Karma couldn't have picked a better time to hit Lily with a cold, she decided. Today would be the last Hogsmeade visit before the winter holidays, and Lily was hoping to spend it at the Three Broomsticks with her two closest friends, drinking butterbeers and just being in each others' company, all in the spirit of Christmas. But ever since the snowball fight she had had last week—during the first snow of the season—she'd been feeling slightly out of it. It was after yesterday's Care of Magical Creatures lesson, which was spent outside, when Lily really began feeling terrible.

She had insisted to her roommates that she felt fine and could handle a day outside, but they thought otherwise. So, she was stuck inside Hogwarts for an entire day by herself with an unruly craving for butterbeer. She pulled the quilt off her bed and grabbed her Transfiguration homework and headed downstairs to the common room, in hopes of starting her homework for the weekend.

James Potter, on the other hand, had other ideas. He, in turn, was banned from the village for this one weekend because he was caught out after curfew last night and McGonagall was furious. She forbade him from leaving the castle, because this was, so to speak, the "last straw." James, of course, being James, wasn't going to go by her rules. He planned to sneak into Hogsmeade using the secret passage behind the one-eyed witch and spend the day with his mates.

Grabbing his invisibility cloak and the Marauders' Map, he headed downstairs. Strolling comfortably through the common room, he spotted a head of dark red hair on a couch near the fire. Evans, he immediately thought. An evil grin spread across his face. He raced to put the invisibility cloak and map back in his trunk and returned to the nearly empty common room. He took a seat on the other side of the couch she was on.

"All right, Evans?" he said.

"Sod off, Potter," she replied, wiping her nose with a tissue, without taking her eyes off her textbook.

"No, I don't think I will." And after a pause he said, "what have you got there?"

"Transfiguration homework."

"Oh. I've done it already. Perhaps I could help?" He smirked.

"I don't need your help, Potter."

"I think you do." He glanced at the parchment on which she was writing her essay on. "That's –ia, not –ium­." He pointed to the word on the parchment.

She tactlessly threw her wad of tissue at him. "Go away."

James ignored the tissue as it fell off the couch and onto the floor and smirked in satisfaction as Lily corrected the word he had pointed out.

"So, what are you stuck here for?" James said after a long pause, trying to make conversation.

"I'm sick. Isn't it obvious?"

"You don't look very sick. To me, you look just as beautiful as you do every day."

"Sod off."

"You won't say thank you? All right, I can handle it. Incase you're curious, I'm not at Hogsmeade because McGonagall caught me out past curfew last night," he said almost proudly.

"That's nothing to be happy about."

"Actually, it is, as I get to spend my whole day with you."

Lily sniffed in response. Finishing up her essay, she finally looked up at James. "Look, Potter, I'm not feeling quite right at the moment and I'm tired and I have an unbearable craving for butterbeer and I'm sleep deprived and I'm going to go upstairs so you just go do what you were planning on doing and sod off," she said very quickly. She gathered her things and got up to leave. She was halfway up the stairs to her dormitory, when she heard James speak again.

"Butterbeer, eh?"

Lily wasn't quite sure what stopped her in her tracks, but she turned around to look at James. "Yes, butterbeer."

James smiled coyly. "I could get you some butterbeer if you'd like..."

Lily's eyes widened and she slowly descended the stairs, as if in a trance. "Would this involve anything illegal or anything that would get us in trouble?"

James shook his head.

"All right, then. Let me just drop my stuff off in my room." Lily rushed upstairs to drop her things on her bed. She ran back downstairs at the speed of lightning, still not quite sure why she just agreed to let James Potter take her to get some butterbeer. Halfway down the stairs, she considered PMS as a cause of her unexplained behavior, which caused a whole new train of thought, but put the thought aside to ponder later. Right now all she could think of was butterbeer.

Finally down at the common room and still wrapped in her quilt, James led her out of the room and through the deserted corridors.

"Where are we going?" Lily inquired.

"The kitchens."

"I've never been there before..."

James chuckled. They walked in silence.

Finally arriving at the portrait of the fruit, Lily looked around and wondered exactly how to get in. James grinned at Lily's cluelessness and tickled the pear in the painting. The portrait swung open and Lily's mouth resembled a perfect letter O.

"Ladies first," James said, holding his arm out. Lily entered and James followed, only to be greeted by a house elf.

"What may Tilly do for you today, Mister Potter, sir?" the house elf addressed James.

"A dozen butterbeers will do."

"A dozen? Are you mad?" Lily gaped at James.

"Don't worry, they're not all for you. I need some, too, you know."

Lily wondered just how many he expected her to drink.

Tilly the house elf brought the dozen butterbeers to James still in the packaging. "Here or common room?" he inquired.

"Uh...common room," Lily decided. It was considerably warmer by the fire place.

James picked up the case of drinks with ease and they walked back to the common room.

Lily settled herself on the couch in the empty common room and took a butterbeer out of the case as James came downstairs tugging on his jumper. He sat on the couch next to her and took a butterbeer as well.

"Cheers." They struck bottles and drank the warm liquid without mercy.

Two hours later, Lily was considerably drunk, and she and James had discussed everything under the sun, from fears to favorite foods. Two butterbeers were left in the case, and they each took one. They downed the last of the sacred drink and continued their pointless conversations. Even after the butterbeer was finished, they didn't stop talking until they both fell asleep, Lily's head in James's lap.

A/N: In celebration of HBP I present you this.

Butterbeers for everyone! D