Peter was sitting on his bed in the dormitories when James, Sirius, and Remus arrived back from DADA to fetch him before going down to lunch in the Great Hall. The moment the door opened, Peter shoved something under his pillow and shifted so it was tucked beneath his round rump.
"What've you got there, Pete?" Sirius asked, seeing the motion, a smirk coming across his face, "Are you taking a look at some fine looking witches?" He winked as he reached for Peter's pillow.
"Oh, don't!" Peter said, batting away Sirius's hand.
"Leave him be," James said, "If he wants to look at dirty magazines while we're gone let him, it isn't as though that is on the list of rules."
Sirius snuffed and went about the end of the bed.
"It isn't that anyway," Peter said, flushing scarlet red.
James raised an eyebrow, "No? You're awfully red for someone who wasn't just... brandishing his wand, so to say."
Sirius's grin widened and he stifled a snicker as he stripped his necktie off and chucked it into the open maw of his trunk, tugging a grey vest from the depths. "Good one, Prongs."
Remus sighed, "Brandishing his wand? Really?"
Peter shook his pink face. "No, no, I wasn't brandishing my -- Merlin, no."
"Well what were you up to then, Pete, that's got you so flustered?" James asked, genuinely curious. "Everything alright?"
Peter hesitated, then he sighed and reached under his pillow, withdrawing an ordinary muggle catalog. He threw it onto the foot of his bed, where James was standing, unbuttoning his school uniform shirt, keen to put on his quidditch jumper before going downstairs. James leaned over the catalog, looking down at a page of muggle jewelry boxes, compact mirrors, make up cases, and hair clips. "It's just Lily's birthday is coming up and--"
James smiled, lifting the catalog up. "You were picking her a gift?"
"Yeah," Peter said. "Except that most of it is too expensive, I haven't got a lot of money, I just -- I thought something small might be nice because she's a very good friend, and --"
Sirius wagged his fingers at James to see the catalog, and James handed it over to him.
"Well that's really nice of you," James said, "I'm sure no matter what you give her she'll lovely, Pete. Don't worry about that."
"Yeah..." Peter said. He crawled up on his knees and pointed, "I wanted to get her that there. That musical jewelry box. But it's way, way more than I've got."
Sirius said, "What if Moonpie and I pitch in as well? It can be from all three of us."
Remus said, "Oh. Um. Well, I don't really have any to--"
"Nonsense, Moony, you've got what I've got, mate." Sirius turned to Pete, "What if we did two thirds and you do one third and Moony will do the wrappings when it comes in? Yeah?"
James was smiling as he pulled on his quidditch jumper. The thoughtfulness of his mates toward his girlfriend was warming up his heart quite a lot. He was struck once again - for about the hundred-millionth time - just how lucky he was to have the relationships that he had in his life. Every one of them meant so very much to him.
"I could do that!" Peter said excitedly. He snatched the catalog up and looked down at the pretty pink musical jewelry box in the catalog with a gigantic grin.
Sirius smiled, too, looking to Remus, who looked a bit apprehensive, but smiled back. "That's settled then, we've solved the Lily's birthday gift dilemma, let's go and eat!"
"Excellent," James agreed, "I'm bloody starved."
"Same," Peter said.
Remus didn't add in. It was getting close to the full moon again, and he was in the early stages of losing his appetite, so whatever he ate it would be just enough to get his required nutrition, and probably forced upon him by Sirius Black's persistence.
They were headed down to the Great Hall, Sirius and Peter walking ahead, talking about their arrangement to purchase the musical box, while James and Remus hung back a short ways. Remus glanced at James. "Hey, how're you doing, by the way?"
"How am I doing?" James asked, chuckling at the irony as Remus Lupin sort of half-hobbled down the corridor toward the stairwell. "You ask me that when you're getting to the full end of the waning moon?"
Remus smiled, "I'll admit the irony is strong here... But I meant more with, you know..." his voice lowered, "The artefacting and recovering from last term and such?"
James stiffened slightly. Neither of them had spoken of the artefacting since he'd told Remus about it two years ago. He gave Remus a funny look. "What made you bring it up?" he asked.
