Chapter one is dedicated to the wonderful KoKo, because she's fabulous and I love her (although we have a gag order not to say I love her more since the dispute ;) ♥️♥️♥️ KoKo523

(11th September 1976)

James Potter was rather fabulous when it came to the things he cared about. Quidditch for example: quidditch was one of the only things in life that one could persuade James to take things seriously, and he always had. Being the captain of the team was like seeing a different person. Almost like 'Jekyll & Hyde' but with pranks and snitches.

"Can we polish this play please, for Merlin's sake! We've got our first game in three weeks and I expect to win! Are we clear?" His chasers were bunched around him (the substitutes were also on the pitch today), watching him with an odd mixture of respect, fear and (in some cases) attraction. 

"Crystal." Esme-Leigh Bisset nodded, her hair a milk chocolate brown, tied atop of her head to make it easier for her to see, per James' recommendation. 

"Jolly Good then! We're not leaving until it's pristine, okay?"

This time no one answered, it had started to rain.

"Okay? — 'Yes, Potter!' — Good-oh then!" He clapped his hands and off they went to their starting positions...

Quidditch was one of the very small list of things that James took more seriously than pranks. The rain would have to try harder to stop him from taking his team out to practise. He had two new players this year and that meant extra work, extra work that he fully intended on putting in.

The quaffle was under McAuley Sallanger's arm as he took it towards the middle hoop at the end of the pitch.

"WATCH THE WIND, SALLANGER!" James yelled, zipping through the rain to meet him at his own position, Esme-Leigh behind them.

The wind in question was beating its rain down to McAuley's Quaffle-clad arm and threatening to beat it out of his grasp.
"Ready?!" James called.

He saw McAuley nod and the play began, "ONE!"

The Quaffle was in James' possession, "TWO!" He immediately let it drop directly underneath him where Esme-Leigh swooped to catch it, flipping over in the process before she thundered back up to score (quite combatively) into the middle hoop. ("THREE!")

Keeper, Conor Trundle, chased after the Quaffle before it hit the sand and grass below.
"Good!" James nodded, (this single word was perhaps the highest of praise that they had received all day), "but not perfect. Bisset, you need to stop flipping over, it wastes time. Get underneath sooner and it'll save you diving. Sallanger: I want to see you keep the Quaffle firm in your hand. You've got gloves, use them. I'm not having your butterfingers ruining this match, okay?"

McAuley nodded, "yes Potter."

"Smashing. And Trundle: don't be afraid to make scoring difficult for her. That's the whole point of you being here. If I wanted to oppose a lamppost, I'd have charmed us one."

Conor Trundle wasn't quite sure whether he was allowed to laugh at his captain's sarcasm or if he should have been offended by the pernicious insult; all the same he only managed a nod.

"Again!"

♣ ♣ ♣

The Gryffindor team made it back into the common room later than curfew that night, moaning and grumbling about 'a sore this' or 'an aching that' but James was having none of it.

"Get over yourselves! We've got a match and I can't have you giving up after ten minutes because you're out of practice!"

Esme-Leigh just grumbled (her hair gone back to its usual blue) and slumped next to him on one of the homely, burgundy arm chairs in the Gryffindor common room.
"Well I'd rather be out of practice than dead!"

Prongs didn't loosen his grip, but he sensed this was not an argument he was about to win so he kept his mouth shut and let Esme drape her head onto his lap and her legs over Marlene.
She had always been like that– very physical, whether she meant it or not she'd always find a way to be touching the people she loved; which, in some instances, didn't do well for her. Esme-Leigh's problem wasn't one experienced by many, in fact, she was even envied for it. Esme-Leigh Bisset was a quarter Veela. This often caused more problems than one might think.

Remus sat opposite them, closer to the fire, in almost exactly the same place they had left him; a book in his hand and a knowing smile on his lips. (James often mockingly compared him to a wise-looking oak tree.)
"Aside from the time inside, I don't think the auror department could cope with many homicides to be honest!"

James shook his head, "I don't suppose so," he lifted Esme's head gently so he could reach into his robes and retrieve a packet of cigarettes he'd nicked from the 'Confiscated Items' box in Filtch's office.

"James, you're not supposed to smoke in here," Remus said, eyeing his friend carefully.

"Who's going to stop me? The first years?"

"I'm a prefect."

James shrugged and lit the cigarette, the ghost of a crooked smirk on his lips, "and I don't see you stopping me."

"I could."

"But you won't."

Remus chose not to answer and James winked, exhaling and letting a thick stream of smoke swirl into the firelight, mixing with the natural orange hue that danced across the common room in the evenings. Red and gold really was a glorious colour scheme to live in, especially in the autumn.

It was well past curfew by the time Sirius found his way through the portrait hole, an elusive smile on his lips and an delectable look in his eye.

"Where have you been then? You look like you've just taken drugs," Remus quirked an eyebrow in his friend's direction and waited patiently for an answer as he sat down on the floor, his head propped up on the couch; Esme –for reason prior discussed– was already stroking his hair tenderly before he'd even had a chance to open his mouth.

