Disclaimer: Harry Potter = not mine. Thank you.
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"Erumpent horns," Lily grumbled to the Fat Lady.
"Surely, a smile would be more suitable to a lady of your nature," urged the Fat Lady warmly as she swung open.
Lily stumbled into the portrait hole. She had been desperately awaiting a quiet common room where she could settle down to study for her N.E.W.T.s. But because fate had such an unfortunate hold on Lily Evans, she walked into a full-blown celebration. The Quidditch final, she had forgotten, had just come to an end. Gryffindor's apparent win stirred the party animals in the hearts of each upperclassman.
"Lils!" called Mary McDonald, her dorm mate. "Over 'ere," her slurred words did nothing to hide her excessive drinking habits. Mary staggered over the lap of seventh year Rufus Fudge which she had been previously seated upon.
"Come on. Lemme grab a drink for ya."
"Mary, you really ought to be more careful when you're drunk. I'm not sure Fudge has your best intentions in mind at the moment," Lily glanced over to Rufus who smirked among his buddies.
"Drinks on me, Lils."
Rufus Fudge had never exactly been malicious toward Lily, but he was certainly unpleasant. With a couple drinks under his low-tolerant belt, he was no better.
Mary threw an arm over Lily's shoulders, mostly for balance, and led her to the bar.
Gryffindor never came up short for Quidditch celebrations. Complete with hundreds of bottles of Butterbeer, kegs of Firewhiskey (only to be brought out after eleven when the younger students had gone to bed. Lily, as Head Girl, made sure of that – after a bit of persuasion from James Potter himself), boxes upon boxes of different Honeydukes' sweets, and the occasional fireworks, Gryffindor common room was a hot spot for entertainment. On nights for special celebration, James Potter, especially skilled in Transfiguration, conjured up a bar. Lily never understood how a student could be almost as talented as Professor Minerva McGonagall herself, but she stopped questioning it after years of disappointment in her own talents. Not that she was awful, in fact, she stood high above the standards of most of her class, but she was no James Potter.
"Up for another, Ms. McDonald?" he smirked at her obviously drunken state.
"Of course, Mr," she hiccupped, "Mr. Potter. I demand seconds."
"Is this what they're calling seconds nowadays?"
"I suppose so," yawning, Mary grabbed her (sixth… seventh… eighth?) glass of Firewhiskey from Potter and trotted back to Fudge.
James leaned over the bar so he was eye level with Lily and spoke in a low tone, "How about you, Red?"
Lily leaned closer toward him and spoke with her regular tone of voice, "I'll help myself, thank you."
It had been a funny year, to say the least. Mary McDonald took up drinking as a heavy habit, James Potter stopped asking Lily out every week (it had now decreased to about once a month), Lily and James had both come to a certain friendship (or at least, they ceased to address each other by surname), and Severus Snape had avoided even looking at Lily.
"James Potter manning the bar? I thought Sirius would have died rather than to give up that responsibility."
"Sirius had more important motives for tonight," James nodded his head toward the couch where Sirius sat with Marlene McKinnon, another one of Lily's dorm mates, in an embrace that left barely enough space for a credit card to fit between them.
Lily dropped her gaze from the two lovers and raised her eyebrows at James. In the past, she had avoided these celebrations, for she never felt the desire to slur her speech or blur her vision. It was simply unappealing. But with the hollow feeling that often occupied her stomach whenever she encountered her old friend Severus, she needed the fire to rage through her veins and purge any ill feeling.
"Here," James fished in the back of a cabinet for a bottle of Firewhiskey. "This one's stronger. I was saving it for a special occasion, but I think you need it more than I do right now. To be honest, Red, you look like you're about to vomit."
Lily took the bottle from James' hand, uncorked the top, and took her last sober steps toward Mary.
"Come on, Mary," Lily tugged at Mary's shoulders, "That's enough. Time for bed."
Though it was only midnight (Mary had a tendency to get completely sloshed in short periods of time), Lily felt most secure with her friend safe and secure (more specifically, away from a sketchy looking Rufus Fudge) upstairs in the dormitory.
James watched Lily's red curls trail up toward the girls' dormitory. With one arm leaning on the bar and another with his hand ruffling his hair, James sighed.
Author's Note: As always, reviews are more than welcome!