About Time

Time passed quicker than Mia thought it would. It seemed like they had barely started school again when it was already the end of January, and Lily's birthday.

Lily made Mia promise that she would not tell James about her birthday. He had started becoming more vocal about his affections for the redhead, and she did not want to see what he would have in store if he knew it was Lily's birthday.

Instead of a big celebration, the girls all had a sleepover in their dorms. Mia managed to sneak down to the kitchens to get them all kinds of snacks for them to share throughout the night.

They gossiped about everything and anything they could think of.

“She did not!” Dorcas exclaimed.

“I’m serious,” Emmeline said, “Ally from Hufflepuff told me about it. Apparently, they all got detention for it.”

“But it’s January,” Alice mentioned, “wouldn’t they be freezing?”

“There are warming spells, you know,” Mia reasoned. “Besides, those kids play it with Veritaserum, and we can never underestimate what a person will do to protect their secrets.”

The girls nodded, thinking about the trivial things they keep secret from each other. Mia was a bit quieter than the rest.

"Where did they even find Veritaserum, though?" Dorcas asked, shaking Mia out of her reverie.

"Best guess is they probably stole it from Slughorn's stash. Maybe they managed to buy it, though, but I'm not sure from where, I'd have to do a little digging to find out." Mia explained.

"Why not just make the Veritaserum? Wouldn't it be easier?" Marlene asked Mia.

Lily was actually the one to answer, slowly shaking her head. "It's too advanced for fifth years. It's probably too advanced even for seventh years. You'd have to be an extremely talented potioneer to be able to brew Veritaserum in school."

The girls all nodded and quickly turned to other topics.

The rest of the night went wonderfully, and the girls fell asleep on a pile of pillows on the floor, surrounded by all the food and magazines they had been looking at earlier.

--

Ron's birthday was a more complicated day than it usually is, mostly because it was the first one of her days that fell onto a school day.

It was quite hard for her to ignore her friends, she had to get the timing perfectly right to be the first one to arrive and leave every one of her classes, and walk fast enough that no one would be able to talk to her in the halls.

She knew that Jamie would probably talk to everyone and have them give her space like he probably did last time, but she didn't want to take a chance and have someone think it was ok to talk to her.

It hurt a lot more than she expected to spend Ron's birthday back in the castle. She felt like the memories of her past were haunting her.

She tried her best to get through it. When the school day ended, she knew of the perfect way to cope with everything. In true Ron honour, she passed by the kitchens, got some of his favourite foods and went back to the Room of Requirement, where she spent the rest of the day playing chess against herself and planning pranks he would've been proud of. Maybe one day someone will remember them and tell a young Ron of them.

By the end of the day, before she snuck out to go back to her dorm, she was smiling and laughing, happy to have felt her old friend with her for a while.

--

The full moon that had happened a couple of days earlier had been one of Remus' best ones yet. Mia was glad he wasn't awake the day after so that he didn't notice she was missing but was truly happy to see that he was barely bandaged the next day.

This put him in excellent spirits for his birthday, being that he even allowed Sirius and Jamie to organize something small for them to celebrate.

He was quite pleased to see that his friends had actually listened to him, for once, and organized a small party in their dorm, complete with games, snacks and gifts. Remus had never had anyone put this much effort into his birthday before, and Mia could see how emotional he was getting, so she tried her best to get everyone's attention off him and onto a game of exploding snap.

They played four rounds, with Sirius whining about losing every single one.

"That's not fair!" He exclaimed. "I should've won!"

"That's what you say every time we play this game, Sirius," Mia commented.

"You should see him play chess, sometimes I think he'll flip the board over when he loses badly." James joked, causing the girls to giggle and Sirius to throw a pillow at his head.

"I do not!" Sirius tried. "Anyways, this doesn't matter anymore. Why don't we move onto gifts now?"

Remus became visibly uncomfortable at the mention of gifts, and when he tried to argue everyone waved him off and Lily shoved her gift onto his hands. It was a gigantic package of Honeydukes chocolates that immediately put a smile onto Remus' face.

Most of his gifts ended up being chocolate, which Remus couldn't have been happier about. The only one that wasn't was Mia and Jamie's, which was a special edition of Alice in Wonderland (and also a bar of chocolate).

Remus thanked everyone profusely for the gifts, and everyone gave him a big hug, telling him he deserves all of this and so much more.

At the end of the night, right as the girls were about to leave for their dorms, Remus pulled Mia into a hug and just whispered into her ear, "Thank you".

Mia quickly kissed his cheek and said, "Enjoy your book."

After they broke the hug the girls went back to their dorm, and Remus started eating his gifts.

--

Mia looked up and the sky was green.

That wasn't right, was it? The sky is meant to be blue.

She dropped her head and focused her vision on what was around her. There was so much smoke she was barely able to see a few feet in front of her. She did manage to see an outline of a figure approaching, though, and tried to back away quickly until she recognized the familiar figure.

Something wasn't right about him, though. Jamie was flickering in and out of her vision, his eyes weirdly changing colour every time it happened. He had a look of anguish on his face, and as soon as he set his eyes on her he started yelling, "Don't leave me!"

--
"Happy birthday, Mi!" Jamie yelled as he saw his sister descend the steps to the common room.

