September 20th, 1976: Alice Abbott

Alice is a little surprised when Marlene asks to work with her on Monday morning—in all fairness and honesty, they've never been that close, and Lily's more talented at Charms than Alice is. She accepts, though, always happy for the opportunity to spend time with her fellow Gryffindors, and Marlene's real reasons become clear within minutes of the start of class.

"I'm going to tell you something," she mutters, pulling out her textbook, "and I want you to listen as my mate, not as my house prefect."

Worriedly, Alice glance to Sirius's table—he's partnering both Remus and Em today. "Not about me and Black," Marlene appends quickly, and Alice heaves a sigh and averts her eyes—if anything, this is a relief. "But promise that you won't—report it or—take disciplinary action."

"Is it serious?" Alice murmurs, propping open her book to cover her mouth from Flitwick's view.

"I don't think so, but—just promise first."

Reluctantly, she nods. Marlene settles a little into her seat and says, "I caught Lily coming down from the boys' dormitory this morning—she's been sleeping up there for the past two nights."

Alice is taken aback: Lily sleeping in the boys' dormitory? The same Lily who befriended Slytherins and who never received a detention in five years (until now)? She glances over at Lily's table, where she and James are huddled together, shoulders brushing. "I'm sure she had a good explanation," Alice says confidently. "Lily would never do anything—er—"

"Like I did," finishes Marlene, looking altogether unaffected by this view of herself.

Immediately, Alice launches into protect-Marlene's-self-confidence mode. "Oh, Marlene, you know I don't mean—"

"It doesn't matter if it is or not; I'm not seeing him anymore," Marlene assures her. Alice tallies mentally: it hasn't quite been four days since Marlene last slept with him, though she doesn't think it would be wise to bring this up. "But could you maybe talk to her, figure out what she's been doing up there? I just want to know that she's…"

Alice is hesitant to complain, per se, but she voices her reservations: "You're sure you want me to ask about it? It's just that you know her so much better…"

Marlene scoffs, "Do I look like I'm in the best position to give relationship advice?"

Her words give Alice pause. "You don't think they're in a relationship, do you?" she asks.

"They could be," she says, softer than before. "There was that date to Hogsmeade last summer—well, not really, but still—she invited him to the wedding, he was there when she found out about her parents… plus they're on a first-name basis, she never goes anywhere without him anymore, he keeps trying to kiss her, and from what you said happened between them at the Slug Club last Saturday—"

Alice blushes: she hates feeling like she's ratting out a friend. "I'll talk to her," she agrees, "but I want you to promise, Marlene, that you won't tell anyone else about this. Not Em, not Mary—"

"Why would I tell Em or Mary?" says Marlene. "Em either wouldn't care or would tell Maggie, and we all know how that would end—and Mary—well, I'm not speaking to Mary, actually."

Alice is starting to see why Marlene came to her about this. "Did something happen?" Alice says carefully, making a mental note to ask Mary about it later—she'd hate to only hear one side of the story.

Marlene shrugs, flipping a page of her book. "We… don't exactly see eye to eye about some things. It'll pass; it always does."

Alice lets it go for now and casts one more look at Lily—she's pointing something out in the textbook to James, who keeps trying to scoot his chair closer to hers. "Can you think of something to get James away from her after class? I'll ask her about it then."

One hour, four passed notes, two Dungbombs, and two detentions later, Alice gets Lily alone in the corridor; they're apart from the other girls, as Em wants nothing to do with Marlene's melodrama and Mary accompanies her out five minutes before Alice and Lily leave. "You know, Lily, about this morning…" Alice begins—to her chagrin, her voice has taken on a concerned, patronizing tone.

"It wasn't anything, okay?" says Lily quickly, reddening. "Ask any of the boys yourself. I'm not—"

"I'm sure you've done nothing wrong," Alice assures her, "but it's not healthy, and I don't want you to regret anything later. I just have your best interests—"

"Right," Lily scoffs, looking down. They've reached the stairs, but she keeps on walking; Alice lags behind, letting her go. "Just like how you want the best for every other girl in this school."

