The cold weather still hung over Hogwarts. Deadly icicles hung off the sides of the castle and sheets of ice lined the roof. Any journey outside had to be faced with a thick woollen cloak and an enchanted hand warmer, which is why Lily had spent most of the start of her year having to coax Kara and Sasha away from their warm fires and excuses of learning the herbology lessons from the textbooks in the common room.
On this particular January afternoon Lily has found the two surrounded by empty mugs in the kitchens and happily sipping on another while a house elf brought them a giant chocolate cake. After a lot of bribery, she finally had them on their way to the greenhouses and munching on chocolate bars.
"I think having to learn anything in sub-zero temperatures should be outlawed" Kara cried, burrowing deeper into her cloak.
"You do also think learning of any kind should be outlawed though" Lily pointed out as they started to trek down the frosted hill trying not to slip.
"I learn through experience, my chum" Kara gazed poetically into the distance. Before Lily smacked her with her copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi loud shouting made them jump and turn around. Three Marauders had appeared in the distance, charging down the hill towards them.
"WE'RE GOING TO BEAT HIM!" Sirius gasped as he pulled James along faster, the two almost slipping over multiple times on the frozen ground.
"What the..." Lily began to curse when she noticed a black and red ball rolling behind them.
"PADS HE'S GAINING" James was in stitches, choking on laughter as he tried to breathe. Just before they reached the bottom of the hill the ball caught up and tor their feet from underneath them, leaving James, Sirius, and Remus in a heap covered in snow. Once they were still you could make out the ball was actually a very stricken looking Peter.
Sirius leapt up and started doing cartwheels towards them. "BEST GAME OF ROLL THE RAT EVER!"
"Why haven't I heard of Roll the Rat?" Kara met him in the middle and high fived him.
Lily stared stony faced into the distance as they all ran past, even until Peter had shuffled by red faced and half dead.
"I don't see how you can't see the fun in them" Sasha snapped Lily out of her trance of Marauder hatred and they continued towards the classroom.
"I don't see how you can't see the stupid in them" Lily retorted, trying to change the subject "Ok Sash, this is what's known as a lesson, and this is a classroom" Lily said in a stupid tone as Sasha hit her with her bag.
"Anyway, technically it's a greenhouse" Sasha pointed out, dodging Lily's swinging back and flinging open the greenhouse door, almost bumping into a Screaming Sunplant as she dashed in.
"Still, how many times have you been in here?"
"I go to lessons" Sasha said sounding hurt, but Lily just gave her a funny look "Sometimes" getting another strange look "OK, I've been to class! Happy now!"
"No." Lily murmured, frantically searching the classroom.
"Why?" Sasha went over what she'd said to find out where the joke ended.
"Because Kara's gone and sat next to the Marauders that's why" She growled as she stormed over and sat as far away from them on her seat until she practically fell off leaving Sasha to awkwardly follow her.
"Now shoot with me with the killing curse and call me Doris!" Sirius exclaimed, getting a lot of weirded out looks. "If it isn't my best friend Lily Evans!"
"Not exactly" She sighed.
"Is she not in a very good mood today?" Peter asked precariously, still wiping sweat off his forehead. from his roll down the hill.
"Well she was until she had to sit next to you lot," Kara explained.
"Why-ever not?" Sirius asked sweetly, fluttering his eyelashes in her direction "We're her bestest friends in the world"
"Well, let's go back to the custard incident, and the ice cube incident, and the broccoli incident, and the broomstick incident..." Kara began to say.
"Oh no! The broomstick incident was my best work yet!" Sirius cried, but changed his answer after a deadly glance from Lily "I mean – oh I do regret the broomstick incident very much, I mean it wasn't funny at all watching Evans being constantly jabbed with a broomstick all day whilst not even McGonagall could stop it" Sirius said in the most innocent voice possible, trying to keep in fits of laughter as James sat grinning next to him.
"Find something funny Potter?" Lily spat out his last name as if it was the dirtiest word she could say.
"Only how dull everything else seems compared to your beauty" James shot back.
"That's probably your worst yet" She sighed, the Marauder pickup lines were enough to make anyone sick on their own, let alone when you have ten coming at you a day. The one thing that was admirable about James in Lily's eyes was his sheer dedication to annoying her.
