Silver Lining

Chapter 3

It went on like this for the next couple of weeks. Lily was carrying the burden of James' incessant flirting while I had to deal with them constantly finding ways to be around us, meaning extra awkward encounters with the infamous Remus Lupin. (He was only really infamous to me. Everybody else adored him, which made him even more annoying.) Meanwhile, I took every opportunity I could get to keep the Marauders in detention and away from me. On top of all this, we were gaining an enormous amount of homework in preparation for the O.W.L.s. 

A normal month at Hogwarts, I suppose.

"Lily, please, all I need is one page!"

"I told you, I'll give the book to you in a second!"

I sighed and dropped my quill onto the parchment as I sat back on the couch, yawning. My watch told me it was past 10 o'clock, and I was more than aware of how late it was getting. Lily and I were sitting in the common room facing the fire, with our books spread out around us and working on multiple essays at once. I was so crammed with information, I had written about the features of a Healing Drought at the bottom of my Transfiguration homework.

"Alright, I've had enough," Lily yawned, dropping her own quill. "I'm off to bed. Here's the book." She handed me a textbook about as thick as my forearm, which I took begrudgingly despite previously nagging for her to give it to me. She got to her feet and stretched, giving me a tired smile before trudging up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. "Night, Violet."

"Night, Lily." I rubbed my eyes tiredly, rolling onto my stomach with the book in front of me. I put my head on my hands with a sigh and flicked through the hundreds of pages absentmindedly. I didn't want to keep working, but I knew there was no chance of meeting my deadlines if I went to bed now. I let my head fall onto the book with a noise of impatience, closing my eyes for just a second. Just one moment of relief, then I would get straight back to my work...

---

I was comfortable. Really comfortable. Whatever I had been stressing about before seemed so far away now, so unimportant. It was just me and the warmth and the blissful quiet.

No, hold on. Voices. There were voices around me. Voices I recognised... James Potter. Sirius Black too, and that other one sounded like Peter Pettigrew. As I focused on their isolated voices my surroundings began to form slowly in my mind.

My eyes snapped open as I remembered where I was. It took me a moment to orientate myself, eyes flicking around the darkened Gryffindor Common Room. I had fallen asleep on the couch while doing my homework - that was normal enough. I'd done that heaps of times, so what seemed different? The voices echoed in my ears again and I groaned slightly. I wanted so badly to close my eyes and let them get on with whatever scheme their mischievous voices suggested they were planning. But no, I just had to be the most stubborn person on the planet, and I was not going to let them get out of this unscathed. Detention it is, boys.

I pushed myself up into a sitting position so I could see the group from my spot near the fireplace. It was hard to make them out in the dark, but it was clear enough to see three of them with their arms around each other, and the other walking alongside. They still hadn't noticed me, and that was an advantage I could easily use. I cleared my throat loudly, and all four heads turned to me. One of the figures - James, I could see as my eyes began to adjust - looked at me for a moment and threw his head back in annoyance.

"We do not need this right now," he groaned loudly. I noticed this wasn't his usual sarcastic act around me - this was genuine irritation that I generally only saw when I got them a detention that clashed with their Quidditch practice.