Sirius had made it clear to them on previous occasions that he did not want to celebrate his birthday, while everyone protested his requests, Lily had brought a compromise to the table that satisfied everyone's needs.

Currently, it was midnight of Sirius's birthday and the girls had decided they all wanted to take a walk around the castle with the moonlight shining around them. The boys had all declined or had been told to get back in bed by the girls because there was a rather harsh full moon that they had all just experienced.

The girls had been walking down the same corridor for what felt like forever when Alice spotted two yellow eyes looking at the group of them.

"Holy Merlin! Is that a niffler?" She near shouted getting their attention very quickly.

"Longbottom, you need to get your eyes checked! That's clearly a cat!" Marlene said in reply, earning a short laugh from both Mary and Lily because of the use of Frank's last name.

"We haven't gotten married yet, McKinnon! In fact, we're not even engaged!" Alice said in retaliation.

"Are we just calling each other by our last names now?" Mary asked, laughing through her question.

"Appears like it, but more importantly, what are we going to do with the cat?" Lily responded.

The girls all shared a look and simultaneously all tried to coax the cat over to them.

...

Sitting peacefully on the couch, Lily read through her Potions essay once more just to make sure that it was up to Slughorn's standards.

Before she could proceed, there was a crash, bang, and boom that came from James's dorm. This struck her with confusion as her boyfriend was usually well coordinated.

"Love? Are you alright?" Lily yelled up the stairs.

"I can't see!" James responded with another crash, boom, bang, following his reply.

"Bloody hell," she muttered impatiently under her breath, climbing the stairs at a rapid pace, and throwing his door open.

At the sight of James, she gasped as his eyes were swollen shut.

"Are you allergic to cats by chance?"

"Yeah..." he replied uncertainly.

The situation would've been humorous, but Lily didn't know how severely allergic James actually was. So, she took action and decided she could ultimately laugh later.

"Let's get you to the hospital wing," she said leading him down the staircase.

"I'm shirtless, Lily!" He protested making her job far more difficult.

"It's not like you haven't walked around the school shirtless before!" She retorted still pulling him down the stairs.

...

Craig decided that he wanted to help people, which led him into thinking about what jobs he could choose from in the future seeing as this was his last school year.

Healing was the first thing that shot into his mind, so he signed up to help Madam Pomfrey when he wasn't in classes. He also signed up to be a tutor for people that were struggling and he even had his first tutoring session later that day.

Yet, he was not expecting a laughing Lily Evans (she had given up on saving the laughter for later) to escort a grumbling James Potter into the hospital wing first thing in the morning. Craig snorted of exasperation at the two, who had begun playfully bickering.

"What do you need?" Craig asked raising both eyebrows at James's swollen face.

"Just something for allergies," James responded disregarding the accent he had never previously heard, "a cat found its way into my dorm and slept right beside my face."

Craig walked over to the medicine cabinet and grabbed a blue potion, pouring a few ounces into a glass, proceeding to then give the glass to James, who almost promptly dropped it.

James's previously swollen face had then gone back to normal, at which Lily gave him his glasses.

"You're not Poppy!" James exclaimed, Lily just rolled her eyes in amusement.

"You couldn't tell by the voice?" He inquired quite confused about how James had not yet noticed it wasn't Madam Pomfrey that was tending to him.

"I just sort of ignored that I guess," he replied scratching the back of his neck.

"Well, James this is Craig, Craig this is James," Lily introduced the two properly.

"You knew him already?" James asked totally flabbergasted at this point.

"Yeah, sometimes Alice, Craig, and I study together in the library," Lily laughed now trying to get James out of the infirmary. "Let's go to breakfast!"

"Breakfast!" James shouted at the expense of everyone else's ears as he stumbled out of the hospital wing.

"Wait! Grab a shirt first!" Lily shouted after him.

"But breakfast!" He yelled back as he got futher away.

"Shit, there's going to be a drugged, shirtless head boy on public display. Bye Craig!" Lily said as she ran out after him.

"Bye, Lily!" He said chuckling to himself.

