*Here we go!
The prefect's bathroom was really nice; I had to give that to James. He'd given me the password and told me that I was free to use it whenever. The best part about having your best friends being Quidditch captain and Head-Boy, and prefect, too. I ran a hand through my wet hair, and took one last longing look at the still popping bubbles, but the boys would never forgive me if I was late.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." I whispered, tapping the Marauder's map.
Ink-McGonagall was sitting in her office, and Ink-Bianca was in the common room, so I didn't think that I'd get in trouble. The curious thing was that she, Lily, Remus and James were having a conversation. I knew she was an interesting person, but she usually kept to herself. Well, it would be easier for her to sit through our game night if she was comfortable with our little group.
"Mischief managed." I tapped the map again, stepping out of the bathroom cautiously. And immediately bumped into Amos Diggory, Hufflepuff prefect. I wasn't sure if I'd ever been mean to him, so I nodded to him politely, praying he wouldn't blabber to someone about seeing me. He nodded back, but there was a strange expression on his face.
I walked away from him…five feet, seven feet, "Black?" Well, damn.
I turned and waited. "You know that new girl, Bianca, don't you?" He asked, blushing tomato red.
"Yeah, so?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Well, there's a Hogsmeade trip coming up, and since you're the only one I've ever seen her with…well…" I caught onto his train of thought. I hated the train.
"You share three classes with her, don't you? Ask her yourself." I snapped.
"You don't mind?" He asked hopefully.
Why the hell would I mind? I thought. I shrugged at him.
"Thanks, man." He told me.
"Yeah." And then I thought, why the hell is it that I do mind?
"Chocolate?" James asked when I sat down in the one empty seat by the fire.
"Thanks." I took the piece he was offering. "Your mom send you that?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I got a box too. She wants you to write her."
"I do write her!" He protested.
"Well, write oftener. And while we are on the subject – since your parents are going for a vacation this Christmas break…"
"Yeah, she wrote about that too. You want to go skiing?" He asked doubtfully.
"Not really. You?" I asked.
"Nah. We get the house to ourselves for, what? A month?"
"Yep."
"'Cept that we're going to have to clean up after ourselves."
"What happened to Rhea?" I spoke in reference to their house elf.
"She'll be going with my parents, won't she?"
"Oh, yeah."
"We might as well stay back, in that case." He grumbled.
"Ah, we'll cross that bridge when we reach it." I waved it off.
James and I glanced at our watches simultaneously. "Seven fifty, girls. You'd better go first, we'll follow."
Lily and Bianca got up, and went out the door chatting as though they were the best of friends. They were to meet Moony's Ravenclaw girlfriend, Sienna Velasquez, outside. For all of Moony's quite, studious nature, he wasn't satisfied with British girls. He had to get a Spanish spitfire.
It was a little strange, and rather heartening to see the trio getting along so well. I'd thought I'd ruined Bianca's chances of having friends here. Of course, I'd been rather pig headed to think someone like her would ever escape Lily's notice.
Bianca was already teasing her about James. I joined in occasionally, ribbing her about how even the new girl could see it between the two of them.
"Nice one you got, Padfoot." Remus told me.
"Yeah, I know." I said, watching their retreating figures. "Wait, what?" I scowled at him, surprised.
"Pretty chummy with her, aren't you? I 'spect you're doing her, too?" He asked, James cocking an ear to the conversation interestedly.
I motioned towards myself conspiratorially, pretending to give them details. Huh. Too bad. They leaned in excitedly. "I'm not doing her, okay?" I said sharply. "Trust me, mate. Would I lie to you about it?"
"Not about an Irish one like that." James conceded, Remus nodding behind him.
I could have been irritated, but we set off towards the Room of Requirement just then.
"Knock, knock, Lily-of-the-valley." James said, grinning like an idiot as we entered the low-ceilinged, softly lit room with six cushions set around a low table.
"My name is Lily, Potter. Just Lily."
His eyes widened.
"What?" She snapped.
"You just said your name was LilyPotter." He said in one quick breath so as to emphasize the two words.
"No, I said 'My name is Lily, Potter."
"You said it again!" He said, laughing. "Marry me, Lily Potter?"
"Lily Evans. And no." She said shortly.
"You'll come around," he chortled.
When they were done flirting shamelessly, I muttered to Bianca, "I hate letting Lily decide what this place becomes; she makes sure it's so low I hit my head when I get up."
"I heard that!" Lily sang.
"I know. It was for your benefit." And we laughed.
We started with the nervous game. There was a bit of a row about what the object of thought should be before we began.
"I think it should be Zonko's stuff." James declared.
"Neither Bianca, Sienna, nor I know Zonko's stuff!" Lily shot back. "It should be something muggle. Like football players."
"We don't bloody know football." Remus said uncharacteristically.
"So?"
"If we can use football players, we can use Zonko's stuff."
"No." I said, finally breaking in. "Let's meet in the middle. It could be…people. From Hogwarts. Nobody below our year." I said with finality.
They all nodded. Bianca looked at me with wonder. "Wow. You actually have a brain!" The girls giggled, while James and Remus roared with laughter.
"Just you wait, Hughes. I'll get you back for that."
"I'll be waiting." She said with a wink. What the hell did that mean?
"Me first!" said James. Obviously. "I pick…"He pretended to look around the little group. "Lily!"
We all rolled our eyes. As if it would be anyone else.
Lily kicked her shoes off and looked at him as if to say get it over with.
"Okay, I've thought of a person." He stated.
He then picked up her ankle as though it was made of glass. Very slowly, he peeled her sock off. It may have been the light, but I thought I saw Lily squirm.
"Filch." She said.
"Drink up!" James exclaimed with glee. I poured her a shot. She drank it reluctantly. If I were to guess, I would say she didn't drink often, because that single shot had a hell of an effect on her. You could actually see her loosen up.