Mia ran down the last couple of steps and threw herself into Jamie's arms, "Happy birthday, Jamie!"

The twins loved their birthday. One might think that they would hate to have to share their birthday with someone else, but not Mia and James. The two siblings were best friends, and they couldn't think of anything better than celebrating their day with their favourite person in the world.

It was their first time celebrating without their parents, but they were sure that Ma and Pa would find a way to be part of their special day.

When they broke their hug, Sirius was already there to swoop her into another hug. "Happy birthday, Kitten."

"Thank you, Sirius." Mia said smiling while breaking their hug.

She squeezed his arms for a second before turning to Remus and letting him hug her. "Happy birthday, Mia." He said, smiling down at her.

"Thank you, Remus," she answered, smiling back at him.

Once everyone finished hugging each other they all made their way down to breakfast. Peter tried to give Mia a hug, but she managed to swerve and link her arm with Jamie's instead.

Mia had a plate full of chocolate muffins and bacon, something Sirius seemed to find absolutely hilarious.

The twins were practically vibrating with excitement when the owls started to swoop in with the mail. They kept their eyes out until they found the family owl headed their way. When it landed on their table, Mia immediately gave it a piece of bacon while Jamie undid the two packages from the legs of the owl.

As the owl rested, they rushed to open up the packages that were now in front of them.

Jamie's package actually contained a single picture. He was quite confused at first as he picked it up, but as soon as he landed his eyes on what it captured he whooped with joy, jumping out of his seat.

"Look, Mi!" He started. "Look!"

Mia was chuckling as she grabbed the picture from his hands, and gave him a big smile when she saw what was on it. It was a picture of their father holding a brand new Nimbus 1000, smiling and waving at the camera. When she turned the picture over, she realized that there was something written behind it.

"Jamie, there's something written here for you."

"Dear Jamie,

Happy birthday, my sweet, sweet boy. We hope you have a fantastic day with your friends and can't wait to properly celebrate with you when you get back home. We also hope that you enjoy your gift, it's waiting for you here at home where you can spend the summer practising for tryouts. We love you so much, Jamie, happy birthday.

Love,
Ma and Pa " He read out loud to all of them.

Sirius and James went insane for a second, fawning over the broom, but quickly righted themselves and pushed Mia to open her own gift.

She delicately opened the box and found a beautiful journal inside, inlaid with her initials. She couldn't describe how much she loved her gift. On the first page, there was a letter written to her from her parents, quite similar to the one written for Jamie.

Lily leaned over the table to take a closer look at the journal. "Wow, Mia, it's gorgeous."

"Not as gorgeous as you, Kitten," Sirius said, winking at her.

Marlene nodded her head in agreement, ignoring Sirius' comment. "It really is."

"I love it," she whispered.

Everyone nodded in approval at the gifts and went back to their respective meals. Mia and Jamie took some time to pen letters to their parents thanking them for their gifts and assuring them that they were having a great time and would certainly have a great rest of their birthday.

When they finished, they all went to class.

The rest of the day was fairly normal, with nothing too extreme happening for most of it.

When the school started filling into the Great Hall for dinner, though, there was quite an unexpected surprise waiting for them. At the back of the hall, there was a huge banner with "Happy birthday James and Mia Potter" written on it.

The boys started beaming with pride as soon as they saw that it was still there. Mia could do nothing but laugh at the sight of the poster and her boys. Lily, of course, looked furious for a second at them breaking the rules, but even she couldn't hold it for long and smiled at the rest of them.

They had quite a nice dinner, but Mia's favourite part was when they got back to the dorms and their friends had a big chocolate cake waiting for them to sing happy birthday.

When it was time for gifts Mia tried to wave everyone off, but Jamie immediately started grabbing at them, making everyone laugh.

James mostly got candy and Quidditch stuff, which he could not be happier about. Mia, on the other hand, had got a mixture of candy and books; she was quite happy with most of them, especially the signed copy Sirius gave her of Bathilda Bagshot's newest book, with a new red hair ribbon wrapped around it.

Mia had no nightmares that night, but she still chose to stay over at Jamie's room, thanking every deity she could think of for giving her such a wonderful brother.

--

The rest of the term passed quite quickly after that. Before they knew it, it was exam time and Lily was absolutely freaking out over every single thing anyone did.

Mia and the others couldn't decide which was worse: studying Lily or post-test Lily. The boys were certain it was studying, as that was when they'd always get yelled at, but the girls argued that post-test was definitely worse, they just didn't know because Lily never wanted to truly talk to them after they all took a test.

Luckily for them, test season was quickly over and Lily was normal once again when they received their grades. Mia knew she made the right choice to lie about her results when she saw the smile on Lily's face at being at the top of the class. Jamie knew, but she knew he wouldn't mention anything to anyone.

The boys were probably the ones who were yelling the loudest when Gryffindor was announced both the winner of the house and Quidditch cup, both victories earned after the final Quidditch game of the season, which was surprisingly against Hufflepuff.

Soon enough the entire group was squeezed into a compartment on the Hogwarts Express. Mia rested her head on Jamie's shoulder and let the sounds of her friend's laughter put her to sleep.