I solemnly swear that I am up to no good

"Eh it’s fine - fine? Tastes bittery. Bitterier?"

"What is this stuff? It doesn’t taste vaguely turnip-y."

"Probably more wine than turnip." James laughed at her expression, almost spilling his drink as he pointed at hers. "Not good then?"

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she scrutinized him. James Potter, sixth year Gryffindor Chaser and Captain, one fourth of the infamous pack of mischief-makers, and forever mooning after Lily Evans. She hadn’t really said much about him beyond his antics with the Marauders, so she figured he’d be one of the safer people to talk to. Safer than Alecto Carrow, at any rate. Rita caught a glimpse of the older Slytherin chatting with some of her housemates, and was glad to be on the other side of the room.

"In fact, I’m a bit surprised you’re not drinking yet, to be perfectly honest. Has the great James Potter finally realized that alcohol makes a person do regrettable things?"

"Also, just for the record, I wouldn't spike a drink with something that'd get you buzzed. Not in the normal sense anyway." Get someone so drunk they fall down some stairs? Sounded okay by him. Leave them telling their most embarrassing secrets? Sure. Give them two ears and a tail? Sounds promising. But the thought of someone spiking people's drinks to make them susceptible to real harm? It made his skin crawl.

Everyone knew to take care what you said to Rita Skeeter. But there were some days James just didn't care. He wasn't that bothered by most people's opinions. If people didn't know that Rita's writing was somewhat on the exaggerated side, then they weren't worth bothering about. "I don't know what these 'regrettable things' are, Skeeter. I don't regret things. Besides, I have been drinking. I'm just building it up. Like a snowball. What about you? Are you planning on doing regrettable things?"

She couldn’t help but laugh as she almost tripped James up - deliberately or not, she would never tell - and gripped onto his shirt more to steady both of them. The choice of song that was playing in their ears wasn’t to Marlene’s particular style yet she made it work for her as she bounced on her feet in time to it, her blonde hair swaying in the air, occasionally whipping James as she twirled - again, deliberate or not, Marlene would never reveal. After all, she loved to annoy James.

She didn’t exactly know how it happened. Her hands had ended up in James’ hair and her lips were merging with his and the fact that he kissed back only urged her on more and in her sober states he would have probably been turned off by the entire situation, but even she couldn’t deny he was good looking, however her friendship with Lily had always stopped her from pointing that out… unless purposely winding up both parties involved - which, granted, she did almost every single day for her and their other friends’ amusement.

Hearing his question, Marlene broke away from his lips and hid her face against his chest, a fit of giggles escaping from her throat. “I think so! I mean, I was this morning but who knows, someone could have spiked my drink and now I’m someone else! Am I really me and are you really you?” She picked her head up and squinted her eyes at the male, humour etched into every feature, “really, James, who are we really because I wanna know!” After a moment’s pause, she wrinkled her nose and held up a finger, “actually, hold that thought. I just want to dance, thinking stuff can come later!”

Marlene turned out be a nice kisser, though that wasn't much of a surprise. If he'd ever thought about it, he would've guessed that she was; the thing was, that he hadn't ever thought about it. Marlene was his best friend and a part of his brain protested at how strange it was. The rest of him just went with the flow.

"Stop talking philosophical, Ma-a-arlene." He'd never noticed how much fun it was to elongate the vowels in Marlene's names. His mind dwelled on that for a while, before he shook himself back to the present. He tried to copy Marlene's dancing, emphasising his hip shaking with gusto. For anyone else, it might have been embarrassing, but James didn't care. Even when he would be told the next day how absolutely, downright horrific his dancing was, he'd just shrug and give a second demonstration. Somehow, he managed to pull it off. They say when you dance with confidence and without inhibition, then you can look good. (There were always exceptions.)

"You can't talk philo-philosophical with me. That's my thing. My thing. You can't James Potter me! That's James Pottering James Potter! No. No." He shook his head, reaching towards her and grabbing her hands. "But for the record- record! Geddit? Music record! But yea-a-ah, for the record, you are Marlene." He lifted one arm above her head for her to spin round.  

Because I wanted to see something that really got into the nitty gritty details of a character.

I tried to organize it into sections and equalize the amount of writing you’d be doing each day, but obviously that’s going to vary from character to character. Good luck, and may the force be with you.

He would never be as important as he thought, unless he switched sides and earned the favor of the Dark Lord himself - and that was very unlikely to happen. He had wonderfully rich followers already, and many purebloods from families more important than the Potters. He had those who were absolutely loyal in every piece of them. He had those who were charming enough to get things with a bit more of subtlety, as he had the ones ruthless enough to use violence and force to achieve his goals. More followers would be welcome, surely, but in a favorite position, or in the inner circle? Very unlikely. Potter had nothing someone else, more worthy, could not give the Dark Lord. He could be a good fighter for their cause, but not more.

And the others may accept him, because he was a rich pureblood, but there wouldn’t be many doing so. The ones who were not good enough to win the favor of those already there who were also rich purebloods from old families. But in the end,  they wouldn’t be enough to make him someone prestigious - and again, he would be just a warrior, ant nothing else.

