All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Seventh Year : Amortentia

Friday 4th November 1977 – 2:00 AM in Gryffindor Tower

“I think there’s something to the colour changing idea,” James insisted, waving his goblet haphazardly as he spoke. The contents had been drained long ago, fortunately, so there was no risk of spillage.

“Nah, it’s too obvious,” Sirius slurred, feeling pleasantly warm and fuzzy, a lingering effect of the copious amounts of firewhisky that he had consumed. James had challenged him to a drinking contest, but by the time they had finished the bottle they’d completely lost track of who had actually drunk more.

“Besides,” Lily added, stifling a yawn, “What do we change? Their robes?”

“Their whole dormitory!” Mary grinned, swaying drunkenly with her arms above her head. She was the only one of them left standing, kept dancing by the power of Nina Simone. “Complete makeover! Bright pink!”

“Why pink, though?” Sirius took a swig from his own goblet (it was supposed to be Witches Brew, but Remus had replaced it with water half an hour ago and thought he’d been sneaky about it). “Some people might like pink.”

“Ha, on your own, Black!” Marlene poked her tongue out at him from where she was lying upside-down on an armchair, legs sticking out over the back. It made Sirius dizzy to look at her, cheeks gone red with all the blood rushing to her head. But Marlene seemed perfectly content, watching Mary twist back and forth in front of the fire.

The common room had emptied out over the course of the past hour, as drunken students stumbled back to their dorms after Sirius’s eighteenth birthday party. It had been just as boisterous and chaotic as the previous years—but better, because this year Sirius kept catching Remus’s eye from across the room, exchanging slow, lazy smiles that sent heat curling through his belly. He’d had half a mind to ditch the rest of their friends and drag Moony upstairs, but seeing as it was his party, had decided that that would probably be a bit too risky. Still, maybe once James and Peter fell asleep…

“How would we even get hold of their robes, though?” Peter asked, drawing Sirius’s attention back to the matter at hand, “We had the same problem in first year, remember? With the itching powder.”

“Oh yeah,” James frowned, “That’s right – it was easier to sneak into their common room than it was to work out how the house elves organise the laundry…”

“How did you sneak in?” Marlene asked, tearing her eyes away from Mary to glance at him, “You can’t have perfected an invisibility spell by the age of eleven…”

“Ask us no questions and we shall tell you no lies, McKinnon.” Sirius shot her a wink, turning back to watch Mary dance, too. “Anyway, we’ve decided not to do it.”

James raised an eyebrow. “You decided.”

“It’s my birthday!”

“Not anymore, it isn’t,” Peter chucked a cushion at his head, and Sirius dodged, laughing. He threw one back, and then James joined in, and pretty soon the entire group was flinging couch cushions back and forth, giggling helplessly.

“Right,” Marlene swatted away the velvet pillow James had just tossed, “I’m off to bed.” She planted her palms on the carpet and executed a perfect forward flip, astonishingly dexterous for someone who’d polished off nearly an entire bottle of Witches Brew herself.