Alice tries not to believe her as she walks away.

The prefect meeting the next night is illuminating, if anything. The last one had been Kingsley's to run, but now it's Dorcas Meadowes's turn—and not everyone is willing to accept her authority. She enters flanked by Damocles Belby and Dolores Umbridge; the former Alice can understand, the most decent of her year's Slytherins, but Umbridge surprises Alice. It hits her after the fact: when Meadowes made Head Girl, Umbridge took her vacated prefect post. Of course—with Umbridge, there's always a self-serving reason.

There are jeers from some of the fifth years, led by Regulus Black, Alice discovers as she glances toward their gaggle. His eyes flicker to Remus's for a moment, and a chill runs down her spine: she's never felt comfortable around Sirius's brother. "All right, er—the roll, then," says Meadowes, taking up post at the front of the room. "By house and year. Gryffindor, seventh year: Angela Macmillan and Gideon Prewett?"

"Present," says a cool female voice—Angela, seething in her seat with resentment. Gideon doesn't even bother replying, just inclines his head with a dare in his eyes.

Meadowes mumbles her acknowledgement, her voice trailing off. "Gryffindor, sixth year: Alice Abbott and Remus Lupin?"

"Here," Alice says definitively, as Remus contributes something to the same effect. Meadowes smiles slightly to both of them, only to be booed by Benjy Fenwick and Edgar Bones, the latter of whom is called on next.

Already, it looks to be a long night, and they're not even a full minute in. Roll call passes far too slowly before they move on to the Hogsmeade trip—it's set for next weekend—and evening patrols. "Kingsley and I have agreed that we'd like to encourage inter-house unity, and to that effect—"

There's a small uproar at this particular announcement, punctuated by Carla Edgecombe's stage whisper of, "Oh, lord, I hope I won't be working with that fat cow…"

For the first time all night, Meadowes flares up, her eyes sparking dangerously. "Settle down," she says, her voice soft but commanding. "That's enough."

She is paid no heed—at least, until Kingsley roars, "She said, that's enough!"

Startled into submission, the prefects quiet down; the blotchy color slowly starts to drain from Meadowes's face. "To that end, he and I have assembled a list of partners for you to patrol with—as we don't know your schedules, we'd like you to talk with your partners and sign up for two nights that work for you each next month. The partnership list is posted by the sign-up patrol sheet, if you'll all take a look after the meeting…"

As fate would have it, Alice is with Frank Longbottom, whom she's always gotten on fine with, but Remus is not so lucky, assigned to patrol with Regulus. Shooting Remus a sympathetic look, Alice talks with Frank and chooses their dates, after which he offers to walk her back to her common room. She agrees, waving hello to Dirk as they go—he's the new male prefect for Ravenclaw this year. Just as she and Frank are leaving the classroom, she hears Meadowes softly thank Kingsley for backing her up, and he replies, "I've been saying it for months now; people don't give you enough credit. Think Gideon will come around after patrolling with you?"

"You don't think Lily's upset with me for anything, do you?" Alice asks Frank in earnest as the other prefects go their separate ways. He doesn't reply, just meets her eyes and nods for her to elaborate. "It's just… I asked her today about, er, something Marlene saw her do this morning—nothing bad or anything, just, you know, questionable. She's Lily; she would never… and, well, she lashed out at me a little, said that—that I don't think of her any differently than anyone else at Hogwarts."

Frank sighs, "Alice, you can't blame her for not completely trusting you yet. You've only been her mate for, what, a month? After five years of…"

Alice goes on, picking up anxious steam, "I don't think it's about that, though—I mean, I would understand if it were, but—do you think that she thought she would be prefect, Frank, before last year?"

