"You have a problem. Addictions are not a joke, they can be dangerous," I said sternly, my arms crossed over my chest in an authoritative manner.

Remus looked at me guiltily, his arms piled high with chocolate bars. He looked down at them and slowly took one more from a shelf in Honeydukes, eyeing me the whole time as if he was afraid I would scold him for it.

I chuckled at the look on his face. "So... got to refill your secret stash that Peter is never able to find when he goes looking for a midnight snack?"

"Maybe," Remus replied evasively.

The wonderful thing about Honeydukes Sweet Shop was the delicious fragrance that filled it. It smelled of all different types of candies and the scent that seemed to linger in the air permanently was very welcoming.

I walked over to the section where all the chocolate bars were, which was Remus's favourite corner of the shop. My fingers trailed over the chocolate bars; I had never realized how many different types there were, from sea salt and toffee to orange-flavoured. I preferred traditional milk chocolate to all the others, such as mint or almond chocolate.

"Do you use magic to hide them, or have you simply got a hole in the floor under your bed that has been left unnoticed by everyone?" I asked Remus.

He pursed his lips and remained silent.

"Come on, Remus, you can tell me," I said. "It's not like I'll tell the others. I'm trustworthy, and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that."

"Fine... keep this to yourself, all right?" he said quietly.

I nodded, patting him on the arm. "Of course I will. Otherwise, your chocolate will start going missing whenever you look for it, and no one likes a chocolate-deprived Remus Lupin."

"Thanks, Bianca, that means a lot," he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

"Anytime. Now tell me, I'm curious."

Remus looked around the sweet shop, his eyes searching for our other friends. Peter was weaving in and out of aisles, bouncing around excitedly, occasionally stopping to grab sweets from certain shelves. James and Sirius were joking around with each other. Neither one of the three boys was listening in on our conversation.

"I use a spell to shrink the chocolate bars down and then I hide them under my bed, pretty much in plain sight. One day, I'm certain that Peter will sniff them out while he's in rat form and find them there, but until then, I'm sure they're safe." He gave me a light smile before looking at me pointedly. "Don't go stealing my chocolate now."

"I won't, Remmy. Besides, it's not like you never share. You're like everyone's favourite uncle who always has sweets on him for his billions of nieces and nephews," I told him, amused.

"Great, so now I'm not the mother of the group anymore. Now I'm the uncle. I think I should be happy about it, but I somehow feel like it's a downgrade."

I laughed. "Oh, no, you're still the mother of three very idiotic children," I said, gesturing to where James, Sirius and Peter were piling on top of each other to be able to reach something on the very top of one of the shelves. "They do realize they're wizards, right?"

"Let them figure it out on their own," said Remus. "Let's watch, though. This is entertaining."

James was the one to pull out his wand.

"So maybe he is sort of smart, as he always tells us," I said, nudging Remus.

However, as we continued to watch, James pointed his wand at Peter and said, "Levicorpus."

Peter was suddenly suspended upside down in the air as he attempted to reach for whatever it was on the top shelf that they were trying to get. He groped in the air, but was still unable to get his hands on it.

"Oh for the love of Godric Gryffindor!" I said, rolling my eyes and stomping over to them. "You thick heads do realize that you could've just Summoned whatever you were trying to get, right? You could've also used the Levitation Charm on one of you in order to lift yourselves into the air and grab it. There are basically so many more solutions that would've been much better than this." I pointed above my head at Peter, who was still suspended upside down, his limbs flailing. "Liberacorpus."

Peter fell to the floor with a thud and rubbed his arm, which had taken most of the impact.

"How are you calling us thick when you literally wanted to break your own fingers in order to heal them once?" James shot back.

"I don't care what anyone says, that was a smart idea," I said sheepishly under my breath. "Am I never going to live that down?"

"Nope," said James.

"Ugh. Are we done here? I want to go get a Butterbeer," I told them.

"Has someone got an addition of her own to a very sweet and sugary drink?" Remus asked me, raising his eyebrows. "Here you were lecturing me on addictions, yet..."

"Shut up and pay for your chocolate, Moony," I said.

When we left the comfort and warmth of Honeydukes, I shivered from the cold and wrapped my scarf tighter around me. It was one of the colder days and there were too many clouds for the sun to be able to break through and provide even a little bit of warmth. Autumn was among us and I was terribly nostalgic for summer, which seemed to have passed by way too quickly.

Besides the chilly air, it was very windy outside. The wind blew my hair into my face, causing me to spit to the side to get it out of my mouth.