"I thought it was pretty good" He mumbled, hoping Sirius didn't let out that he'd been working on that one for over a week.
"Don't worry Jamesy-kins, you're still beautiful in my eyes" Sirius pulled James' stall closer to his and patted him on the back "Some people can't appreciate the perfect specimen of a human being"
"Oh my God really? Where is he?" Lily exaggerated looking around the greenhouse anywhere but James.
"You joke now, Miss Evans, but one day my match making skills will draw the two of you love birds together" Sirius wiggled his eyebrows at her as James face palmed and started turning red.
"You do and I'll set a finger eating shrew on you" Lily threatened.
"OH NO!" Sirius exclaimed sarcastically, but Lily just glared at him "OK then, where are you going to get a finger eating shrew, eh?"
"You really don't listen in class do you?"
"Now class, I'm going to hand out a pot containing a finger eating shrew to each pair, be careful not to wind it up though, or you will lose a finger" The young Mrs Sprout called across the classroom.
"Oh God" Sirius gasped as Lily chuckled to herself, stopping when she remembered who she was talking to.
The lesson then flew by with Sirius flinching any time Lily moved her shrew around, trying to feed it growth potion through a pipette was not going so well when the plant was a lot more interested in the fingers holding the pipette. Somehow the class made it to the end of the lesson with all fingers in tact, even Peter with his many near misses, and they started trudging up the snowy hill back to the castle.
As Lily, Sasha, and Kara reached the doors they bumped into Hagrid, the half giant gameskeeper, dragging a large sack out of the main doors.
"Hi Hagrid" They all called, scaring him and making him drop the sack, a mass of raw steaks from the kitchens spilling out the top and attracting the Marauders over.
"'ello all of you" Hagrid grinned, recovering from the shock and scooping steaks back into the bag "I'd'er thought yeh'd all be huddled up in that common room o' yours"
"Herbology" Sirius groaned "I swear by seventh year one of these plants will have eaten me" Lily rolled her eyes at him, shuffling further to the door but not wanting to be rude to Hagrid.
"Never been a fan o' that to be quite honest, don' see the point in keepin summat that can't even move around. All potted up like that, it aint right" Hagrid noticed the group shivering in the snow "Where are my manners, yeh should all come back to the hut, I'll make yeh all a cup o' tea"
Hagrid had always been a fan of the Marauders; they kept the Slytherins from messing around in his vegetable patch and taunting the animals he cared for, and Lily had often met with Hagrid in the hut to show him different charms for growing pumpkins and protecting pens, even with the unpredictable nature of the pink umbrella Hagrid used which contained the wand that was snapped after he was expelled.
Shielded from the now extremely heavy snowstorm by the enormous Hagrid, the group made their way down to his small hut, the seven of them plus Hagrid barely all cramming in. They awkwardly sat crushed side by side on the two benches nibbling on a slightly burnt fruitcake while Hagrid made tea and told them about the trouble he'd been having with the gnomes that were working their way into the grounds.
"O' course, the cold weather's been keeping 'em off so far, but the little blighters do keep comin' back. They can see the smoke from my cabin, yeh see, want some o' the warm" Hagrid smiled to himself as he poured out the tea, he'd always found the grumpy little gnomes quite funny.
"We can always help you with the gnomes Hagrid" James suggested, happily accepting the hot mug and warming up his fingers "I've always had to sort out the gnomes in my garden"
"Oh yeah" Sirius groaned "The highlight of my summer was almost having my fingers eaten by the little devils"
"Shame it was only almost" Lily remarked, dunking her fruit cake into her tea to soften it. Hagrid laughed off her comment like she wasn't being serious and carried on.
"How are things going as a prefect, anyway?" He asked James and Lily. James becoming a prefect was a constant source of disgrace from Sirius, who tried to ignore the matter as much as possible. Lily, however, couldn't have been prouder, and sat up in excitement.
"It's been brilliant Hagrid" She beamed "We've been helping McGonagall round up the first years and direct them around the castle, and the bathroom is amazing" James couldn't help but agree with that, the prefect bathroom had a huge bath that could pass as a swimming pool, and hundreds of golden taps with any scented soap you could think of. He once snuck the Marauders in there with bowls of Honeydukes sweets and held a pool party.