"Lily? Prefect?" He thinks on it for a moment, that faraway, pondering look in his eyes. "There was some talk in fourth year that she might get it… you've always had higher marks, but she went out of her way to be nice to the Slytherins, Dumbledore always likes that, and she took the way you lot treated her well…"

"We weren't awful to her," Alice argues as they round a corner, reaching the stairs. "I don't defend how we treated her, no, but it wasn't openly hostile—not with me, anyway. All right, Mary did spread a few rumors—where else do you think the one about the Dark Arts came from?—and Marlene would tease her sometimes, and Potter's attention probably embarrassed her, even if he didn't mean for it to… but I tried to be nice to her, even though I didn't understand her friendship with Snape. I wrote her sometimes over the summer, I worked with her in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy…"

Frank waits a moment before answering, collecting his thoughts. "You may not have done anything wrong, Alice, but collectively—you Gryffindors always made things difficult on Lily, and she might have seen you as—a rival of sorts."

"Oh, but there's no rivalry," Alice says, her brow furrowing in a baffled line. "I've always gotten higher marks; it's not a point of contention…"

"To you, it may not be. To her… oh, Alice, it's all right." He wraps his arms around her, and she leans warmly into the hug. "Things will work out with her, I promise." Alice nods, mostly to convince herself, and pulls back quickly. It feels good to hug Frank—really good—and even though there's nothing officially happening between her and Dirk, it feels like it would be disloyal to him to be this close to Frank for too long. She's known Frank most of her life, though, since their parents run in the same circles; shouldn't she be able to be mates with him if she wants to be? What makes befriending Frank any different from befriending James or Remus—who says it has to mean something like what's between Alice and Dirk?

She fingers a lock of her hair; Frank's eyes jump to the movement, and he says, "Curls look nice on you," he remarks—straightforward but sweet.

Blushing, Alice steps out of Frank's arms and resumes their climb to the seventh floor. Frank is commenting on her appearance now? That can't mean he's fixating on some kind of attraction to her, can it? She says, "Thanks. Marlene's been helping me with them… usually, Mary would, but she's having some sort of shift of priorities as of late and, well, won't."

"Ah, well, better Marlene than Mary," says Frank sagely. "You're already blonde; it looks better without any added highlights."

"Frank Longbottom," she scolds gently, giggling, "was that a jibe at one of my best mates?"

"Merely a compliment," Frank clarifies. "Hey, so I was wondering about that Hogsmeade trip we scheduled today. Carol and Dana and I are getting a little group together to go—did you want to come with us?"

This surprises Alice a little—she never would have pegged Frank or Carol as being friends with their housemate Dana Madley—but she finds herself nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, that would be really nice."

That Hogsmeade trip turns out to be a much bigger deal than either of them imagined when Alice accepted Frank's invitation. The flyer in the Gryffindor common room looks innocent enough on its own as Alice tacks it up between a Quidditch practice notice and the new class standings list. Pushing the class standings from her mind for now, she gives the flyer a satisfied once-over: Hogsmeade, October 2nd.

She's then shoved out of the way by a few burly fourth year boys as students start to trickle out of their dormitories for breakfast. At least she's done her job—if she does say so herself, the message is simple but powerful. Or maybe Alice is making an unnecessarily big deal out of it.

It's Wednesday, which means discussing everyone and their mother's love lives over vicious potted plants. "Mary's taking Cattermole, isn't she?" asks Peter, eyeing his knife warily: we're trimming Alihosty roots today, and he's never been handy with a blade.

"Clearly," says Marlene dryly, tipping her head toward Mary. She's working with Reginald and Benjy, the latter of whom is singlehandedly battling their Alihosties as Mary and her date engross each other in conversation.

"Poor Benjy, putting up with so much," says James lightly. His eyes widen, and Alice swallows thickly as he rounds on her and Marlene. "D'you think Lily'd let me take her if I asked?"

