- Chapter Forty-Eight -
"Happy birthday."

(A/N: Just look at this man.)

"Happy birthday!"

The boys eyes snapped open and his brain was forced to work almost straight away on that fine morning. Well, a morning that was supposed to be fine. He had awoken earlier in the night to some rustling and looked around sluggishly to see Sirius' bed curtains rustling slightly. However he thought nothing of it and fell back to sleep, burying his face back into his soft pillow. Now he was suddenly face planting the cold, hard mahogany planks of wood that lay fixed together on the floor of his dorm room.

Remus groaned in shock, pain and having to wake up sooner than he anticipated. He could hear sniggering behind him, definitely Sirius, along with some humorous guffaws from James. A small, feminine giggle came from the group too and he instantly knew that it was Elladora trying to hide her laughs in case he was hurt.

"Are you okay?" Her mellow tone made him smile lazily as he rolled over onto his back instead of being on his front.

Above him stood his four best friends, all smiling down at him with their wands in their hands. It looked like they had all just woken up, but Remus knew that they had just been working for the majority of the night. For example, blowing up the big 1 and the big 7 that were floating behind them. He had no idea when Elladora arrived, he surely would've heard her come in and be able to wake the rest of the boys up, but maybe not after that glitter fiasco ten days ago.

They were all still in their Pyjamas, grinning like mad down at him.

"I'm fine." He muttered, rubbing at his eyes as he propped himself up on his elbows. "What the hell is this?"

"It's your birthday." James shrugged, holding a hand down to his friend so he could pull himself up. He pushed whilst James pulled and they both stumbled when they were on their feet. "Happy birthday, mate." The bespectacled boy slapped his arse as he stepped away.

Remus glared at his back whilst raising a hand towards his behind, but then he had to move them back towards his front when a pile of wrapped gifts were shoved into his hand. He caught them carefully and smiled after seeing that none of them had fallen out of his grip.

"Happy birthday!" Elladora flung her arms around him, bringing him into a hug as he hugged back with only one arm since the rest were cradling the presents that Sirius had stuffed in his hands.

"Thanks, Dora."

"Quickly quickly." James hurried, running over and jumping onto Remus' bed like a little child on Christmas morning. "I don't want to miss breakfast because of your slow and neat unwrapping."

"Hey." Remus exclaimed in defence. "I happened to be recycling for someone else's birthday instead of needing to buy new wrapping paper." He said and Sirius joined James on his bed, accompanied by Peter.

Elladora squeezed her way in too, nearly sitting on Sirius's lap but managing to squeeze in the middle of him and James. The four of them taking up something that was meant for one person made for uncomfortable movements that led to Peter elbowing Elladora in the stomach which he apologised profusely for with a deep blush on his cheeks.

Remus watched with an exasperated sigh as James whacked the blonde boy on the head which sent him squishing into Sirius, which meant that he and Elladora bumped heads.

It was a very chaotic morning, but with friends like these, what did he expect?

"Settle down, settle down." He coaxed and Elladora reluctantly stopped herself from hitting Sirius across the head after he had elbowed her again, in the chest which is far more painful than being elbowed in the stomach.

"Sorry, Professor." James guffawed as Remus perched himself on the edge of the next bed so he was facing them all. "Hey, guys, maybe we should carve that into his case."

"You are not ruining the case that I bought him!" Elladora glared at the boy viscously. "I had to use the imperious curse on the goblin to let me through to my vault in Gringotts without parental permission."

"You used an unforgivable curse?" Sirius asked with wide eyes and she straightened up as though offended that he would ask such a question. "Won't that land you in Azkaban?"

"Well, it was my own money." She defended, looking around at all of them. "Why should I need parental permission when I'm a legal adult to get my money from a bank? I doubt they'll even be able to put me in Azkaban if they tried."

"So you'd be a wanted criminal?" Remus raised an eyebrow.

"Better than having dementors all around you for years upon years." She retorted, rolling her eyes as James laughed quietly. "Anyways, let's not talk about what may or may not land me in Azkaban and let Remus open his presents!"

"You just want to change the subject." Sirius narrowed his eyes at her playfully. She only turned to him and flicked him in the forehead before turning back to Remus with a small smile.

The boy shook his head with a small and went to the first gift, from James. It was a small frame with a photo of them all at Christmas that year, Remus looked down at it as his lips tipped up into a wide smile. They were all sat in front of a Christmas tree in their variety of different pyjamas: James in a white shirt and red plaid pants, Peter in grey loungewear, Sirius wearing the same as James but with a black shirt and black plaid pants, Remus in his long sleeve matching royal blue set, Elladora wearing a white cotton button up t-shirt and shorts.

The moving picture showed a short three second sequence of Elladora launching herself towards Remus for a hug after seeing the Narnia books and the other boys laughing. Remus at first seemed taken aback as she wrapped her arms around him, but quickly relaxed with a smile when wrapping his own arms back around her.

