*7th Year*
By the time Mariya found herself on the platform later that week, she was in a very good mood. She had received owl post from the Ministry the previous day and she couldn't have been happier with the result. Her parents had told her she was safe to go the the station herself, having passed her Apparating test over a year ago and given that she was to be meeting people on the platform.
"If anyone tries anything funny," Her father had told her, "You have permission to hex them in all the ways your mother has discouraged."
This comment had earned him a slap on the arm from her mother, though the woman couldn't really say much in her defence, seeing as she had always attempted to prevent Mariya from attacking anyone except when necessary.
As she emerged from the barrier, Mariya was immediately assaulted by the wall of sound created by all of her classmates and their parents as they gave teary goodbyes and students begged their parents to keep them at home so they didn't have to go to their exams. Making her way towards the Potter family, Mariya was surprised to see the broad grin which both James and Fleamont were wearing as they looked at her.
"What are you grinning at?" Mariya asked as she reached Euphemia's shoulder but was surprised as the older woman - who had apparently not noticed her presence - turned and pulled her into a tight hug. "Hello Mrs Potter."
"Euphemia, darling, Euphemia." The woman in question told her as she squeezed so hard that Mariya was sure she would end up with cracked ribs.
"She was just talking about you." Fleamont explained as Mariya shot him a quizzical look over his wife's shoulder. "She was beginning to worry that you weren't coming."
"Thanks Euphemia, I missed you too." Mariya assured her, embracing the other woman before pulling back. "James."
The aforementioned boy reached forward and pulled her into a hug that felt rather gentle after the one given by his mother. Euphemia's grin was practically audible but the teens were quickly distracted as they saw a flash of ginger off to their left and pulled back to see what was going on.
They were very surprised to see the normally reserved Lily Evans running after Jasper before jumping on to the boy's back in an impromptu piggy-back. Jasper stumbled a bit but quickly adjusted to the extra weight and everyone around them continued to watch in confusion for a moment before returning to their own conversations.
"What happened to her?" Mariya asked, having never seen the girl act so exuberantly in her life.
James grinned, "I don't think she knew about the weird tradition Jasper has of giving his best friends presents on his birthday. I think he was getting her some sort of first edition muggle book about a wizard and these strange small people with fluffy feet. He said it was called something like 'The Comradeship of the Bracelet'."
Mariya frowned in confusion for a moment before getting it, "You mean 'The Fellowship of the Ring' by J.R.R. Tolkien. How on Earth could you get 'The Comradeship of the Bracelet' from that?"
"Sounds about right." James shrugged, "I'll be honest, I lost interest once he said it was a book."
Mariya snorted before her face twisted to a faux offended look, "He didn't give me anything, and I thought we were friends." She clasped a hand over her heart in the sort of dramatic way she knew James and Sirius did all of the time.
"Just wait for it, he probably won't take long. I would bet proper money that he will have given you something by the time we reach the castle, if not the carriages."
"Speaking of money," Mariya remembered, "Are you really interning under my mother?"
James nodded, "Yeah, all summer. I will be going on one of the exchange trips in July which is why I was so enthusiastic about you signing up. Speaking of which, did you get it."
Mariya let her face fall in disappointment for a minute and watched in amusement as James began to panic, thinking that he had said the wrong thing and that she hadn't been offered the position. Once he looked suitably scared, Mariya grinned.
"Yeah, I did." And she observed as his face twisted in confusion before he realised that she had been joking with him and reached for her sides. Seeing what was about to happen, Mariya swivelled on her heel to avoid his hands and jumped back, swiping her wand out of it's holster and using a levitation spell on her trunk as she ducked in-between people to make her way across the station to the train, shouting back over her shoulder as she did so.
"It was lovely talking to you Mr and Mrs Potter." Before spotting James gaining ground and increasing her pace.
Avoiding him became a little more difficult once Mariya made it onto the train. She had to try to levitate her trunk over the heads of all the students in the corridors as she swept through the compartments. Eventually, she made it to the end one, where she knew Remus would already be waiting. Sticking her head inside, she was relieved to see him as she quickly placed her trunk on the rack above his head before pulling herself up onto the shelf and curling into a little ball in the hope James wouldn't spot her. Though Remus looked rather confused at first, he accepted the strange action with a speed that showed he was used to his friends doing this sort of thing and went back to his book. Only a few moments after silence resumed, it was broken by the door slamming open so hard the glass cracked and James emerging through the opening.
"What did that window ever do to you?" Remus asked and James spun around to see the broken pane.
