Lily groaned as she flipped through her potions book. She had had a long day; no free periods and then a Head meeting with the headmaster, followed by patrolling the corridors with a seventh year Ravenclaw prefect, Jacob Smith. Lily and Jacob got along well and always managed to have interesting conversations, which at least made patrolling go faster. Still, by the time she had finally gotten back to the common room it was close to midnight. Lily was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a week, but knew she had two essays due tomorrow which she needed to finish off. Since it was past curfew, she couldn't leave the Gryffindor common room, and the girls in her dorm were busy eating sweets, doing each others' hair and talking about which boys they were crushing on. Though Lily usually loved spending time with her dorm mates, even if their endless chatter about boys drove her slightly insane, the dorm wasn't exactly the perfect study environment that night. Lily had curled up in a corner of the common room with her books, hoping that most students would be heading to bed. However, it seemed today was just not her day; most of the older students were still up, talking and laughing with friends.
Lily sighed, trying to block out the noise as best she could. Then it hit her; she could literally block all the noise out. Why hadn't she thought of this earlier? She flicked her wand and muttered a silencing charm, and was suddenly alone in blissful quiet. Lily managed to concentrate that way for a good half hour, finishing off her Defence Against the Dark Arts essay. She stretched, glancing around the room, before beginning to work on her next assignment. The common room was much emptier than before; a quick 'tempus' charm told Lily it was nearly 1 am. She reversed her silencing charm, enjoying the sound of the crackling fire and quiet chatting of a group of sixth years after the abnormal silence of her charm. She was re-reading her unfinished History of Magic essay when the potrait opened with a "BANG". Lily jumped, as did everyone else in the room, but when she turned to the portrait hole, there was no-one there.
An invisible someone, who sounded suspiciously like Peter Petigrew, giggled and whispered loudly: "oops! I think they heard us!" This was followed by shuffling feet, muffled chuckles and shushing sounds. Lily just glared at the space expectantly; she had known since third year (when Potter had bragged about it, thinking it would impress her) that Potter had an invisibility cloak, handed to him by his father. She waited for the boys to reveal themselves, and sure enough a few seconds later the cloak was ripped off of Sirius as he tripped into the common room. Potter and Petigrew followed, whipping the cloak off and laughing like loons. Remus followed them more quietly, his expression somewhere between amusement and exasperation. Lily stood up from her spot on the couch and marched over to them, hands on her hips.
"Where the hell have you four been?" she hissed. "It is way past curfew! I should dock points for this!"
"Aww, come on Evans," Sirius grinned as he tried to stand up, struggling to hold his balance. "You wouldn't take points from your own house! It's not like any of the teachers can see you now."
Lily watched as he leaned on Peter to steady himself; not such a good idea since Peter himself was swaying back and forth with a glazed look in his eyes. "Oh my God, you're drunk! You've been sneaking around the castle at one in the morning drinking? How stupid are you? It's a week night for Merlin's sake, you could easily have been caught!" Out of the corner of her eye, Lily noticed the remaining sixth year students heading towards the stairs to avoid the inevitable fight.
"Relax, Evans, we didn't get caught. 'Sides, we were barely in the castle, we were at Hogsmeade. Stop being such an uptight bitch and accept that some people like to have fun now and again," Sirius slurred. Remus and James both glared at him, looking slightly panicked.
"At Hogsmeade?!" Lily exploded. "How the hell did you even get there? And how dare you Black! I'm not an uptight bitch, I just happen to understand that rules are there for a reason! What if you had gotten hurt? Merlin, you know this makes me look bad, I'm Head Girl, I can't let my class mates wander to bloody Hogsmeade in the middle of the night, drunk!" Lily had a murderous look in her eyes.
"Look, Evans, we're sorry alright. Especially Sirius, he didn't really mean that. It wasn't our finest idea, we know. We weren't trying to get you in trouble, you weren't supposed to know. Can't you forgive us this one time?" James tried to reason with her. However, Sirius' comment had gotten to Lily more than she'd care to admit, and Potter's defence of his friend only made her angrier.
"Shut the hell up, Potter! This is stupid, and immature and wrong! None of you will ever do this again, or I'm telling the Headmaster, you understand me? And Remus, you're a prefect for Merlin's sake! What the hell were you thinking, wandering off with this lot?" Remus looked ashamed as Lily turned her glare on him. James was fuming at the fact she was disappointed by Remus, but acted as though she expected this kind of thing from him, Peter and Sirius. Never mind that it was only the second time they'd ever snuck out to drink outside of the castle, or that they had done it to try and cheer Sirius up.
"Listen Evans, we weren't just out drinking for the fun of it, we were trying to take care of our friend!" James gestured to Sirius, who was slumped against the wall, watching the argument without comprehension. He was, Lily realised suddenly, in a much worse state than any of the other three.
"Taking care of him by letting him get wasted and wandering around outside of school? Yeah, great friends you are! So disappointed I've been missing out on that kind of friendship all these years!" Lily shouted.
"Maybe you should spend less time judging us for enjoying ourselves Evans, and a little more time trying to understand that not everyone has the perfect life!" With that, James spun on his heel furiously, wrapped an arm around Sirius' shoulders and marched the two of them upstairs. Peter looked between Lily and Remus and shrugged, then followed the other two to their dorm.
"Look Lily, I am sorry. I know I shouldn't have let them do it, and I shouldn't have gone with them. They honestly don't do it very often at all, it's just that Sirius got some bad news today and we wanted to cheer him up." Remus explained softly.
"What, so just because someone has had a bad day it's ok to run off in the middle of the night, get wasted and break about a million school rules?" Lily asked him sharply.
"I'm not saying it was ok. I'm just saying he really needed some time out, would you have preferred if we let him go alone?" Remus was starting to get frustrated with her inability to see things from another perspective.
"Yes! Because then maybe he wouldn't have gone, and would have dealt with his problems like anyone else in the school. Or at least it would only have been Sirius at risk of getting hurt!"
"Lily, he got a letter from Gringotts. His family have cut him off from any form of inheritance. He left last summer, not really intending to go back, but I don't think he honestly expected them to disown him. His parents never even told him they were going to, didn't give him any explanation or even warning, they just did it. Don't blame him for trying to let off some steam tonight, and don't blame the rest of us for trying to be there for our friend." He stomped up the stairs after his friends, leaving Lily shocked and alone in the common room. She felt awful after Remus' explanation, and even worse when she realised that maybe Potter was right; she didn't really know what was going on with Sirius so she had no right to judge him. And Remus' logic did make an awful lot of sense in hindsight, there was no way it would have been a good idea to let Sirius head off to get drunk alone. Lily sighed, slouching back to her homework and resigning herself to getting very little sleep that night.
