CW: Underage drinking

My parents were extremely strict on underage drinking. Ever since I was old enough to understand what alcohol was, they'd made me swear to not drink it until I was seventeen and a half.

Seventeen and a half because my mum didn't want me to drink until I was eighteen, the legal age for muggles, and my dad didn't want me to drink until I was seventeen, the legal age for wizards. So, they'd created a compromise.

Because of this, I'd promised them and myself to follow that rule, and that my first drink would be the night before I left on the Hogwarts Express for my seventh year.

But here I was, one month short of sixteen, downing my sixth glass of whatever drink the seventh-year Gryffindors had served us, because Sirius had already kissed four girls during spin the bottle, and the drink made it somewhat manageable for me to witness.

I'd had to kiss girls as well, but none of them seemed nearly as keen to kiss me as they were to kiss Sirius. They'd just quickly peck my lips, but all of them would full-on snog Sirius in front of everyone.

I downed my seventh drink as Emmeline Vance kissed Sirius for the second time. My head was swimming, so I could barely concentrate on Sirius anymore, which was good because the jealousy that had been burning through me at the start of the night was completely gone.

Everyone who was in a relationship had opted out of the game, and so had Lily because she didn't want to kiss random boys. Since Lily had chosen not to play, James had as well, because he didn't want to kiss anyone other than Lily.

But all that had happened at ten, when the Valentine's party had begun. I had no idea what time it was now, but I knew it was well past midnight, and I couldn't think straight.

I was sitting cross-legged in the spin-the-bottle circle, but I wasn't really playing anymore. I was just sitting there, dizzy, nauseous, and not thinking about anything at all.

That was a once off and Mum and Dad do not need to know about it, I thought to myself the next afternoon as soon as I opened my eyes. I'd only gotten to sleep around dawn and had slept all morning.

"You alright, mate?" came a voice, and I looked to where the source was coming from. It was James, sitting on his own bed.

"Yeah, good," I said. My voice didn't sound slurred like it probably would have last night if I'd said a single word to anyone.

"I noticed you drank a bit last night," said James, standing up and placing a glass of water next to my bed.

"Oh, yeah..." I said. I didn't think any of my friends had been paying enough attention to me to notice that. "I was just being social, you know..."

"Sirius drank a lot, too," said James, sighing. "You were both out of it this morning, I had to take you both to bed."

"Sirius was drinking?" I said, surprised. I'd been so focused on not focusing on Sirius that I hadn't noticed him drink at all.

"Oh, yeah," said James, nodding towards Sirius's four-poster. "He was stoned. He's still in bed."

"Right..." I said. "I might go back to bed, actually."

"Alright," said James. "That might be good for you. I'll see you later, alright? Make sure to drink lots of water."

I felt like saying, OK, Mum, but I just thanked him and pulled my duvet over my head.

Sirius and I both woke up around the same time later, around dinner time, so James and Peter were in the Great Hall, and we were alone in the dormitory.

"I could never go out with a girl," said Sirius after we'd both woken up. "They all kissed me... weirdly. I didn't like it, at all."

"It wasn't that bad," I said. "I mean, they didn't all love me as much as they love you, so they all gave me tiny little kisses. I didn't get the love that an attractive person would get."

Sirius snorted. "I don't know why you'd say that, because you are ridiculously attractive."

"Your girlfriends don't agree," I said, shrugging.

"They're blind, then," said Sirius, climbing out of his four-poster to come and sit next to me. "And they're not my girlfriends. They're girls we were forced to kiss."

"Not forced," I said. "You could have chosen to not play."

"You could have chosen to not play, too," said Sirius. "You kissed girls, too."

"I didn't make out with them!" I said.

"They made out with me, not the other way around!" said Sirius. "It was nowhere near as good as it is with you..."

And just for saying that, I kissed him. I'd been wanting to since the morning after the prank because he was a good kisser, he was hot, and I loved him. As Sirius began to kiss me back, two months of a tense break in the relationship melted away and it was like we'd never broken up.

It was probably the longest amount of time we ever made out, and I only pulled away from Sirius when I heard footsteps on the steps to our dormitory. He couldn't hear it, though, so he was confused at why I'd pulled away suddenly.

"Sorry," he said, "did you not want to..."

"James and Peter," I said. "Quick, go back to your own bed."

Sirius's eyes widened, and he rushed over to his own four-poster and sat down, just as the door to the dormitory opened and James and Peter stepped in.

"Hey," said James. "Are you two hungry? We brought you some dinner."

He placed two plates of sausages and vegetables on the table in the middle of the dormitory, and my stomach rumbled as Sirius and I made our way toward it.

"And water," said James, moving our water glasses to the table as well.

"Thanks, James," said Sirius, taking a sip of water as I left to go to the Shrieking Shack. "You're a legend."