Alecto laughed at his reaction. “So,” she started, ironically. “that only makes you look like a bigger fool. Someone so ridiculous that you know she doesn’t like you, and still you insist - even when she’d give her favor to any other boy but you, even to that Snape kid.” They weren’t friends anymore, she knew, but they were bestfriends before, and Potter hated Snape. Alecto continued, smiling wryly. “That must hurt, huh? Knowing she dislikes you that strongly, when you like her so much? It must be really frustrating, to be chasing the mudblood all those years and not being capable of even being friends with her, still.”

But he reconsidered continuing the argument. "Even if that is the case, it just shows that I've been doing all the right things then. If there is someone I haven't offended yet though, do point them out. I really do love your labels though. I'll just paste it on my forehead, so no one forgets, yeah? Bloodtraitor. Warning. Danger." He traced a finger across his forehead slowly. "And you can have 'Nasty, stuck up brat' on yours. Then everyone's happy."

That thought occurred to him every time he got his hopes up about Lily. He was a fool. That was when he went through phases: sometimes he couldn't get her out of his mind and sometimes he just tried to live his life and avoid her. But it was true. He always came back to her in the end. "I don't know what you're talking about. Do I look hurt? Really broken?" James snarled. This was stupid. But she was right. But it was stupid. "How do you know if she dislikes me so much? I didn't realise you were a bloody mind reader. Or that you were so interested in my fascinating life."

"I’m not sure about that, Potter… Turnip wine sounds pretty good, actually. Everything all right there?"

"You really want to join a circus?" Sirius grinned wryly, pillowing his head on the armrest and letting one arm dangle down from the couch. "Granted, we’d be the stars of any muggle circus. We could pull the best disappearing-and-putting-animals-in-our-places act ever. But to be honest, if I had the choice, I’d rather go for the band. Be the next Beatles and all."

"Seriously, let's do it. Next summer. That's our last summer holiday. Just for a week or something. Nothing that'll cause headlines." Not that they hadn't caused headline kind of trouble before. But with his father in the Ministry, he couldn't cause the kind of trouble that got wizard kind in trouble. "We just do a disappearing trick with the cloak. They do disappearing tricks right? Nobody would think that's weird. And Transfiguration! But under a cloak - a normal cloak. I'm doing it whether you will or not. It's happening. We can do the band thing too! We can do everything." That was James all over. He wanted to try everything. If he could, and he was going to do his best to do it, he'd cram every exciting idea and activity into his own short lifetime.

The party was in full swing by the time Marlene had decided to grace it with her presence. It wasn’t be choice, though. The Gryffindor beater was stuck in the library slaving over some class work that she had recently missed. However, far be it for Marlene McKinnon to not show up without an entrance. She pushed the doors open with a flourish and smirked. She waved at a friend before making a beeline to her choice destination: the booze.

It didn’t take long for the blonde to join the mass of dancing bodies and it took even less time to find someone to dance with. Her body moved in time with the beat as she drank her fill of firewhiskey. It would be a cold day in hell before Marlene allowed the fact that she had more homework waiting for her to dampen her party spirit.

After almost an hour of non-stop dancing, drinking and enjoying herself, Marlene tugged her dance partner closer. She then connected their lips with a harsh passion egged on by the alcohol and music.

He could be a good dancer. He'd been taught how to dance properly when he was younger - his mum seemed to think it was important - but right now, he was just doing whatever he felt like. At least he danced to the beat (or that's what it felt like, but who knew what he looked like to the outside viewer).

James did remember finding himself dancing opposite Marlene. Dancing with Marlene was easy - they'd been friends for longer than he remembered, albeit bickering friends.

James didn't remember how it happened, but suddenly he was kissing Marlene; he kissed her back like he'd done it before, his hands moving to her waist. It took him a few seconds for a small part of his brain to think What am I doing? and pull back. "Ma-arlene?" His head tilted slightly to the side in confusion. "You are Marlene, ri-i-ight?"

This was the night Rita had been looking forward to since July. It certainly wasn’t the only part of the year, but it was one of the best. The Welcome party was always a night full of interesting happenings. She’d had this planned for a while. Her Transfiguration essay for Monday was already completed, so she would have the entire weekend to focus on her gossip magazine. This year she would not get drunk. Or, at least, she would not get very drunk. It was still a party, and she wasn’t a prude. 

Rita stationed herself in a little nook behind a statue across from the entrance to the party, so she could watch unobserved for a while before actually going in. There was Alecto Carrow looking a bit more angry than usual, Bellatrix Black laughing her head off about who knows what, Lily Evans looking more relieved than anything else, and a cheerful little crowd of Hufflepuffs. The usual crowd, then. Rita peered down the hall, and crept out of her hiding place, satisfied no one was coming.

She snuck into the back of the party, keeping around the near edge of the room. There was already dancing going on in the center of the room, and over by the drinks it looked like Lockhart had managed to trap Evans in conversation. Poor girl. Rita skirted the edge of their conversation, not wanting to draw the blonde’s attention. She did not have time for a three-hour discourse about hair products and fame.

He'd just been about wander over to Evans to see if she'd like to dance - he predicted the answer as no - just as a friend, in a friendly way, with completely friendly intentions. However, Lockhart got there first. Poor Evans. He wondered if he should go over a save her, but a sudden horrible thought appeared - what if she refused to come with him because she'd prefer to listen to Lockhart? That would hurt more than he cared to admit.

Instead, he darted through the groups of people talking towards the drinks tables. Few people were dancing yet; people usually needed to get more drunk for that.