"And on the off chance you have just taken drugs are any going spare because I would like to live till the morning after that quidditch practise!" Marlene added in a tone that made it impossible to decipher it's veracity.

"Not drugs. Although not dissimilar, I guess..." Sirius trailed off mysteriously, averting his eyes in a display of melodrama that only Sirius Black was capable of.

"He's had sex." Peter concluded as if it were obvious. (Peter, whom had been so suppressed that none of them had even noticed his presence until that moment).

Sirius laughed, "ten points to Gryffindor!"

Esme-Leigh gave his hair a sharp tug.

"OW!"

"GOOD!"

James laughed, but jumped to his friends defence anyways: "what's wrong with that? It's not as if it's the first time he's gone off on sex sabbatical!"

Esme looked up and shot him a glare cold enough to freeze magma.
"If you call it sex sabbatical again I will slam my head down on your crotch hard enough to stop you from ever having relations –of any kind– ever again."

His eyes widened and he shrank away from her (although it was hard to shrink away from someone that was lying on your lap).

Sirius, however, was enjoying this more than he would probably enjoy his own mother's funeral, "Esme-Leigh I swear you are the best woman on this planet!"

Marlene coughed.

"Joint best."

And in some respects he was right. Esme-Leigh was every man and woman's wildest dreams. Beauty beyond measure, a wit quick enough to challenge Brogan Giddumdy –the wizarding worlds current favourite comedian– and smart enough to out-score a Ravenclaw in a charms test. She was the type of girl that lead one to believe in angels.

James had often been rumoured to be dating Esme-Leigh at various times throughout their Hogwarts career and yet they had only ever innocently kissed once during a game of 'Marauders Dares'. Although despite their efforts to shut down the speculation they always seemed to be doing something that someone could misinterpret for romantic affection, and deny it as they might: they likely would be the hottest couple in school. James, according to popular belief was a different breed of gorgeous. Some even considered him almost an Adonis: he was outrageously tall, his skin was a few shades darker than olive and seemed to glow in firelight and his hair always looked like he'd just hopped off a broom (sex hair, Sirius called it). He had a smile that could end a war and a wink that could turn Dumbledore to mush. All in all, he was Hogwarts Most Wanted.

"I'll take joint best. I'm too tired to argue the point anyway." Marlene shrugged, stretching theatrically, and yawning loud enough to attract attention of students with in a three metre radius. "I'm going to bed before I die! I'm fucked."

"Ever the lady." Remus smirked.

"When isn't she?" Peter replied with a nod of admiration to Marlene.

She smirked at him before turning back around and offering Esme-Leigh a hand up, "coming?"

She nodded, "oui, oui."
Standing up took her longer than it should have with aching joints but it wasn't something a long, hot, soothing shower wouldn't fix. She kissed Sirius' head and patted James cheek as she stood. She proceeded to kiss Remus and Peter before taking Marlene's hand and allowing herself to be taken up to the girl's dorms. Her hair had turned a sombre red– like it often did when she was overly tired.

"What a sweetheart," Remus smiled after her; he had always gotten on particularly well with Esme-Leigh in the sense that James was almost positive they were the same person but with broomsticks instead of books.

"Stop drooling over the pretty girls, Moony," Sirius winked and Remus averted his gaze (the lavishly carpeted floor seemed to be incredibly enticing for him to look at). He seemed to be burning holes in the ground with the stare he was giving it.

"You're one to talk: Sirius the Apparent Sex God! Who was he, anyway?" Peter smirked elusively, the blue in his eyes still twinkled with humour despite clashing oddly with the orange that shadowed that danced across his face.

Sirius (The Apparent Sex God) winked, "a Ravenclaw who's name shall forever remain a secret."

"It was Keegan Trista, wasn't it?" James said bluntly. Eyeing his best friend with a look that only he would understand to mean "we're talking about this at a later date, you dolt!"

"HOW DID YOU KNOW?"

"I know a lot of things."

Remus scoffed, "so you do, mate."

Clearly scandalised, James' look diminished as he turned his attention to a very culpable looking Remus.
"I'll have you know that I know a lot of things!"

"This'll he good," Moony nudged Peter, "go well."

"I'm not proving myself to you, Moons!"

"Prosecution rests."

♣ ♣ ♣

"Marlene if you're still in the shower so help me god!..."

Esme-Leigh was having perhaps too much fun watching the situation unfold on front of her. One of their dorm mates– Mary MacDonald– was banging on the door to the bathroom, the same bathroom that Marlene had been occupying for almost an hour.

"I'm coming! Lord have mercy!" Came the slightly muffled reply.

Mary thanked her, patience wearing thin and stomped back to her own four poster bed. Esme-Leigh had always liked Mary; they had never been incredibly close– Mary preferred the company of the prefects, rule-followers and library-goers, while Esme and Marlene preferred quidditch players, rule-breakers and cads but she admired her a great deal. Mary could be demure but she had a temper that could combat the Passover when one was so inclined as to push the right buttons.