Alice is doubtful, but Marlene latches onto the idea. "You know, I think she probably would," she considers, James's face lighting up more by the second. "Aren't you two basically dating now, anyway?"

"Well, not exactly…" hedges Peter. Marlene's face falls a little: the idea probably doesn't seem so likely now that their relationship isn't a sure thing to her. "You're just friends, right, James? With a couple of benefits."

"What kinds of benefits?" prompts Marlene, still a bit intrigued.

"Occasional hugging benefits, and not rowing benefits, and giving up my bed benefits," mutters James, visibly disgruntled. Marlene and Alice exchange a look that the boys are quick enough to catch. "Yeah, yeah, it's not how it looks—she's coming off her Dreamless Sleep Potion and needs a place to crash with heavy sleepers who snore. I'm bedding with Sirius while she's with us."

This is definitely not the explanation Alice had expected. She's surprised that Lily trusts James enough to confide this in him, even more shocked that she would keep it from the other girls—to protect them? Suddenly, Alice feels more than a little guilty for confronting her about the dormitory last Monday. After Snape, her parents… "Keep your voice down; remember, Veronica Smethley is less than two meters away from you," Alice implores—after everything, they at least owe it to Lily to protect what little privacy she has left.

"You should ask Lily anyway," Marlene says hastily to James. "Even if she's not interested—and I'm starting to think that she is interested, from the way she talks about you—you can always go as friends, and that's more time with her, at least. Have anyone in mind to ask, Pete?" she adds.

"Oh, er…" Peter looks flustered by Marlene's question—like Remus and James, he's never had a girlfriend before and probably doesn't plan on getting one. "Well, I was thinking of asking Siobhan Flynn from Ravenclaw, but—"

"You can't ask her to Hogsmeade, Peter!" erupts James. Veronica Smethley is staring, so he lowers his voice and goes on in a frantic whisper, "Haven't you learned anything from Sirius? You can't ask the younger girls now; you'll exhaust the dating pool, and then who will you go with in seventh year? Upperclassmen now, underclassmen later."

Peter rolls his eyes. "So says the bloke who's been holding out for a girl he'll never get with," he scoffs.

James turns all sorts of colors and says merely, "I haven't been 'holding out' for Lily at all. You know how close I got with Dana Madley last year. If I'd been interested…"

"You're going with Cresswell again, then, Alice?" says Peter over James's mumbled embarrassment.

"No, I'm actually—Frank Longbottom asked me to go with him and Davies and Madley."

"What, no date with Cresswell?" asks Marlene with interest.

"Shut it, Marlene," she replies, blushing. "Dirk and I are just mates—that's it!"

"Right, like Black and I are just mates, hmm?"

A hush falls over the four of them at the open allusion to their relationship; rattled, James nearly cuts off his finger and swears loudly. "I thought you stopped seeing him," Alice says slowly, crossing to the boys' side of the table and mending James's finger with a flick of her wand.

"I may not be seeing him now, but that doesn't make everything platonic overnight," Marlene shrugs. "He can take whomever he'd like to Hogsmeade, but we can't just call the whole thing off and just be mates; it doesn't work like that, Alice."

Alice doesn't want to believe her, but her words stay with Alice all through class and into the first break. It's only up in the dormitory when Em takes her mind off it, remarking, "Class standings are posted in the common room."

Lily tenses immediately; sensing this, Moonshine leaps out of her lap and into Alice's, yowling. "Professor McGonagall put them up last night, I think," says Mary, unusually interested. "They go by O.W.L.s—like, the number you got, marks for the classes you're taking this year—that's labeled 'sixth year initial'—and then 'fifth year final' is your overall standing that accounts for, like, your marks and the number of classes you took. That's the important one; that's the score that factors in to determine valedictorian and salutatorian at graduation."

Alice is only a little nervous—all right, no, she's quite nervous. "Did you happen to glimpse our ranks while you were checking yours, Mary?"

