A/N: Hello, my lovelies! Sorry for the slight delay this week, but school's about to start back up, so life has been crazy. Not really. I'm just a horrible procrastinator.

Disclaimer: I own some Redvines and a wand, but not Harry Potter.

Once I had levitated my trunk upstairs and my blush had faded – though in my defence, I hadn't been allowed to do or say anything about magic in an entire month! That should entitle me to the occasional lapse in memory regarding my magical abilities, I think. Anyhow, once I was upstairs, I took a look around. Though Mary and I had been friends since first year, we hadn't been particularly close until Snape and I had stopped being friends, and so I had never been to her house before.

I was standing in a long hallway with a carpet that I guessed was once cream-coloured, but was now the faded sort of murky grey that all well-worn carpets are. The walls were the same shade of blue as the sky, and were peppered with pictures of Mary and her family, as well as one photo of a very fat cat sitting next to a dog that looked like its face had been smashed in by a frying pan. Apparently the Macdonald family didn't favour attractive pets….

I abandoned my trunk to explore the hallway. On one end were two open doors. One was a bathroom. The other was the guest bedroom where I was meant to stay – or, at least, that's what I assumed judging from the empty closet and the blandly decorated walls, covered only by a few impersonal pictures of the ocean and one of a flowering meadow. The windows were open, allowing sunlight to pool on the covers of the bed, which was neatly made but had an unhealthy number of throw pillows. Other than that, there was a small, scuffed writing desk in one corner and a cute little dustbin, if something that houses rubbish can be described as "cute". Though the room was neat and comfortable, it made me miss my own bedroom and its purple walls, barely visible beneath pictures of my mates and me and posters for my favourite bands.

I left the room – I'd move my trunk in later – and walked to the opposite end of the hall. This side had two more doors, but both were closed. Here, I would have been at a loss, not wanting to accidentally intrude on Mr. and Mrs. Macdonald's room, were it not for the sign on one door. It was handwritten in Mary's loopy cursive.

Mary's Domain

Enter at your own risk.

Under the warning, Mary had doodled a baby unicorn. I snorted.

I quietly opened her door and poked my head in. If the sign had left any doubt (which really, it hadn't, seeing as it labelled the room as Mary's), the disaster that met my eyes on the other side of the door eradicated it. I was sure I could've picked the room out as hers from a criminal line-up of girl's bedrooms (if, you know, there ever was such a thing. Which is far from likely.)

Piles of clothes and rubbish were strewn about the room, nearly obscuring a desk and a bedside table from sight. And the carpet? I wasn't even sure there was one. Truthfully, I was impressed. I thought Mary's bedroom couldn't be any messier than her part of our dormitory was, but I'd been wrong. Apparently, Mary actually tried to be tidy at school. Her mess in our dormitory wasn't even comparable to the catastrophe of her bedroom.

And okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a teeny bit. But really, would it kill the girl to buy a laundry hamper and then actually use it? Or a rubbish bin? I suppose after the whole closet-debacle of the morning, I'm not one to talk about clutter, but really.

I edged into the room, treading carefully around the more suspicious-looking piles (I did not want to step on Mary's dirty knickers), and made my way to the bed, where I could barely see a Mary-shaped lump hidden under the covers. "Mary," I whispered, prodding the lump. "Mare." I prodded her again. She groaned and the lump wriggled a bit, but kept sleeping.

I sighed. I'd hoped to avoid this, but I supposed it would be necessary. After all, I'd learned years back that if you tried to wake Mary up with any… less than gentle methods, such as shaking… she would attack. And I would like to keep my eyes, ears, limbs, and other bodily parts intact, thank you very much.

I flipped the blanket back just enough to reveal Mary's head, her dark hair sticking up funny against the pillow, and hastily retreated a few feet from the bed. Drawing my wand, I murmured "Agaumenti." Water surged out of the end, soaking the pillow, Mary and all.

She bolted upright, sputtering and shoving her now-wet hair out of her face. "What the hell?" she said, looking around with wide eyes. I took a few more steps back.

"Morning, Mary darling. Sleep well?"

"Lily!" She flew off her bed toward me. I didn't have time to flee, but rather than the beating I was expecting, I received a (rather wet) hug. "If I weren't so happy to see you, I would be murdering you right now, just so you know."

"I know. My apologies, but I couldn't wake you up any other way without endangering my physical well-being. I didn't want to stand too close – Black warned me of flailing, and I knew from prior occurrences that his experience was true to form."

"Oh, c'mon Lily. You know I wouldn't really hurt you. At least, I wouldn't do any permanent damage. Sirius, on the other hand… He had it coming to him."

"Sirius, is it? Since when are you on first name basis with him? Actually, he and Potter were referring to you as 'Mary,' though I didn't really notice it at the time. What's going on there?"
"My dad heard us calling each other by our last names on their first day here, and got really angry over it. Something about how it's impolite and standoffish. He says that since they're the sons of such good family friends, and since they're going to be living here for the next month, we better call each other by our real names. He'll probably force that rule on you, too, so be prepared." Mary pulled me over to her bed as she spoke, and we both sat down.

I sighed. "I suppose it's about time, anyway. We have known them for six years. We probably had to learn their first names eventually. At least this coincides with their sudden increase in maturity. If your dad told me to call Potter by his first name a few years ago, I probably would have told him to go snog the Giant Squid. Now that I can actually hold a civil conversation with him, I suppose it won't kill me to call him 'James'."