"Oh thank the heavens!" She sighed at the arrival of towel-clad Marlene McKinnon upon exit from the coveted bathroom.

Marlene laughed and playfully flicked Mary's plait as she scurried in where she had just left.
"She makes me laugh sometimes, you know?"

Esme-Leigh nodded, "lovely creature."

The same could almost be said for their other two dorm mates, Trudy Nott and Aliona Connolly. It was difficult to find a reason to hate them and yet Esme had never quite loved them, at least not as much as she enjoyed the company of Mary.

"You reckon the boys are still downstairs?" Marlene asked, smiling at the ceiling.

"Oh, almost definitely," Esme-Leigh replied, the streaks of red in her hair had now taken over her full head.

"You need sleep, Ez."

She turned sharply to face her friend on the bed next to her, "I do not!"

"Hair."

"Shit."

Marlene laughed, showcasing a gorgeous smile that seemed to bring a new hope to the world. That was the thing with Marlene: she was practically celestial, without a drop of Veela blood and yet she never saw it. Marlene had always considered herself lesser to Esme and her beauty, no matter how hard she tried Esme was always prettier, but Esme saw it the other way. If she needed magic to be pretty then Marlene was doing better than her naturally.
It was a phenomenon that most girls experience, an odd sort of selfless jealousy that flatters and destroys a teenage girl all at once.

Marlene picked up her notebook, the one that Esme-Leigh knew was filled with all sorts of wonders and began to sketch out a quidditch pitch.
Marlene's notebook –or The Enigma as she liked to call it– was chock-full of millions of little mysteries, quidditch plays, fashion ideas, reminders, sketches of her girlfriend, even poetry but she would seldom let anyone get so much as a glance at it. (Unless of course it was to show James a quidditch play.)

"Whatcha drawing?"

Marlene glanced up at red-haired Esme-Leigh and smiled, "the new quidditch play."

"But you're a seeker?"

She shrugged, "I like to know where everyone is."

As soon as everyone was out of the bathroom Trudy insisted on blowing all the candles out and since none of them had a viable counter offer that's what they did.

Esme-Leigh fell asleep dreaming of quidditch plays, red hair and an unfinished charms essay...

Sirius Black was also very awake. But, ever the dramatist, he preferred that everyone in the dorm know this for gospel.

"Moony, you can't make me sleep!"

"I can easily drug you. You seem the type that would take the cake saying 'eat me'." Remus said, shoving Sirius into his four poster and pulling the covers over his chin.

"Did you check under the bed for monsters?"

"I did."

"What if they're still there?!"

James, having been bored to tears from this an hour ago, rolled around in his own four-poster to glare at Sirius.
"They will be if you keep this act up! And they'll be me with a bastard knife! Now get your arse to sleep before I kick it there!" He then moulded his voice to a syrupy and dangerous high pitch, "thanking you now, cheery night!"

Sirius pulled the curtains round his bed, passive aggressively mumbling, "someone's on their period, merlin!"

♣ ♣ ♣

(20th November 1976)

The Magical Prejudice Protection.

Upon hearing that name, the last person one would expect to be heading such a ritzy sounding committee would be James Potter. Unlike the MPP, James was usually about as easy going as they come. Breezing past rules like a casual, April wind; whispering inside jokes behind his hand at the back of his classes; turning in essays days late with a shrug for an apology; a cigarette passively between his teeth and a stolen snitch in his left hand.
But the MPP was different. Similar to quidditch, James took this much more seriously than his default approach to life. Although paradox to his quidditch attitude, he much preferred the breaking of rules when dealing with the matters of the MPP (and he had served his fair share of detentions for this reason).

This would usually lead one to question: why?
And that was simple enough to conclude. It was the simple reason of his childhood influence. James had been brought up by Euphemia and Fleamont Potter (and his governor, Halina) and the two of them were well known by almost every wizard in the country, and not just in their respective fields. The Potters were a family with connections all over.

But it was the field of Euphemia that influenced the MPP. James' mother was the head of the Magical Peace Process; a team that worked with the Auror Department to bring the wizarding community to justice in any way they could. They were under no obligation to the ministry and that was perhaps where James had gotten his rather imprudent approach from– watching his mother disobey the rules– "rules are recommendations, not orders," she would say, and James (being James) had taken her word for gospel and so perhaps that was why Euphemia found it incredibly hard to penalise him for something that, ultimately, she had taught him.

The Magical Prejudice Protection had a plethora of members and that was one of the reasons James enjoyed leading it so much. A lot of them were purebloods, tired of bearing the weight of their unwanted supremacy; many were muggleborns, eager to take back a little power that the war had stolen from them, and a fair few were queer students, here to fight for themselves from the prejudice of muggleborns and halfbloods.
The thing that James liked most about the MPP was it's meeting place. Somehow, with the help from Sirius he had managed to find a place that could ensure that all the members present had no ill intentions. The MPP held their meeting in the 'lost and found room'.

