Author's Note: A friend of mine tweeted about the Thong Song yesterday, and now it's bloody well stuck in my head.

Five Small Steps To Ruin Your Reputation

Step Three

Consume Copious Amounts Of Alcohol, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

The world was a beautiful place, and sufficed with colour in a way that it hardly ever was, or perhaps it always had been? How had she never noticed before, she wondered? Had she been blinded by authority, by her thirst for power? Had she been thirsty for power? She didn't know. She had always just tried to uphold the rules, be a good student, be a good person. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps that was why she had never really seen before.

The common room was a fairyland. It was so beautiful, and so red, so infused with passion, and anger, and blood, and strawberries, because those were the things that red were for, and there was a lot of red in the common room. In fact, the common room was almost entirely red. Red for Gryffindor! She was in Gryffindor! And her hair was red! It all made sense! How wonderful! How noble, how brave she must have been! How could she ever have believed that her surrounding students were irritating or ridiculous? Why had she worried so much? They were heroes, such gorgeous, fabulous people. Everyone was wonderfully interesting and everyone was terribly nice. Hilarious things kept happening all around her and she couldn't keep up. She felt dizzy. She needed to sit down. Or did she need to dance? Maybe she needed to dance. She didn't know.

She was vaguely away of the fact that she felt very, very sad about something, but for the life of her, Lily couldn't remember what it was, and laughed loudly at her own stupidity as the thought occurred to her. She had no reason to feel happy. Life was great. She was great. Hogwarts was great. McGonagall great. Beatrice great. Sandwich great. House elf great.

Firewhiskey was especially great.

"Who did you get this from?" Beatrice was saying, and her voice sounded confused, having just pulled the empty bottle – Lily's second of the evening – from her friend's vice-like grip. "Did you confiscate it from someone?"

"Who knows?" Lily sang, and beamed at her friend. She felt wonderful and beautiful and she loved all of the world. Beatrice was clinging to her arm most determinedly, but Lily was attempting to escape her and join a bunch of other people who were dancing in the middle of the room. She may have been a little wobbly on her feet, but she was just fooling Beatrice. She was sure that she could maintain miraculous balance if only her friend would let her go. "I am Lily Evans, and no man can restrain me!"

Beatrice, however, was unmoved by this brilliant and impassioned plea.

"Was it completely full when you found it? Did anyone else have any?" she continued to shoot questions at her, and gave Lily's arm a little shake. Lily simply beamed at her. What did it matter about bottles and people when Beatrice was so exceedingly beautiful? This was the real important news. Lily needed to tell her immediately.

"You're so pretty, Beatrice," she sighed, and stroked her friend's face, after which she hiccuped in quite a loud and obnoxious manner. "I really love you."

"You're completely smashed, darling."

"But you look like a birthday candle," Lily tittered, amused by her friend's needless concern. She tugged on Beatrice's sleeve and pointed in the direction of the fireplace, where some of the assembled Gryffindor boys were showing off in front of everyone. "Sirius Black," she whispered conspiratorially in Beatrice's ear. "Is so funny, Beatrice. So funny. Look at him hitting that boy with an umbrella! It's amazing!"

Had Lily been in her regular, and infinitely more preferable, frame of mind, she would have borne down upon the violent-when-drunk Sirius Black with unmitigated fury and given him such a boot up the arse for assaulting Bertram Aubrey with that umbrella that he wouldn't have been able to sit down for a week without screaming in agony, followed by more detentions than he could have poked a shitty stick at. In her drunken frame of mind, however, Lily was of the opinion that Sirius Black was the most wonderful creature to have ever graced the entire planet, and she was quite sure that she would forever be in awe of his splendour.

"I wish you were one of those quiet, depressed drunk people, like Karl," Beatrice muttered under her breath, as she tried to keep Lily afloat, a difficult task, as Lily insisted upon flailing madly around like a fish on dry land. "They're so much easier to deal with than cackling lunatics."

