Forever and a Day ~ James Potter

Padfoot, Rosie and the Sixteenth Birthday Party

Chapter Eleven

Friday 7th November ~ 19:23 ~ waning moon

Rosie was gently applying some glittery eyeshadow from the palette Sirius had bought her on her birthday when she heard a low cry from the bathroom. Looking over at Marlene, who was dabbing powder blusher over her cheeks, she frowned in amusement as they made eye contact. She'd expected the sound to have come from the blonde, but she looked just as humoured. 

Alice put down the bottle of hairspray she was using on Mary's her and went over to knock tentatively on the bathroom door. "Lil? Are you alright?" she asked gently, looking around at the others, who were also staring.

"I'm fine!" she shouted back, her voice a pitch higher than it usually was. But the others waited for her to say that it was, in fact, not fine. "It's just that... Rosie's run out of that perfume I like, and I bloody forgot to buy more at Hogsmeade!"

"Just use my soap!" Mary shouted impatiently, carrying on with applying her makeup as she shook her head at the girls dramatics. "I bought some similar stuff last time we went! It was just probably a lot cheaper," she flashed her eyebrows in the mirror.

"And there's another trip to help me right before Christmas. We can go together then," Rosie added, hoping that she sounded helpful. Though, she did feel slightly guilty that her perfume was most definitely out the girls' budgets, as it had been bought by her grandmother on her fifteenth birthday.

"Thanks guys! I'll be out in a minute!" Lily shouted, her voice returning to its normal pitch. The girls sighed in relief, knowing that they were already running late for Rosie's arrival.

The others shook their heads with light giggles and carried on getting themselves ready for Rosie's, slash Sirius's, slash Charles's birthday party.

*

While the girls worked in perfect sync, helping each other with their weaknesses in getting dolled up and moving from station to station in perfect timing, in the Marauders' dormitory, Peter was being chased by Sirius with a threatening can of aftershave.

"Padfoot, leave me alone!" Peter shouted - or 'shrieked' would probably have described his reaction a little better - after almost dropping his little tub of Sleakeezy's hair gel. James always gave him the tubs that his mother forced him to take to school in September.

"Give me back my eyeliner pencil!" Sirius roared, stamping his foot like a child and holding the can at full arms length, almost hitting Peter in the back of the head.

"I've told you already. I don't have it!" Peter shouted back now, spinning around and glaring at the long-haired boy. He took a double-take at the close proximity of the can but held his ground nonetheless.

"Well then, who-" Sirius paused mid-accusation as he spotted Remus standing in the mirror, drawing under his eyes with something. His posture stiffened. "Lupin," he growled, narrowing his eyes and stalking towards the lanky boy.

"Yes, Black?" Remus smiled smugly, turning around with the pencil quite obviously in his hand. He made no move to defend himself from the wand that was now gripped in the boy's free hand.

Peter huffed, growing impatient as he sensed the argument that was about to occur. So, he pushed Remus out of the way as he hurriedly styled his thin hair with the gel, anxious about missing out on anything that might be happening at the party.

Sirius walked over to the boy, so close that they were almost touching noses, and he even had to tilt his head up a little so that he could look Remus in the eye, who was grinning still. "Give me that... BACK!" he roared, snatching the little pencil out of Remus's hand and running back to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind himself so that nobody could take it from him again.