"Right, final thing before we clear off:" James was pacing their meeting room (an enigma in itself) and addressing a group of roughly thirty students who were all listening to him like he was preaching the word of God.
"Mary: this gorgeous woman over here," he gestured to Mary MacDonald who beamed as the MPP turned to glance at her; "has done us the pleasure of making these delightful little badges to wear. Now, not only are they a fetching design but they're practical too, aren't they Mary?" James handed her the box to allow her to demonstrate their alleged practicality. She stood and took a badge from the box, holding it up for the room to see. The badge was silver with bronze calligraphic lettering, 'MPP' and underneath, 'Magical Prejudice Protection'.

"Practical. Yes. So basically what these little wonders do, is they'll swirl like a spinning top whenever someone in the MPP wants to contact you."

The group shared impressed glances as the box began to get passed around. It was clear Mary had put a lot of effort into the construction of these pins.

"And what's more is one can choose what message you want to appear on the others badge– within reason– for example if I wanted to tell Trudy to meet me in the dorms all I'd have to do is this:" Mary drew her wand and tapped it twice onto her badge, "Trudy Nott. Meet in dorms." And with a third tap she looked up and asked Trudy if it had worked. Seconds later her badge began to spin quick enough to take one's hand off, when it had stopped, four words had appeared in place of the MPP lettering:

Meet in dorms - Mary

Trudy looked up and grinned. The rest of the room oohed and ahhed at such delicate magic. But the ever humble Mary just blushed.

"Remember and tell MacDonald she's awesome if you see her in the corridor. And with that I think we're just about done. Any personal questions just ask me and if you have a problem with the badges then Mary'll give you a hand. Remember this room is always here if you need it. Just pace back and fourth and wish to find the MPP!" James smiled, winked and patted shoulders as his committee began to clear out of the meeting room; more commonly known as 'the lost and found room', the establishment was situated on the seventh floor corridor and was hidden from sight unless one fully intended on being there, without ill intentions (as previously mentioned, it was one of Sirius' better ideas).

"Nice meeting today, Prongs," Remus slapped his friend on the back as they began to tidy the bits and pieces left behind by the MPP members.

"I like to think so," he replied, pulling a left-behind hair clip from behind a sky blue couch.

"Mary was a gem making those, wasn't she?" Sirius toyed with the silver badge on his left breast and grinned, "they're fuckin' awesome!"

"Charming language Sirius!" Esme-Leigh chuckled, shaking her head in a way that could have either been exasperation or fondness (that was a common emotion when it came to Sirius: unsure if one was impressed, miffed or simply fond.

Sirius saluted her, "Merci mademoiselle!"

Marlene had clearly gotten bored with helping out and had decided to become a hindrance instead (she often did), laying across the couches and blowing cigarette smoke into the air.

"McKinnon, get off the settee for Pete Sake!"

"Make me."

"I will."

Marlene groaned and rolled off the couch and onto the carpeted floor.
"You're lucky I'm hungry and want to get to dinner, otherwise I'd still be on that couch."

"I don't doubt it," Remus nodded, holding out his hand, "let's go."

Peter was the first to open the door and he held it while the others sluggishly dragged themselves down to the ground floor.

"You know what would be grand?" Remus said dreamily as they traipsed down, what must have been, their tenth set of stairs.

"What's that?"

"A lift."

Sirius frowned, "a what?"

"A lift!" Esme-Leigh grinned, "it's like a little room that moves up and down floors using electricity. They're great for big places like here."

James, still utterly baffled was unsure if his a-million-and-one questions would deem him a bad student in his Muggle Studies class.
"Remind me to get you to show me next time I'm round yours?"

The question wasn't directed at any particular individual but Peter, Remus and Esme-Leigh (halfboods) all nodded, as did Marlene.
"You live closest to me, don't you?" She asked him.

"But you're almost as useless as me at that kind of trivial shit. The only things your stepdad teaches you is football," He replied simply and she shrugged.

"Enough of the tiffs anyway, we're here now," Peter waved a hand in front of him to the  Great Hall entrance which they were currently passing through, confronted with the four mahogany tables. They took their usual seats and began to pile food onto their plates.

"Holy Merlin, Peter! The rate you eat we'll need a lift to take you up the stairs!"

Peter looked up to locate the speaker, Marlene, and glare at her before continuing to eat, faster than before as if trying to prove a point. It was safe to say that, between jibs and cackles, he didn't quite get to get his argument across...

(24th November 1976)

Cokeworth Academy wasn't the best school one would come across, nor was it the worst. A lot of things were like that for Lily Evans: not the best, not the worst. She had lived almost her entire life out in soul-crushing mediocrity and her education was no different.

The school consisted three floors (all classrooms), a sports field, a track, a swimming pool and a small gym. At the top of the school was an art-room –all windows– and one other. This was Lily's favourite room in the school: the darkroom.