"Relax, Alice, you did fine—you're second. I'm not sure who's first; I asked Reg and Benjy in Herbology, and, like, they say it isn't a Hufflepuff, either… they only list Gryffindors in our common room, you know." Alice exhales, her heart rate slowing again. "Lene, you're sixteenth; Em, twenty-second… and Lily, you're eleventh."

"Eleventh," Lily repeats.

Alice suddenly remembers that the first qualification to become valedictorian is to have been one of the top ten students every year. She wants to say something to tell Lily it's all right, but Alice don't know how to phrase it without sounding condescending, so she quickly changes the subject: "Remember when we were first years and worried about just passing our classes?"

Marlene laughs derisively. "You know, I lied that summer—I did fail Herbology, with a D."

"Out it comes, four years later," says Em, absentmindedly scratching behind Aquarius's ears. Marlene glares at her; the rest of them burst into laughter—even Lily.

"Those were the days," Alice reminisces. "Remember the train ride? I came with Marlene, since my parents knew hers, and we ended up in a compartment with Dana Madley, Gilderoy Lockhart, and Veronica Smethley—"

"—I still reckon you don't like Ver just because she accidentally spilled pumpkin juice on your only new pair of robes, and you had to find a second year to use Scourgify because you didn't know any magic—" continues Mary, grinning.

Marlene rolls her eyes, but she's unconsciously fingering the hem of her robes. "Hey, I didn't know who Dorcas Meadowes was when I asked her—it wasn't my fault that she was a right little bitch when she was prepubescent! She wasn't halfway decent like she is now!"

"I didn't know you think Meadowes is decent," says Mary—the wall between them is apparently starting to crumble.

She shrugs, flicking back her hair. "Well, nowadays she doesn't go around hexing first years for fun. Lucky that the Prewett twins were in the compartment one down from theirs and knew the countercurse."

"Remember how Fabian used to hate Meadowes?" says Lily—Alice is glad to see that she's perking up. "He went off about how all Slytherins are evil scum and would have gone on for a good quarter-hour if Snape and I hadn't been sharing the compartment with him and Gideon since we left the boys'."

"Meanwhile, Em was getting into a rather noisy row with some Gryffindor third years for insulting her height, and Mary was preoccupied bonding with all her future boyfriends—not that you knew it at the time, Mare," chuckles Marlene.

Alice sighs contentedly, stretching out on her four-poster and letting Moonshine scamper back to Em and Aquarius. "We were so different back then, you know? Mary, you were a tomboy, of all things, and Em was so outgoing…"

Em says nothing, but the corners of her lips turn up; Mary fiddles with her split ends and smiles. "The boys were, like, identical, though, don't you think? Except Sirius and Em were inseparable, and James used not to follow Lily around—"

"Whatever happened between you and Black?" asks Marlene, rolling onto her back and yawning. "You two were always inseparable, and then…"

"He got too interested," says Em airily. The rest of them stare. "At the worst possible time."

Mary contemplates, "I'm glad you weren't mates with us before now, Lily. Not to be rude… it's just that, like, it's only a matter of time before you and James get together, and it would feel a bit like incest if you were always on the inside."

She's hit full on with Lily's denial ("James and I are not getting together!") and Marlene's indignation ("Black and I are like incest now?") and ducks for cover behind her hangings, laughing. Em and Alice exchange a look, and Alice tries and fails to stifle her giggles as she shakes her head and almost, almost, smiles.

Greta, Em… Marlene. It gets Alice thinking enough that she flags Peter down after lunch—he's just as likely as the others to have answers and the one Alice trusts most not to tell Sirius about what's to follow. "Can you keep a secret?" she asks first, just to be sure, once they've locked themselves in the boys' dormitory; he tells her that the others have taken a trip to the kitchens without him. It's more than a bit messy, and Alice cringes with disgust as she clears a food-free space on what she assume is Sirius's bed to sit.

