J U N E     1 9 7 6

.・。.・゜✭・.・✧・゜・。.

"LILY, WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS six times, we both know you already have it memorized." Clara groaned from the opposite side of the table.

The two witches had been studying for Lily's upcoming O.W.L.s the entire day. They'd opted (though not by Clara's choice) to ignore the warm summer weather on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and chose to spend the entire day preparing Lily for her exams in the library instead.

Clara, though she really did love Lily like a younger sister, was quite bored of sitting in the near empty library all day. Save for the handful of stressed out fifth years joining Lily in their last ditch effort to prepare for their exams, the library was almost startlingly quiet on that early June afternoon.

But Clara couldn't help but grow weary, especially when she could have been spending time in the courtyard with Marlene instead. Though she'd never say it out loud, Clara thought the other fifth years who were outside enjoying the sun may have been a bit more self-aware than the Evans girl – knowing that stress would inevitably lead to poor performance in the exam.

But she couldn't blame the girl, Clara had also spent a majority of her fifth year with her nose stuck in a book, dreading the O.W.L.s as well.

"Just quiz me once more, I want to be sure." Lily insisted.

With a sigh, Clara looked back down at the aged brown pages of the potions textbook before her, "What is the exact order of ingredients in Polyjuice Potion?"

"Fluxweed, knotgrass, leeches, lacewing flies, boomslang skin, bicorn horn, and the hair of whomever you wish to impersonate." Lily recited with ease.

Clara closed the book and looked up at the redhead, "Can we be done for the day? You clearly know everything, I'm not sure why you asked me to help you study."

"You're the best potions student at Hogwarts, that's why. You got an 'O' on your potions O.W.L. last year, and after Severus–" she cut herself off before breaking open the wound that was still fresh, "I sort of lost my potions study partner after that."

"I'm only good at potions because I have to be if I want to be a healer, not because I'm naturally gifted in it. Plus you should stop worrying about that git. If he ever really cared about you, he would have never called you that."

Lily nervously tucked her red hair behind her ear at Clara's remark. Although Clara would never understand their bond, Severus had been Lily's best friend since childhood. That kind of love doesn't just disappear, even when one of them does something cruel and unforgivable. The love lingers in a painful way that makes you long for simpler times and better days.

His hurtful remarks toward the girl hadn't been the first time Severus had done something to upset Lily over the years, though. He'd begun associating with people who disliked Lily just as much as she detested them and he had ignored her countless warnings about the crowd he was slowly sinking into. It was an unfortunate culmination of little things that had finally boiled over when Lily tried to defend him from James's incessant bullying.

Over time, that pain of their broken friendship would dissipate. The wound would slowly heal. Hopefully leaving behind only fond memories and the realisation that some friendships simply aren't meant to last. In hindsight, she'd learn that their friendship was doomed from the start despite her best effort to hold on.

But it had only been a handful of weeks since Severus had called her a 'mudblood' in a fit of rage and to Clara's (and James') dismay, in that short amount of time Lily hadn't yet been able to let go of that last thread of sympathy she had for the boy.

When Clara first heard the story from her brother after it happened, she wanted to march right down to the dungeons and burst into the Slytherin common room herself to give him a piece of her mind, but it was Remus who talked her out of it. Losing house points from her brother's friend, who just so happened to be a Prefect, wasn't on her list of things she wanted to accomplish before the end of term.

At that moment, that very same Prefect with sandy brown hair and mysterious scars decorating his face, the one who seemed to be the only voice of reason within her brother's group of friends, rounded the corner of the shelves next to the table where the girls sat.

Clara never knew why he had so many scars and despite how nosy she tended to be at times, she never asked Remus nor her brother what happened to him. Even after five years of curiosity, she simply let her brother and his friends lead their own lives and prayed that they would never rope her into any of their schemes.

"Is this the book you said you couldn't find earlier?" Remus asked, setting down a tattered copy of Flesh-Eating Trees of the World Vol. 2 in front of Clara.

"Yes! Remus, you're a lifesaver!"

"Shh!" the elderly librarian who was reorganising books just behind Remus hissed at the teenagers.