The art department didn't offer photography as a stand-alone subject and so Lily had taken it upon herself to start up a club of young photographers so they could have their own time to develop pictures by themselves. And that was exactly what Lily was doing, she was alone in the sizeable room, submerged in red light and eerie black shadows.

Lily sighed, humming to herself, a million miles away as she dipped a landscape of Cokeworth into a bath of mixed chemicals and counted to herself with taps of her foot. When she was satisfied she pulled it out and hung it on the line that swept the room in a zigzag motion.

Light poured into the room and disrupted her. Just as she was about to snap at the catalyst to her bubbling frustration she recognised the kind, olive skinned face.

"Oh! Alice, I didn't know it was you!"

Alice Fortescue slipped into the darkroom and closed the door promptly behind her, plunging them both completely back into the red light.
"You didn't put the 'occupied' sign on the door, dear."

Inwardly, Lily cursed herself. She'd always had one half of her body in the clouds and so she tended to forget the tedious minor details in most things. She preferred to focus solely on the bigger picture– hence why she enjoyed photography. What you see is what you get.

"You should have used your x-ray vision, Ally." Lily deadpanned, turning back to her next photograph, this time it was a portrait of her next door neighbour– seven year old Tessa. She was grinning widely and in the motion of jumping, Lily had managed to capture her airborne, with the light bouncing off her bright ginger hair.

"I'll polish up my x-ray skills next time. Tell me, are you still coming over tonight? You promised you'd help me with the chemistry work."

Lily nodded, concentrating wholly on the next development of the picture.
"Course. Is Dorcas coming?"

"She's got training."

Lily nodded, too engrossed in her own work for words, apathy was always her weakness.

"I don't know why she needs to hold so many sessions?" Alice went on, un-phased by the fact she didn't have much of an audience; given the right materials, Alice could hold intelligent conversation with a doormat. "She's on three a week at the moment! You'd imagine that with a track team you could only run so much?"

Dorcas had been given captaincy of the Cokeworth Girls Tack Team last year and since then they had been getting much better results in their competitions, Dorcas had always been a force of nature when it came to running, much like Lily and photography, or classical books.

"And besides that, she's forfeiting time with us! I mean, us, Lily? Is she insane?!"

This penetrated her wall of careful application and she smirked.
"Crime of the century."

"Exactly!"

♥ ♥ ♥

Alice's and her grandparents lived in a tidy little cottage at the end of town. It was an enchanting little place, painted pale yellow with dark green ivy crawling up the sides. Lily had always wished she lived somewhere as enchanting as Alice's cottage.

Much like the outside, the interior of the Fortescue home was packed full of wonderful bits & bobs and charming little antiques kept of shelves and in teapots. There were ceramic children playing with each other; ashtrays from towns and cities all over the world, and paintings of flower gardens that were so realistic they gave Lily hay-fever.

However, Alice's pride and joy was kept in her bedroom, also painted pale yellow, Alice's prized possession was an old Olivetti typewriter. She'd had it ever since she was ten but she can never seem to remember why; Lily had always joked that it had been magic (it was her bitter irony that started that running joke).

Despite not using it often, Alice liked to call herself an expert in adoxography: and she was talented in the field of trivial writing. The little poems she wrote were always beautiful, whether they held much substance or not. Besides, it wasn't the content of the writing that Alice adored; it was the process of writing it that excited her. The satisfying click the slide makes when the line is finished; the click of the keys as they're pressed down; the association of hot, milky tea she had conditioned herself to love after many an afternoon spent working away on the wondrous machine.

Lily chose to sit on the floor when she entered Alice's bedroom, pulling the chemistry jotters out of her school bag (sorting through the classic novels she'd borrowed from the library).
"So is it just last weeks lessons?" She asked without looking up.

"Yep!" Alice responded from somewhere else in the room –most likely choosing an album to make the chore pass faster. Like Lily, Alice was a firm believer in music and it's power to influence a mood and so Help! By The Beatles was her weapon of choice.

Lily clapped her hands as she heard the opening track, "perfect! Now get over here we've got a lot to get through!"

Alice sat down and curled up on the floor next to Lily, eager to soak up every word...
Not two hours later they were still in the same place, but now papers, booklets and jotters were sprawled out across the floor like a blanket.

That was how Dorcas found them, curled up together in the warmth and solitude of the little room, half asleep, half working.

"THE BEATLES? I did not just run five miles to listen to lullabies!"

Lily and Alice jerked their heads up to look at her. She had her long hair at the top of her head in a gyre of corkscrew curls and her sports jacket was slipping halfway off her shoulder.

"I want some exciting music! Like... The Stones or... Pink Floyd," Dorcas huffed, "but I doubt Alice owns any of them."

"I do!" Alice frowned, holding out her hand so Dorcas could help pull her up.
"I've got these! Queen, Stones, Led Zeppelin..."

Dorcas laughed, leaning against the wall she watched Alice fret over her collection.
"Here!" She pulled a vinyl from the top shelf and threw it gently towards Dorcas, who caught it and turned it around for examination.