James' favourite part, however, was the fact that for an hour a week every Wednesday he and Lily had to do rounds of various parts of the school to make sure there weren't any students messing around, and sometimes checking Peeves wasn't turning classrooms upside-down. For that one hour Lily was forced to listen to James' every word, and he was throwing all the compliments and jokes in as he could.
"It has been surprisingly ok" James admitted, ignoring the sniggers from Sirius and Remus – Peter was already on his fifth slice of cake and hadn't heard anything they were saying.
"Oh yeah, James has been loving the perks of the job" Sirius winked at James.
"Well I'm proud of the both of yeh" Hagrid beamed, pulling Fang away from Peter as he shuffled past to grab the last slice of fruit cake "Crikey, is that the time? You better be off to the feast or Filch'll be on yeh"
Hagrid ushered the group out, slung his crossbow onto his back, and headed out into the forest with the steaks, never saying what he was feeding in there.
Now holding their arms up to get through the snow again the group forced their way up to the castle, stopping for a break when they finally burst through the doors, coming face to face with none other than Regulus Black and Barty Crouch jr.
"Surprising, I didn't think I'd bump into such a large group of dimwits this evening" Barty remarked at the seven of them as they brushed snow off their faces, making Regulus snigger.
"I do wish I didn't have such an embarrassing family" Regulus sighed, eying Sirius as he glared daggers at them "A Gryffindor brother, you should have heard our mother when she found out, couldn't look at him for months, our father still doesn't talk to him you know"
"Trust me, we're all grateful for that" Sirius said, starting to walk past them with the rest of their group, but was stopped by Barty's outstretched arm clutching his wand, making Sirius immediately whip out his.
"We're just going to, er, be on our way" Kara stuttered, pushing Sasha and Lily the other way and running off up the stairs. She was uneasy being so close to a member of the Black family given their family's history.
"Back off Crouch" James warned pulling Sirius away from his wand and drawing his cautiously "We all know you can't do anything, do you really think your father would keep his job if they found out about what you get up to?"
"It's not like you can do anything with that wand anyway" Barty sneered, lowering his in defeat "You're nothing but a blood traitor, just like your friends" he gestured over to Remus and Peter who were hiding in the doorway trying not to get involved.
The two of them started to back away when Professor McGonagall walked out of the Great Hall nibbling the end of a scone to find James and Sirius holding up their wands to the Slytherings.
"James Potter! Sirius Black!" She exclaimed shooing off Regulus and Barty, who beamed at James and Sirius over their shoulders as they walked off, and ushered the two Marauders up to her office, ignoring Peter and Remus' attempts to explain.
"I will not have members of my house fighting in the corridors" She shook her head as she wrote up their detention slips "I'm not going to act like I'm not surprised, but I am ashamed"
"Professor they insul…" James tried to explain but McGonagall cut them off.
"There are no excuses Potter, not in times like this, so you think it's wise to widen the void between Slytherin house and the rest of them?" James and Sirius shook their heads and stared at the floor "Exactly, you will serve your detentions with Filch tomorrow evening" She handed them the slips and dismissed them.
"We definitely don't deserve a detention, they started it" He muttered and he and James walked into Filch's office to come face to face with none other than Severus Snape.
"What is this rat bag doing here" Sirius asked furiously.
"Same reason for you, breaking the rules, I caught him snooping around the dungeons when he weren't supposed to" Filch snapped "You're already five minutes late so come on, everyone else has been sent to do greenhouse clear up, you'll be in the Great Hall. Where are the others?" Filch croaked at them
"Others?" James looked around and counted the four Marauders just as the girls came into the room.
"Uh yeah, running huh?" Lily tried to explain to the shocked faces.
"I thought the only running you'd been doing was the running away with my heart" James winked over to her and got only a mildly disgusted face in return.
"Enough of that" Filch hissed "Running up my stairs, traipsing snow everywhere, it's not right"
Lily ducked her head, nervously rolling up her robes. She'd only been in one other detention in her life and that was when Kara had dragged her down to the kitchens at night for her birthday feast and Peeves had found them on their way back, calling Filch to them when they wouldn't hand over any of Kara's birthday cake.
