september
The second day of the school year Marlene was already very happy about having made friends with Mary, because the two of them were paired up by their Potions teacher. Both of them turned out to be decent at this subject, and since they were slowly starting to get along it was a pretty fun class. Severus Snape apparently was some kind of pro at making potions, so was Lily, but her talent wasn’t as noticeable since she was paired with Remus who was terrible. Later, when he was chatting with Marlene he told her he was very grateful for Lily’s help because without her he would already be failing Potions.
Lily and Remus seemed to get along fantastically, so the redhead joined James, Remus and Marlene during their study session that night. James seemed to like Lily a lot, but Marlene didn’t think that was completely mutual, since Lily looked very annoyed by him.
Marlene had hoped Dorcas would’ve come along, but she had gotten really close with Frank, Alice and their ravenclaw friend Pandora Lovegood, so she’d gone to the library to study with them.
Sirius had received a howler from his mother that morning. She was furious about him being sorted into Gryffindor, like he had predicted. Guess he wasn’t being that dramatic after all. Naturally he was quite sad for a big part of the day. By the night, he seemed to have snapped out of it though, because while Marlene and her friends were trying to study, he was chasing Peter through their bedroom because he’d stolen some of his sweets. Everyone was laughing and cheering for either Peter or Sirius, until Pettigrew took a bite of the chocolate frog he’d stolen. Sirius then looked grossed out by having to eat something after someone else had taken a bite and let Peter have the frog.
The next day it was saturday, so there were no classes. Marlene was happy she could finally sleep in without Mary commenting on it. The tan girl even slept longer than she did! After breakfast, Frank gave Marlene and Dorcas a tour of the school. It was so big Marlene’s feet hurt by the time Frank had showed them every cool place he knew.
That night, Marlene asked Remus if he and James wanted to hang out again, but he said he was very tired and wanted to sleep. The next day he looked even more exhausted, so apparently that early night didn’t really help. On monday, he wasn’t in class. Lily looked pretty stressed, because their first class of the day was potions, so it meant her partner was missing. It wasn’t that big of a problem though, now she could show the teacher how good she was at potions.
At lunch, Marlene asked James if he knew where his roommate was. He said Remus was ill and in the hospital wing. Together with Lily they went to visit him, but madam Pomfrey, the nurse, didn’t allow any visitors near him. On tuesday afternoon, Remus sat in class again, looking exhausted. The next day he already looked way better, which was great because they had astronomy at midnight, so they had to stay up pretty late. They’d also had their first flying lesson that day. Some of them were amazing at flying, some… weren’t (Peter fell off his broom).
For a few days, not much was happening other than classes and hanging out. Then Marlene found out it was Frank’s birthday on the fourteenth, and then Mary’s on the sixteenth. She asked her brother Michael, who was old enough to go to Hogsmeade, to buy her some sweets for the both of them, which he did.
Both Frank and Mary held a little birthday party in the common room. Most of Frank’s friends were in their second year, which was a bit awkward for Marlene since she didn’t really know anyone. Because of that and because she still had classes the next day, she left pretty early. Mary’s party wasn’t that special, just the Gryffindor first-years, some music and some leftover cake from the dinner table. The boys kept whispering about something. Naturally, Marlene was curious what they were talking about, but the only words she heard were ‘prank’, ‘Snape’ and ‘toad’. She debated telling Lily the boys might prank Snape, but she decided she was just going to let it play out.
A few days later, Snape came into the great hall loudly yelling “Who switched my toad with a chocolate frog?” A lot of people, including Marlene, were laughing. Next to her, the four boys were grinning and high-fiving each other under the table. That night, Marlene was in the boys room to study with James, when she said: “I know you guys stole Snape’s toad.” Peter went bright red, which made Sirius kick him from under the table they were sitting at. “Oh come on McKinnon,” James said, “we would never do something like that” “How would we even go into the Slytherin room? You’d need to be invisible to do that,” Sirius said. Marlene was very confused when all the boys began to laugh loudly at that. What was so funny about having to be invisible?
Eventually, Lily joined them in the boys dorm. At some point, they heard a weird noise coming from under James’ bed. Lily was about to take a look at where the noise came from, when James said: “Don’t look there!” “And why not Potter?” Lily asked. “It’s a… birthday present… for you!” Sirius answered. “Well thank you boys, but my birthday isn't till february. So what’s under here… Snape’s toad?!” Marlene bursted out laughing, while Peter was nervously giggling. “I’m going to bring it back to him right now!” Lily said angrily, already walking away. James and Sirius were both speechless, but Remus went after her. A few minutes later he returned. “She is going to give the toad back, but she won’t tell it was us.” Both Potter and Black looked very relieved at that.
Luckily Lily stuck to her words and Snape didn’t seem to know the boys were the ones who had stolen his pet, although he did shoot them a few angry looks. During breakfast the next day Marlene heard Sirius whisper: “We shouldn’t have wasted a delicious chocolate frog on him.” The other boys chuckled at that, as did Marlene although nobody seemed to hear that.