"Yes!"

The Dark Side of the Moon, according to Dorcas, was unmatched in the music of this decade. She flipped it twice in her hands (a habit she picked up from her girlfriend) before placing it with care on the gramophone—another antique that decorated the entrancing  mood to the cottage.

Alice grinned, "I told you I'm cool."

"Still not convinced." Dorcas waved a dismissive hand in the air as she sunk down onto Alice's bed. She had always made a habit of being excessively comfortable in other people's surroundings like some kind of borrowed rodent.

"Smashing. No one thinks I'm cool."

"That's because you're not. You knit, Alice, Jesus Christ!"

It had about reached the point where poor Lily was seriously considering a double homicide once they had painstakingly finished studying her immaculately colour coded chemistry notes.

"So..." Dorcas hummed, rolling over on her back so her hair spilled over and onto the floor, "how's Frank?"

"Doing fine without your meddling!"

She laughed merrily, seemingly coming alive with humour, "no but really?"

"He's well." Alice was doing her best impression of a debonair demeanour when in fact it wasn't difficult to see the pink cheeks even as she attempted to hide them with her chestnut hair.

"Well? Or the kind of well that entails gossip?" Lily chimed in, it was usually Alice that enjoyed gossip however, whenever the shoe was on the other foot (so to speak) it was Lily that jumped to every opportunity.

"The kind of 'well' that entails shutting your trap, Lily Evans!" Alice snapped sharply; she had always seemed to posses a flare for telling off her friends like they were children. Lily used to joke that Alice should become a primary teacher.

She held her hands in the air, her eyebrows raised, "I beg your pardon, Miss Fortescue," she pleaded.

"You are pardoned. I want a subject change: have you talked to that odd looking boy, Severus, recently?"

Lily felt her heart plummet so far down that it might have touched the core of the earth, "no," was the best she could manage for a moment while she composed herself, "he's not written in a while and I'm not sure I would reply anyway."

"And why would you?" Dorcas deadpanned, "he's a creepy bastard and he's not even good looking!"

Lily didn't have the strength to smile, "that's not the point though, Dorks, he's not weird, and we've been friends since I was like ten."
She felt a warm hand stroking her back in small circles, filling her with a smooth buttery sensation like melted chocolate. Alice smiled soothingly at her.

"It's alright to miss him, Lily," she said, her honey eyes glowing with comfort and compassion.

"I don't! We've not even fallen out!"

"He goes to the same school as Marls, she said he's a prick."

"Yeah well it's not up to Marls, is it?" Lily spat bitterly, instantly wishing she could catch the words out of the air and put them back in her mouth before they reached her best friend's ears.
"Oh... Dee, I'm sorry..."

Dorcas, however, was having absolutely none of it.
"YOU SEE?" She cried, pushing herself (forcefully) up off the bed, "he's already turning you against us and he's not even here?!"

Lily stood up as well, the intense fury burning in her chest was leaping out of her like a dragon.

"What's so special about him, eh? Why is he more important than us?!"

A single tear fell down Lily's face and burned her cheek; her mind slipped back to the time that it was blood that rolled along her face. She wasn't so far off that...
"You wouldn't understand, okay!? He's just... he's special to me!"

Dorcas rolled her eyes, "and we ain't? Is that what you mean? Because we can fuck off and leave you to alone, is that what you want?"

"If you're going to behave like this then maybe I do!"

Alice stood up, grabbing onto Lily's arm before she lunged at Dorcas, or punched a wall, either was rather undesirable.
"Shut up the both of you!" She hissed, "my nan will murder you both!"

Dorcas rolled her eyes, "not if I get there first."

"OH YOU KNOW WHAT?—"

Smash!

Alice leapt up and out the way of the sharp noise, which they were yet to locate the source of.

After a moment of taut eyes darting around the room Lily noticed the picture frame, the one with herself and Dorcas snuggled under a sleeping bag on the camping trip they took two years prior.

Lily went pale.

This was no accident.

All of a sudden the room seemed to impersonate a sauna and the walls closed in around her. The oxygen supply seemed to become dangerously low. The threat of tears would surely become inexorable if she didn't get the hell out of there.

"I need to go."

And she fled, almost tripping over her satchel and leaving all her notes sprawled across Alice's floor, mingling with the glass shards from the picture frame.

It had been months since something like that had happened.

Once her deprived lungs had finally found the air she gulped it down, attempting to drown in nitrogen, oxygen, argon (and whatever else was in air). Her bike was round the other side of the cottage and she sprinted to it. Escaping from her magic really wasn't the most tactile way of dealing with things but there was nothing else she thought to do.

Over the years magic had become a shame just as much as a secret. She hid it from her family just as much as she hid it from her friends and wider society and having it burst out of her involuntarily felt like being waterboarded with the reminder she was different.

Pulling herself onto the bike and pushing herself away she could hear Alice calling apologies after her but it would take a miracle to drag her back there.