Clara stuck her tongue at the witch when her back was turned before looking back up at the boy towering over them, "I dislike you the least out of all my brother's friends, have I ever told you that?"

"I'm touched." he replied sarcastically.

"Honestly, Peter's really not that bad either. It's just Sirius I can't stand." she laughed.

As if by a stroke of terrible luck, the exact moment the laughter fell from her lips, over Lily's shoulder Clara spied James and Sirius confidently sauntering into the library being tailed closely behind by Peter who had his hands buried in his pockets with his eyes glued to the ground.

A grimace fell on Clara's face immediately, causing Lily to glance over her shoulder to see the mischievous group of boys entering the room.

"Hello Lily-flower." James said smoothly as he took the empty seat next to the redhead.

"Hello, Potter." she groaned.

"Why the long face there, Evans? Sick of spending time with this stick in the mud?" Sirius asked as he leaned his hands against the back of the chair James was in, gesturing his head over to Clara who now had a prominent scowl on her face.

"I'll have you know, Clara is the only Potter at this table I like." she replied coolly.

James clutched a hand to his chest dramatically, "You break my heart Lily-flower."

"I don't see how that's possible, Clara's about as fun as Dragon Pox." Sirius interjected as he shot Clara a devilish grin, clearly amused by the dirty look she was giving him.

"What are you three even doing here?" Clara asked impatiently.

"Wormtail here told us you three were in the library, so we decided to come and liven things up a bit." Sirius replied with a wink.

"If you do anything to get us kicked out, I'm going to hex you into the next decade." Clara threatened, narrowing her eyes.

"I think the 80's will be a blast, don't you?"

"Why can't you be normal for once? Follow the rules, maybe? Study every now and then?" she asked sarcastically, looking into his dark eyes.

"Oh, I'm sorry Clara, were you talking? I was falling asleep." he replied, giving her a very unconvincing yawn.

"Right, well I'm out of here before you pull me into some sort of trouble." Clara announced as she quickly gathered her books and slung her bag over one shoulder.

"See? A right stick in the mud, that one." Sirius laughed as Clara deliberately bumped his shoulder on the way out.

"Why are you so horrible to her?" Lily asked once Clara was out of earshot.

"I'm not horrible, I just like to give her a hard time. It's part of the territory of being my best mate's sister."

"But Prongs isn't mean to her." Peter said quietly from next to Remus.

"Yeah, well that's because Prongs has gone soft. Isn't that right Lily-flower?" Sirius smirked.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were compensating for something, Padfoot." Remus suggested casually.

"Yeah? And what's that?"

"Perhaps you're more fond of Clara than you want everyone else to think."

"Oh that's a good joke, tell another Moony." he rolled his eyes dismissively.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✧・゜・。.

Clara woke up early the following Monday morning, refreshed and frankly quite relieved that she still had another two weeks before her own final exams for the term.

Though she was quietly dreading her Herbology final, she resigned to the fact that any more studying over the weekend wasn't going to stick in her brain, so it was of no use.

She had just barely scraped by with an 'E' in her Herbology O.W.L. last year and was falling behind in the N.E.W.T. level course. It wasn't her fault that everything she touched in that greenhouse seemed to die. She just hoped that by the end of the term, Professor Sprout would stop calling her a black-thumb in front of the entire class.

Despite this, she was thankful that she wasn't nearly as stressed as all the fifth year students seemed to be as their O.W.L.s were beginning today.

As she made her way to the Great Hall for breakfast, she passed only four groups of students who seemed to be having varying levels of mental breakdowns in the corridors. It was quite a few less than she remembered last year. Though, if she had to guess, she probably accounted for nearly half of the crying done by fifth year students last year when it came to fear of the exams.

As the brunette entered the Great Hall, she immediately spotted a redhead frantically flipping through three open textbooks as she ignored the bacon and eggs sitting beside her. Marlene, who was notorious for sleeping in, frequently missed breakfast more often than not, leaving Clara no choice but to sit with her own house rather than with Ravenclaw. Clara didn't mind sitting with Lily though, even when the girl had her nose in a book. If anything, she appreciated the quiet company.

"Alright, Lily?" Clara greeted as she sat across from the redhead and grabbed a piece of toast.

