May 12th, 1977It took months—and a substantial amount of secretly stashed firewhisky—to get
Peter to relax a little. It had not helped that Death Eater reports filled an entire page of
the Daily Prophet at least once a week. Fortunately, they were getting farther and farther
away from Britain, with the last reported sighting being somewhere outside of Bulgaria.
Instead of focusing on O.W.L.s as they had the year prior, the sixth years had all
signed up for Apparition testing. Bitterly, Remus could not afford the classes, especially
since his father had withdrawn what little money had been deposited in his personal
account at Gringotts and refused to return any of his owls. Ignoring his unspoken pride,
Charlus and Dorea insisted on helping out. They paid for Remus's Apparition classes and
license testing, even secretly adding money to his vault to cover anything he needed at
Hogwarts. Regular reports were given to them from Mia, James, and Sirius as to whether
or not Remus was properly taking advantage of the gifted Galleons.
Mia prided herself on being the first in her year to get her license. She allowed only
a small part of herself to feel guilty, considering she had been Apparating for close to a
decade and had been able to successfully Side-Along at least two other people—it had been
the third extra person during the hunt for Horcruxes that had caused her to be splinched.
Thankfully that scar was not due to show up for another six months or so, but Mia was
already worried about what she was going to say to people who saw it—mostly Remus,
who often had access to her bare skin. One dark scar was something he was currently willing
to ignore at her request, but a splinching scar that ran down her back? She was not certain
that Remus would be willing to remain silent on the matter.
Lily and Remus gained their Apparition licenses right after Mia, followed by Snape
and several other more focused Slytherins like Damocles and Adrian Abbott, as well as a
slew of Ravenclaws. James, Peter, and Sirius struggled, but only because they found it more
interesting to try and distract one another than focus on their own Apparating. After a
good scolding from Mia, all three boys put more effort into not splinching themselves. Mia
was grateful she did not need to treat a splinched Sirius Black—again.
As spring began preparing for summer, Remus, James, and Mia celebrated their
coming of age with butterbeer and a feast from Honeydukes. Firewhisky had long since
been banned at Lily's behest, though Sirius kept a stash of it in the bottom of his trunk,