written for: the houses competition

house: slytherin

category: drabble

prompts: breakfast (setting)

word count: 898

warnings: mention of alcohol

notes: in case anyone's wondering, i'm actually a gryffindor (hufflepuff is my favourite house, though) but i'm writing for slytherin in this competition because they needed some spots filled! i'm curious—did anyone have any ideas about what house i'd be in or were surprised to see slytherin/gryffindor?

disclaimer: disclaimed.

the marauders & marlene, lily, dorcas and emmeline-—the name game; breakfast, james & lily's house

war can take much from you, but hold onto the golden moments before the storm

"Okay," Marlene said, waving her fork towards Lily, "but consider: Horace."

James choked on his toast.

"I'm sorry, what?" he asked, blinking at Marlene.

Sirius, meanwhile, was frowning. "Like the poet?"

"No, the professor," Lily corrected, sighing as she did so. "And no, Marls, absolutely not."

"Why would we name our child after Slughorn?" James asked.

"Lil already vetoed George," Remus called from the kitchen, before appearing in the doorway with a tray of coffees. "Though personally, I think George is a better name than Horace."

"Well, yeah," Peter agreed, snagging some toast from the centre stack as he did so, "but just because one is better doesn't mean either are good."

Marlene looked affronted. "Et tu, Brute?" she asked.

"It's too early for Latin. Shakespeare. Either. Too early for all literary references," Dorcas grumbled, padding in and looking wrecked. James slid her a coffee, which she accepted gratefully.

"Rough night?" Sirius teased.

"I blame Mundungus," Dorcas grumbled, squinting against the sunlight streaming in from the window behind Marlene. Peter leaned back and closed the screen curtain, easing up the glare a little and earning a nod of thanks from Dorcas.

"Emmeline said you'd say that," Marlene snickered, passing the plate of fried eggs to Dorcas. "It'll help," she promised. "Grease is the enemy of hangovers."

She made a face, but she accepted it. "Where is Emmeline?" she asked, sliding two eggs onto her plate and grabbing a slice of toast.

"Headquarters," Sirius said airily, pretending not to notice Marlene stiffening. She had the utmost faith in Emmeline, and always had, but it was impossible to forget that anything could go wrong on a mission. It was always worse if you were back home, constantly wondering what was going on in the field.

Instead, he chose to focus on Dorcas' incredulous stare, shrugging as he did so. "I've never known Emmeline to get a hangover," he said. "Right, Marls?"

"Yeah, she's pretty much immune," Marlene said, snapping back to attention so quickly that it seemed like she'd never been distracted at all. "I mean, part of it is that usually she's the most reasonable person with alcohol intake anyway, but there have been multiple distinct occasions where James and I have practically had her mainlining Firewhiskey just to see what it takes to get her drunk, and she's still up by, like, dawn the next day."

Everyone glanced at James to see what he made of this, but he was still stuck on the earlier conversation about names.

"Just to be clear," he said, noticing everyone looking at him, "Horace is off the table. I'm still not sure why he was even on it."

Lily groaned, but Marlene grinned at the return to her favourite conversation topic: pitching names for the little human growing inside of Lily.

"I mean, without ol' Sluggy, you'd have never got together," Marlene said, using her hash brown to gesture at James and Lily.

James sputtered, but Lily frowned, thinking about it.

"Like, maybe you'd still have got it together, but the reason you asked him out at the actual time that you did was because of the Christmas Cauldron Catastrophe of '77," Marlene pointed out, looking at Lily.

Remus tilted his head. "She has a point."

Dorcas looked confused. She had graduated the year before them and hadn't been present at the incident. "What happened?"

The rest of the group exchanged glances. "Evans cared way too much about both extracurriculars and Slughorn's opinion," Sirius said, "and when you combine that with Prongs' crush and extreme willingness to help her out… it doesn't end well."

"It'd probably have ended better if Peeves hadn't been there," James muttered.

"I think it was a great ending," Peter said unexpectedly.

"We melted a classroom," Lily reminded him.

"We nearly melted James," Sirius added.

Peter shrugged. "So? From that, you ended up together. That's a great ending in my books. And James was all right. Well, mostly. His foot got better."

James scowled, but everyone else grinned. After a few moments—and a nudge from a smiling Lily—James smiled too.

"All right, I see your reasoning about Horace," he said to Marlene, "but still… no."

Marlene shrugged. "All right, Cap," she said, grinning at him. "What's your proposal?"

He glanced at Sirius. "Got to be Elvendork," he said, leaning back in his chair.

Lily sputtered this time. Marlene ignored this.

"Family name?" she quipped.

"Well, his dad's name is Fleamont," Remus pointed out.

"Said Remus," Peter said drily.

The room descended into argument—James and Sirius could be heard chorusing in unison, "Elvendork is unisex!"—and looked poised to continue in this vein for hours until a familiar whoosh came from the living room.

Emmeline was standing there, hands on her hips. "Are you Hobbits? How long does breakfast take?" she demanded, gesturing to the fireplace. "Reinforcements needed, let's go."

Everyone started filing out via Floo. "What was everyone arguing about when I arrived?" Emmeline asked Marlene.

"James wants to name his child Elvendork," Marlene replied. "But hey, at least it's unisex."

"Damn straight," Sirius called, before entering the Floo.

"For Elvendork?" James asked Marlene and Emmeline, the last two left in the house with him.

They looked at each other, rolling their eyes, before grinning at him. "For Elvendork," they chorused, before Floo-ing out to fight, as James said, for a better world for Elvendork.

a/n. very different length from the last thing i wrote, ahaha. also, the elvendork thing is a reference to jkr's prequel, not my personal suggestion at an alternate name for harry lmao