A/N: Updates on Mondays from here until done! Also, I have a book out on Amazon, Magical Girl, $2.99 ebook & $9.99 paperback. FREE DAY AUGUST 21, 2018. If you read make sure to review! Go check it out. It's a young adult, magical realism setup. I flipping love it & I hope you will, too.

Another story, a Death Note but not DNR2 (sorry!), will start on Wednesday & it's the same deal; post until done.

Enjoy The Marauders!

Lily Evans didn't care one whit about The Marauders. She wasn't impressed by their money, good looks or talents. She didn't care about where they summered or what they bought for their rumoured girlfriends of the moment.

Petunia did.

She cared a lot.

She cared so much that she watched each new episode of the teenage drama series like it would be on a final exam, going so far as to take notes that she would later compare with friends, over the phone, as they watched the rerun of the eight o'clock showing at ten in tandem.

Every Wednesday night was the same. Petunia parked her skinny blond self in front of the television to worship the hottest show on prime time.

The Marauders followed the ever dramatic lives of four teenage boys attending a ritzy-ditzy private school. It was full of implied, sometimes more than implied, sexual encounters and spending sprees. Glamour and glitz. The kind life Petunia wished she had. The kind of guys she wished she could date.

Instead she was with Vernon Dursley who was basically the antithesis of The Marauders, excepting the money bit. The brute was loaded.

The show had a little twist too, something to make it stand out from similar pickings. Really, no teen drama was very original. Werewolves and vampires were in vogue, but The Marauders picked up on that and added a dash of magic.

Literal magic. With wands and spells and curses and potions.

When the plot was first announced Lily thought she might like it, but upon airing it became obvious that magic was only a side item. Typical scenarios reigned supreme and she couldn't make herself interested in the overblown theatre.

As it was she knew more than she wanted to; it was impossible to avoid Petunia's chatter in the hours following each new release and the truth was that Lily was an outlier. Women of all ages were invested in the show.

Her own mother had more than a passing interest.

Escapism Lily could understand, but the following The Marauders had was an incredible phenomenon. There were websites dedicated to the clothing and accessories worn, blogs hawking lookalike pieces, and so many fads were spawned out of the show that she'd heard rumours about how much product placement cost.

Thousands. Tens of thousands.

It was insanity!

To top it off everything was so secretive. She could only imagine the contracts of the actors. You'd think they'd be all over supermarket tabloids, but they weren't. Oh no. Instead they were never seen.

Ever.

It wasn't that people didn't know who they were, but it was sort of fishy or at least Lily thought so. The actors and their characters had the same names. A bit dodgy, made her wonder about who the designers were. Probably a family affair or business partners or something like that.

Not that it mattered; the whole thing was a massive hit and no one cared who was behind it.

Considering the hoards of fangirls it was probably a good decision to keep the young stars away from society for a while. They'd shot to renown so rapidly it was no wonder directors and whatnot would rather keep them from prying eyes. Many a rising star burned out after too quick a rise; they didn't handle fame well, spent too much, got lost in their own celebrity.

"Oh Merlin!" Petunia's exclamation was a show standard. Now oft found on mugs and t-shirts. "Snape. What are you doing? Stop. Please. Ooooh, the second hand embarrassment is murdering me!"

"Wish I could murder you," Lily muttered. It was such a nice night, too bad it was ruined by her sister's hysterical shrieking as the antagonist made yet another bad decision.

She sat on the brick patio, looking to the stars. The summer breeze was warm enough to keep her in shorts despite the darkened sky; the last few days were absolutely sweltering.

"Merlin, why?!"

Full, pink lips curled in irritation, red hair whipped around as Lily turned to look through the glass sliding doors at her elder sister. Long, thin legs were clutched to her chest, a pillow held for extra comfort as she died over the goings-on of her favourite television show.

Their mum was there too, giving just as much attention to the fictional characters on screen, though in a markedly more understated away. She was just as obsessed, but she didn't act it out the way Petunia did. Didn't try to force Lily to be interested too.

If anything that only made her more determined to dislike it and maybe that was childish.

Regardless, this fad couldn't end soon enough, yet it showed no signs of slowing down.

