in the cards | marlene mckinnon -- on hiatus

16. gilded lily

The morning after never failed to meet its horrendous expectations.

It felt as though the halls were longer, the stairs more mobile, the teachers louder. Everything sucked. The only thing that really brought any remarkable difference was the food. The greasy, well prepared, reasonably unhealthy, food. 

On the flip side of things, the day after was the holy grail of gossip. Someone had seen something, and told someone else about it, and within hours the majority of the castle knew everything about anyone, no matter how far removed from their everyday lives. 

From an outside perspective, it might've seemed an overdramatic statement, but when so many adolescents are isolated from the outside world, and then inside a forced proximity, what happened between two people that otherwise had nothing to do with anyone's lives, suddenly seemed as interesting as the letters written by the queen herself.

Coincidentally enough, the day was also comparable to Christmas morning or birthdays, at least in the eyes of Mary and Sirius. After all, they thrived in both dramatic situations and gossipy spirals. They'd also, unlike most, try to socialise as much as possible the day after. Much to everyone else's dismay, as they were only trying to survive the day.

The need to know had gotten so bad for Sirius, that he had enlisted a handful of first and second years to be his spies. Even going as far as bribing them with chocolate frogs, cauldron cakes and much more. 

He only got caught as Remus noticed his stash of various chocolates lessening, ending in a blowout fight wherein the pair didn't speak for three weeks, according to Lily. Although, not for a lack of trying by Sirius who nearly started losing his hair from the stress. That in itself prompted James to finally step in and mend the bridges between the two.

The mood varied deeply from dorm to dorm. Some students were basking in the sunlit glory of a night well-spent with their lover, others were wiping the residual mascara from underneath their eyes from whatever heartache had caused it. 

A third were thrown haphazardly over the toilets, wishing for the day to end or for the sweet welcome of death to save them from the paralysing nausea.

Only a fraction went to Madam Pomphrey, usually the youngest or the least experienced with drinking of the lot, and the rest thought it'd be safer to deal with the repercussions on their own. It was for the best, too. Since too many nauseous students on one random Saturday morning was far too odd to be a coincidence.

And it made it blatantly obvious what had transpired the night before. 

The last quarter were seemingly fine, with no lasting side effects of the binge drinking they'd gotten so used to. It seemed those students were always the liveliest ones. So obviously James Potter was one of them. 

It was unfathomable how in all his time as a party-animal, he'd never really been badly hungover. At least not bad enough to throw silencing spells at anyone who so much as breathed too loud, like Peter was prone to do.

This morning, however, James was in a shit mood. 

He had been pouting in bed, clinging to his pillow for dear life, while Sirius whined about something that felt awfully irrelevant to James at that time. All he could think about was Lily, and how she'd left with his friend. 

And then he thought of Nora. How could she do that to him? But in his rational and all too forgiving mind, he knew the alcohol was at least partly to blame, and that she wouldn't have betrayed him if she had been sober.

But as Remus had so dutifully reminded him well into the early hours of the morning, James had no right to be mad, since Lily wasn't his. He had no say in what she did or who she did it with, no matter how it pained him.