"I'm assuming you were throwing pies at each other or something else of the Neanderthal IQ level" Severus groaned, not even looking at James and Sirius.
"Defending ourselves against your little friends actually" James snapped as Sirius glared on clenching his fists.
"Makes a change from checking each other for fleas then" Severus rolled his eyes.
"Why you little-"Sirius rolled up his sleeves and had to be held back by James.
"Oi! Quit your messing and get a move on" Filch jabbed at Sirius with his broom and nodded to the door. "I can't believe you're not ashamed of yourselves, the people of this school work too hard..." Filch begun a rant that everyone soon zoned out of.
"Prongs, I can't put up with a night of the two people I hate the most!" Sirius whispered to James as they were lead to the Great hall, nodding between Severus and Filch
"What about your parents?"
"Well yeah, but I try to forget about them"
"You better watch your mouth, Black" Filch said, glaring at the two of them as he handed Sirius a rag and polish, James a broom, the girls sponge and buckets, and Severus a scraper.
"You" Filch pointed at James "Mop the floor, you" He pointed to Sirius "Polish the tables and benches, you" He said pointing to Severus "Scrape the gum from the tables" Filch smiled at the revenge he was getting on the three of them after they had treated him "Finally you" he waggled his finger between the girls "I want those windows shining"
"How on earth are we supposed to reach those?" Kara moaned, craning her neck up.
"There's a ladder over there. You don't know how lucky you have it, back in my day we had to clean all the windows in the school with nothing but a bar of soap and a napkin" The group rolled their eyes at each other "Now get on with it"
"But this is the house elves job!" Sirius wailed, mainly because he didn't know how to even use polish, the downside of growing up in a family mansion where house elves did everything for you "Can't we just use magic?"
Well it wouldn't be much of a punishment if the house elves did it, would it? Definitely not if you could just wave your wands and have done with it, no, I'll have hard work from all of you" Filch cackled to himself "Now get on with it! If you do it properly you should be done by at least Midnight."
"MIDNIGHT?" James moaned, Filch's detentions were always the worst, he preferred the lighter detentions lead by Professor Slughorn, they were always accompanied by a cup of tea and some cake.
"Should have thought about that before you did it, shouldn't you? Back in the day I would have you chained up in the dungeon for a week only living on bread and water!" Filch smiled at the thought of it, and then strode out of the hall to go and find his cat.
"IF HE MENTIONS 'THE DAY' ONE MORE TIME, SO HELP ME..." Sirius threw down the polish and stamped on it.
"Pads, calm down" James sighed, picking his polish up for him and looking at Lily to see is she'd seen him being sensible.
"Prongs, we need to get out of this, now, I need my beauty sleep!" Sirius shivered at the thought of losing it.
"Yeah and by the looks of you, you need as much as you can get" Severus smiled at his own remark.
"So help me Prongs I'm going to kill him" Sirius slammed his hand on the table, breathed out, and ignored it.
As everyone started to get to work James tried to stay next to Sirius as much as possible, every now and then breaking out into dance, Sirius with his polishing rag in his mouth in place of a rose.
Sirius had only got to the bottom of his second table, and the girls had finished three windows, when Sirius fell over a stool and head-butted Severus as he knelt on the floor.
"Why don't you watch where you're being an idiot?" Severus shuffled backwards and rolled his eyes.
"Oh thanks for checking how I am Snivellus" Sirius rolled his eyes, throwing his polish down on the table in annoyance.
"What's going on?" James called over after noticing the confrontation, dropping his broom and walking over.
Severus looked over at Lily, Kara, and Sasha who hadn't seen what was going on and he saw his opportunity "Why do you always gang up on me!" He whined, falling backwards on the floor.
"What the hell?" Sirius and James stepped back but Lily and the others were already running over.
"Stop being such a bully!" Lily shoved them aside and helped Severus get up, squeezing his arm and smiling at him.
"Lily, you don't understand!" James begged, grabbing her arm.
"No Potter, you don't understand" Lily shook her head and walked away.
Authors Note:
Hope you're enjoying my story, I really do love everything about the magic and wonder of Hogwarts, oh and please do leave a review! Go on you know you want to, reading this whilst I'm on, like, chapter 55? Who cares! Be a free spirit, type that review!
-Hannah