Somethings are best left unexplained...

♥ ♥ ♥

That night, Lily realised that she ultimately had two perceptions of her magical abilities: at times she left special. Like she was carrying a wonderful secret, something that was uniquely her own and sublime, while other times the magic was her. It wasn't in her control. She didn't know what to do with it and so she watched like a bystander in her own mind as the magic burst from every pore and swallowed her whole at the same time.

Magic was the bane of her existence and her greatest solace, it was the wonder and the pain. She loved and she wished she had never known it.

It was evident that sleep wasn't going to feature in her night and so she decided she needed something to do. Somewhere so be.

The window wasn't particularly hard to sneak out of. There was a titanic oak tree that had been in her garden as long as she could remember, and that made matters easier to manipulate in her favour. Climbing onto it from the window ledge didn't take much effort.

As soon as her feet hit the floor the inspiration for her destination hit her like a tonne of bricks and although it wasn't wise for her to be out so late, Cokeworth was rarely ever occupied by night crawlers unless one found themselves in town, which was the last place Lily was looking to be.

The park was barley a ten minute walk from her house and she reached it without bumping into a single soul. The swings were rocking ever so slightly in the soft wind, screeching eerily as if someone invisible were sitting on one. As Lily sat down she allowed herself a smile.

This was where she had first met Severus.

Despite everything that had happened since, this was where he was a complete stranger, standing up for her to her sister and telling her she was special– that she was indeed magic and it wasn't just the wind... or the sleep deprivation... or food starved hallucinogenics, but real and unique to her.

Despite Dorcas' outrage and upset there was nothing that she could do to change that, she would never know why Severus was so special to her and yet Lily could never tell her. That was what bothered her most about the whole thing –the not being able to tell her– sometimes she wished she could just blurt it out and scream. Other times she wished she could show them all the wonderful, delicate tricks she'd learned her whole life. But most of the time she would just rather be at Hogwarts.

Lily wondered how different her life would be if she was there now, with Severus and perhaps some other friends just like her. Would they be awake right now? Talking about the next magical essay due in? Did they even have essays?

It was difficult to explain how much it hurt to pine for something so closely within reach. Over her years of that numbing pain Lily had decided on using the term 'missing'.
To be missing was worse than to be empty or lost. It was worse than the sordid morose that overcame a person in its terrible waves of misery.
To be missing was quite the same as the hole one found in their heart when they were empty; the real pain of being missing was to know exactly what was needed to fill it and how excruciatingly easy it would be to have it.

To be missing was much worse.

Some people called this time of night 'Witching Hour'; where the sky was at its darkest and the gloom gave way to a baleful shade of purple.
Some people were scared of the Witching Hour but Lily had never found anything but comfort in its shadows and mysteries. Her head was in the clouds to often it could be a relief to trade them out for shadows.

Silence coated the park thickly, making her doubt she was even there at all.

Perhaps this was just a lucid dream?

She tapped her foot on the floor to the beats of her heart, to remind herself that she was there and not just a fragment of someone's imagination.

"I'm Lily." She whispered.

"I'm Lily." (Louder.)

"I'm Lily!" (Even louder.)

Her head rolled round the back of her shoulders as the exhaled into the air, letting the water vapour from her respiration twist and turn into the night air. Making all sorts of swirls, reminding her of the cigarettes her dad used to smoke when she was a child– before he quit.
Still, the air sat ominously without a single sound...

It took Lily about thirty seconds to hear the rumble of an engine coming from the opposite end of the street...

She looked up to see a vehicle much too large to be a car speeding towards her. Busses didn't run past eleven. Besides, this –whatever it is– was purple. As it got closer she squinted her eyes to make out a bus. A bus that was running too late, the wrong colour and much too high over the speed limit. The purple, illegal bus must have been doing about seventy there.

When it reached the park the 'bus' slowed, pulling to a stop when they were level with Lily. She began to feel uneasy.

The doors were flung open with a clattering sound and a man stepped out wearing a conductors hat. Lily tried to look away, or at least pretend she wasn't looking (although strictly speaking she wasn't fooling anyone).

From the corner of her eye, she watched as the man opened his mouth, as if he was considering shouting her over but thought better of it each time.

Eventually after about two minutes of that hellish nightmare he turned around and got back in, driving away much to fast for a town road.

Lily shook her head, unsure if she had even seen it at all. The Witching Hour did eldritch things to the mind.

(24th November 1976)

Some people called this time the Witching Hour. The time in the night where the sky is at its darkest and the menace and mysteries of the night are at its most powerful. Being a pureblood wizard, Sirius had never bought into The Witching Hour; he knew fine well that there were horrors out there, he didn't need a myth to tell him that, but sometimes he could understand how one might believe it.

