Better - The Marauders

THIRTY-NINE

- Chapter Thirty-Nine -
"Goodnight, Sebastian."

A fun night, it was.

After dancing with Peter, Elladora had laughed her way back to the spot where they all stood and dragged Remus into the dancing crowd, despite his protests. It took a minute for him to ease into it, but did so once he saw how much fun the girl in front of him was having.

Sure, her dance moves were a little rusty, but then again she had never danced to a tune that quick before. Luckily, everyone was so immersed in their own little world of dance that they didn't even pay much attention to Elladora's unusual, yet horrific, arm movements where she would have nearly pushed people onto the floor about ten times if it wasn't for Remus grabbing her arms before she could.

Then she danced with Sirius, who taught her a dance move called the running man. It was quite a sight to see, Elladora Hargreaves in a black dress doing the running man with Sirius Black in the Gryffindor common room. Not only was it the running man that was included in their little routine, but not many people had seen the two of them do the Disco Finger, The funky chicken (which got James cracking up) and the robot.

James was the last to dance and settled on just turning her around a lot, slowly though so she didn't puke firewhiskey all over him. This is what they were doing now, James holding her hand delicately whilst bringing her arm around her head as she turned her body with it, a smile practically glued to her face as she watched their hands above them in wonder.

It turns out that she was mostly a very happy drunk, but sometimes she had a minute or two of moping around before getting sleepy and then going back to being happy and energetic. She was a rollercoaster of emotion when she's had too many drinks.

"Are you gonna be sick?" James shouted over the music as he slowed her to a stop. Her eyes were becoming slightly droopy.

"No, I'm just tired." She yawned. He sighed through a laugh but grabbed her hand again and wormed their way through the crowds towards a circle of chairs, where the other lay laughing and putting their hands to their chest as they did so.

"She's tired, so I'm guessing we have a good two or three minutes until she goes off again." James chuckled as he let go of her hand and plopped down in a seat next to Sirius, reaching over to get a bottle of butterbeer. "You guys feeling anything?"

"Sirius is gone," Remus sighed and looked to the boy in question, who seemed to be giggling at the air with dazed eyes. "Peter's buzzed," Peter was sat with half a glass of firewhiskey in his hands, a small frown on his face. "And I've not had anything else to drink since Dora got here." He looked over at Elladora who had slumped in the closest armchair and began to fall asleep.

"Why not?" James asked, taking a swig of his beer whilst furrowing his eyebrows at Remus.

"Well, it's her first teenage party and I think that somebody needs to take the responsibility of looking after her, and we're not gonna be able to do that if we're all drunk out of our minds." He admitted, drinking his water.