The next morning, slept after transforming back into my human form and was woken up by the sunlight, and I remembered that it was Monday, and I had to either go to the Hospital Wing or go back to class. The Valentine's weekend felt like it hadn't been real at all, and on that Monday morning I wasn't even sure that my kiss with Sirius had been real, after all that had happened in the last two months, from the prank, leading up to playing spin the bottle and getting myself drunk so I didn't have to see him making out with so many girls.

Madam Pomfrey came into the shack soon and took me to the Hospital Wing. I wasn't badly hurt, just really tired, so I went to my first class for the day after lunch. It was Defence Against the Dark Arts, and the teacher (whose name I didn't actually know because we'd gotten a different teacher every year) was extremely annoyed that I'd missed half the lesson because he'd just finished giving the rest of the class a really important debrief on how the Defence Against the Dark Arts O.W.L was going to work and didn't want to repeat it for me.

"We'll explain it to him later, sir," James offered, and the teacher seemed OK with that, and let me sit down. I sat on the end seat of the table, next to Peter. James was on the other side of him, and Sirius was next to James, so it was hard to look at him subtly out of the corner of my eye, to confirm whether our kiss last night had been real or not.

It was impossible to look at him without making it obvious though, so I had to bite the inside of my cheek and look at the blackboard as my thoughts swirled around my head as if they were in a blender.

It was real, right? I hadn't dreamt that I'd snogged Sirius for the first time in two months, and absolutely loved it?

No, I couldn't have dreamt it, because I hadn't slept the night before. It had been a full moon. I'd snogged Sirius before I went to the Shrieking Shack. It was real. And I wanted to do it again.

After Defence Against the Dark Arts, I finally got the chance to look at Sirius as we walked to History of Magic. He was smiling at me, and that was the only confirmation I needed. Sirius and I were back together.

The first week of being back with Sirius romantically was... interesting. He was kind of nervous whenever we were alone as if he was worried he'd stuff up again. While part of me thought it was kind of cute, the other part of me was worried about the same thing. If something like the prank with Snape ever happened again, and someone actually got hurt, I didn't know what I'd do. Kill myself and Sirius, maybe.

I noticed we were talking a lot less and snogging a lot more than we had before the prank.

Before the prank, we'd had a nice balance of talking and snogging, but now it seemed like kissing each other was our only form of communication when we were alone.

Two weeks after Valentine's Day was the Gryffindor Quidditch team's game against Hufflepuff, so in the week leading up to that, I barely saw Sirius, or James, because they trained every single bloody day.

Thankfully they won the game because James in a boastful mood was a lot more tolerable than him in a sulky mood.

And Gryffindor winning the game also put Sirius in a good mood, and he was a lot more flirtatious and confident than usual when we got half an hour alone in the dormitory while James had to do his Quidditch captain duties, and Peter, as usual, tagged along with him.

"I think I look hot in these robes, don't you?" said Sirius, standing in front of the mirror in the dormitory, playing with the loose fabric of his scarlet Quidditch robes.

"You look sweaty," I said. "I never thought I'd see someone sweating in February."

"It's the end of February," said Sirius. "It'll be Spring tomorrow."

"No, it won't," I said. "It's the twenty-eighth today."

"Yeah, and there are twenty-eight days in February, is there not?" said Sirius, not taking his eyes from his own reflection.

"It's a leap year, Sirius," I said.

"Is it?" said Sirius. "You look at calendars too much."

Well, I have to track the dates, I thought. It's not like I have much of a choice.

I didn't say that though, I just said, "Maybe I do", and walked over to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, looking over his shoulder at us in the mirror. He looked so perfect, even if he was all sweaty and his cheeks were pink.

But then again, anyone would look stunning next to me.

March came soon after the Quidditch game, and so did my sixteenth birthday. I spent the night before my birthday lying awake and contemplating how old I was.

When I was younger, I'd always seen sixteen as this old age that was practically an adult. It was the last year of childhood, after all.

I eventually went to sleep and woke up to the alarm the next morning. Of course, my birthday had to be on a school day, so I couldn't spend the day doing whatever I wanted with my friends. And I had to patrol with Lily that night, so we weren't even able to have my party on my actual birthday.

I climbed out of my bed, ready for my friends to come and force me to go out to the Great Hall so they could embarrass me, but they weren't in the dormitory. They were gone.

Had I slept in? I thought, looking at the clock. But it was only five past seven. I looked around the room, wondering if they were hiding somewhere, ready to jump out and scare me, but they were nowhere to be seen.

One thing did catch my eye, though. A single piece of paper on the table. I walked over to it and picked it up. It contained a short note:

Remus,

Happy birthday! Meet us in the Honeydukes cellar as soon as you wake up. We may or may not have a birthday present for you.

From your fellow marauders

Why the Honeydukes cellar? I thought, but I binned the note and ran out into the halls of Hogwarts, then downstairs to the statue of the humped witch. I rushed through the tunnel and didn't stop moving until I reached the Honeydukes cellar, where I gasped, taken aback.

Standing in front of me was a stag, a large black dog, and a rat.