"Guess who came up with your nickname, Muzzlemane," James instructed, wiggling his eyebrows. "I want to see if you get this right."

"Sirius," I said immediately, going along with my instinct.

"How's you know?" Peter asked me. "Are you using your Divination senses?"

"I dunno, I just felt it," I said, glancing at Sirius.

He smirked. "Want to know one of the reasons I came up with it?"

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

He took a step closer to me and gestured to my hair, which was flying all over the place. "It's your hair. You've got so much of it that it just looks like a mane."

"Thanks," I said flatly, blowing a strand out of my face.

"If I were you, I would take it as a compliment," James told me, pointing his finger at me as if to scold me. "Messy hair is wonderful. Look at mine. My own father came up with the genius invention of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, yet I purposely don't use it because I much prefer my messy hair."

"I keep saying this... your hair is a rat's nest," Peter said, staring up at James's hair.

"Yeah, because you sleep in it," Remus mumbled.

The five of us laughed at the thought of Peter in rat form nestling into James's messy hair as we entered the Three Broomsticks Inn. As usual, it was extremely loud and crowded, and there was a long line for ordering drinks. Madam Rosmerta, the owner of the Three Broomsticks, was taking the drink orders.

"I'll wait in line, you guys can go ahead and get a seat," Sirius said quickly, his eyes wandering to stare at Madam Rosmerta.

"And I," said James, a smirk sliding onto his face, "will wait with him."

James and Sirius ran off to stand in line, leaving me, Remus and Peter to find a table.

"Boys," I muttered under my breath.

I looked around, weaving through the throngs of people standing and sitting inside the Three Broomsticks. Unfortunately, all the tables were taken.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Peter asked helplessly.

"We could pick a full table and stare at the people sitting there until they're intimidated into leaving," I suggested.

Peter and Remus both pulled a face.

"Why don't we split up?" said Remus. "We can each walk around until we find an empty table and then race there before anyone else gets it."

"OK, but I still think that if I glare at some people long enough, they'll leave. That trick actually works extremely well, I've used it countless ti—there's a free table over there, run!" I gasped suddenly.

Remus and Peter didn't move and instead looked confused, so I bolted off towards the free table and sat down before anyone else could take it. The two finally came over and sat down.

"Could you two be any slower?" I asked, glowering at them.

"What? It's not like anyone would take these seats while you're here," Remus pointed out, grinning mischievously.

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it and snorted. "Actually, you've got a point," I said, shrugging.

"We've finally got a table with enough chairs for all of us," said Peter.

I looked around to see James and Sirius joking with Madam Rosmerta, holding up the line even though they already had their drinks.

Across the Three Broomsticks Inn, I spotted the seventh-year boys who had terrorized Isla and Muriel sitting together at a table, drinking from their bottles of Firewhisky. I instantly became angered as I remembered not only what they had done to the two first-year girls, but what they had said about Remus and how they had underestimated my abilities because of my height.

"A Butterbeer for your thoughts?" someone suddenly asked me, depositing a steaming mug of Butterbeer in front of me.

I gazed up at Sirius, seeing that he and James had finally returned with the drinks.

"I hate everyone."

"Lovely," he answered. "You're always a delight."

Sirius and James placed the rest of the mugs on the table. Then they sat down.

"Madam Rosmerta still wouldn't give you Firewhisky?" I asked them, sipping from my mug.

"No," James said, shaking his head.

"At least in a few weeks, I'll be of age, which means that I'll get to order whatever drinks I want," said Sirius. "And you all won't. Ha!"

"You're actually telling us that you won't be ordering us all Firewhisky even though we can't do it ourselves?" Remus scoffed. "Like I'm going to believe that you won't do that for us... especially Prongs."

Sirius sighed. "Fine, we all know that I'll do that for you guys."

"Except Bianca, she's too young," said James, patting me on the head.

"Pft... normally I'd be upset by that statement, but you know I don't like Firewhisky," I stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I took a gulp of Butterbeer. "This," I said, pointing at my mug, "is way better."

James gestured for everyone to lean in. "We've got to think of a prank idea for this year."

"We do know that there's no way I'm going to get caught doing anything bad, right?" I asked them. "I can't get detention or be associated with this prank in any way, except for planning."

"Of course," James agreed, "you're the person behind the scenes, like usual. We know the drill. If you get in trouble, Sirius takes the blame for you. So, does anyone have any ideas?"

