Previously: The first year Gryffindors are: James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans, Alice Prewett, Marlene McKinnon, and Mary Macdonald. Lily has some reservations about being the only Muggle-born, but she keeps quiet about them.
Chapter 7: In the Halls of Hogwarts
"Welcome to the Gryffindor common room," explained Emmie as they entered the portrait hole. Mary stumbled over the step behind the portrait of the Fat Lady – which was rightly named in Lily's eyes – but Marlene and Alice grabbed her before she could do a second face plant that day. After righting herself and brushing it off like nothing had happened, the girls headed through the short passageway to enter the Gryffindor common room, and Lily was not the only one who gasped.
They were in a large, circular room draped with scarlet and gold tapestries. High-arching windows flooded the common room with silver moonlight, and several windows had ledges with various pillows and sitting cushions on them where Gryffindors could lounge during daylight hours – several people already occupied some of them. A hefty, ornate mantelpiece accommodated the merrily crackling fireplace, and the rest of the common room was full of plush sofas, tables, armchairs, desks, and one giant bulletin board near the entrance. Several older students who were busy lazing around, chatting with friends they had not seen in a long time.
Emmie and Samuel them to the center of the common room, and Lily noticed two separate stairways leading up even further. Alice trailed one hand over the back of a couch.
"This is where you will spend your time after curfew. Each staircase leads to the dormitories: boys, yours are to the left; girls, same on your right. All of your belongings have already been brought up," said Emmie.
Without waiting for any further instructions, Alice grabbed Lily's hand before bounding over to the entrance to their dormitories, dragging Lily along much faster than she would have liked with a full stomach. Marlene and Mary scurried to keep up as Alice ran past the stairs.
She reached the first door even though the staircase continued to spiral upwards and reached for it, but when she opened it, the dormitory was already full. Lily counted four girls all about their age before one of the girls said, "Wrong dorm, first years."
Alice quickly closed it and headed for the next one, which was also already full of girls. It continued like that, the occupants getting progressively older each time they tried a door. By the time they reached the sixth door, Lily, starting to get desperate, opened it to reveal six more girls, all in their late teens who had been laughing at some joke. However, one of them must have noticed the door opening slowly because a girl with honey-blond hair that hung in short waves around her face whipped around, and Lily soon found herself going cross-eyed trying to keep the older student's wand in view
Mary, who had been right behind Lily, yelped and hastily showed the armed girl her hands as she rushed, "Sorry! Sorry! We were just trying to find our dormitory!"
"Oh," said the girl, lowering her wand when she realized that the intruders upon her dorm room were only lost first years. "Sorry 'bout that. You startled me is all."
On the other side of Mary, Alice groaned out loud, "Oh, come on! Where in the name of Merlin is our dormitory?"
The girl laughed and said, "All first years get the old seventh years' dormitory, and last year theirs was at the top of the tower."
"Well, why can't they put up bloody signs or something?" growled Alice in frustration, stomping outside.
Another girl giggled and called after Alice, "It's written on the door."
Sure enough, when Lily closed the door behind the students, there was a bronze, slightly tarnished plaque that read Seventh Years – though, to be fair, it was above the door rather than on it. Alice went pink with embarrassment as she read it herself, and Marlene hurried them along the spiraling staircase until they finally reached the top where a door identical to last six that the girls had tried, only this one had a plaque labeled First Years.
Marlene bravely pushed it open, revealing a small circular room with four matching beds that looked identical to the previous residences, except this one was untouched. Each four-poster had scarlet hangings with a nightstand on one side and a dresser on the other. There were a couple windows but none to match the splendor of Great Hall or common room windows, and off to the side, there was a little door that no doubt led to the bathroom. If the empty beds were not enough to convince Lily that this was their real dormitory, then Crackerjack was. He streaked forward towards Lily the moment they opened the door and leapt into her arms before suspiciously assessing the other girls.
"Mine!" cried Alice as she claimed the bed closest to the bathroom door. She ran straight for it, flopping onto the bedspread with her and legs splayed out as she gave a sigh of relief. "Sleep at last …" she exhaled gratefully.
"Look at whose trunk is underneath," Marlene told her.
Indeed, each bed had a large trunk at the end of the bed; they were the only things so far in the room that were customized. Mary quickly ran for the bed of a chest covered in large stickers and pictures depicting everything from daisies to dragons, several of which moved, as Alice crawled up to the footboard to double-check the luggage container that had a bright red paintjob, which apparently was Alice's because she smiled and again fell back against that bed's pillow. Lily and Marlene's trunks were surprisingly similar and difficult to distinguish until Lily noticed her initials she had carved into the trunk earlier.