"Nothing." He admitted sheepishly and Remus shot him an expectant look until he sighed and pulled out his wand. "Reparo." He muttered before turning back to the boy.
"Have you seen Mariya recently?" Said girl couldn't help but be impressed as Remus's gaze didn't once flicker in her direction as he lied to his friend.
"No," He shook his head before sighed and running a hand through his hair as though he didn't really want to know the answer to his next question but was going to ask anyway. "What has she done now?"
"She tricked me." James muttered and Remus shot him an unimpressed look at this rather sparse explanation. "I was asking if she had got the internship at the Ministry of Magic and she made me believe that she hadn't before saying she had."
"She made you?" Remus asked, his eyebrow raised about as high as Mariya had ever seen it go. "Used the Imperius curse on you did she?"
James pouted, "No, and I don't appreciate you attempting to ruin my bad mood Moony. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a snake to find."
"Don't break the door on your way out." Remus muttered as he picked up his book once more and opened to his last page. "I really don't want to try to explain to Professor McGonagall how the Head Boy came to damage school property in front of me."
James shrugged, but closed the door deliberately softly behind him and gave Remus a sarcastic smile before disappearing down the hallway.
"Should I even ask?" Remus muttered to Mariya as he pretended to read his book, just in case James came back and Mariya's secret was revealed.
"Probably not," She whispered, waiting to see James walk back the other way before swinging herself off the luggage rack and collapsing into the seat across from Remus so she would see James first if he returned. Doing so, she fished her own book out of the inner coat pocket where it had previously resided.
The two sat in silence for around ten more minutes before they heard a gasp outside of the compartment and they looked up to see James and Sirius standing on the other side of the glass door. One of them was grinning broadly whilst the other had his jaw dropped, I imagine that you can guess who was who. Mariya scooted across the seat and propped her foot up against the far panel of the door in a way that would make it nigh impossible to open. James seemed to realise this as his face settled into a sullen glare at the woman, who merely smiled innocently at him whilst Remus smirked at their antics. He might sometimes pretend not to approve of their nonsense but Mariya knew he was really lived up to his title as a Marauder when it came down to it.
Mariya allowed the boys to stand outside looking unimpressed for a while, before they tried to open the door. Unfortunately for them, Mariya had a good understanding of physics and knew that they wouldn't be able to generate a great enough force to open the door until she let them. Watching avidly as James latched on to the door handle and Sirius grabbed his waist to help, she waited until they were both leaning back with all of their weight resting on their hands, before dropping her foot in one swift move and turning in her seat to watch them fly down the corridor. It was happy coincidence that the train happened to start moving just as she did this, causing two things to happen. .the first being that the two tumbled even further than expected and the second, a group of fourth year girls, who had been trying to find an empty compartment, started giggling only slightly hysterically as they realised that the James Potter and Sirius Black had landed at their feet. Carefully stepping over the two, they grinned broadly at Mariya as they saw her standing in the doorway watching the boys, before heading off further down the train.
After a few moments of groaning theatrically on the floor as though he had been actually wounded by the fall, James dragged himself to his feet and offered a hand to Sirius, who took it just to pull James back onto the floor with him. Mumbling something less than pleasant about the boy, James stood back up once more before grabbing Sirius by the ankle and beginning to pull him towards the compartment Mariya and Remus were in.
"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to mess with a girl?" Mariya asked, raising both eyebrows at him. "We have claws." She grinned and swiped her hand through the air like a cat.
"I hate you." James muttered to Mariya as he flopped into the seat across from her.
"I love you too." Mariya grinned at him before they started to argue about how unfair Mariya's move was.
Sirius and Remus however, were looking between the two after registering Mariya's words. Remus was frowning gently but Sirius was much less subtle as he gaped at the two.
"How has he not reacted to that?" Sirius mouthed to Remus once he recovered slightly from his shock.
Remus shrugged, "Maybe they have already said it." He suggested as he watched James reach out towards Mariya before she batted his hands away. "I wouldn't be surprised."
Sirius turned back to watch them as Remus resumed his book, what a strange couple. Eventually he decided that he would approach James about it later and sat back to enjoy the train ride.
Thanks to the crowd of students trudging up towards the carriages, Mariya managed to lose the Marauders and found herself instead close to Severus, Jasper, and Lily, who were all heading towards the same carriage. Pulling herself up and in after them, Mariya sat down on the soft seat and settled back as the vehicle began to rock gently back and forth as it ascended the slope towards the castle.