Mary snorted. "What is it with you and romantic references to the Squid? Didn't you once tell Potter you'd rather date the Squid than him, or something like that, back when he was an immature prat? Do you have some kind of sea creature fetish you're not telling me about, Evans?"

"The Giant Squid is one handsome fellow, Macdonald. I can't help myself." We looked at each other solemnly before deteriorating into laughter.

"But really," Mary said, between giggles, "the mental image of my father snogging the Giant Squid is enough to keep me smiling for a lifetime." She flopped back across her bed, still laughing. "When did you get here, anyway?" she finally calmed herself enough to say.

"Just a little while ago," I said, twisting on the bed so I could look at her. "I chatted with Potter and Black… er, James and Sirius – that's going to take some getting used to… down in the kitchen, sat in Black's lap for a bit, and then they coerced me into making them breakfast."

"Woah, woah, wait. You tell me not to gawk at Sirius Black and then you sit in his bloody lap?"

"Long story. Well, not really, I suppose. I just Apparated badly and landed in his lap rather than on your porch." Mary started laughing. "It's not funny! And you're sworn to secrecy on this, Macdonald. Consider it a symbol of my friendship that I'm even telling you."

She snorted once more. "Your secret's safe with me. I only wish I'd been there to see it. Wait… before you distracted me with stories of lap-sitting, what were you saying? You made them breakfast? What time is it?" She twisted her head around to look at a clock on her bedside table. "Blimey! It's only a bit after 10. I thought you were coming at noon! What are you doing here so early?"

I rolled my eyes. People simply didn't understand the difference between arriving at a certain time and by a certain time! "I like to be prompt." Mary raised an eyebrow. "And okay, maybe I didn't exactly want to spend a few extra hours at my house. But still."

"Was Petunia still being a horror?"

"Yes," I sighed, lying back beside Mary and speaking to her ceiling. "She wasn't so bad at first, but then she brought her cow of a fiancé over a couple weeks ago. She'd already told him what I am, and he kept looking at me like… like I had leprosy or something. Besides that, he's horribly dull and rude and all sorts of unpleasant adjectives I don't want to be bothered to come up with right now. I talked to her about him later, and might have said something about how he wasn't good enough for her and… well, she didn't take too kindly to that. She spent the last few weeks glaring daggers at me whenever I entered a room, and she started slipping in snide comments about how I don't have a boyfriend."

"She didn't!"

"Yes. Actually, that's how we left things this morning. She said something about how no one would ever want to marry me, and I sort of exploded. Left the house in a huff." I sighed.

"Lily."

"It's all right - really. Not exactly how I would have chosen to leave things with my sister, I guess, but it's been headed that way for a while."

"Lily."

"I'm fine! Really." She turned her head to look at me. "Don't look at me like that, Mary Macdonald. I don't want your pity; I was just answering your question. Plus, I needed a good rant. It felt good to get that out of my system."

"All right. If you're sure you're okay. I have tissues here somewhere, if you need to cry about it."

"Do you not know me at all? When would I ever cry over Petunia?"

"This is true. But still."

I laughed. "No, I don't need tissues. Thank you, though."

"What are best mates for?"

"Acting as stand-in therapists, apparently."

"But of course."

"So, now that you're awake and I still have all of my limbs, what are we going to do today?"

"Well, you can unpack while I shower and get dressed, then I'll give you a quick tour of the house – which will be supremely fascinating, I'm sure, but my mum told me to make sure you know your way around. After that, anything really. My parents are at work for the day, so we're stuck here with James and Sirius. They'll probably be holed up in their room or off gallivanting through the yard, though, so we should be okay."

"Do they… gallivant… often?" I asked, trying not to laugh at the mental image the word summoned.

"Yes. I don't even want to know what they get up to out there. It's not like there's a whole lot to do. We just have a plain old back yard that runs into a boring forest. As long as they don't burn anything down or expose wizardry to the Muggles though, I don't care."

"All right," I said, laughing as Mary and I stood up and walked into the hallway. When we reached the staircase, I levitated my trunk again and moved it alongside us.

"This is where you'll be staying," Mary said when we reached the guest room, "though I suppose that's fairly obvious."

"Indeed, it is."

"I'll leave you to unpack, then. I'll be in the shower right across the hall, so knock if you have any questions and I'll shout the answers through the door."

"Thanks, Mare."

Mary looked at me for another moment before smiling. "I'm really glad you came, Lily. There's far too much testosterone in this house with James and Sirius here, and I think you'll balance it out quite nicely."

"I'm glad I came, too. We'll see if I still feel that way after a few days of Po – James and Sirius. Who knows? They may be much less tolerable when one is living in close quarters with them, but we'll see. Either way, at least I get to see you again." I smiled. "Now go shower before this moment becomes embarrassingly sappy and we start hugging or braiding each other's hair or something."

Mary grinned and lightly punched my arm. "Good to have you back, Evans."

A/N: Most of you replied saying that you prefer shorter chapters, and so that's what I'm going to stick to. I prefer shorter chapters myself anyway, because once I have enough to be considered a decent chapter, I get anxious to post it. Anyhow, hope you all are having a lovely week, and thanks to everyone who has reviewed/favorited/subscribed!

Reviews are thunderstorms and double rainbows. (It rained earlier today.)