- Chapter Thirty-Seven -
"Make it just Saturday and Sunday and you have yourself a deal."

Snape, Avery, Mulciber and Elladora were all sat on separated chairs in Slughorn's office. The man was looking between them all inquisitively whilst Professor McGonagall was stood at his side, gesturing for the boys from her house to take their places at some desks too. Once she had come across the fight, she had waved her wand and they were all away from each other at once.

Elladora reckons that the Marauders won, since Mulciber and Avery both had black eyes and some more bruises on their cheeks, the latter also had an ice pack held over his face. Whereas, James and Sirius only had one bruise each on their faces. Snape seemed a bit dizzy, since he had been running around in a circle trying to shake Elladora off of him.

Peter and Remus were both fine since they didn't really get involved with the fight, but were there are further in the ring than the rest of the students. Remus was not happy about having to be here with the two heads of houses, Peter didn't really care and just took a place at the desk next to Elladora and waited for McGonagall to lecture them.

"Fighting." She said after a moments silence, still red in the face as they all stared up at her. "I have never been so appalled with a students behaviour and it will not be tolerated."

"Fighting?" Slughorn looked shocked as he looked up at the eight students before him. "Oh, I don't think that-"

"Potter was punching Mulciber in the face, Avery was pushing Black into a wall and Miss Hargreaves was clinging onto Snape's back when I got there." Professor McGonagall said shortly, staring disapprovingly down at them all. Elladora glanced up at the witch, who simply shook her head at her, her eyes whirling with sheer disappointment.

"Oh." Slughorn muttered. "Elladora, surely you need more time to heal before doing any extra-curricular activities." He looked at her and she smiled sheepishly. Like all other people who hadn't ever seen her smile, he was taken aback slightly and smiled himself after a moment, glancing down at his papers before looking back up at the group,

"Extra-curricular?" McGonagall sputtered, turning to the man. "Your students have been fighting in the corridors." She exclaimed.

"Oh, don't fret Minerva, they're just having fun. Well, yes, uh, you'll all do detention on Friday afternoon." He cleared his throat and pointed at each of them, before reaching over to grab 4 pieces of paper, one for each of them. "That was very wrong of you to fight."

"I can't do Friday afternoon." Elladora said and frowned slightly as Professor McGonagall strode over to stand right in front of her desk.

"And why not?" The woman asked sternly. "Is your schedule so busy that you can't possibly make time for a detention that your head of house is setting you?" She looked down upon the girl.

"Yes, actually." Elladora answered and stared straight back up at her. A low whistle came from the direction that Sirius was sat in and then some rustling as well. The silence was saying a million different things at once. "I am rather busy on Fridays."

"Well, would you prefer to have a detention on Friday, Saturday and Sunday?" McGonagall wasn't letting up, keeping her gaze on the young girl as they stared each other down, not either of them breaking contact.

"Make it just Saturday and Sunday and you have yourself a deal." She smiled up at the woman. McGonagall stayed still for a moment before stalking away back to Slughorns desk. The young girls sigh of relief wasn't visible, but it was satisfying when a slip of paper was slammed down in front of her, the dates and times of her detention scrawled neatly onto it.

"You may go." The elderly witch said once she had handed everyone their own piece of paper. "And I hope that you learn a very valuable lesson from Fridays or Saturdays and Sunday's detentions."

Elladora smiled and grabbed her bag and cloak that Remus and Peter had given her after she was pulled off of Snape. Of course she doesn't want to have a whole weekend detention, but she can't just skip out on Hagrid, especially when she's been holed up in the Hospital Wing for the last few weeks. As she brought her cloak towards her arms to slip it over her shoulders, the scars across her stomach seared in pain and she winced slightly, losing her footing, but quickly regaining it as she grabbed onto the nearest thing for balance.

"You okay?" Peter murmured to her, putting his hand on hers that was clamped onto his arm. The Slytherins marched out of the room after Professor McGonagall had swept out so it was only the Marauders and Professor Slughorn still in the mans office.

"Fine." She smiled tightly and picked up her bag, hiking it slowly onto her shoulder and wincing once again when it pressed down onto one of her scars. "I'm fine." Her hand released Peter and she started to walk away, an obvious expression of pain on her face.

"You're not fine." Remus came next to her as James joined her other side, Peter next to him and Sirius next to Remus. "Do you need to go back to the Hospital Wing?"

"No!" She denied almost immediately, she didn't need to go back into the Hospital when she had seen what it had done to Regulus the first time she'd been in there. It was like he was a different person. "I just need to get used to moving around."

"Yeah, like at Evans's party tonight." James nodded and Elladora turned to him, eyebrows pinched together in confusion.

"You mean Evans' not Evans's." Remus raised his eyebrows at the bespectacled boy, who just waved him off with an incoherent murmur and waved at a passing boy from Hufflepuff, who gave him a simple nod.

James then turned slightly to face the group and glanced down at Elladora's still confused expression. He mirrored it and flicked her forehead whilst she swatted his hand away with a small chuckle. "Whats got you so confused, Dora?" He asked.

"What party?" She said, looking around at all of them, all of them then turned to her and looked over her face for a moment before making noises of realisation and nodding whilst incoherently muttering. "Wait, what was that?"