Keeping the actors from the public was a good move publicity wise, Lily grudgingly acknowledged. It kept the hype high. When the inevitable slow down started they'd release the stars and fangirls would flip-out all over again.

By then those boys would, hopefully, be educated enough to keep themselves from dying during a drinking binge and wise enough to stay away from crazed fans no matter how physically attractive they might be. Girls were vicious, more so when they were after fame and fortune; there was no doubt in her mind that a load of gold diggers and their mothers were chomping at the bit, waiting for information to leak.

They had to be rich as Midas at this point.

"Oh. My. MERLIN!"

Lily flinched as a particularly loud shriek left Petunia, followed by a series of indecipherable high pitched enunciations.

"Mum, Mum, we must go. We have to. WE HAVE TO!"

That was bad news for Lily because where her mother and Petunia went she would be forced to follow. It was never simply a day for two, it was forever three. Some strange way of bonding they thought. Kidnapping the youngest for forced participation in various activities she didn't want to be part of.

"Lily!"

She was tempted to ignore the call, but there was no avoiding it and she returned indoors with a sigh of resignation.

Petunia was flying from the living room, upstairs, likely to her closet. That was always her thinking spot, where all crucial decisions were made. Those choices were then cemented as make-up was applied at the vanity.

"This is really important to your sister, alright? So don't put up a fight because we're going."

She'd not said where or what or why yet. That meant it wasn't something she'd want to do.

"There's an open casting call-"

Tomorrow would be a long day.

―

Slouching in her seat, oversized sunglasses hiding green eyes, Lily prepared for horror. The hour was too early, the streets too crowded, the sounds too loud. Everything was too much.

Petunia was too much.

Her mum was too much.

That damned show was much too much.

But it didn't matter because she was here, pulled out of the back-seat and into the humid warmth, sure to gain a few freckles because as much as she'd loved the cloudless sky days before, she hated it now. Why couldn't there be some relief from the sun? Fair skinned as she was, she burned rather than tanned and yet it was too hot to keep her hair down in protection of her neck. She felt forced to pull it to the top of her head in a messy knot; the sight made Petunia's blues roll.

"How can you possibly dress like that now? What in the world are you thinking?!"

"That I don't want to be here."

"Merlin..."

There was honestly nothing wrong with the clothes she wore and Petunia wouldn't have been satisfied no matter how she dressed. White shorts, trainers, and green striped tank top were fine day wear; it required her to be slathered in sunscreen, but she'd be sweating bullets otherwise.

She took a vicious swig from her water bottle, aggravation already nearing its peak and it wasn't even ten yet.

Mummy dearest bowed out upon seeing the line, yet didn't feel right about sending Petty alone. So she was at the car, or a pub, or somewhere not hot as Hades while Lily was made to accompany the willowy blond as she waited for her turn to be sent packing.

Lily was positive, absolutely positive, that this whole thing was a marketing scheme. There was no intent to choose some random fan off the street and make her a star. This was a publicity stunt, plain and simple.

Of course it was working. There had to be hundreds of girls in this line, she'd even go so far as to guess near a thousand. It was insane to think so many were dumb enough to fall for this ploy.

There was some free gear involved too, workers moving down the line passing out officially licensed merchandise that Lily didn't want anything to do with, yet Petunia was gleefully accepting two of everything on her behalf. Cheap shopping bags, mass produced hats. Along with them came papers for filling out and in her haste Petunia did one for each of them, too excited to care that Lily protested mightily, and then shoved those same forms at the red-head because her arms were laden with loot.

She scoffed as Petunia fawned over the items with a fellow devotee who stood by them, also in line to be disappointed.

"Damn, wish I'd made my sister come with! She wanted to, sick, should have pumped her full of meds and brought her anyway."

"This one's out of her mind, doesn't even want to be here!"

She ignored the stares of disbelief, scratched at her nose, and yawned widely. She didn't even have her phone, it lay forgotten on her bedside table because someone was so busy flipping-out, and urging a quick pace, that there was no time to think about anything beyond pulling on clothing.

"Whole day wasted," she grumbled as they inched forward.

One grueling step at a time.

One useless step at a time.

One awful step at a time.

"Red hair with sunnies, step out of line please!"