"Are you sure you'll survive an evening without James?" Marlene teased.
Lily rolled her eyes as they walked to the cinema. "Yes, for the thousandth time, I will be just fine."
Marlene laughed, "You're too good for me, Lils. I tease you mercilessly and you just roll your eyes and humor me." She linked her arm with Lily's, "You can't ever stop being my friend." She winked at her and Lily laughed.
"You know I love you, Marls. You'll never get rid of me."
They walked into the cinema and bought their tickets for the new romantic comedy Lily wanted to see, and just when they were next in line at the concessions Lily heard a few familiar voices.
"Red! Darling!"
"Sirius!"
"What? You would have told her you saw her when you guys got together next?"
James groaned.
Lily laughed and turned to see James with his hand in his hair glaring daggers at Sirius while Remus laughed at them.
"Hi, guys!" Lily waved, "Fancy seeing you here!"
James waved sheepishly, "To be fair, you didn't tell me you and Marlene were going to a film."
"So you're tracking Lily?" Marlene teased.
"No!" James groaned.
Lily laughed and ordered their popcorn before pulling Marlene over to where the lads were.
"Marlene, this is Sirius Black and Remus Lupin." She introduced them, "Sirius, Remus, my best friend Marlene McKinnon."
"Oh, you're the fun one!" Sirius smirked.
"Excuse you," Marlene's voice had an edge, but Sirius seemed to take it as some sort of endearment and smiled at her fondly.
"You're the one who threatened to castrate my best mate," he chuckled. "I told Lily and James you sounded like more fun than the two of them."
Marlene seemed to relax a bit and Lily let out an explosive breath.
"Ok there Red?" Sirius gave her a confused look.
"You passed," she shrugged, "I didn't think you would, but she didn't just kill you so you passed."
"Lily, I disown you for giving away trade secrets." Marlene glared at her.
"Nope," Lily laughed linking her arm through Marlene's. "You told me not thirty minutes ago I'm not allowed to stop being your friend, so no, you can't disown me."
Sirius chuckled, "Good to know," and he winked at Marlene.
"Oh, look at the time!" James interrupted quickly. "Our film is going to start soon. We should get going. I'll see you soon, Lil." And he pecked her cheek before grabbing Sirius' arm.
"How long is your film?" Remus asked out of nowhere. James looked like Remus had just pulled a rug out from under him.
Marlene eyed Remus who smiled calmly back after a quick glance at Sirius. "It's a bit more than two hours."
"So is ours, we should grab dinner after, the five of us." Remus walked to join Sirius and James. James eyed him with blatant distrust.
"What do you think Lils?" Marls asked.
Lily sighed, "Why are you making me decide?"
"Because you gave away trade secrets," Marlene shrugged.
"Well then sure," she smiled at James who smiled back but then turned to eye Remus suspiciously.
"Great, we'll meet you out here." Remus chuckled before leading James and Sirius away.
"Do you know what Remus is up to?" Marlene asked as she and Lily headed to the other side of the cinema for their showing.
"You saw that too?" Lils breathed. "I thought I might have been imaging it."
Marlene shook her head, "No, he's got something up his sleeve. I was hoping it was something you were privy to."
Lily shook her head, "I guess we're going to find out."
"Alright, Remus," Lily smiled sweetly at him as they walked out if the cinema. "What are you up to?"
"See!" James claimed victoriously as he wrapped an arm around Lily's waist. "I'm not crazy! You are up to something!"
Remus rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically, "I'm accused of my own friends."
"And acquaintances," Marlene chimed in with a smile.
Remus laughed, "I just thought it would be nice for all of us to get to know one another. James and Lily are hopeless for each other and it'll be easier on them if we can just all hang out together."
"Whatever Remus is up to," Sirius cut in, "can we discuss it over dinner? I'm positively famished!" And he doubled over groaning and holding his stomach.
"Fine," James gave in. "How does Greek food sound?"
"Honestly anything edible sounds good, so let's just go." Sirius groaned before turning on his heels and heading, presumably, to the Greek place James had been suggesting.
