why hello there :3 ...long time no see. 8P
i apologize for that, i truly feel bad for it but i just really procrastinate updating someti- okay all the time hahaha but i hope that since this chapter is longer than usual that it makes up for the pretty much 4 months of nothing 8P but in my defense i've had tons of homework and a life to manage and a bunch of other stuff going on that i've been kinda really busy. but anywho, if you're actually taking the time to read this, i hope this chapter is good and im not going to promise to update soon because whenever i promise such things, i take longer... i think this might be the longest authors note i've ever had. huh. interesting. and now im rambling and am wasting your time and i apologize for that! OHHH i just remembered what i meant to say in this originally! haha so for the dance, for the guys, i really dont like picturing them in dress robes... i just dont like dress robes, sorry if you think it makes it less "authentic" or "realistic" or whatever haha i just can't picture james or sirius or remus in dress robes... but peter, i don't have any issues with him wearing dress robes :3 well i won't waste your time any longer!
Enjoy! 8D
James yawned, and sat up in his bed. He looked over at his bedside table, and saw that it was 9 am. James glanced around the dormitory at his roommates and found that only Frank had vacated the dorm, leaving the marauders alone. He stood up, and walked over to where Remus was sleeping peacefully and hit him with a pillow.
"What the -"
"SHH! Don't wake the others, I want to talk to you." whispered James.
"Oh, um, okay. What's up?"
"It's Wormtail. He STILL doesn't have a date, and the dance is tonight. I kinda feel bad for him."
"Well, so do I, but what can we do?"
"No idea..."
"I mean, it's not like we can just walk into the great hall and ask if there's any girls without dates."
"No...wait. Why can't we?"
"Because they're going to think that we're asking for, well, us. Not him."
"Well then that's their problem."
"Yeah, but I really don't think thats fair to them.." Remus tried to reason.
"Please. We're marauders. When do we ever think about what's 'fair'?"
"Good point."
"Great. So it's settled then. I'll wake up Padfoot and Wormtail. I'm hungry."
So James yelled, "WAKE UP! IT'S MORNING!", heard some complaining groans in response and walked over to his trunk and pulled out some fresh clothes, a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt.
"Prongs, whudday isit?" mumbled Sirius from under his bed sheets.
"Uhh, I think it's saturday. Why?"
"Jus' makin' sure s'not friday or monday..."
"Don't go back to bed you dolt it's the day of the dance."
"WHAT?" yelled Sirius as he bolted upright.
"You heard me. Tonight's the dance."
"SHIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTT! SHIT SHIT SHIT!"
At this, Peter sat up and dumbly asked, "Where?"
James rolled his eyes, and Sirius gave Peter a look of utter amazement. Understanding dawned upon his face, then Peter promptly buried his face in humilation. Sirius stood up and also got dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a grey shirt.
"Wormtail, get your lazy arse out of bed so we can go to breakfast. Well, we're leaving in about 2 minutes with or without you anwyays so I guess it doesn't matter for us." Sirius bluntly stated as he looked through his stuff trying to locate his wand.
Once Remus and Peter were dressed, Remus in a black shirt and jeans, Peter in jeans and a green t-shirt, the marauders headed down to the great hall to get breakfast. It was about 11 a.m., and the great hall seemed surprisingly empty for a saturday morning, given the time. The marauders headed over to the gryffindor table and started filling up their plates with food; waffles, bacon, sausage, eggs, etc.
"So enlighten us all Prongs. Did you ever actually end up picking a date for the dance?" Remus inquired.
"Nope." said James while taking a bite of his waffle.
The marauders just looked at each other, aside from James who continued eating as if his friends weren't looking at him questioningly. Sirius was the one who decided to break the brief awkward silence.
"Why?"
"Because I have a plan." James said while a smirk appeared on his face.
"Uh oh. Whatever it is you're thinking prongs, it will only result in physical violence. Aimed towards you. She has a date and if you screw it up for her she's literally going to kill you for doing so. So i would suggest you should get a date and give up on whatever mental idea has been running through that head of yours." Remus bluntly stated.
At this, James rolled his eyes. Remus was entitled to his own opinion, and so was James. He wasn't going to let his "logical" friend talk him out of his plan. No way. James' plan was –hopefully- foolproof. Hopefully.
When it was nearing noon, Mia and Avery walked into the Great Hall and sat down quite a ways away from the guys. As the girls walked by, Remus looked up and was surprised to see that Avery was looking at him. When their eyes met, Avery blushed furiously and quickly turned her head away and kept walking swiftly by. Remus stared after her for a brief moment, with an expression of confusion on his face.
