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December 19, 1978
It was one of those rare days off for Remus.
Maybe he’d actually get to sleep in today.
7:49 a.m.
“Moony!”
… Maybe not.
There was a furious frantic knocking at his bedroom door.
“What?” he grunted, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“It snowed a lot last night.” Sirius’s voice wasn’t muffled by the door at all. If anything, it made him speak more clearly.
Oh nope, it’s because he came in. Lovely.
A large black dog pounced onto the bed.
Remus groaned.
Snuffles bounced on the bed, whining something that sounded suspiciously like “Moony”.
It took all of thirty seconds for Remus to finally sit up.
“Yes, Padfoot. It snowed. You dragged me outside and spent twenty minutes catching snowflakes on your tongue, remember?”
Snuffles gave him a doggy smile.
“What I really want to know is why you couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour to remind me.”
Pop.
“Moony, Prongs Flooed a few minutes ago.”
“What? Prongs? As in James Potter? As in the one who always threatened to hex our bollocks off if we woke him up before 8 a.m., that Prongs?”
“The very one!”
“Did someone die?”
“No! We’re all heading out to the countryside to enjoy the snow. None of us have work today.”
“Ah yes, we’re officially all back in first year, eh?”
“Hey, the Great Snowball Snafu of First Year will forever go down in history as the start of the Marauder legacy.”
“I will admit, it’s the stuff of legends.” Remus cleared his throat. “Hey, are you planning on putting a shirt on?”
“Not really, but I suppose I should, don’t want my nipples to fall off!”
“Yes, what would Lily have to aim her hexes at anymore?”
“Be ready in 10 minutes!” Sirius scampered out of the room, but not before swiping one of Remus’s Christmas jumpers from The Chair.
9:02 a.m.
“It’s actually a lot warmer than I was expecting.” Sirius mused, messy hair sticking out from beneath his beanie.
“Speak for yourself.” Remus was quite well bundled up. The only bit of skin exposed was the bits around his eyes.
“Actually he’s right,” Lily picked up her pace to walk along side him. “It’s not that bad.”
“Almost perfect snowball weather.” Peter commented off hand.
Remus quickly concluded that he should have worn something less restrictive.
“Lily, love, where exactly are we?”
Lily paused, glancing at the field around her.
“Erm, we should be about to the village soon enough.”
“Your tone doesn’t provide me with much confidence.”
“That it! We’re going to die out here.” Sirius flung himself at Remus, who, of course, caught him because that’s what friends are for. “We’ll have to forage for food, fight off wild animals, and at night we’ll have to—”
“Oh look, Wormtail has a ball for you!” Remus said calmly (not in the panicky tone the voice inside his head was telling him to say it in).
Sirius leapt form Remus’s embrace, landing on all fours as a huge black dog. He whirled around to Peter and barked excitedly.
Peter, who didn’t actually have a snowball ready, froze in a panic. If he didn’t have a ball ready in three seconds, he was going to get pounced on.
Luckily, Remus was there to save the day.
“Here Pads, fetch!” Remus, for all his lack of physical exercise at school, could have easily made the Quidditch teach as a chaser. Maybe even given James a run for his money. If only he wasn’t so afraid of falling off his broom at high speeds. The point is, Remus could throw farther than any of the other Marauders.
Snuffles took off a second later, prancing through the chest high snow on the untrodden sheet of snow. He stopped looked ahead with perked ears, the way a real dog does when they’re 100 percent sure you threw something in this direction. He looked back at Remus, barking.
“You lost it? How could you lose it? You’re getting soft, Padfoot.” James remarked, his arm slung around Lily.
“Don’t bring him over here!” Lily scolded him, jabbing him with her elbow.
Remus threw another snowball. It hit James square in the chest.
“Too late!” Peter dove out of the line of fire.
“Bugger.”
Lily followed Peter’s example and leapt away with a giggly-shriek.
James wasn’t so lucky.
Remus couldn’t help it, he howled with laughter as Snuffles barrelled into James, knocking them both into the snowbank.
“Oi! Pads! Sirius! You could at least warn a bloke!”
“I did. Didn’t you hear me barking? It wasn’t the stealthiest of attacks.”
“I demand a do-over.”
Remus’s eye twitched. He knew exactly where this was heading, and glancing at Lily, it looked as though she knew what was going to happen, too.
“There are no do-overs, mate. Only winners, losers, and soon-to-be winners because they kidnapped the opposing team’s fiancée."
“Wait, what?” Lily managed to get out before Remus threw her over his shoulder. “Remus John Lupin! How dare you!”
“Well, it was either me or Padfoot.”
“Good call.”
“Fine, take her! I don’t need a woman to help me win this war.” James set about making a stronghold behind a set of bare bushes. “Wormtail! I need snowballs.”
“Oui, oui!”
“Is no one going to question why Wormtail always turns French when James orders him like that?” Remus gently set Lily down in the snow behind the wall of snow Sirius had already pushed up.
Lily grabbed a handful of snow, stood up, and let it fly. It landed with a satisfactory explosion and knocked James on his arse.
“That’s for the woman comment, you git!” She knelt back down behind their wall. “We need balls men, and lots of them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
9:24 a.m.
“We’re going to have to try and out flank them.” Lily said seriously. She was absolutely determined to win. “How did you win back in first year?”
“You know about that?”
“The whole blood school knew about that!”
“Well then you’ll know that technically, we didn’t win. Plus, there was a lot more magic involved—”
“Black!”
“Erm, I mean, I’ll go left. You and Moony take the right. We’ll win this war.”
Sirius disappeared before the other two on his team could get a word in edgewise.
“Well, we’re as good as dead if we stay here.” Remus turned to Lily, only to see the tail end of her coat as it disappeared around the corner of their wall. “I love this sense of unity we all share.”
Remus followed behind Lily as best he could. However, he lost her around a bush and heard her scream. He decided not to take the same route.
Two long, cold minutes later, and he was in the enemy camp, staring down Peter, who had frozen in surprise.
“You think you have enough balls for this?” Remus said with a smirk, raising his own snowball. It was all going quite swimmingly until something rather odd happened.
A large black dog caught him in a flying tackle.
“Argh, Padfoot!” Remus attempted to shield himself from the massive amount of dog slobber. He’d abandoned his scarf earlier, which unfortunately left his face unprotected. “What is this? You were on their team the whole time? Really? Really??”
Sirius popped back, barking laughter.
This was an all too similar situation to the wrapping incident yesterday. Although this time, there was room to turn the tide.
Sirius’s laughter was cut off as Remus flipped their positions, stuffing snow down his jacket.
“Ah, no, shite that’s cold. I yield, I yield!”
“Oi! What happened to our pact of ‘never say yield’.” James had Lily thrown over his shoulder. She was not overly fond of it, judging by the cursing.
“You try having a werewolf pin you down and see how you fair.”
“No thanks mate, I’ll leave that to you two.” James set Lily down gently into the snow on her back. She landed with a huff and a puff of snow.
“You lot are going to give me grey hair.”
“Join the club.” Remus helped Sirius up. The werewolf went over and joined Lily in the snow. She’d started making a snow angel, and he hadn’t made one in ages.
“You’re my angel.” James said fondly, helping Lily up from the snow. She laughed as she kissed him.
“You’re still in trouble.”
Sirius held out his hand to Remus, who had finished his angel.
“You’re not going to be incredibly cheesy about this, too, are you?” Remus teased, taking his hand.
“Merlin no, I don’t want to be one of those couples.” Sirius remarked off hand.
“Good, because you’re my angel.”
“Oi! You can’t just say that to a bloke and walk away, Moony. Moony? Mooooooonnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”