As they left, he was reminded of the tutoring session he had later, which was making him mildly nervous. The person he was supposed to tutor is none other than Regulus Black.

Regulus was a smart kid, but he had been routinely withdrawing from each class, which was making his grades drop horrendously. He had previously been through three tutors, who had either resigned or Regulus had just not shown up.

A number of people had warned Craig about the house of Black and how each member acted, except a select few. They spoke about their haunting beliefs, which often led them to the dark side of the war.

Yet, people also spoke about Sirius and how he had rebelled until they finally disowned him after many years of abuse, mentally and physically. They spoke about their hope that Regulus, too, would rebel, but that didn't seem likely.

Sirius had had the opportunity to rebel the moment the hat sorted him into Gryffindor, Regulus never got that chance. He was stuck in a house with the influence of his cousins, while Sirius had the influence of James, Remus, and Peter.

"Dear, you have ten minutes until your first period- are you okay?" Madam Pomfrey asked Craig, who had since put a forced a smile upon his face.

"Yeah," he responded, but he was actually getting eating alive by his worries. "I'll see you later then, Madam Pomfrey."

...

It was in Potions, the last class of their , that the Marauders had decided to pull Sirius's birthday prank. Seeing as all eight people of their friend group were in the same class, it was the most opportune time.

At first, Lily was not on board for the Marauders pranking Sirius in Potions because she felt bad for Slughorn. James, however, had made sure to clear up the idea that Slughorn would also be subjected to the prank.

Slughorn had allowed the class to choose partners, for he found forcing groups usually did not bring out the group's best work.

As James and Sirius had been banned from being partners after a laughing potions gone wrong, which is a another story for another time, they had both paired up with their respective girlfriends.

Remus and Mary had proved to be a good potions pair as well because they struggled through the class together.

Alice worked with Craig as they had become very close. With their combined smarts, it was rare that their potion didn't rival James and Lily's.

Peter opted to work with a Ravenclaw he had never met before, but they were nice and pretty, which were both definite pluses.

The Ravenclaw, Dahlia Anderson, a peppy seventh-year, had excelled in all of her classes except Transfiguration. She had always had a fleeting thought that she liked girls as well as boys, but seeing as it was the 1970s and she wasn't as confident as Marlene McKinnon, she hadn't explored it.

Dahlia was never seen without her signature black lipstick and septum piercing that her dorm mates had done themselves. They had done quite a good job for a bunch of inexperienced fifth-years.

So, the class chugged on, with heavy fumes practically suffocating the air, making a hue appear near the ceiling.

James stirred their potion three times counterclockwise just as Lily had told him to as he shared a grin with Remus. Lily had opted to roll her eyes at the pair as she unlit the cauldron.

She spooned the teal colored potion into the vial, which James had already written their names, albeit incorrectly on purpose, catching Lily's attention.

James Evans
Lily Potter

"What the hell is this?" She asked with an amused look in her eyes.

"I figured we could switch last names for the day, throw a little spice into-"

He was cut off as a loud popping noise emitted from Sirius and Marlene's cauldron. Directly after, confetti popped into the air from the cauldron, seemingly not affecting the potion itself.

Sirius turned his field of vision from a chuckling Marlene to a smirking James.

"It was all about surprise factor," he said to his best mate.

"Yeah, well you could've given Sluggy a fucking heart attack!" He said laughing along with Marlene.

...

Regulus Black walked into the library, immediately receiving glares from students and the librarian because of his last study session.

It had ended with multiple rows of books knocked over and a few broken bones for the surrounding students. Regulus and his old tutor had gotten a few detentions each.

The glares hadn't fazed him as he just flipped them off with a hard stare of his own while he looked for the student Dumbledore had described.

His eyes landed on a messy brown haired Hufflepuff, a medium height, who had definitely fit the description Dumbledore had gifted him. Yet, Regulus's first thought was that the boy was sort of cute.

Walking over to the table the Hufflepuff had set up shop at, Regulus had begun to grow nervous. Why was he nervous? It was going to be the same as every other tutoring session was, more wasted time.