As Remus turned back to his friends, he was met with a smirking Sirius just staring at him. Remus stared right back at him questioningly. Sirius, as usual, was the first to break the silence.
"What was that?" Sirius smugly said, while slowly drawing out the ends of the words "was" and "that".
"What was what?" Remus replied, although knowing what Sirius was about to say and wishing that he wouldn't.
"Moony was checking out Brooks!" Sirius sang with his ever-present smirk plastered on his face.
"I was not." Remus firmly stated while looking incredibly annoyed.
"Then what were you doing?"
"I was…um… I was simply, uh, looking at her…hair."
"Her hair." Sirius repeated, clearly loving every minute of Remus' discomfort.
"Yes."
"Why the hell would you be looking at her hair? Of all things that you could've looked at, you chose her hair. What the hell?" Sirius incredulously said.
"Because she has… nice hair…" Remus was mentally kicking himself that one. It was dumb enough of him to have said he was looking at her hair, when he obviously wasn't. But now he just had to say she had "nice hair". Yeah.Nice going, Remus thought to himself.
At that last comment, Sirius couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't help but laugh at Remus' pathetic excuses of why he was staring at Avery. Sirius was full out laughing his head off, and soon enough James joined in, and then so did Peter, which left Remus sitting there looking extremely pathetic and beet red.
With three boys laughing hysterically at him, this caused a lot of wondering eyes to look over at them, which made Remus turn even more red – if that's even possible – and that caused the rest of the marauders to only laugh even more. It was an ongoing vicious cycle of humiliation on Remus' part.
When the laughter finally died down, Sirius looked Remus in the eye with a straight face and asked,
"Is there something you're not telling us Moony? Are you… are you gay?"
Remus rolled his eyes – Sirius was obviously just trying to get him going again, and Remus was not going to make the same mistake twice in one day.
Just then, Lily and Taylor entered the great hall and headed towards their friends. Remus couldn't help but be amused by the fact that Sirius was momentarily distracted by a certain blue-eyed blonde who was currently sitting with Avery, Lily, and Mia. Remus considered making a comment, but then decided against it seeing as he wasn't exactly in the mood to put up with a conversation with Sirius. For a few moments the marauders just sat there, silently, which was odd because when they're all together they're usually never quiet. They all looked at each other expectantly, and realized that Peter was just silently staring down towards where Mia Shite was sitting with her friends.
"Wormtail. Stop staring. You're going to freak them all out with how intense your creepy stare is." James remarked. As his comment made no effect on the staring Peter, James slowly waved his hand up and down in front of Peter's face. This tactic was successful, as it broke Peter out of his creepy daze.
"Huh? What is it?"
"I told you to stop staring at Mia because you look really creepy when you stare."
Peter just lowered his eyes and his face became slightly flushed. As he was staring at the floor, Mia walked swiftly out of the Great Hall, leaving her friends behind. James glanced towards Lily, Taylor, and Avery and saw that Avery was getting up to leave as well.
"Alright. This got really boring. Can we please leave now?" Sirius complained. James sighed and stood up, and the others followed suit, aside from Sirius who practically jumped up out of his seat.
"Where are we going?" asked Sirius, who mainly just looked overly excited to get out of the Great Hall and do something.
"I don't know. Why don't you lead the way?" suggested Remus, still slightly annoyed at Sirius for earlier.
"Fine then. I will." and with that, Sirius started walking quickly out of the Great Hall, while the other guys had to catch up with him.
James, Sirius, and Remus stopped outside the common room to catch their breath. James looked back and saw that Peter was still struggling somewhere around the 5th floor to catch up with them. The boys had just ran from the courtyard up to Gryffindor Tower because they had set off a series of dungbombs and explosions surrounding the packs of students huddling together in the courtyard. Not their best work, but they had to get it out of their system. Rather, Sirius had to get it out of his system because he was getting really edgy and restless. And slightly crazed.
Peter finally caught up with them, and was clutching a stitch in his side. Once he recovered enough to talk, he asked, "What time is it?"
Each of them looked at each other, and realized that none of them had any idea. So they filed into the common room and saw that it was pretty well empty, and that the clock read that it was almost 2 o'clock. James sighed, and headed towards the dormitory stairs and Remus followed - presumably to go get a book to read, leaving Sirius and Peter down in the common room to do who knows what.