Remus hesitated, watching Sirius and Peter step onto a staircase about to swing away from the one that he and James were on, alone. As the staircases split, he turned to James. "Regulus remembered being in the Shrieking Shack, although he's never been there," Remus said. "When we went to meet you the other night. He remembered some stupid joke that was very much something Sirius would say - about a deer friend making the antler marks you've left on the rafters out there. It was the weirdest feeling, when he was saying it, like a ghost of a memory."
James blinked in surprise at Remus. "That... that was when Maryrose died. Sirius told him that when... when we went to rescue her body from the cave, where the inferi were."
Remus murmured, "Why would Maryrose's death be artefacting?"
"Maybe it's not Maryrose's death, but the fact that Sirius and Regulus were mates in that timeline - or at least closer to being mates than they are now?" James suggested.
Regulus shrugged. "Eitherway, something changed that ought not to have."
James felt a knot in his stomach at these words, somewhere deep down. He pushed it away, only to have it return again a little bit later when they came down the stairs into the Entrance Hall to find Maryrose and Wendy deep in a conversation by the doors to the Great Hall. They stopped talking when they spotted James, Maryrose smiling and chirping out, "Morning," as the Marauders walked by.
"Morning," James murmured, and he gave Remus a Look as they walked through the Hall toward Gryffindor table.
"There you are," Lily said as she scooted down to make room for the four Marauders on the bench. James and Peter took the seats to her left and Sirius and Remus went 'round to the other side. "I was wondering where the feck you lot were gone to."
"Feck, Evans?" Sirius snickered.
"Shush yourself," Lily said, even as James snickered, too, and kissed her cheek.
"You know how these two are with their grooming," Remus said, rolling his eyes and thumbing at James and Sirius, "Takes them for-bloody-ever to get ready to go anywhere. I swear, with this one here I could run an entire errand before he was even ready to step out."
Lily laughed, "Things I have to look forward to in my future, I s'pose - James Potter being slow on everything except a broomstick."
"Especially logic," Sirius piped up and James grabbed a roll and chucked it quite violently in Sirius's direction.
Severus Snape sat in his dormitory. He refused to go to the Great Hall for lunch. He was far too angry to be hungry. He'd sat burning and stewing for over an hour since he had left the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.
The simulation from the Ministry had not worked on him. He had felt it, trying to penetrate the walls he had built in his mind, but he had been too afraid to knock them down. Vulnerability was not part of Severus Snape's vocabulary and the simulation would have forced him into it. He had stood there, in the center of the empty room, staring at the desks and shuttered off windows, frustrated as he felt the simulation bouncing off his thoughts, flashes of it invading his mind like memories... He could've passed it with no problems, he could have won the entire thing. But once again his affiliation with the Dark Lord was keeping him from it.
Now, with a troll on the challenge, it didn't matter he had gotten all the scrolls, did it? He would still not win the whole game. That honor, he realized sickly, would go to James Potter. He wanted to throw up thinking of how boastful and stupid about it Potter would be. Would probably shout about how Snape had had all 26 scrolls and still not managed to win, even though he and Lily only had 21...
At least Lily would win, too. Unlike James, Lily deserved it. He would have let her win if she hadn't been teamed with one of them.
He thought about how Remus and James had pretended at congratulating him when they found out he had the most scrolls, as though they thought he was an idiot that would believe for a second that they gave a blast that he had gotten them all. As if they weren't mocking him, probably whispered about how he had probably cheated or something the moment he turned away, or said some other awful, hateful thing. He pictured Lily Evans laughing at whatever it was, and his blood boiled and he hated James Potter and his little posse of idiots all the more.
Furthermore, he hated Urquart for having set up the stupid challenge.
He hated himself, for building the walls that had kept him from success.
And he hated the Dark Lord, who was the one he should have hated most of all, really, because it was Voldemort's fault that he had those walls built, Voldemort's fault that a class like DADA had to exist, Voldemort's fault that he was back here at Hogwarts instead of far away at Durmstrang, where he'd been happy and free from the Marauders and their bullying... Voldemort's fault that he didn't have Lily Evans to talk to anymore, to love as his own.
He sent a jet of red light violently across the room, shattering the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. He rolled over, tugging the duvet up over his head, closing out the world.