James took a look around his dormitory, taking it in for the last time. He’d sat through his last Hogwarts dinner last night and in three hours he’d board the Hogwarts Express, also for the last time. It hadn’t hit him. No more Quidditch games, no weekend Hogsmeade trips, no new discovers of secret passages. No more mid-night runs or haunts of the school grounds. This was it and it was all over.
His eyes fell on Sirius Black, his best friend in the world, who was in the midst of a furious conversation. Half his belongings were scattered throughout the room, having accumulated over their seven years sharing this room. James was sure he’d pack the same way he always had: by magically calling his belongings into his trunk five minutes before they had to leave. He was sitting beside Remus Lupin, their resident prefect and werewolf, his own belongings meticulously packed the night before. Peter Pettigrew was still scurrying around the room, glancing beneath dust ruffles and dressers to see if he’d forgotten or lost anything.
Sirius and Remus were fighting about something and he tuned in to their argument about whether or not to preform one last, tremendous prank. Remus was fighting against it, as he had been for the last month, trying to convince Sirius that the teachers deserved a break after what they had put them through in the last seven years. Sirius though, was fighting just as heartedly for it, positive that the Professors would be expecting it.
“Well, why don’t we skip it completely?” Remus asked. “Let them think it’s going to happen and then do nothing We could always do that.”
Sirius snorted. “Don’t be such a prat! If you don’t want to be part of a prank, don’t. But don’t try some weak excuse like that!”
“Fine. I don’t want to,” Remus said, his mouth set in a thin line.
“But“” Sirius started loudly, and they were off again.
James resumed ignoring them once again, leaning back against his pillows, staring up at the ceiling of his four-poster. Funny, he was never going to lie in the bed again, this bed that he’d been sleeping in for seven years. The house-elves were going to have quite a job putting the room to rights once they were gone; there was no doubt that the Marauders had left their mark on the room. The furniture and beds were badly scratched and dented, owed to scuffles as well as practice in learning to become Animagi.
They had discovered, early on but too late, that beside for taking on the form of an animal, they took on respective characteristics. The first time Sirius had changed in their dormitory, he found himself unable to control himself and, well...the carpet still smelled strange, even after nearly three years. Peter had done his share of the damage as well, finding that he had a tendency as a rat to hoard, and he had chewed enough holes in the walls for a whole pack of rats. And once, in early spring, James had transformed in the dormitory as well, only to find that just like a real stag, his horns shed after the winter; he’d rubbed his horns nearly raw against the bedposts before some sense returned to him. What they had been doing changing form in their dormitory when anyone could have walked in was something not a single of them could remember. But“
James sighed. Nearly half their lives had happened within these walls. Friendships made, secrets uncovered, enemies made and loves discovered. Loves. He smiled, recalling an image and a particularly happy hour with Lily to mind. After chasing her for years, he’d been floating ever since she agreed to date him. And somehow, he knew, from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, that he was going to marry her. Couldn’t explain how he knew, he just did. He’d only been slightly bothered that she’d avoided him like the plague for six years. When she had finally consented to have a ‘trial-run’ a few months ago, he had leapt on the chance, doing his best to prove to her that he had changed; that he wasn’t the person she had accused him of being back at the end of fifth year. He must have done a good job convincing her because they’d been thick as thieves ever since and now.... Now everything was perfect.
Well, almost everything. There was always the ever-growing threat of Voldemort outside the castle walls. There was a danger in the world now that hadn’t been known since the defeat of Grindewald and the threat was greater than it had ever been. Very few people could still be trusted; anyone at all could be spelled or cursed to be acting against their own wishes. And there was never any way to know....
He was just eighteen, only a few months more than a year through his majority, and instead of feeling as though he’d been given a fresh start, he felt weighed down by the uncertainty. A war raged on outside the safety of the stone walls of the Hogwarts castle; a war that was deciding the fates of hundreds, if not thousands while he lay on his bed in his dormitory, still innocent. But there would be no more fooling around for him, sides had to be chosen, decisions made. Life was going to get very serious the moment he stepped through the barrier at Platform Nine and Three Quarters and back into real life. It was unfortunate, but there it was. At least he’d never have to see that slime-ball Severus Snape ever again. But it was the only good thing he could think of that was going to come from leaving the place he had adopted as his second home; a place where, in all honesty, he had done more growing up than anywhere else.
He sighed, knowing that the ride on the Hogwarts Express would not signal the beginning of adult-hood and responsibility. Rather, it was a testament to the end of an age of innocence. An innocence that James wasn’t ready to let go of yet.