"wisdom in your teens would be a lot less fun"

*

"You did it!" Lily threw her arms around Eva the moment she entered the common room with such force that both of the girls tumbled backward, only being saved by Marlene. "That was amazing! You were amazing! You didn't let a single goal in the entire match!"

Secretly, Lily loved Quidditch but never learned how to play. She always claimed it was because she was a Muggleborn, but so was Eva. In reality, she had a crippling fear of heights and almost fainted the one time Eva took her for a ride on her broomstick around the grounds. Even though she never tried to play the game, she supported it with all of her heart.

"That's what I do," Eva joked before getting an identical hug from Marlene. The girls settled down on a couch in front of the window and passed around mugs of hot cocoa Marlene somehow managed to grab from the kitchen. "Where are the guys? James disappeared as soon as it was over. I barely even got a chance to congratulate him."

Marlene rolled her eyes at the question. "Merlin knows. After the match, they kept rambling on about how tired they were and then they ran off. Remus looked dead on his feet, it was awful. He shouldn't have come to the match, everyone told him so, but of course he didn't listen. He's a boy. The others were fine, though."

"He needs to start taking care of himself," Eva grumbled in regards to Remus. She worried about him often. He seemed to get sick frequently, and even if he wasn't sick, he still missed meals to study or lost sleep when he desperately needed it. "But the other two were fine?"

"Absolutely," Lily said. "I'm sure they ran off for some sort of prank. It's been too quiet around here. Sirius was acting like a hyper puppy after announcing."

"Speaking of that, did you actually say you'd go on a date with James if he scored that many points?"

Lily laughed so hard that she had to stop drinking her hot chocolate. "He's never gonna do it. You should have seen their faces, though!"

"We need to celebrate!" Marlene said, her slate-blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "I know where James hides their secret stash of firewhiskey."

"I'll grab my Beatles CD," Eva added, hopping up from the couch.

"And I'll find some cards!"

The three girls dashed off to retrieve their respective celebration materials. After a few minutes of intense searching, Eva found a copy of Abbey Road under her bed and scooped up some blankets before heading back down to the couch.

"All right, let's go," Marlene said once she emerged with the bottle and a bag. She winked. "I also found Remus' chocolate stash! We'll replenish it later."

Eva led the way down a set of winding side hallways until they found their usual hiding spot: a large closet that everyone, including Filch, seemed to have forgotten existed. In their six years at Hogwarts, they'd never been caught having sleepovers outside of the common room.

"Lumos," Eva whispered before setting her wand on the floor. Her friends replicated the action, and the room filled with light. "Oh! Muffliato." There. No one would hear them, either.

Throughout the night, Lily and Eva lost too many Knuts and Sickles to Marlene, the master of poker despite being the only one not brought up by Muggles. The Muffliato spell allowed no one in the area to hear them, so karaoke followed. All throughout the night, the firewhiskey bottle was passed around, only making everything ten times funnier to the girls. Secrets were spilled, jokes were told, and happiness filled each of their hearts with warmth (it could have just been the firewhiskey, but they didn't think so).

At around two in the morning, Eva briefly opened her eyes and rolled closer to her best friends before falling asleep again.

*

Sirius yawned the second he opened his eyes. He pushed himself up slowly from where he'd fallen asleep with his head on Remus' bed. He hated full moons. Remus always went through hell and the rest of them woke up with random bruises and scratches. All the same, he knew he'd do it over and over again without hesitation. Just from stretching out, he could feel the bruises on his neck, a spot that had just healed from right before school began.

A newspaper sat on the bedside table. Sirius picked it up and grimaced at the headline: Two Muggleborns Killed Last Night in Bristol, Death Eaters Escape. He set it down without reading anything further. There was already too much to think about without those murders. It scared him, this war that seemed to grow each day. He didn't want to know how his family would react to it, or his beliefs of being against it. He had no idea what it was he wanted to do after Hogwarts, but it certainly wasn't to join up with the Death Eaters and get himself landed in Azkaban.

"Mate, you awake?" He nudged James, who groaned and scooted away from him.

"No."

"Come on, it's Sunday! We can do whatever we want today."

James lifted his head and slid on his glasses. "What if we sleep?"

"That's boring." Sirius leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on Remus' bed as he considered. "We could go on a ride through the forest."

"If we don't want detention, that's not allowed," James pointed out, then looked like he wanted to shove the words back into his mouth. "That was a stupid thing to say. Since when have we cared?"

"Technically, Potter, it's called the Highly Discouraged Forest," Sirius corrected. "It's not forbidden. Not yet, anyway."

"We could take Evans and Blondie on a broomstick ride. Moony's gonna be out of condition today and Peter'll be asleep for ages."

