Chapter Text
January 1st, 11:02 AM. Aforementioned Vague City.
Peter has been half-comatose on the couch for several hours at this point. Dorcas apparently attempted to make her way to her bedroom and is wedged onto the staircase landing in an impressive pose that most certainly means a backache later. The rest of the motley gang is scattered about the living room, eyeing the mess that’s been made of the lower floor the same way a procrastinating student regards their growing pile of missing assignments.
“You’re going to need a name for that iguana, you know,” Marlene says. “Have you thought of that?”
Sirius has not.
“Batman,” Peter says before dropping his head back down onto the couch.
“Peter shouldn’t get a say,” Remus mumbles from over his cup of tea. “He threw up into my best shoes last night.”
"I already said I was sorry!”
“Sorry doesn’t clean the smell of orange soda and Bailey’s off of them.”
“I do kind of like Batman,” James muses.
“Well, Jamsie, she is your replacement childhood pet, so it’s only fair that you should get the last say.”
“You’re only saying that because you want me to be the one to clean her tank.”
“Ridiculous! Insulting! Completely out of character! I’m offended that you’d even entertain the notion-” A death glare from Lily stops Sirius in his tracks.
You can’t blame her. He was being Too Loud for eleven o’clock the morning after New Year’s.
“Isn’t the iguana female?” Marlene’s head is buried deep into her glitter-stained hands. It appears as though someone has attempted to paint her fingernails and failed miserably.
Someone. Yep. Definitely not Sirius.
“Yes, and?” Sirius asks. “Marlene McKinnon, I’m shocked. You’re supposed to be one of the progressive ones!”
“Well, you could at least call her Batwoman,” she protests, but the deal is done.
----
January 1st, 02:38 PM. I’m going to stop writing the location until it changes.
Peter and Remus have gone off to go get him new dress shoes, and Dorcas has migrated upstairs. The other four are left to vacuum up confetti and wipe questionable substances off of the floor and wonder how unreasonable it is to just scrap the whole house and start anew.
Sirius and Marlene are on the second or third floor. The occasional crash or yell or scream drifts downstairs, and James and Lily have a little nonverbal conversation every time one does. It goes like this:
‘I think that’s your problem child.’
‘What? No! That scream was far too high-pitched for it to be Marlene! That’s your problem child.’
‘Ugh, fine. I’ll go see what’s happened.’
Eventually, though, the catastrophes die down and the two clean in comfortable silence. Lily wonders absentmindedly when they went from ‘say another word about my flowing scarlet locks and I’ll cut your bollocks off’ silence to comfortable silence. She doesn’t have to wonder long, though, because James Potter cannot keep his mouth shut for more than a grand total of fifteen minutes.
“Hey, Evans.”
Lily straightens up from where she’s been attacking a puddle of something sticky on the kitchen counter.
“What is it, Potter? I thought we were past the ‘random marriage proposal’ phase?”
“I never proposed! Just asked you out!”
“No, I have a pretty vivid memory of you drunk off your arse, on your knees before me with a ring pop.”
Lily has no such memory. It’s just fun to watch James’ face as he flicks through various drunk memories, each presumably more horrifying than the last.
“Whatever. I was going to tell you that I must give credit where credit is due. Snivellus will be washing whatever that was out of his roots for days.”
Sirius lets out a barking laugh from the stairs, where he’s materialized somehow. “Not that there’s much visible difference!”
“Yes, well, hopefully we won’t be there to admire the aftereffects of my drink on his head anytime soon,” Lily says.
“Evans, I admire your intellect, I really do,” says James. “But do you really think that that’s going to be enough to make him leave you alone?”
Sirius makes a face. “Yeah. He didn’t stop stalking you after Marls poured birdseed all over his car so it’d be covered in their shit.”
“Or when you tossed his flowers into the woodchipper.”
“Or when Prongs put glue into his shampoo in the dorms.”
“Or when Padfoot pushed him into the pool fully clothed on spring break.”
“To be fair, the last two happened while Sev and- while Severus and I were still friends.”
But they have a point. Lily is suddenly bombarded with visions of Severus trailing after her, grinning creepily and offering her necklaces made out of his hair until the day she dies.
“So what do I do?” She asks, with more desperation than she’d like to admit tingeing her voice.
All three shrug in unison. Well, Sirius shrugs. James hunches his shoulders as he rubs his palms together.
“Oh, Evans, I have a couple ideas.”
Dread begins to pool in Lily’s stomach.