London, May 2, 2020
"Wakeup-wakeup-wakeup!" Remus was woken by a shrill voice and a hit on the head with his own feather pillow. "Whaz goin' on, Marlene?" he grumbled as he tried to fight her off while keeping his eyes closed. Was it too much to ask for to be able to sleep in on a Saturday? He managed to wrestle the pillow away from her and used it to cover his head.
Marlene, however, was not deterred; she ignored his sleep-drunk protests and yanked off his covers before proceeding to jump onto his bed and prod and tickle his sides.
"No, gerroff!" He growled and tried to recover his blanket while still holding the pillow over his head. "You crazy woman!"
"Remus Lupin, you wake up right now, or I'm giving your ticket to somebody else!" she threatened and finally stopped bouncing.
"What? What ticket? What are you on about, Marlene?" Deeming it safe at last, he emerged from his pillow and rubbed his eyes.
"A ticket. To the concert. Tonight. I won! We're all going!" She squealed, and grabbed his pillow again, giving him one last whack on the head before she danced out of his room. He could hear her burst into Lily's room to give her the same good-morning greeting that he had just received.
He dragged himself into a sitting position and stretched. He'd better go rescue Lily from the Marlene whirlwind, he thought, before Lily had the chance to murder their enthusiastic roommate. It was before her morning coffee after all, so one should always tread carefully.
He stopped by the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker before joining his two best friends in Lily's bedroom.
Lily was currently buried beneath her covers, muttering something unintelligible, but undoubtably nasty, at the ecstatic mess pouncing on her.
Remus chuckled at the sight but decided it would be wisest to intervene before Lily woke up properly and started to fight back.
"Alright Marlene, what's this talk about a concert?" he asked, putting on his diplomatic teacher's voice, and pulled her off the awakening beast.
"Just now on the radio! Ludo Bagman had a contest and I called in! And I won! Four tickets! Can you believe it?" She finished with a squeak of excitement, clapping her hands and jumping up and down at the foot of Lily's bed.
Lily sat up, her normally sleek, red hair almost comically tousled and her green eyes puffy and only half-open.
"Whoa, slow down, Marlene," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with her palms. "What concert? When?"
"The Marauders, of course! They're playing at Wembley tonight, and it's been sold out for ages, but Mama here scored us four tickets! You're welcome." She stuck out her chin and brushed imaginary dust off her shoulder.
"Hmm alright, that could be fun I guess, but why did you have to drag us out of bed at such an ungodly hour if the concert's not until tonight?" Lily groaned and let herself fall backwards onto the bed, once more covering her eyes with her lower arm.
"You guess it could be fun?!" Marlene said, dropping down to her knees to get all up in Lily's face. "It's only the hottest rock band ever to come out of Britain, their music is legend, the guitar player's arse is unrivalled on this planet we call Earth, and you 'guess it could be fun'?!" She made quotation marks in the air and glared at Lily. "Hmm, well I guess that I could find someone who would appreciate it more, then!" She huffed, sitting back on her heels and crossing her arms, sticking out her lower lip in the Marlene Signature Puppy Pout.
"Aww, Marlene, don't be like that. I'm sorry—of course I wanna go!" Lily began with the air of someone indulging a small child. "It's amazing that you managed to win those tickets," she continued as she got up and rubbed her pouting friend's arm. "I bet you had to answer some tough questions from Bagman?"
Marlene's pout turned into a slightly more dignified expression as she answered, "Yes, as a matter of fact I did. There were five other contestants but only I could answer the final question: 'What's the name of Sirius Black's dog?'" She quirked an eyebrow as if to challenge them, but Remus and Lily just looked at her with blank faces. "It's Snuffles, of course!"
"Obviously," Remus said and rolled his eyes.
"How very punk rock." Lily snorted.
"You two just be happy that you have such a clever friend, who knows everything there is to know about The Marauders!" Marlene said, shaking her index finger at the pair of them.
"Yes, Queen Marlene, we bow to your immeasurable intellect and thank you humbly for your gracious gift." Lily smiled and kissed Marlene's cheek fondly. It wasn't often that Marlene knew something they didn't, and they couldn't bring themselves to deflate her happiness by pointing out that her particular area of expertise had somewhat limited applications. "Remus, is the coffee on?" Remus nodded and Lily proceeded to the kitchen.
Marlene sighed, but it was obvious that her friend was forgiven. "You're excited to go, aren't you Remus?"
"Erm, sure." He yawned, putting as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could muster so early on a Saturday morning. He had never listened to The Marauders much—in fact, he rarely listened to music in general—but he had heard a few of their more popular songs, and he could not deny that the guitar player had featured in one or two of his more… private… fantasies. Purely based off the poster that Marlene had stuck to the inside of her door. It featured the guitarist, shirtless and drenched in sweat, picking the strings of his instrument with his eyes closed in blissful concentration.
He was pulled from his thoughts by Marlene drawing him in for a quick hug. "Excellent, I'll go ring Alice. She loves The Marauders just as much as I do—she'll be creaming her knickers when I tell her!" she said and skipped back to her own bedroom.
Remus joined Lily in the open kitchen, where she was putting slices of bread in the toaster. The coffee maker gave a final slurp, indicating that it was done, so he poured them two cups and went to fetch butter and jam from the fridge.
Lily groaned behind him. "She's not gonna sit down today, is she?"
Remus just smiled and shook his head; knowing Marlene (which they both did, having shared the flat with her for the past eight years), she would be running up the walls, driving them crazy all day.
"I suppose it might be good for us—the concert, I mean," Lily mused. "We've all been so caught up with work lately, it'll be nice to have a night off, won't it? When was the last time you went out?"
Remus had to think for a while. To his chagrin, it had to have been a long time ago because no answer sprang immediately to his mind. A night out would probably do him good, and even though a loud rock concert would not have been his first choice of setting, at least he would have something nice to look at. That thought made him feel like a randy teenager, but fortunately, Lily was too busy setting the table to notice his blush. Yup, it had definitely been too long.
They had only sat down for a few minutes, when loud rock music suddenly blared out from Marlene's room, almost making Remus drop his toast into his coffee. She must have finished talking to Alice, then. She came dancing into the living room, still in her pyjamas, hairbrush-turned-microphone in hand.
Remus and Lily looked at each other and smiled in defeat.
They were in for a long day.
A/N:
There you have the first two chapters - I hope you enjoyed and would love to know your thoughts!
What to expect from here: I'm currently at 56k words and planning to post 1 chapter per week (2 if they're short), so by the time I run out of finished chapters, I'll hopefully have the last ~50k's worth of loose ideas organised. The ending is written though!
