#and the maraduers quickly discovered it during a nighttime experiment

[padfootastic]

No, tell us about the dorm parties and Lily finding out about them, pretty please

ooooh a tag question! love these too hehe

okay so. a lil bit of backstory: i had a semi-wild teen life, ykno? like. not as crazy as ~american high school movies but in the context of the country i grew up in? pretty unreal. there were parties and alcohol and weed and a lot of hooking up. so much petty drama. so much irreverence.

point is: i dont like it when teens are portrayed as some pure, untouched, prudish creatures who've never heard of fun or drugs or sex. it just doesnt fit with what i know.

and i fully believe that hogwarts--a boarding school where kids have MAGIC (which really just means unending possibilites)--was a place where the students went wilddd. one of the ways? dorm parties. u have these private spaces for just you and like. 5 others. u can do a shit ton with ur wand. why wouldnt u use it for parties ykno?

so yeah, i think the common room had larger parties after like. quidditch wins and end of exams, but bc its more people and more younger kids, u had to be more careful. dorm parties tho? smaller, more intimate, and ur with the people u know/trust so crazier shit will happen.

the marauders were invited to a lot of them in the girls dorms (and vice versa) and ykno. they went to a lot. bc teen boys and girls. it was all very scandalous--booze and short skirts and shirts unbuttoned off their shoulders and hazy smoke filling the room and lipstick marks smeared over chins and necks and the like--and incredibly fun. just kids being kids, yeah?

lily, though. i've long been playing w the idea that her friendship w snape (and chastisement of james--and sirius, to a lesser extent) came w a substantial social cost. her defending someone who was so shady didnt win her any points and i hc as her a person who hid her insecurity w self righteousness (on top of just. being a bit of an abrasive person) which didn't win her additional favors. so even her dormmates maintained a certain distance and the dorm parties didn't often include her. she only found out accidentally when she went up to the room it was happening in to get a book back and saw everyone buzzed out and dancing and more relaxed (intimate) than she'd ever seen.

it was genuinely a huge shock when she saw the boys sprawled across the room in varying stages of undress (james had a girl and a guy on a thigh each, arms wrapped around both waists; sirius was hanging upside down w a joint dangling from his lips and its a wonder he didnt choke himself to death) and she squeaked out of the room in a moment of severe cultural shock.

it was only later that she worked herself into moral outrage and just. hurt-filled anger type stuff, ykno? her roommates sort of had to give her a reality check in that moment. the marauders only blinked at her in bemusement, amused at her high-handed attempts to manage them.