"So! Introductions first," chirped Alice as she beamed at her three new roommates. She scrambled back up so she was sitting on her knees while Lily collapsed onto her own bed. "I'll go first. Hi, my name is –"
"Alice, we already know everyone's name," Marlene reminded her, rummaging through the numerous clothes which she had brought from home before pulling out a soft blue nightgown that she quickly began changing into.
Alice pouted.
"Fine," she mumbled, and there was a moment of silence before her face brightened with what she probably considered a great idea. "How about we play a game of Truth or Dare?"
Looking around impressively at all of them, Lily was glad she was too sleepy to bother answering her.
That fell to Marlene again, who sighed heavily and said, "Alice, we just ate. I know you have an unlimited energy source, but the rest of us are tired – how much sugar did you even have at the start-of-term feast?"
Alice shrugged, and Mary caught Lily's eye, looking like it was the hardest thing to not giggle with amusement before she shut her curtains to change into her pajamas while Lily gently put Crackerjack down at the foot of her bed before pulling on an old, baggy T-shirt to sleep in. Afterwards, she crawled under her blankets, eager for tomorrow to come.
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"Hey – wake up, you," whispered James, prodding the lump that was Sirius Black curled up under the covers so far that only a sliver of his forehead was visible beneath his blankets. The half-moon shone through the high windows of the dormitory, illuminating their new dormitory with a liquid silver that highlighted the mess on the floor that the four boys had succeeded in making a mere five hours after the feast ended.
"Mmpf," was the muffled reply.
"Sirius, wake up," hissed James as loudly as he dared.
"Mmpf!"
"Wake up!"
"What?" snapped Sirius in a cracked, tired voice, finally throwing the covers back to reveal messy black hair splayed out in different directions on his pillow. He was clearly half-asleep, but that did not mean he also was not annoyed.
James gave him a roguish grin to match the twinkle in his hazel eyes, ignoring his friend's irritation as he said in a low voice, "You don't remember, do you? How about that late night exploration of the castle we talked about? I'm not sure the prefects covered everything on the tour up to the common room."
Sirius sat up, bleary-eyed and tired. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, trying to eliminate the obvious signs of weariness, but James knew that he was awake now if the impish gleam in his bright grey eyes was any indication because he keenly asked, "Where do we start?"
James laughed at that – really, it hardly constituted as a question.
"Whichever place is forbidden to students of course."
Sirius's eyes lit up at the thought, all traces of weariness disappearing, and James felt triumph as Sirius quickly threw his feet over the side of the bed to stand up. James had barely been gone from home for twenty-four hours, but, if he was being honest with himself, James was well on his way to having a new best friend and fellow partner-in-crime – it was going to be an amazing first year.
"You really shouldn't do that when it's not even the first day of school," said Remus suddenly from behind the curtains of the bed next to Sirius, and James jumped, not noticing that he had been awake. There was a brief movement before the drapes opened, revealing the scarred boy whose eyes seemed to gleam in the moonlight.
"What happens if you get caught?"
"Go back to sleep, Remus. You don't have to be in on this," said Sirius in a hushed voice.
"Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you," said Remus as he pulled the curtains shut again. James heard the soft thump as he landed on top of the covers and did not relax until Remus's breathing slowed down enough to indicate that he really had fallen back asleep.
It was only then that Sirius turned back to James and said, "How are we supposed to get around without teachers noticing?"
James puffed up his chest importantly.
"With this of course," he said, and James produced his silvery cloak.
He held it out to Sirius and ran his hand lovingly along the fluid material, letting the fine silk slip through his fingers as if it had been woven from water, just as James had so many other times.
The Invisibility Cloak was a gift on James's eleventh birthday, and while he did enjoy sneaking up on old family friends over for a cup of tea and eavesdropping on Ministry officials who occasionally stopped by the house, there had never been any real reason to use until now, when teachers and ghosts prowled the halls to watch for students bold enough to be out of bed, and James could not help but relish the thrill of opportunities and daring adventures that no doubt awaited him just outside the common room.
"Mate, this is an Invisibility Cloak," gasped Sirius, staring at the material with wonder.
He hesitantly reached out to touch it again, like the first time had not been enough to convince him it was real.
"Where, in the name of Merlin's dirtiest boxers, did you get this? My dear old Mum's been trying to find one of these that will last longer than a year, but none of the spells she tries have been powerful enough yet. Ha! I'm just imagining the look on her face if she knew."
"Family heirloom," answered James in a hurried voice, still conscientious of the fact that light-sleeping Remus was a mere bed away from him. "You know what that means?"
"Hmm?" asked Sirius, still examining the Invisibility Cloak with an expert eye. Perhaps it was premature for James to show Sirius one of his most prized possessions, but though he could not explain it, not even to himself, there was an intrinsic bond of awaiting brotherhood just beyond the horizon.
"Hogwarts is calling us, my friend."
