September 4, 1977
6:34 p.m.
Hospital Wing

Everyone had been discharged from the hospital wing, except Marlene, since her injuries had made her go unconscious for a period of time at the manor.

Madam Pomfrey was being very strict on no extra activities, if it wasn't studying and attending class, you weren't allowed if you had been taken hostage.

However, with classes starting on September 7, Marlene had pleaded to be let out of the hospital wing. She was growing quite bored with nothing to do, though she did enjoy talking to a boy with a strange accent that helped Madam Pomfrey.

So, Lily made her way up to the hospital wing to talk to Marlene per usual and found that Madam Pomfrey was due to discharge her later that night.

"Craig! I haven't talked to you in awhile! How've you been?" Lily asked when she saw him in the hospital wing.

"Quite alright, Lily. I'm shadowing Madam Pomfrey to help her out a bit-"

"Poppy, when am I going to be discharged?" Marlene nearly screeched.

"Sooner rather than later!" The woman replied walking briskly in the other direction.

"Lily! Thank Merlin you're here! All I've had for company since Sirius left was the weird nurse!" She said as Lily sat down next to her bed.

"I heard that!" Craig shouted from somewhere they couldn't see, Lily snorted.

"The weird nurse is a friend of mine, his name is Craig Geyer and he helped me apparate from the train with Annie and Julia."

When James was told that Lily had been the one to take Annie to Hogwarts, he quite literally almost kissed her. Sirius had told him alone because he knew what his reaction would be, but when he saw her again, he hugged her while saying thank you about a hundred times.

"Alright, McKinnon, here's the paper you hand the teacher if you need to get out of class, not if you want but need."

Madam Pomfrey stood there for a moment pondering what to say or do next, she turned to Lily.

"Let me see how the scar is healing, Miss Evans!" She said as Lily swept her hair over one shoulder.

"It's healing, but the scar will most likely never go away fully. Very well, off you go."

"Finally, bloody hell," Marlene muttered.

...

September 7, 1977
7:05 a.m.
Heads' Common Room

Lily clasped the back of her earring while almost simultaneously grabbing her bag and her shoes.

"Lily! We need to go!" James hollered up the staircase.

"I know, I know. Why couldn't classes have been canceled for another week?" She whined as they practically ran out of the portrait hole and to the front doors.

They both had herbology first, along with Mary, Alice, and Sirius. Marlene, Remus, and Peter had it later that week.

Beating the clock by a mere thirty seconds was not something Lily had planned on, but James had hogged the shower for a horrendous amount of time, giving Lily little to none.

Professor Sprout welcomed them in with a small smile and a tip of her hat, before starting what would be an inevitably boring lesson, that was sure to put at least five of the NEWT students to sleep.

Evans, late to your first NEWT class I see.

Lily looked at James' messy scrawl and rolled her eyes like clockwork, everyone watching the interaction would chalk it up to nothing but a little banter, yet the little banter was what made Lily's day all the better.

And I wonder who's fault that was...

...

September 7, 1977
1:36 p.m.
DADA room

Professor Witman led the class into his DADA room and surveyed who was sitting down in the seats. A redheaded girl, a black-haired boy, a brown-haired boy, were three of which stood out. Not because they sat in the back row, or because they all had unique mannerisms, but since those three students were the ones he was told to watch out for.

"My name is Professor Witman and I will be your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year. Turn your books to page two hundred twenty-two." He said in an unusually high voice for a male.

"Lily, I bet you two galleons you can't pull a prank on this professor within the next ten minutes," Sirius said almost directly after the professor turned to the chalkboard.

"You're on," she said and shook his hand directly afterward.

The best way to prank the professor would probably be to change his hair color or float a book over his head, but Lily didn't want to pull an easy prank.

Lily screamed and then fake fainted onto the floor, putting a hand over her forehead. Sirius bit his lip to hide his laughter that was sure to come.

"Professor! Lily has fallen to the floor!" Sirius said melodramatically.

Professor Witman spun around from the chalkboard where he had begun to write about the class's expectations and ran over to where Lily had "fainted."

"I'll have to send for Madam Pomfrey, who can-" And right on cue, Sirius started barking with laughter, which made Lily start to laugh.

"Fake fainting in front of a new professor is neither funny nor acceptable in this or any classroom! You and Mr. ?"

"Mr. Black," Sirius answered still laughing as Lily stood up and sat back down in her chair next to his.

"You two will be serving a detention tonight, come to my classroom at 9:00 p.m. sharp!" 

...

September 7, 1977
9:00 p.m.
DADA room

The candles lit the atmosphere with an eerie ambiance, making for the walk from the Gryffindor common room to Professor Witman's classroom feel much longer than it truly was.

"So, when are you going to finally give up your stubbornness and date James?" Sirius prodded.

"Stubbornness? I told him that-"

"Yeah, yeah, he told me. Now, stop being so fucking noble and just date him already."

"It's not that easy, Sirius! There's a war and I'm in the middle of it! I don't want him to do anything stupid because of me!" Her voice got louder as she became more frantic for him to see her side of things.

"Lily, when will you learn that we are the Marauders and it's in our nature to do stupid shit. Love is something Voldemort doesn't have and it makes you a hell of a lot stronger if you do."