As suspicious as Lily was, she had to admit that Remus' idea to hang out altogether had been a stroke of genius. Marlene just fit and all of the sudden they felt like a group of friends who'd always known each other and had managed to stay friends for years.
They ended up back at James' place, sharing cartons of ice cream they'd bought on their way there and laughing about embarrassing stories they had about each other.
It was late when Marlene's phone went off and she groaned when she checked it.
"What's up?" Sirius tried to grab her phone away, but Marls wasn't born yesterday.
"Paws off Black," She dug the last chocolate chunk out of one of the death by chocolate cartons. "And to answer your question, my work decided it would be a great idea to let our web developer go because they have a whole software engineering department. I told them we couldn't handle that, most of us haven't done CSS since undergrad! But they didn't listen to me! They let him go yesterday and they just dropped the damn website in my team's lap! We don't have time for this!" Marlene shoved her spoon maliciously into the carton of cherry amaretto ice cream.
Lily stood and gave Marlene a hug, "I'm sorry Marls."
Marlene huffed, "It's not your fault I work with a bunch of idiots who know fucking nothing about the technology they provide! I'm positive some of the higher-ups think that there's only one coding language."
Sirius scoffed, "Right, because object-oriented programming and scripting are just wizard terms to keep intelligent business blokes from making more money."
"Exactly!" Marlene grabbed his hand, "One of these days I'm going to throw the group of them off a bridge somewhere!"
"Hey, I've got an idea," Sirius' eyes lit up. "I'm a web developer. Show me the site; let me get an idea of what it is and what I'd charge to be contracted with it. Then you go to your boss and tell him that you'll need funding for this extra project because of man-hours. Then you can contract me to take care of it with that funding. It's off your shoulders, and I get another site to manage out of it. We all win!"
Marlene looked like she could have kissed him. "That's the best idea I've heard all week!" She stood and pulled Sirius up with her. "Come on, if I can getting that email off before tomorrow I'll have a better chance of getting you your top price. My boss only half reads emails over the weekend; makes it so much easier to push stuff through."
"Let's go, I'll add an extra percentage for having to work with a friend. It's one of my rules I try not to break." Sirius winked at her and Marlene laughed at him.
"Thanks for a great night, everyone!" Marlene gave Lily a hug, "Wish me luck, this is the biggest fast one I've ever tried to pull."
"You've got Sirius," James put a comforting arm around Marls' shoulders, "He's a top-notch prankster, this is child's play."
Sirius winked at him as he released Remus from a hug, "Got to keep in practice somehow, mate."
Sirius and Marlene were out the door, and Remus suddenly started to tidy up the ice cream cartons and spoons, whistling happily to himself.
"You're smug!" James exclaimed whipping around.
"I have no idea what you're on about James. I was thinking about how much I prefer my work to all of yours and it brightened my mood considerably." He gave James a withering sigh, "You just don't trust me."
"Bollocks, Remus," James laughed. "Our best pranks at school were always your idea! You're more trouble than any of us!"
Remus huffed and turned to Lily, "I am so misunderstood." He gave a melodramatic sigh and Lily laughed at him.
"Marlene and I think you're up to something too so don't turn to me for pity."
Remus shrugged his shoulders and gave them each a hug, "Then I'll bid you both a good night and seek solace in the glories of outer space."
"That's a really roundabout way to say that you open the observatory tomorrow," James rolled his eyes.
Remus chuckled and nodded before grabbing his phone and sliding it into his pocket. "I'll see you both soon."
Once he was gone, Lily pulled James close. "What do you think he was up to?"
"I don't know," James ran his hands along her sides as he thought about it, "But I do know that whatever it was, it went well. Remus only whistles when he feels like a plan has gone better than he hoped."
Lily laid her head on James' chest and sighed when he moved a hand to run through her hair. "Well, I think tonight went fabulously. So whatever it was, I'm guessing it was a good thing."
James chuckled and pulled them down to his couch, keeping Lily wrapped in his arms. "Yeah, I suppose whatever he did, it was good."