Witching hour was more of a disease than a time of night as far as Sirius was concerned. Clouds liked to creep across the black sky and obscure the twinkling of the stars, maliciously smirking at him, laughing at his frivolous attempts to hang onto the approaching dusk.
Grass seemed almost black as it swayed and rippled like water with the vindictive sough of the trees. So it would be a fair assumption to say that The Witching Hour unnerved him; just not in exactly the same way as one might think.

"Padfoot?"

The voice that had spoken was only a whisper but the unmistakably defined, crisp London accent gave away whom had spoken without Sirius even having to look.

"I'm by the window, James."

A set of footsteps crept up behind him and eventually a shadow, obscured by the Witching Hour light joined him on the ledge.

"You know what would be great?" James whispered, "firewiskey."

"Yeah," he murdered, not bothering to turn round to look at his friend. He was too occupied with the hypnotic pull of the eerie light that cast across the grounds of Hogwarts like an aberrant, twisted looking prank.
James held a cigarette out towards Sirius as he held a second one in his teeth, already lighting it.

"Really? Have you checked the time?"

"When has the time of day stopped me?"

He shrugged and accepted it.

"So," Prongs began, exhaling into the air, adroitly and watching as the smoke began to twist and turn before his eyes, "what's got you behaving so taciturn then? I don't think I've ever seen you so quiet!"

Sirius narrowed his eyes, "very funny."

"Your words not mine."

The window was letting in the wind's whispers by now, and as their legs swung out over into the cold the gusts and breezes whispered beguile magic into their ears. Sirius did his best not to listen.

"Remus."

"What about him?"

"Just... Remus..."

James nodded, "is this about your crush?"

Sirius only nodded, turning almost mute for a long while. It was unclear to James weather he had elected to become quiet or if his words were swallowed by the elusive canards of the wind of Witching Hour.

"Yes." He said eventually, "he's... he's straight isn't he?"

James didn't say a word for fear of interrupting his train of thought and subsequently making the matter worse. Everything seemed rather heinous at this time of night.

"He's straight and I'm pining over him like a dolt. Making a right prick of myself because I can't just fancy a gay boy like a normal person." His tone was bitter and caustic, a deep set frown between his eyebrows. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was a miracle Remus –being a halfblood– didn't hate him when he told him he was gay, and now he fancied him! There was only so much a Muggle-parented person could take.

"How long has it really been since you've felt this way Sirius? It's not recent is it?"

That was the thing with Sirius and James' friendship. They knew each other so well that one didn't even have to lie to know that they weren't being told the whole truth. Ever since first year they had been closer to each other than they had ever really been with anyone before. They were brothers, really, no matter what their DNA advised to the contrary.

Sirius shook his head.
"End of fourth year, I reckon. I had a crush on you for a bit before then. But that only lasted until I realised that you were a prick."

James chuckled, tapping the ash out the window and watching the debris flutter to the grass below– what seemed like a mile away, "that checks."

"Anyway, I never told him because I sort of never grew out of it and... I guess I never found a way to bring it up," he laughed bitterly, his glossy black hair tumbled round his shoulders as he shook his head. "It's not exactly something you can bring up in casual conversation. 'By the way Moony, I've got a pretty massive crush on you, anyways off to Transfiguration!' It's not really the most casual situation, is it?"

James shook his head slowly, staring out to the unforgiving abyss beyond, transfixed under the same spell that had caught Sirius rather off guard on this particular dystopian night.
"No. No it's not... but Pads, I mean... it could be worse. I mean, when Remus told us he was a werewolf we thought it was pretty cool, so I don't think anything could really surprise him at this point. Besides, who said he's straight? You would be surprised to see how many muggleborns are gay and don't say anything. Running the MPP you see all sorts of stories like that."

Sirius nodded slowly, crushing the butt of his cigarette against the stone window ledge, "yeah. I know, I know. But... Prongs it's pathetic! I'm pathetic, I just..."

"I don't think it's pathetic."

Sirius turned to look at his best friend, his brother, "no?"

"No. It's human."

A faint smile tickled the corners of his lips, "same thing."

And in many respects James realised that Sirius was right. It was the same thing. Being human consisted of a lot of things, some good some bad but quite a lot pathetic. Pathetic had run in human society for longer than any of them had walked the earth and yet James was only realising this now. And so he laughed. Just a small chuckle but enough to let it spread to Sirius. And so they laughed, loud enough to lift the poisonous spell of the Witching Hour.

What seemed like years later, when they closed the window and went back to their four poster beds the rancorous wind was gone and the eerie light that had spread its disease over everything was gone. The darkest hour was over.

Morning had arose.

This was going to be a bit longer but I took it down a bit so there we go, hope you liked it, I've had so many tests and assessments recently to prepare for a potential cancellation of exams so I apologise for the terrible updating on my part ahah!

Anyways, love you all! Good luck in life,  and remember: Black Lives Matter, Fuck Trump, Settle For Biden, register to vote, all that jazz!
(If your from the UK then) vote Labour, Stan Nicola Sturgeon, fuck Boris!
And everyone fight the patriarchy, be anti-racist and do crimes!

Love you all,

Abbi ♥️