She had expected to pass the journey in silence, but it had only been thirty seconds more or less before Jasper said her name and she opened her eyes to look at the boy. He was grinning brightly at her and holding out a small dark red box tied with a silver ribbon in a perfect bow. Mariya was confused for a moment before she remembered what James had said earlier about him giving presents to other people for his birthday.
"Thank you, Jasper." She smiled, taking the box from him and beginning to untie the bow.
"Don't thank me yet, you don't know what it is." Jasper grinned, a mischievous twinkle entering his eye as he watched her.
"I'm presuming it can't be that bad, seeing as you have gone to the trouble of getting me anything." Mariya replied, as the ribbon came off and she lifted the lid.
Inside lay a small red velvet cushion upon which was placed a silver necklace. One might generally think that this was a very nice and expensive gift for Jasper to buy her but if one was to look more closely, one would quickly notice something strange about the necklace. In the very centre of the silver chain, lay three letters: MSP. Mariya was confused for a moment before she realised that the M and S stood for Mariya and Seratova, but she couldn't for the life of her work out why there was a P on the end. That was, until she looked up at Jasper, who had a bright grin covering his face and she made the connection. Potter. The P stood for Potter.
Unsure whether she should make a scene about it or not, Mariya decided that she would turn to Lily, who was sitting next to her and offered her the necklace. The girl took it and threaded it around Mariya's neck as the girl smiled smugly at Jasper, who was now looking significantly less pleased with himself as he realised that she actually intended to wear it.
"I'll take it this is your way of accepting me into your family." She told him as she kept her face happy. "Does James know about this."
Jasper shook his head, "I didn't expect you to actually wear it, though I am curious to see how James reacts when he sees it."
"Me too Jasper," Mariya agreed, her eyes slightly narrowed in thought. "Me too."
At the end of dinner, the James, Sirius, and Remus walked back towards the Gryffindor tower with a relatively high level of enthusiasm, they were all ready to unpack and settle into what had, over the years, basically become a second home to all of them. They were all glad to be back in their room once more but Remus was surprised to notice that he hadn't seen Peter since they had arrived back.
"Has anyone seen Wormtail recently?" He asked, frowning across at the other two from his position on his bed. James stopped watching the small Golden Snitch that was hovering just out of reach above his bed, only to turn in Remus's direction and shrug.
"Sirius?" He asked, and said boy screwed his face up in concentration, his face bright red as he hung upside down from the top bar of his four poster - a habit he had formed in their third year as he claimed it was good for thinking.
"I bumped into him on the train," He offered after a moment of careful consideration. "But he told me that he needed to speak to someone about something and I haven't seen him since."
"How strange." Remus muttered, after all the boy didn't really have another other social groups outside of them, Jasper, and Mariya so who could he possibly have been talking about.
"Is it?" James asked, and his friends frowned at him from across the room. "I mean, he has been disappearing more and more often recently. We barely saw him last term."
Remus nodded, it was a good point; Peter wasn't really in any of their classes so they never saw him then, and the only place they consistently spent time with him was in the Great Hall at mealtimes. Having voiced this opinion, Remus rolled over and pulled the duvet over his head in the way he always did when he wanted to go to sleep but knew that James and Sirius would probably stay up talking.
Sirius was glad of this as he walked over to, and flopped on top of, James's bed. His friend looked at him grumpily but shifted over nonetheless, it was something they were used to doing when they wanted to keep secret a plan they knew Remus would disapprove of, or were trying to give him the best chance of sleep they could.
"You didn't really react earlier when Mariya said she loved you." Sirius stated rather more bluntly than he had originally intended, deciding that diving straight into the deep end was better than beating around the bush with James.
"What do you mean?" James asked, frowning slightly. "When did she say that?"
"When she told you not to mess with her, you said that you hated her and she said that she loved you too."
James gave a snort of laughter before muffling it as he glanced across at Remus, "That is just what people say in response to 'I hate you'; she didn't mean it like that."
Sirius fell silent for a moment before asking, "And what would you have said if she had meant it like that?"
James did not hesitate before answering, "I would tell her that I loved her too."
Sirius looked only mildly surprised by this response, after all James would have said the same thing about Evans only a year previous and yet, the boy had a very giving nature and a heart that could stretch to love almost anyone.
Placing his arms around James in a tight hug for a moment before getting out of the bed, Sirius felt as though he had never thought so much in his life, feeling rather cheated that all of this thinking power had been used on James and Mariya rather than on something important, like how on Earth he was meant to introduce his friends to Saros.