The dance had started, and Sirius, James, and Remus were walking down the final flight of steps. Sirius spotted Jordan lingering outside the doors, so he went over to meet her. Jordan was wearing a light pink strapless dress that fell just above her knee, gold high heels, and her hair was styled in a curled pony tail. Sirius was dressed in black pants, a black dress shirt, black converse, and a pink tie to match Jordan's dress. Jordan's eyes lit up when she saw Sirius and a huge smile spread across her face and he smirked and took her hand and they went into the dance together.
Remus, on the other hand was looking around for Skye when James tapped him on the shoulder and pointed over towards the base of the stairs with a couple of friends. She was wearing a purple dress with thin straps that came just past her knee with white shoes and her hair was pulled back into a fancy bun. Remus had black dress pants on, a white dress shirt, black dress shoes and a purple tie that went with Skye's dress. She noticed him silently waiting nearby and quickly walked over to him and beamed up at him. He smiled shyly back, and they walked through the doors.
James went in behind his friends, and he was just wearing a white dress shirt with black pants and shoes and a black tie seeing as he didn't really have a date...yet. As he walked in, he surveyed the crowd of students for Lily. He saw her over near the edge of the crowd with Cameron. James thought she looked absolutely stunning and was hit with a new pang of jealousy that Cameron was her date. Lily's hair was curled and her dress was a strapless cream colour and was fitted to the waist then went slightly poofy to just past her knees, and was wearing red high heels that matched her hair.
As James watched, Lily and Cameron went over to talk to Taylor and Damian. Taylor was wearing a strapless blue dress that fell above the knees and had a white waist band that wrapped around her waist that had a black bow on the front of it with white high heels and her hair was straight and half up. Damian was dressed in a white shirt with a blue tie, black pants and blue converse. James decided to look for Lily's other friends, and saw that Mia was wearing a bright yellow puffy dress with pink flats and her hair was straightened. Jacob was wearing black pants with a yellow dress shirt and a black tie. Yup. He's definitely a hufflepuff, thought James. Although, they did look pretty cute together.
James continued scanning the crowd until he found Avery and Frank. Avery was in a sunset orange dress that was fitted on the top and fell just above her knee with a bottom half that was flowy and fell down in petal pieces with red shoes and her hair was wavy. Frank was wearing a white dress shirt with an orange tie and a black vest with black pants and black dress shoes. James could tell just by looking at Avery that she wasn't having the time of her life, but she was still being incredibly polite about the whole situation.
James then looked around to see what his friends were doing, and saw that Sirius and Jordan were snogging. Typical Sirius, thought James. He moved on from Sirius, and found that Remus and Skye were seemingly heading over towards the dance floor, and then there was Peter. James just realized that he had forgotten to get a date for Peter, and suddenly felt really bad for him because Peter was sitting in a corner all alone and was wearing really odd dress robes because they were all that he had. As sorry as James felt for him, he couldn't let it affect him. James had a plan to carry out, and it wasn't going to happen if he sat around pitying his friend. James looked back towards Lily and Cameron, and saw that they were slow dancing. James closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself, and was about to make his way over to them when someone tapped him on the shoulder. James turned around and saw that it was Maddy Clearwater, from Ravenclaw.
"Would you dance with me James? I had a date, but he went off with some Hufflepuff girl."
"Oh, um..." James glanced back at Lily and Cameron, and then turned back to Maddy, "sure. I'd be happy to."
"Thank you!" Maddy exclaimed with a smile and then hugged James. She then grabbed his hand and tugged him onto the dance floor. Maddy had blonde curly hair, and was wearing a dark green dress that was strapless, fitted, and came to just above the knee and was wearing black high heels. She is pretty, thought James, but she's not Lily. Then James realized something. Maybe his original plan wouldn't work out, but maybe he could use the jealousy tactic. Sure, he's tried it loads of times before, but that was before he kissed Lily and she kissed him back, and before she started staring at him every now and then.
As James and Maddy started dancing, James threw a quick glance towards Lily, and found that she was staring at Maddy and him. He returned his gaze to Maddy, and just smiled while thinking to himself, it's working. For once, I'm actually making her jealous.
"So do you have a girlfriend?"
Maddy's question pulled James out of his thoughts.
"Wha- oh, um, no. I don't." James said with a small laugh.
Clearly, his response made Maddy smile because she continued on the subject,
"Well that's a shame. Why don't you?"
"I just...don't at the moment."
"Do you want one?
"Um. I think for right now I'm fine, actually."
"Okay, but just so you know, if you ever change your mind, I'd be more than happy to be your girlfriend." Maddy said with a smile. James smiled back, and discreetly sideways glanced at Lily to see that she also was staring back at him and Maddy, still. James thought about it for a moment, and then he decided that maybe he should just go for it. So he did. He smirked down at Maddy, and then kissed her. The kiss wasn't anything special, really, but it was still a kiss. Although, it did go on for longer than James had anticipated, but when they pulled apart, he looked towards Lily and saw that she had completely stopped dancing and was just staring at him and Maddy. James smirked, and turned towards Maddy.