"Nothing." Remus reassured from her side. "We just realised that the reason you didn't know about the party was because you were in the hospital wing when she invited us."

"To her party! And you can all thank me, because without this face, you wouldn't be invited." James smirked and gestured to his features, Elladora was sure that she would've missed James' cockiness if her brain was conscious for those three weeks.

"And I'm invited too?" Elladora asked, looking around at them. Lily Evans was a very very kind girl, she could see why James liked her so much, but the two had never really spoken except for maybe a sentence or two here and there. Lily once asked how she made her skin look so smooth, but Elladora didn't have an answer, it was just naturally like that.

"Yes, indeed you are." Sirius said in an odd posh voice and stuffed his hands in his pocket. "Pretty sure that one of the envelopes that were on your Hospital Bed has the invitation in it. She's of age today so it's a pretty big deal."

"Yeah, and I've been ignoring her all day so I can show up at the party and be like 'boom, hello!'" James exclaimed and two passing third-years jumped at the sudden loudness of his voice. Elladora smiled apologetically at them whilst they giggled and ran off.

"Well, James I'm sure she'll love that." Elladora muttered and Remus chuckled from next to her, grinning. "Also, all of the mail is up in my dorm room under my bed so that cow Amber Parkinson can't find it and make fun of me." She frowned and scowled at the thought of Amber.

"Why would she make fun of you?" Peter asked as they descended some stairs down to the dungeons, absentmindedly making their way to the Slytherin Common Room for Elladora.

"She makes fun of everyone for anything." The girl shrugged and jumped off of the last step, heading towards the stone wall. "You guys can come in if you want, I don't think anybody will be in the common room. It's not a very comfortable place to hang out in your free time."

That was true, not many Slytherins liked to hand out in the common room between periods and at lunches. They only really stayed there after curfew. The couches were comfortable, yes, and the fire was warm, but Elladora thinks that it just reminds them all too much of their homes.

At the start of the year, Elladora didn't care much for Hogwarts, if it got blown up or everything came crashing down, she wouldn't have cared. In fact, she would probably bow her head, lift a hand in farewell and say 'good riddance'. The same luxury, silver platters were like the ones at her house, the dark colours and just the chilling breeze of it all was the same as her house. It was all just too similar.

That's why she spent a lot of her time in the library. The library at her house was dark cold and too clean, but the library at Hogwarts was lit with a thousand candles that provided warmth as well as light, it had thin layers of dust in some places, so it was an actual library where you could sit and read books. It wasn't like a museum exhibit where you can't touch any of the artefacts.

Now, however, if Hogwarts were to come crumbling down and get destroyed, she would be a mess. Some of her greatest memories were made here: The prank on the Slytherins; The three broomsticks with the boys; Honeydukes with the boys; Waterfights in detention with the boys; Watching Quidditch with the boys and just the boys in general. If Hogwarts was destroyed, her parents would probably make her go to Durmstrang. It was a very strong first option all those years ago, since they practiced dark magic and all, but her parents couldn't move away from England. They had their business to attend to.

She thought it was amazing how she could go from hating every single person in the whole school, to having a strong friendship with four of them and being acquaintances with the rest in under 6 months. It's like she was a whole new person and she rejoiced that. She deserved it, and she didn't care what anyone else thought because she knew that she did. She deserved it all, years and years of torture, pain, neglect and abuse and she was finally happy.

She deserved it.

"No, it's fine, we'll wait out here." James nodded, he seemed a bit nervous and maybe a little bit scared to be entering the belly of the beast in pure daylight, not having an invisibility cloak or map to assure his stealth.

"Okay." Elladora shrugged and faced the stone wall head on. "Serpens." The stone wall slid to the side to reveal a rectangular entrance into the green room, there was indeed no one there, the fire wasn't even on and joined with the cold water of the black lake outside of the windows, it was quite nippy.

The door slid shut behind her and she shivered slightly, walking up the stairs to the girls dormitory. As expected, no one was in there, instead they were probably enjoying their time to revise and study for the upcoming end of term exams, less pressured than the end of year ones but still needed to be studied.

She made her way over to her bed, pulled one of the curtains that surrounded her back slightly and reached under it, pulling out a large basket filled to the brim with letters. Then she realised that she didn't know what the invitation looked like. She should've brought James, he could recognise Lily's writing in a heartbeat.

Turns out so could she, but maybe it was just a gut feeling as she picked out a red envelope with her name written in neat and cursive black writing. She couldn't believe that something so simple could be so beautiful. It's not like her handwriting was bad but Lily Evans' was like something she'd never seen before.

Elladora,

It said.

You're invited to my 17th birthday party!
This may seem a bit extra, but I'm finally of age, meaning I can do magic outside of school so it's kind of a big deal! But still!
It's on the 30th January, 9pm in the Gryffindor Common Room. Ask one of the boys can let you in. Hope you show up! I'd love to talk to you at some point!

Lily xx

Well, parties weren't normally Elladora's thing. But if the boys stayed with her, then it should be fun. The invitation said it was tonight, after curfew in the Gryffindor Common Room so maybe she'd be able to ask James to borrow his cloak so she could travel all the way to dungeons to Gryffindor tower and let herself in.

She does know the password after all.

•*•*•*•*•