What if it wasn't? What if Regulus actually enjoyed his time with the mystery Hufflepuff? What if it offered an escape? What if-

"Hello," Regulus cut off his own intruding thoughts, "are you -er- Craig Geyer?" He stumbled through his words a little.

"Yes, which makes you Regulus Black?" The boy with bright eyes replied.

He nodded as he sat down and looked at the stuff spread across the table. Craig had an assorted amount of books for every subject, but they were just his own textbooks and healing books. There was no extra material for Regulus to study.

"You're a smart kid, I've seen your past marks. Yet, your more recent marks are just subpar," Craig stated bluntly, catching Reg off guard.

"I guess you could say that," he responded scratching the back of his neck.

"If you don't want to be taken out of quidditch, you should probably start writing your essays."

"How do you get motivated?" Reg asked looking in Craig's forest green eyes.

"I think about what I want to do in the future. I think about how it will affect me after Hogwarts," he responded truthfully.

"What if I don't know what I want?"

"You wouldn't want to fuck up the unknown, would you?" Craig asked noticing the boy who sat across from him was trying to figure out his accent. "My accent is American."

"Interesting take and I thought it was from the States, I just couldn't place it."

Craig took a deep breath in order to begin the actual tutoring session and lended Regulus some ink and parchment.

"We can't leave until you finish two essays."

"Two? Don't you think that's unreasonable?" He groaned sinking lower into his seat.

"Do you want to fuck up your future?" Craig asked reminding him why they were there.

"And to think, I was beginning to believe that you were cool."

...

The ginger cat made its way around the heads common room with James staring at it with narrowed eyes. He was still not over the humiliation of being dragged around Hogwarts by Lily earlier that morning.

Yet, the cat had unfortunately taken a liking to him and had finally settled on his lap. This caused James's eyes to go wide and the rest of the group to laugh.

"I stopped by the hospital wing to get some more allergy potion. I left it on your dresser," Lily reassured him.

James was still skeptical of the cat, but he pet it all the same with a hesitant smile on his face.

"It needs a name," Alice noticed eating another Bertie Bott's Bean.

"Are we thinking a human name or?" Remus asked leaving the end of his question hang in the air.

Collectively, they all sat in silence pondering the different names that entered their heads, "Bob" and "Kevin" making presence in more than one head.

"Well, is it a girl or a boy?" Marlene asked logically.

"I'm not checking! I'm not picking this thing up!" James said with an adamant tone.

Mary sighed and walked over to the cat, picked it up, and noticed the hives on James's arms.

"We should probably keep her in the our dorm," she said gesturing to his arms.

"That's not normal?" James asked running a hand over his arm.

"No! It's an allergic reaction! Julia used to get them before our cat died," Mary said remembering that short period of time.

"How did your cat die?" Sirius asked as Mary sat down in the couch with the now purring cat.

"He was run over, poor Elvie."

"Is Elvie short for something else?" Remus asked curiously.

Marlene, Lily, and Alice snorted as they knew full well what the late cat's name was. Mary had probably used the nickname to avoid sharing the full name.

"Elvendork," she cleared her throat rather awkwardly after she replied.

"Elvendork II it is!" Sirius clapped his hands together.

"But-" Alice was cut off and pulled off the ground where she was sitting by an enthusiastic Sirius.

"It's my birthday! Let's dance!" He said leading Alice around the common room, who hadn't seemed to know what was going on.

"I thought you didn't want to celebrate because of you parents," Peter pointed out.

"Fuck them!"

...

Author's Note:

First and foremost here's my money for the swear jar. I actually went through the entire chapter looking for swear words believe it or not. (I only counted the ones I thought were swear words.) 💵💵💵💵💵

Secondly, sometimes I have doubts about how good these chapters actually are because one of my elementary teachers told me in a creative writing unit that I only knew how to write dialogue.

Lastly, thank you for 250 votes and 3k comments! It means so much to me and brightens my day every time I see a new vote/comment!

Lmao anyways thanks for reading
-teddy🐈