"Look, Maddy, you're a really great girl and all, but I'm not looking for a relationship and also, I need to go check on Peter so I guess I'll see you around school." James smiled at her and then turned away and made sure he got lost in the crowd of people. He only said that to Maddy so that he could go find Lily and try to execute the final stage of his plan to hopefully get Lily to dance with him and fall madly in love with him and become his girlfriend. As James was closing the steps to Lily, some crazy fourth year Gryffindor girl blocked his path.
"Hi James! I was just wondering if you had a moment, because I would love it if you would maybe dance with me?" she squealed rather excitedly.
"Um, I would love to, but I can't. Sorry." and with that, James nudged the girl out of the way and closed the final steps towards Lily to find that Cameron wasn't with her. Probably went to get punch or something, thought James. James took a deep breath and tapped Lily's shoulder. She spun around, looking startled, and James watched as her eyes widened when she realized it was James.
"Oh, um, James. Hi. Uh, what are you doing here?" Lily stammered.
"Just wanted to come say hi to my favourite redhead."
"Why do you always say that?"
"What?"
"That I'm your 'favourite redhead'?"
"Because it's true."
Lily slightly nodded her head and took a deep breath. James looked at her for a minute, and then asked,
"Is something wrong?"
"Hmm? Oh, uh, no. Not at all. What could be wrong? Everything's fine. Absolutely fine. Why do you ask?"
"You just seem troubled, is all."
"Oh, well... it's nothing."
"Is it nothing?"
"No... but I'd rather not talk to you about it."
"Why?"
Lily sighed and lowered her eyes.
"Because it has to do with you. Are you happy now?" as she said these words, her cheeks flushed red.
"Tell me."
"No way. Why would I tell you?"
"Because I care? And I don't want to be the reason you're 'troubled' or whatever it is you are."
Lily took a deep breath, and looked up into James' eyes.
"Fine... the truth is -"
"OH MY GOSH! Lily! I have to talk to you!" Taylor ran over to her friend, squealing. Lily looked slightly annoyed for a split second, but then she quickly covered it up and smiled.
"What is it?"
"Damian kissed me!" Taylor sang while twirling dreamily about in circles around Lily, not taking any notice at all of James.
"Really? That's great! But couldn't you of waited to tell me later?" Lily looked at her friend. This seemed to snap Taylor back into the real world. She looked towards James, and her eyes grew wide with realization and her mouth formed an "o" shape. She backed up a few steps, and then ran off to, presumably, go find Avery or Mia. Lily was staring towards the floor when she said, "Sorry about that..."
"It's okay. But, um, what were you saying? Before she came?"
"Oh, that. Um..." Lily bit her lip, and James found it was extremely adorable.
"Yeah?"
"I, um... I think that I might... maybe... I kinda - "
"PRONGS!" a voice yelled from across the dance floor. A voice that could only belong to the one and only Sirius Black. James sighed and turned around.
"WHAT IS IT?" he yelled back.
"GET OVER HERE! NOW!" James took a deep breath, and turned back towards Lily.
"I'm really sorry, but I have to go over there, otherwise I'm not going to hear the end of it..." James' eyes were full of regret, and as he turned away, Lily breathed out a sigh of relief and went to sit down. She was relieved in a way, that she didn't have to admit to James that she liked him, but she also wanted him to know, in some weird twisted way.
"What do you want Padfoot?" James demanded when he reached his best friend.
"It's Wormtail. He hasn't moved the entire dance. I think he's gone into a state of depression." Sirius remarked while looking over his shoulder at Peter.
James just stared at Sirius.
"You called me over to tell me that? Couldn't that of waited until the dance was over?"
"Well, the dance is practically over. There's like, what? Ten minutes left?"
"Really? That went by fast."
"Yeah, well, I wanna get outta here so let's go."
"Alright, I'll go get Wormtail, you can get Moony."
Once all four boys were together, they left and headed up towards the dormitory. James was extremely tired, as was Remus and Peter, but Sirius seemed to be all hyped up. But what else is new?
There you have it! haha its my longest chapter yet... i think. I hope you liked it! Parts of it I don't really like, but for the most part I think its pretty good, considering I'm too frustrated with it all to try to make it any better hahaha 8P don't forget to R&R! Tell me what you think! 8)
ta ta for now!
- HazelEyes8D