"Who took this?" He laughed, leaning forwards to prop it up on his bedside table. Elladora leaned past Peter to examine it with a small smile of her own.

"Mum did." James laughed. "She mailed it a couple of weeks ago after getting it printed. Didn't know how we didn't see the flash."

Sirius' gift was next, a sort of distorted shape. Remus eyed it skeptically before trying to carefully peel the wrapping paper off, although it was hard to make sure it didn't have any rips when the present was wrapped so oddly.

It was a jumper, a knitted jumper that Remus smiled at as he carefully slipped it out of the wrapping. He turned it around to look at both sides and gave a sigh at what he saw. Noticing the confused stares of Elladora, Peter and James and the excited grin of Sirius, he turned it around to show the others what had been stitched onto the front. A knitted wolf was knitted into the jumper and Sirius let out a bark of laughter when he saw it.

The rest of them smiled amusedly and gave their own small little laughs as the boy shook his head, folding it carefully and placing it to one side.

"Wait, why was it wrapped so...twisted?" Peter asked inquisitively, cocking his head to one side.

"Not all of us can wrap presents as neat as Moony and Dora." He explained, glancing in between the two aforementioned friends.

"Just use magic." Elladora suggested, shrugging her shoulder and Sirius pursed his lips in both thought and regret, groaning. "I'm guessing you forgot that you had a wand at the time."

Peter's gift was an assortment of different chocolates. Remus' eyes lit up as soon as he carefully peeled the two sides away and saw the top of the box, he thanked Peter sheepishly and took great care in making sure that it didn't get squashed as he placed it to one side.

Next was Elladora's gift and she sat up considerably straighter as he began to carefully unwrap it. He delicately slipped the rectangular novel from its packaging and scanned the cover, turning it to look at the back too before he looked up at her.

"Pride and Prejudice." He smiled and she nodded her head fervently.

"I read it in the library, someone must've left it there and I spent the whole night reading it. It's good and I thought you might like it so I bought two copies. One for myself and one for you." She told him happily, smiling down at the novel.

Remus looked at her happy face and couldn't bear to bring up the fact that he had read it many times before, so he acted like he had never even heard of Jane Austen. He read the blurb on the back of the book and put on the most pleased expression he could muster, looking up at her with a smile.

"It sounds good." He laughed and she nodded, grinning like mad. "I'll read it as soon as possible."

"Okay, well, I have to go now and get dressed but I'll see you at breakfast." She tried to get up from the tangle that she and the others had managed to get them self in and ended up falling off of the bed whilst all of the other reached out to catch her before she met the floor and broke her nose.

"Careful!" Sirius yelled out as he stabilised her.

"I will." She breathed out in relief of not breaking a bone from falling out of Remus' bed. "Okay, well, I'll see you guys in half an hour."

"Bye, Dora."

The door closed softly behind her and they listened for her footsteps descending down the stone stairway and Remus took his eyes away from the door to face his friends, who were all staring at the book of Pride and Prejudice.

"Didn't you recommend that to us last year?" James titled his head, pointing at the novel. Sirius and Peter nodded their heads along with the statement.

"Yeah and loads of other books by that James Australia person." Sirius added. Remus scoffed at the butchered name of one of his favourite authors of all time.

"Jane Austen." He chastised, glaring at the boy, who backed away from his friend at the severity of the glare. "And yes, I've read that book many times, it's a classic. But I'm not going to tell her that. Imagine how disappointed she'd be."

"True, she would be quite sad." Peter pursed his lips as he stood from Remus' bed. James just adjusted his position so he was lying horizontally over the covers, glasses tilted whilst he snuggled into his friends pillow.

"Prongs." Remus said and James peeked an eye open. "Get off my bed."

"Fine." The boy groaned and slid off of it dramatically, sighing heavily as he grunted every time he took a step over to his own bed, which only had to be 5 feet away.

The four of them were quiet as they changed into their uniforms. Peter did fall over at one point, trying to tug his pants over his legs and then tipping onto the floor, which Sirius nearly collapsed over in laughs at. But overall, it took a short time to get fully dressed.

It was just Remus' luck that his birthday was on a Thursday. Thursdays were his least favourite days: double potions, history of magic, Herbology and Charms. A full day and he sat next to his friends in none of these lessons. Still, he knew that they would have fun later in the night but by then they might be tired for the next day.

Tomorrow they had double defence against the dark arts, where he was next to Elladora and she wouldn't mind if he slept. God knows how long she could go without a good nights sleep, he could count several times where she had let slip that she had spent the whole night in the library. Three of those times being three days in a row and she was still as chipper and alert as ever.

He'd only seen her with tired and stressed eyes once and that was when they first spoke that night on the Astronomy Tower. Never again had he seen her look that drained and she intended to keep it that way.

•*•*•*•*•
A/N: We're getting close to the ✨ drama ✨