" Dave asked, looking incredulously at the bronze eagle. The bronze eagle simply answered, "Sorry, but that is not the logical answer to this riddle. Think on this for it will only make you wiser."

"S' the way we get in, y'gotta answer the question," Moira supplied.

"Well what's the answer, Mor?" Rodger asked impatiently as he shifted her weight a bit to get a better grip on her.

"Ya think I can figure tha out right now?" Moira responded, spilling her words into each other.

"Urgh I do not have time to time wait around here for you to sober up and figure this out," Rodger yelled in frustration. He picked his sister up and threw her over his shoulder and thanked Merlin they had been doing so many team work outs at quidditch practice. "This is a lot easier," Rodger grunted and he turned and descended the stairs of Ravenclaw Tower. Dave followed suit by tossing Lily over his shoulder and she only made a slight grunt of discontent and the new position, but the boys covered the distance from Ravenclaw to Gryffindor in half the time had they dragged the girls.

"We're going to bring your sister into Gryffindor?" Dave asked as they approached the portrait.

"S'not like she's the first Ravenclaw to sneak into the dorms," Rodger responded. In fact there was probably at least one person from every house but Slytherin to make it into Gryffindor just within the seven years Dave and Rodger had been at Hogwarts. They supplied the password to a disapproving Fat Lady and made it to the foot of the stairs to the girls' dorms.

"Bloody hell!" Dave said suddenly, "We can't go into the girls' dorms remember? The trick step?" Rodger groaned in response.

"Do we leave them on the couch?" Dave continued.

"No, Prewett likes to hang out here on the weekends, you know that," Rodger responded. Truthfully, Dave did not know that because he usually slept straight through the weekends, unless they had early morning Quidditch practice. The boys had learned early in September that outside of house pride there really weren't many perks to having the Head Boy come from your house.

"We'll have to take them to our room," Rodger sighed. It was obvious at this point that both girls were completely passed out. This last set of stairs felt the longest and hardest to climb, because Rodger and Dave knew they were so close to their beds.

Dave offered up his bed for the girls and prayed one of them wouldn't vomit in it durning the night. Laid side by side on Dave's bed, Rodger pulled the blankets up over Lily and Moira's shoulders.

"You so owe me," Rodger whispered in Moira's ear before kissing her on the top of her head and pulling the curtains closed around the bed and he was sure he saw her smile.

"Time to cuddle, dude," Dave said posing seductively on Rodger's bed. Rodger shoved him playfully and laid in the opposite direction of Dave so that Dave's feet were even with his chest, a sleeping method they had worked out years ago durning their many sleep overs.


"Morning sunshine, lunch is in a half hour," a male voice rang out, cutting through Moira's dreams. A male voice? She opened her eyes and was nearly blinded by the light streaming in through the windows causing a terrible headache to flare up. Suddenly a figure was blocking out the sun. She focused her eyes.

"Davie! What are you doing in my dorm?"

"I should ask you the same thing," Dave said with that too big, goofy grin plastered on his face. Moira looked around and realized she was definitely not in her dorm. She was still groggy, but she could tell by the fact that everything was maroon and gold that she was in Gryffindor.

"Who's bed-"

"Mine," Dave answered before Moira could finish asking.

"Yours?" Moira asked, eyes going wide at what that could mean. Why couldn't she remember how she got here?

"Relax, it was you and Evans in the bed, I was shacked up with Rod."

"Oh," Moira said with relief. Some remnants of the night floating into her memory. "Where are they?"

"I think Evans woke up and went to her own bed in the middle of the night, but Rod left early to go fly around the pitch. He's kind of mad at you," Dave lowered his voice for the last statement and stared out the window that looked out onto the pitch. Moira groaned and gripped her head, praying for some relief. Dave wordlessly handed Moira a small bottle of what she recognized as hangover potion.

"Thanks," Moira said quietly taking the bottle and administering herself the appropriate dosage.

"We should probably get you back to Ravenclaw and cleaned up before rumors start spreading about you, little Miss Moira," Dave said with a wink and he accompanied her back to her own tower and waited patiently outside, trying to figure out the bronze eagle's various riddles while Moira changed and freshened up then they both headed down to the Great Hall for lunch.


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