Lily didn't respond and instead she just soaked in his words. Sirius was right, which was the really infuriating part of it all, but sometimes the voice in the back of her head was saying the same things. She just had yet to listen to them.

Professor Witman was waiting for them outside the classroom door with a stern expression before he opened the door to lead them inside.

"I want you to write about what you will do differently the next time you are in my class and you will leave when you are finished."

The next time I am in Professor Witman's classroom, I will listen attentively instead of pretending to faint. I comprehend the fact that my actions are wrong and they will not be repeated in the future.

If essays could kill by being drop dead boring, Lily's would've been the biggest mass murderer in history of all murderers. Yet, when it was time to leave, she felt zero remorse in leaving it on the professor's desk.

Light banter ensued as they walked to the Heads common room, since Sirius insisted on walking her back.

"James asked you to, didn't he?" Lily inquired before spouting the password.

"Yes, but it's because he cares, Evans," Sirius replied.

"Night, Black," Lily said with a hug before she walked into the common area to see James playing himself in Wizards Chess.

"Are you playing yourself in order to avoid McGonagall's essay?" Lily asked sitting on the couch across from him.

"Minnie may be my favorite professor, but her essays are brutal and I do not have enough brain power to waste on one tonight," he said staring at the chess board.

James stuck out his tongue out the side of his mouth and furrowed his brow in concentration, which was something Lily loved when he did so. She quickly became flustered after realizing she was staring and came up with a rebuttal.

"Yet, you have enough brain power to waste on a chess game played against yourself," she added.

"That's exactly right. Now, as your first day as head girl of this fine establishment called Hogwarts, you were nearly late to your first class, pretended to faint because you were bored, and then got a detention. I'd say that qualifies as a marauder day."

"What's a Marauder day?" She asked with an eyebrow raised.

"You have to complete at least three offenses to the school handbook for it to be considered a productive day as perfectly stated in the Marauders handbook," he said completely abandoning the chess game.

"I refuse to believe there's an actual Marauders handbook. You guys aren't that big of dorks, are you?" She replied through a laugh.

"Changing the subject... Pete's birthday is in two days and I was wondering if we could celebrate it here, after classes of course."

"Merlin, you really are that big of a dork."

...

September 9, 1977
7:30 p.m.
Heads' Common Room

Lily and James had decided to ask the house elves to make a rat themed cake earlier that day and boy did the elves deliver.

Sirius was the first one to dig into the cake and consequently the first to taste it.

"Bloody hell! They must've put actual rat chunks in that fucking cake! I need water!"

Sirius ran around the dorm frantically screaming profanities while most of the crew just sat and laughed, eyeing the cake. Marlene decided to throw him her water bottle after a fair few minutes of watching him run around the room.

"Well, now that the cake's a bust, anything interesting happen?" Alice asked with a hopeful expression.

"We saw Annie and Julia running around after curfew," Lily said playing with her unused fork.

"Telling them off was rather hard since they wanted to know all about Lily's latest adventure in detention," James said jokingly glaring at Lily.

"You are not allowed to judge me for that, Mr. Over Seventy Detentions!" Lily shot back.

The peaceful aura that floated off the bookshelves put everyone under a quiet spell as nobody talked or moved for five straight minutes, which would be a record for the marauders unless you count sleeping.

"Thanks for the smashing party guys, I'm going to the kitchens to eat some of the leftover feast," Peter said equally sarcastic and disappointed.

"Pete!" James said before Peter could leave.

"Don't Pete me! Since our two groups merged, everything has always been about James and Lily. In fact, I think it has always been about James and Lily!" Peter said looking directly into the hurt filled hazel eyes, while Sirius' flashed in the background.

"Will Lily ever love me?" He said in a mocking voice.

"Alright mate, time to pack it up. Let's go," Remus said ever the peacekeeper said grabbing Peter's arm and dragging him out of the portrait. However, it was only a matter of seconds in which Remus returned.

"Rebecca Cortell says Dumbeldore needs to see you," he said, leaving once again, probably to track down Peter.

"Why was Rebecca Cortell meeting with Dumbledore?" Sirius asked eyebrow quirked.

"Why do we have to meet with Dumbledore?" James asked.

It took only five minutes for the two head students to make their way up to the headmaster's office, three of which were spent trying to get upstairs.

He looked much like Professor Witman did by how he was standing at the top of the staircase accompanied by a stern expression and Fawkes on his shoulder.

"Hello, professor. You asked to see us?" Lily asked slightly out of breath from their trek.

"Yes, please come in."

The office had long been put back to normal since Lily had last seen it in an enlarged state, with many more people in it. Fawkes flew over to his post and tucked his head underneath a wing.

"I brought you here to talk a bit about the war and your responsibilities. I am sure you two know about Voldemort and his crew of Death Eaters, who are growing in number and rapidly at that."

Lily shivered as the air around here tightened, almost as if it knew what they were speaking about was bad.

"I will leave the school periodically and when I do so, you need to answer to Professor McGonagall. Do you understand?"

"Yes," they answered simultaneously.

...

Author's Note:

Hey! I'm back with another chapter! (finally)

I knew this one would take a while because I did not like what I had planned, but also since I can't use one of my thumbs. The following chapter may take a while as well.

Have a wonderful day!

Lmao anyways thanks for reading
-teddy🦔