Chapter Text
The Gryffindor common room was atypically quiet for a Friday evening. There were no recent Quidditch victories to celebrate that hadn’t already been thoroughly commemorated. It was not yet exam season, so there were no “end of exams” celebrations nor any “we’re avoiding studying” parties. All holidays and birthdays had passed with appropriate antics or were too far away to begin festivities. So, in reality, the common room should be quiet and orderly with there being nothing to celebrate.
Or so everyone thought.
At precisely 10 pm, all four Marauders entered the common room with loud laughter, bright smiles, and arms laden with suspiciously-wrapped bundles and half-hidden food items.
Lily assessed the group with a wary eye, distrusting the level of merriment from the four known troublemakers. Sliding from her chair by the fire, she approached Remus as the group made their way toward the stairs to the dormitory.
“And what do we have here, Mr. Prefect?”
Remus froze for a split second before slowly turning toward his fellow Gryffindor Prefect. When he met her gaze, he wore his signature “surely you don’t expect me to be causing trouble” smile but the tell-tale gleam of mischief lingered in his eyes. Lily just barely missed seeing him slide his wand up his sleeve.
“I’m simply ensuring these troublemakers make it back to their common room before curfew like the good, upstanding Prefect I am. Is that against the rules, Miss Prefect?” Lily had to admit, the smile and polite tone were a deadly combination for an unsuspecting professor but she knew what he was truly capable of – especially with the company he kept.
“Not at all, I commend you for doing your due diligence to keep those menaces in line. I was more curious about what you all brought up there with you.” Lily met his polite-but-fake smile with one of her own. This was a showdown she was determined to win.
Remus made a big show of looking confused at what she could be referring to before donning an over-exaggerated face of realization. “Oh! You must be referring to the snacks!” He moved to the side to show Lily the plate of spiced desserts and bottles of pumpkin juice hovering behind his back – not alcohol after all. Or so it seemed.
“You’re not fooling me that easily, I wasn’t made Prefect yesterday.” Lily walked up the few stairs so she was level with the food and drink. She opened the bottle of pumpkin juice and sniffed, hoping to catch the tell-tale scent of Firewhiskey or even Butterbeer. It was, sadly, just overly-sweet pumpkin juice. Hiding her disappointment, she turned to her friend and adopted her most Prefect-ly tone. “All seems to be in order here, carry on.”
“Thank you ever so much, Prefect Evans. Have a pleasant evening.” With a parting wink, Remus took the stairs three at a time (Merlin, but that boy’s legs were long) and rejoined his roommates. Lily was only mildly disappointed that she couldn’t “confiscate” any alcohol this time. Then again, Remus usually never held out on her if there was a party or celebration, so maybe they were just normal snacks.
Once Remus got to their room, James nearly sent them both to the floor with the force he used to tackle Remus.
“What did Evans want? Did she take anything?” Remus patiently prised James from his body and checked that the snacks he levitated up here were still intact. James, following his gaze, squawked in indignation. “Moony! What happened to the Firewhiskey?”
Remus sighed and shook his sleeve out to retrieve his wand. With a few mumbled words, the bottles of pumpkin juice returned to their original form of pumpkin pasties and the spiced cakes returned to their original form of two bottles of Firewhiskey.
The others looked on in awe as Remus gently sat the bottles on his nightstand and turned to face the group. “What?”
“Moony, you transfigured solids into liquids and back again?”
“Er, yes? I needed to keep Lily from asking too many questions before we got started. She won’t bother us once we start in on our ‘immature antics’,” Remus replied in an uncannily accurate imitation of her northern accent.
“This is why you’re the mastermind,” Pete called from his bed where he was sorting some of the communal Honeydukes into a pile to bring down to the common room later. “Padfoot would have accidentally vanished it and Prongs would have frozen and Lily would have found the alcohol.”
“Oi! Slander!” Sirius leapt up from where he was lounging across Remus’ bed, waiting for the other boy’s return, and huffed in indignation. “I would not have vanished it!”
“Pads is right,” Remus interjected. As Sirius opened his mouth to thank Remus for coming to his aid, he added “he would have let the levitation spell drop while he panicked and ruined the food. Which is worse.”
James and Pete cackled as Sirius hit Remus with his most deadly pout. “Oh come on Padfoot, you know I’m just teasing,” Remus sidled up to Sirius and slung his arm over the shorter boy’s shoulder, pulling him in close to whisper “you and I both know James would have dropped the bottles too” into his ear, making Sirius shiver at the proximity.
Sirius must have managed to make some sort of sound in the affirmative because Remus stepped away to change out of his school uniform and into more comfortable clothes. The four had a night of revelry planned in honor of their 100th joint detention. James maintained it should have happened far sooner than their sixth year, but ever since Pete started using his animagus form to escape undetected and Remus was a constant favorite of all the professors (and therefore frequently went completely unsuspected), it took until nearly the end of their sixth year to rack up 100 detentions “awarded” to the group as a whole.
Remus made weak protests as to the fact this wasn’t the greatest milestone to celebrate, but James and Sirius proclaimed setting a new group detention milestone record (which was also previously held by them at 75, 60, 50, and even 20 group detentions) warranted a celebration. So that was how Remus found himself misusing his Prefect status once again to escort his friends back from the Hogsmeade secret passage, laden with food, chocolate, and alcohol.
Once the group was properly dressed and their first (and second) celebratory shots were taken, they descended to the common room. Most of the younger students were already in bed or heading up and a few of the older students saw the look on the Marauders' faces and quickly packed up, knowing only too well what that level of group merriment on a weekend could lead to. Before long the only students left in the common room were the four drunken boys and a few of the sixth- and seventh-year girls.
And so their night of revelry began.