"You should turn a whole bunch of students into alpacas," I mused.

"You're in a weird mood. Where did you get that nutty idea?" he asked.

"I dunno. I thought of that one when Remus said that my Patronus should be an alpaca," I replied as the boys snorted.

I reached into my pocket, taking out a Pumpkin Pasty that I'd bought at Honeydukes and opening it up.

"Can I have one?" Peter asked eagerly.

"Sure," I told him, tossing him another one.

Suddenly, we were interrupted by a frustrated groan. I whirled around, only to see Lily, Alice and Marlene lingering around the table right next to ours. It appeared as though it was the only free table left in the Three Broomsticks. Marlene and Alice looked as though they just wanted to sit anywhere, while Lily eyed James warily.

"This should be interesting," said Peter, sitting up straighter in his seat.

James perked up immediately.

"All right, Evans?" he called to her, hopping up from his seat.

"Just grand," Lily said sarcastically.

"Well, aren't you going to sit?" he asked her, gesturing to the table beside him. "How lucky you are that the empty table was near me! It really could've been a lot worse, Evans. You could've been stuck next to Stebbins or Spartstern."

"Lily, I don't care how much you hate him, I'm sitting here because I'm tired of standing around and we probably won't find another table," Marlene said, swiftly sitting down in a chair.

Alice did the same thing and Lily followed suit rather reluctantly.

"You're just in time, Lily," said James, clapping his hands together and beaming as he slumped into his seat once more. He scooted it closer to the three girls' shared table. "We were just discussing prank ideas. You seem to have become somewhat of an expert at that. Say, would you let us know how—?"

"Ah, insincere flattery to get me to tell you what you want to know... I'm not telling you how I did it," said Lily haughtily. "You wouldn't understand—you don't seem to have that ability. Besides, pulling a stunt like that would require much more intelligence and skill on your part."

"Rawnr," James said, making a cat noise and wiggling his eyebrows.

As James scooted even closer to Lily's table in order to be able to pester the redhead girl, Alice and Marlene both got up, pulled up chairs and sat with me, Peter, Remus and Sirius. Peter immediately tensed up as Marlene, the girl he fancied, sat next to him. However, neither she nor Alice seemed to take any notice of anyone sitting at our table and instead sipped from their drinks casually. Though it was loud, James and Lily's voices stood out as they bickered.

Finally, Sirius, whose eyes had been locked on James and Lily as they argued, looked broke the silence. A wide smirk graced his face as he said to everyone, "Five Galleons says they start dating by Christmas."

"You're on," said Remus, cocking his head in James and Lily's direction. He seemed to contemplate them for a moment before saying, "I give them until after Christmas instead. Not past January."

Marlene shook her head and exclaimed, "No way! Lily would never go for him that soon."

"James is beautiful and everything she could possibly want, of course she wouー" Sirius began, but Marlene cut him off.

"I say around the end of school," she said, surprising everyone that even Lily's friends did in fact find it plausible that Lily would end up dating James.

"End of this year," Peter repeated, nodding. "I agree."

"No, you dolt, I meant end of seventh year," said Marlene abruptly, causing Peter to blush and go quiet.

I frowned at her condescending tone towards Peter, narrowing my eyes at her for a moment. I had never been too fond of Marlene before, but I was getting protective at the way she was acting towards Peter—especially since I knew he looked up to her so much.

"That was unnecessary," I mumbled, arms crossed.

"What?" Marlene asked, looking puzzled. "Sorry, I didn't hear what you said."

"Nothing, nothing," I said, deciding to let it go with a shake of my head.

She looked confused for a moment before turning her gaze away from me and speaking again. "We are actually making this bet, right?" Marlene continued. "I'll expect five Galleons from each of you at the end of next year." Everyone nodded in agreement. "What d'you say, Alice?"

Alice shrugged. "I say around Christmas next year," she said. "That gives them some time until then to admit they like one another, but not too much time."

I had a feeling that Alice was the closest to being correct.

"I think it'll be at the beginning of seventh year," I quipped. Everyone turned to look at me. "Over the summer, I reckon she'll realize she liked him and he'll realize he liked bothering her all the time for a much bigger reason."

"You think?" Sirius asked me disbelievingly. "That's too long from now. Look at them: they're smitten."

He pointed to James and Lily, who were both continuing their almost playful banter.

"Yeah... yeah, smitten," said Sirius.

***

Author's Note:

Thank you so much Therealmsblack for making this amazing edit for Regulanca!