The Years We Were Alive: Year 1

Easter

March 29, 1972

"Bye! I hope y'all have a great Easter!" Lizzie waved goodbye to most of her friends as they stepped up into a carriage.

"Bye," Sirius waved.

Once the carriage went off, Sirius and Lizzie went back into the castle.

"Race ya," Lizzie looked at Sirius and took off. He could definitely run faster than she could, but she always liked a race.

"I'm gonna win!" Sirius set off a few seconds later. Lizzie thought that it could have been to give her even the slightest chance.

She kept a lead on him for a little while. They hardly got to run through the castle, they would always be told to walk by a teacher, but they were all sending off the kids leaving for Easter. Easter holiday was a lot different than Lizzie ever experienced. It was much more akin to what a Thanksgiving break would look like. It was Wednesday. Lizzie and Sirius would have three weekdays with no school with barely any other students in the castle.

Lizzie was bounding upstairs until she stopped dead in her tracks. The vanishing step. She tripped and fell down the rest of the staircase. Once she hit the ground she coughed. Everything seemed okay. No cuts, no scrapes. She could wiggle her toes. That was the checklist her mother would have told her to go through.

"Sirius, I'm done, I fell," Lizzie called, hoping for her friend to come back to her. She stood up and started to walk slowly up the stairs, watching out for the vanishing step. It would be nice if James could make it so the map could tell her that.

IT was too late; he was far far ahead. Lizzie would just walk the rest of the way. She did this to herself. She thought that maybe there was a reason teachers would tell her to stop running.

"That took you a long time," Sirius was sitting on one of the chairs in the common room when Lizzie came in.

"Yeah, I tripped on the vanishing step," Lizzie chuckled. Nothing really hurt too bad, and it was all in the name of fun after all.

"Liz! How many times is that now?"

"You don't want to know," Lizzie smiled and shook her head.

***

"Come here Middy," Lizzie patted her lap. Her cat hung out all over the place. Lizzie loved her to the end of the earth though. At Hogwarts, they make it so that it's hard for a student to accidentally kill their animal. The house-elves take good care of them, and the animals tend to spend a lot of time together.

The cat meowed at her and nuzzled her hand.

"I thought you were naming it something else," Sirius made a rotten face.

"Oi, if you didn't want me to name her myself, you should've given her one before I got her,"

"Yeah, yeah, I just didn't know you'd give a cat the name midnight,"

"You're unbelievable," Lizzie shook her head at him, "Well, what would you have named it then?"

"Er, chocolate? You love chocolate so much," Sirius shrugged.

"That really is not better," Lizzie rolled her eyes at him.

"You're wrong about that,"