"That sounds fun," Sirius said nonchalantly, trying not to seem overeager at the prospect. "They might still be sleeping, though."

"Then let's go wake them up!" Despite James' statement about not asking Lily out for a while, he still jumped at any opportunity to be around her. Sirius suppressed a sarcastic eye roll.

"All right then, let's go." Sirius wrote it a quick note in his swooping cursive, something he tried to change about himself but never could.

Moony, we'll be back later. Don't die or anything before then, we'd be rather irritated with you. Hi Peter.

"Sirius, mate, come on!"

Using hidden hallways and trick staircases they'd added to the map over their time at Hogwarts, the boys arrived back at Gryffindor Tower in record time.

"Hey Alice, have you seen Evans?" James asked Alice Fortesque, a fellow sixth year, as she passed them in the portrait hole.

"Actually, no. I haven't seen her since last night. She wasn't upstairs."

Sirius leaned on the doorframe casually to hide a slight sense of panic, his emotions running higher due to that newspaper article. He knew it wasn't them, but both Lily and Eva had Muggle parents. Each day, the world became more dangerous for them. "What about Eva or Marlene? You see them?"

Alice shook her head again. "Sorry. They might be at the library or something. I have to go, I'm meeting Frank. See you later." She hurried down the hallway with a big grin on her face.

Sirius turned to his friend, a crease of worry forming between his eyebrows. "Where do you think they are?"

"I dunno. Doesn't look like they're in here," James replied, glancing around the common room as if they'd materialize.

"Where's the map?"

Wordlessly, James ran up the stairs to the dormitory, Sirius right behind. He dug around under his bed and pulled out a wooden box.

"Where the hell's my firewhiskey?"

"Prongs, that's not important right now!" Sirius snatched the map from the box and quickly tapped it with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

James craned his neck to see over Sirius' shoulder, sneezing when his long hair tickled his nose. Sirius slapped him before scanning again for names.

"There!" James said, pointing to the small dots labeled Eva Taylor, Marlene McKinnon, and Lily Evans.

Sirius tried to hide his sigh of relief, but it came out anyway. "That's a side room near Flitwick's. I didn't know anyone besides us knew it existed."

"Come on, let's go get them," James said, itching to make sure they were all right.

Once again, they took shortcuts. Everyone always wondered how some of the school's biggest pair of pranksters always arrived to class on time, but it was simple to them. James pushed the door open and almost laughed. As Sirius caught up with him, it was easy to see why.

All three wands lay piled in the center of the room, which really wasn't bigger than a small bedroom. The girls all slept next to each other under a single blanket, a half-filled bottle of firewhiskey open nearby. Lily's red hair covered Eva's face, and Marlene lay sprawled out over the two of them. Beatles music played in the background, and Muggle playing cards covered the floor.

"Blimey," James said quietly, a big smile on his face, "they look like they had some fun last night."

"Looks like they were celebrating. Found your firewhiskey, by the way." Sirius picked it up and took a swig before passing it to James. His grin widened when he realized Eva was wearing his leather jacket over her bright red Quidditch robes.

"Thank you very much." He vanished the bottle. "They couldn't have been celebrating that much. Most of this is still in here."

"What do you think we ought to do? Should we wake them up?"

"Stop being so loud," Eva muttered from under the tangle of friends and blankets.

Sirius chuckled as she tried and failed to escape. "Hey there, Blondie."

"How did you find us? Oh, let me guess. That dang map, right?"

"She knows about the map?!" James whisper-screamed. "We had a pact, mate!"

"We almost were caught by Filch," Sirius said, shrugging. "I may or may not have whipped it out while we were in the closet."

"What was it you whipped out in the closet again?" James asked, an innocent look on his face. Sirius felt his face flame up. He wanted to punch him, but if he fell, he'd definitely trip onto the girls.

"James Potter, I will hex you, I swear," Eva mumbled. "My head hurts."

"Who are you talking to?" Lily asked without opening her eyes.

"Lils, we've got visitors."

Lily almost shrieked when she saw James Potter grinning lopsidedly at her bed hair. "Merlin!" She scooted away and pulled the blankets around her even though she wore school robes. This caused Marlene to jump up, trip, and squish Eva. Sirius and James roared with laughter as the girls all began to freak out at each other.

"Get off of me!"

"That's my wand!"

"What are you doing!"

"You're on my foot!"

"Where did they even come from?"

"All right then," James smirked and clapped his hands together before turning to Sirius. "Breakfast? Before they realize this is our fault and they kill us?"

"Yeah, good idea."

They didn't walk from the room. They ran, neither of them wanting to face the wrath of three witches who had drunk too much and been woken too early.