"I'm going to fail." she groaned, dropping her head into her arms over the textbook.

"That's not true Lily, you're at the top of your class. You're so hard on yourself."

"I prefer to call it disciplined." she responded, her voice muffled by her arms.

Clara let out a chuckle, "Well, whatever you call it, I think you're going to spontaneously combust if you don't calm down."

"Think they will give me an extra day to study if that happens?" she peeked out at Clara from under her arm.

Clara shook her head at the younger girl with a smile, "I think the entire school could be taken over by something horrible like giant spiders and the Ministry would still try to administer the exam."

Lily groaned and put her head back down. A few moments later, three of the four Marauders found their way to the Gryffindor table, Remus and James sliding in on either side of Lily, while Peter took a seat next to Clara.

The problem with being friends with Lily meant that her brother and his friends were never far behind, thanks to James's infatuation with the redhead which was the dictionary definition of 'unrequited love'. That fact alone was why Clara typically tried to have most of her meals with Marlene and her Ravenclaw housemates instead, just to get away from the boys.

"What's wrong, Lily?" James asked softly, consciously dropping the 'flower' from her name because deep down he seemed to know that it bothered her.

"Have you forgotten what day it is, James?" her muffled voice had a clear tone of annoyance.

"Well it's Monday..." he teased, earning another disgruntled groan from Lily.

"How are you all not stressed?" Clara asked the boys.

"Wormtail and I have done our studying, but Prongs and Padfoot are convinced that they don't need to study. It'll all come to them during the test. It's all 'in here' they tell me." Remus explained, tapping on his temple with his index finger.

Clara shot a sceptical look at her younger brother, "You're confident then?"

James shrugged, "Suppose so, I've always done well in my exams without really trying."

Lily raised her head and glared at the boy, "These aren't normal exams, James. These are Ordinary Wizarding Levels, the results define your future!"

"It'll all work out in the end Lily-flower, don't stress." James responded with the best of intentions, but she wasn't having it.

Lily slammed her textbooks closed and shoved them haphazardly into her bag before standing from the table and promptly leaving without another word to the group.

"What's her problem?" Sirius asked, wandering up to the table fashionably late after passing a clearly annoyed Lily Evans in the corridor.

"She's just stressed, something you clearly can't relate to." Clara remarked as Sirius took a seat beside her.

"I take offence to that, Potter."

"Yeah? Well, why were you late to breakfast? Surely you couldn't have been doing any last minute studying." she rolled her eyes.

"Actually, I was just with Sarah Newton, you know the pretty blonde Hufflepuff girl? We were in the corridor de-stressing, if you know what I mean." Sirius said with a wink.

Clara made a disgusted face at him, clearly not wanting to hear any details of her brother's friend's snogging rendezvous, but her expression only served to amuse Sirius.

"Don't be jealous, Clara." he said with a smug smirk.

Clara let out a disgusted scoff, pushing away her plate of toast as the prospect of kissing Sirius suddenly made her lose her appetite. She simply couldn't understand all the girls who swooned for the boy she found so utterly infuriating.

"You could only be so lucky, Black." she jeered.

"Is that an offer?"

"Ha! You wish."

"Just give me a time and a place."

"Please Sirius, you've already put me off my breakfast. Don't make it worse."

James, Peter, and Remus' eyes were darting between the two as they bickered.

It certainly wasn't uncommon for the two to get into it when they were together. It would almost come as more of a shock to the group for them to have a civil conversation about the weather over beans and toast. But unbeknownst to the boy and girl in the midst of yet another silly squabble, the three remaining Gryffindors all had their own thoughts running through their heads.

James knew Sirius was only picking on Clara for fun and that he didn't really despise her. But she clearly wasn't very fond of him at all and wasn't afraid to make it known to James through the many complaints he had to sit and listen to whenever she could catch him without his friends.

Peter on the other hand often worried that their fights would turn into something more explosive. Whenever they got into a row, he would typically try to find an excuse to get away from them. Usually this would be by attempting to start up a Wizard's Chess game with one of the Prewett twins or by asking Remus to study on the other side of the common room.

But Remus had a calm, knowing look on his face. It was as if he could see something the two of them wouldn't come to acknowledge until much, much later.