AN: This is just a short oneshot written for the 2013 Summer Olympics on the HPFC forum. I know I haven't written in a while, but I've gotten really into the Marauders era, and I hope you like this story!
"Hey, Marls?" Lily picked her head up off the seat she was lying down in and frowned. "I hate this."
"I think we all do, Lily," Marley replied, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets and letting the silence seal over the compartment once more.
"I mean, I really hate this. Like, deep in my bones, want to punch a wall hate." Lily put her head back down, only to realize that James had slid his legs underneath it. "I also hate James Potter and his bloody long legs."
"Let's do something fun, when we get back to Kings Cross," she continued, sighing. "I want to do something fun."
"Lily," Sirius said wearily, "shut the hell up."
"No. I'm miserable, and I want to do something really, really fun. Like… the beach. Let's all go to the beach." Lily sat up again, looking at James with a slight smile on her face.
"Lils, we can't just go to the beach," Alice said from her perch in the corner of the compartment. "Our parents are going to want to see us, we haven't been home since Easter. Besides, it's early in the summer, the water's got to be freezing."
"We're seventeen bloody years old, our parents can wait a day to have us back. I say we go to the beach." Lily looked around the room defiantly.
"I think it's a great idea," James said, grabbing Lily's hand. She beamed at him.
Marley sighed. There was no stopping Lily now. They were going to the beach.
~~~~~~~~~~LINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~
The teenagers piled off the Knight Bus, looking at their surroundings in wonder. As not all of them had been to the same beach, it would be hard to apparate, and anyways, Lily had wanted a surprise. Her friends knew not to disappoint her, and had just told Ernie to take them to "his favorite beach."
They'd lost a member, having left Frank with his mother, who wouldn't let him leave, insisting that "her Frankie needed a little motherly love after Hogwarts."
But they had made it to the beach, the few afraid to talk to their parents in person still clutching their belongings, having sent notes or siblings.
"Did anybody bring a bucket?" Peter asked, lugging his trunk out onto the rocky shore.
"Maybe coming right to the beach was a mistake," Remus mused, scratching his face absently. "Maybe we should've gone and got suits and towels and stuff first."
"Don't be a wanker Moony," Sirius bellowed as he raced to the waterline. "CANNONBALL!"
"Sirius, you-" Marley called, then stopped as he landed, arse first, into the shallow water. "This isn't a pool, you twat!"
"He realized that," James told her, chuckling, then turned to Lily. "You going in?"
"Looks cold," Lily said, eyeing James' Quidditch sweatshirt. "You going to be a gentleman and give me that jacket of yours?"
"No," James replied, and like that, he swept Lily up and over his shoulder. He sprinted to the waves as she shrieked.
"Hey!" Marley shouted. "Come back with my Lily!"
"Never!" he shouted back, prompting Alice and Marlene to mount an attack.
Lily tried as hard as she could to seem outraged as James plopped her down in the water, clothes and all. She emerged, sputtering, her hair plastered to her head.
Lily laughed and gasped, jumping onto James' back and wrapping her legs around him. He simply let himself fall backwards into the surf.
Remus and Peter sat together surrounded by piles of sand, debating whether to make Camelot or change Peter into a mermaid. Peter was all for the mermaid, while Remus thought Camelot would add a certain grandeur to the whole setting.
Sirius had bounced back as only Sirius could, and soon he was halfway down the beach, complaining about the undertow and plowing his way back to the raging battle between James and the girls, both trying to win back Lily.
Lily wasn't trying to do anything. She was just laughing, the uncontrollable, joyous kind of laughter that robs your breath and gives you serious stomach muscles.
James paused in his attack, and simply stared at her. A year ago, she would have been screaming. She would have been raving and lashing out, and, as she flounced away, she would've scoffed and muttered "I hate Potter."
In his momentary lapse of concentration, Marley and Alice managed to drag Lily out of the shallow water and lay her out on the sand as her laughter shook her body. Sirius returned with seaweed draped in his hair and wrapped around his legs, pretending to be the giant squid, and James caught him in a headlock. They wrestled each other to the ground and collapsed next to the girls.
"Wormtail, tell Remus to get his arse over here and join in on the moment!" James called, crossing his leg over Lily's and squinting at the midday sun.
"I am going to get so sunburned," Lily muttered, covering her eyes with her hands.
"You're going to look so cute," James retaliated, expecting the hand that came to swat at his head.
"Your manliness is so gone," Sirius added, rolling his eyes at Lily, who hadn't taken her hand away from James' chest yet.
"You're such a dick," Marley said, her smile betraying her words.
As in the compartment, they let the silence take them over, and they simply lay on the beach until the tide came in, rolling up over their toes, and then Lily spoke.
"I hate this," she said.
"But we're at the beach," Alice said, tracing patterns in the sand.
"Yeah, but we aren't at Hogwarts," Lily said, shivering slightly as the sun went behind a cloud. "We aren't at Hogwarts and we don't get to go back anymore."
"We have to get jobs," Peter said, sounding pained. "We have to work for someone."
Sirius laughed quietly. "We have to get our own places, and act like adults, and choose a side in this war."
"I think that's already chosen," James said softly, grabbing Lily's hand. "And I think finding a place could be easy enough, London's a big place."
"Why don't we all get flats close to each other?" Marlene asked, brushing her hair away from her face. "Why don't we act like we're still at school except with jobs instead of classes?"
"Because we aren't still at school," Sirius answered bitterly. "We're out in the open and vulnerable and we're expected to deal with it ourselves suddenly because we're adults and that's what adults do."
"We're adults, and we know how to deal with ourselves," James said convincingly. "That's why we went to school. None of us failed our NEWTS. Purposefully, anyways," he finished with a quick glance at Sirius, whose frown lessened.
"Is it okay if I still hate this?" Lily asked again.
"You don't really, love," James assured her. "This is, after all, what we've been working towards for seven years of our lives."
"Yeah, but I hate endings," Lily said, rolling over closer to James.
"It's also a beginning," Remus mused. Sirius muttered something that sounded derogatory. Remus responded with a ruse hand gesture.
"Those are my boys," Marley said, sitting up and running back towards the water. "Whoever dives in last is a bowtruckle!"
And they dove into the waves with all thoughts of endings gone and water on all sides.