"Well this ought to be fun." Remus muttered. Lily and James were too far gone to have heard.
"Definitely. They get together tonight, I bet." I said.
"You think so? I bet Lily can fend him off."
"Yeah? How much?"
"Ten."
"Okay. Ten on James."
"Ten on us." Bianca said from beside me.
"You're supporting James?" Moony asked her.
"Yep."
He shrugged, putting the money into our bet pouch. Along with more important things like James' invisibility cloak and the marauders map, our bet pouch made things constantly entertaining for us.
"Ten on James." Sienna muttered, putting down her money as well.
"Good! A payday. I haven't had anything good from Honeydukes in a while."
"McGonagall!" Lily shrieked when James had reached her knees. It wasn't public knowledge, but just behind her knee was a little spot where she was extremely ticklish.
"Padfoot?" James said gleefully.
I poured out more amber liquid for Lily and she shot me a baleful glare.
"Slughorn."
"No." Shot.
"Snape."
"Ugh." Shot.
James' finger slid over her ticklish spot, and instead of shrieking like I expected, she sighed and closed her eyes. Christ. If this meant that they were going to act sappy all the time from then on, I was going to be spending a lot more time with Moony and Wormtail. After being really happy that James finally got the girl, of course.
"Wormtail." She whispered.
James rolled his eyes. Shot.
Her eyes opened in wonder as Prongs' fingers trailed further up her leg. "Me." She breathed, undulating beneath his fingers like a ribbon. Rather reluctantly, he withdrew his hands.
"Alright. Who's next?" James asked grouchily.
"I'll go." Said Sienna. And if she picked Remus, we'd be there all night long. Remus was possibly the best nervous game player in Hogwarts. The round only ended when Remus got drunk and said "Nervous" out of boredom.
"By a bottle." I said, interrupting whatever she was going to say.
"What? Why? James didn't have to!" She protested.
"We'll be here until next month is why." Lily muttered from the side. I wondered why there wasn't witty remark from James until I saw his dreamy, glazed over eyes. Damn.
"To paraphrase Lily's excellent observation, you and Remus take forever."
"Okay, fine. Spin the bottle, then."
I handed to Remus, who looked at me murderously. I shrugged an apology.
The bottle spun for quite a while, before landing on Bianca. James and I were the first to burst out laughing. Remus was torn between seeing his girlfriend with someone else, a girl, no less, and laughing like us. Lily was grinning too, but her eyes were out of focus. Five shots? Six? That would probably do it for her.
"Get this over with, shall we?" Sienna said good-naturedly, her bell like voice and Spanish accent making it easy for me to see what Remus saw in the girl.
Theirs was a quick game, where Bianca guessed first Remus, then Sienna's sister, Sierra, before sighing out an exasperated, "Nervous." The two shots seemed to have had no effect on Bianca. She looked like she'd just had water. I knew from experience that firewhiskey caused some light headedness even at the first shot.
Sienna spun the bottle, and it landed on me.
"Your turn." She grinned at me.
"With pleasure."
The bottle spun and spun and spun and finally landed on…Bianca.
I wasn't really sure how I felt. Sure, she's grown bizarrely close to all of us in a very short amount of time, but her well hidden innuendoes, usually pointed at me, the occasional wink, and of course, male pride, which refused to let me like Bianca, left me a very confused man. Oh, well. The girl did have quite the set of legs.
She unzipped her boots and let them fall to the ground, holding her ankles a foot in the air, a smile playing around the edge of her lips. A challenge. I grinned in anticipation.
I was pretty proud of how slowly I was going.
"James." She said. I scoffed and shook my head, pointing at the bottle. She quickly had a shot, and launched into a series of names.
"Remus. Sierra. Sienna. Peter. Yourself. Me. Elizabeth Allen. Allison Peters."
I shook my head again, and laughed. "How many, Prongs? Seven?"
He responded in negative. "Eight."
I was amazed at how fast the girl drank. Had it been me, I would have been sputtering at six.
"Dumbledore. McGonagall. Flitwick. Hagrid. Filch." She was firing off names so quickly, that I had only gotten up mid-calf by this time.
"Five." She was a little dazed, though, so I took pity on her and said, "But you're getting warmer."
"What was the last thing I said?" She muttered after downing the shots, eyes unfocussed. "Oh, yeah. Filch. So it's a squib? But we don't know any squibs! So maybe it's just someone who's pathetic with a wand. Pettigrew? No, I already said his name."
She was slurring her words by now.
"Maybe it's Filch's friend. But he doesn't even have any friends; mean, grumpy bastard he is." She started muttering something unintelligible, while I watched on, fascinated. The chink of coins got a little louder.
"Focus, Bianca." A tan hand smacked her knee.
"Thanks, Sierra." She mumbled. "Hey, I know! It's his girlfriend, Madam Pince!"
"Nope." I laughed yet again.
"Mrs. Norris?" She asked doubtfully. James had already poured a shot out. I stopped him just in time, though. Bianca was already accepting it.
"Yep." I told her.
"I need to visit the washroom." she sighed, getting up. She stumbled off in the complete wrong direction. I hurried after her, but I had lost precious moments laughing. She was already opening the main door.
"Hide!" I threw behind my shoulder as I sprinted after her.
I had just pulled her back, and walked straight into Dumbledore. And McGonagall. Great.
"Mr. Black?"
"Yes, professor? I tried desperately to save us both.
"Do I smell alcohol?" Dumbledore asked mildly.
I decided to be honest. "Maybe a little, sir." Okay, partially honest.
"Assist Ms. Hughes to the common room. I shall see you both first thing Monday morning." McGonagall piped in.
More detention? Really?
Rose.
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