"As long as it's for a good reason," he says honestly. He's a lot more confident outside James and Sirius's shadow, and he carries a set jaw and a steady gaze.

"Depends on how you look at it," Alice admit. "Sirius would probably want to know about this, but then, it's better for everyone else that he not. It's… it's about Em, Peter."

Something tightens in his expression, and Peter nods, his eyes fluttering shut. "What did she say about him?"

"Peter—" she starts, doubtful.

"Her exact words, Alice—please."

There's something desperate about the way he's looking at her, so she complies, however unnecessary it feels. "She said, er, that he got interested in her at a bad time."

"That's what I thought," says Peter as he starts to pace, and he cuts off her questions, gaining momentum, speaking faster now. "He didn't get interested in her romantically, he just—noticed."

"What are you talking about?" Alice asks, her interest sparking. "Noticed what?"

"Did you really think it was a coincidence that Em and Sirius drifted apart in fourth year?" Peter suggests, his voice getting higher. "That it was right around the time when Emmeline drifted apart from all of us, that it was right around the time when Sirius and Marlene—"

He breaks off abruptly and meets Alice's eyes again. "Oh, god." He doesn't seem willing to tell her the details, so she doesn't push it and just waits for him to go on. "Oh, bloody hell, I think it was her."

"But—"

Peter shakes his head and slowly sits on the edge of his bed. "I won't tell Sirius—there's no use talking to Sirius about it—but you really, really ought to talk to Emmeline."

"What do you know, Pettigrew?" Alice demands. It's just like it was during Sirius and Marlene's fight in the common room; she doesn't lose her cool often, but enough cruelty and lies can set her off. "What aren't you telling me? Why won't you—"

"I'm sorry, Alice, I want to, but it's not my place to jump to conclusions and then spread rumors about it," Peter sighs. "Ask her what happened, and don't take 'nothing' for an ans—"

He breaks off and Alice jumps as the door flies open; behind it, James is stowing his wand away and muttering, "God, how paranoid is Remus—what are you two doing in here?"

"Brainstorming for the Herbology essay. Alice had a few good ideas," Peter lies smoothly. "Where are Remus and Sirius?"

"Still in the kitchens, I expect," says James wearily. "I hung back to ask Lily to Hogsmeade—she said no."

Alice shakes her head sympathetically. "That's tough, Potter, I'm sorry."

He notices her properly for the first time since he's come in here, taking his eyes off of Peter. "She's not mad at you, you know—Lily. I heard that you two got into a bit of a disagreement last Monday—"

"Word travels fast here at Hogwarts," says Peter darkly.

"—But she was just on edge about people knowing she's been staying up here; she says she didn't mean it." James smiles at her weakly, stepping forward—Alice assumes with a jolt that she's not sitting on Sirius's bed, but James shakes his head and laughs. "You really think Lily's that messy when she sleeps up here? I'm sharing this one with Sirius. Budge up."

Alice gets up, casting one last look at the food crumbs all over James and Sirius's bedspread. "I'll just be going, then… good luck with the essay, Peter."

Hurrying out of the dormitory and down the stairs, Alice finds the other girls gathered around the fire and join them with a pleasant smile. Marlene and Mary seem to have made up, but that's only to be expected; feuds rarely last long between any of them. "Look who's in the wrong dormitory now," says Em; Alice glares playfully at her but says nothing more, not wanting to bring her suspicions up just yet.

"You knew about that?" asks Marlene incredulously, glancing for a fraction of a second at Lily, then back.

Mary sighs and draws her knees up to her chest—she's sitting in an armchair with her feet propped up on the cushion. "Why do I get the feeling that I'm out of the loop?"

"I believe that Lily can do the explaining," Alice says, smiling at her; the look she gives Alice back is mortified but reconciliatory. Alice thinks back to something Em told her once—that she's always the first person to try to smooth everything out—and hopes that she's better than Em claimed.

It's been a weird week, and Alice is only halfway through.