If Beatrice had never before felt remorse for the number of times that she had run away from Lily in order to snog her boyfriend at parties such as these, now would have been the time for her to experience the harsh sting of being truly sorry for one's actions. Lily had made very short work out of consuming the full contents of the large whiskey bottle she had swiped from Sirius, and she had been staggeringly hammered before finishing even half of it. Not being used to drunkenness to begin with and having gone terribly overboard right away, finishing the first bottle and hastily procuring a second from Cheryl Midgen, who was passed out by the fire, the normally sensible redhead was now somewhat of a liability.

"It doesn't ever rain in common rooms, though," she continued to babble, watching with glee as Sirius ploughed his way through a small crowd of fifth years, all of whom were howling in pain. "We're always losing umbrellas in my house at home in my house, where I live, at home. I wonder where he bought it from."

"He pulled it out of his arse," said Beatrice shortly. "Darling, did something happen to you while I was gone?"

Glancing sideways at Beatrice, Lily could see that she was looking at her with great concern. It was funny. Giggled. Beatrice was silly.

"You're silly," Lily informed her. "Of course something happened. Things happens all the time!"

"You know what I mean, Lily!" Beatrice gave her arm another shake. "Do you think your pumpkin juice might have been spiked and that's why you got a little squiffy, or did somebody upset you, or…"

"I'm fine!" Lily shouted, accidentally spitting in Beatrice's eye. She felt truly wonderful, although still confused as to why she had been so upset earlier, and there was some murky sadness lurking in her tummy that she was steadfastly ignoring, but otherwise the world was shining and glittery and Beatrice was just being a fool. "I'm just having some fun, Beatrice. Merlin, stop trying to judge my life all the time."

"Yes, because this is normally what constitutes fun for you," said Beatrice.

"You sound very sarcastic right now," said Lily, frowning. "And my hands are going to float away."

"I would genuinely be delighted to see you indulge in some harmless alcoholism," said Beatrice wearily, dropping the empty bottle onto a nearby armchair. "But I know you well enough by now to know that Lily Evans doesn't do harmless alcoholism, so unless you can't remember what happened while I was with Karl…"

"Yeah, Karl!" Lily squeaked, Beatrice's boyfriend's name being the only word that Lily had paid any attention to. "I like Karl, Beatrice. Are you going to marry him, Beatrice? I think it'd be well funny if you married Karl, you should do it in the common room so everyone can go. Actually you should do it right now, where is Karl? Can we get him?"

"Lily!" said Beatrice sharply, giving her friend's arm another, harsher shake. "Did someone put something in your pumpkin juice or did you fall over and crack your head open?"

"I only fell a few times," said Lily sulkily, pulling her arm from Beatrice's grip and pouting like a baby. "I didn't hurt anything, look for bruises! I can't see any at – oh."

On the other side of the common room, far away from where Beatrice and Lily were standing, the portrait hole had just swung open and two people had entered the room. Having caught sight of them do so, Lily remembered why she had been so very sad an hour ago, because the feeling suddenly returned to her with shocking force. The knife was twisting in her stomach again.

"Oh," she said again, pressing a hand to her heart – her chest hurt. No, it didn't hurt, but there was an ache, somewhere, everywhere, a really dull ache, and it was worse than a bad pain. Beatrice might as well have been invisible. "He left with her earlier. I forgot. Oh. Oh God."

Beatrice had not been around when Lily spied James and Heather leaving the common room together, presumably in order to go somewhere more private and snog until their lips were chapped and their breath robbed from their bodies – which incidentally, had been just the prompt Lily needed to spur her to drink more than just the one mouthful of whiskey she had permitted herself to swallow. Over an hour ago, the pain she had felt upon seeing them sneak out of the common room had been considerable, but after far too much booze on an empty stomach, and in a very small amount of time, suddenly Lily felt just about ready to jump in the path of Voldemort himself and beg for immediate death.

"James and… Heather Jordan?" said Beatrice softly, having turned on her heel in order to investigate what had just entered the common room and sapped all the light from her friend like a leech. She promptly spun back around, her eyes full of sympathy. Being Lily's best friend Beatrice did, of course, know just what Lily's feelings for James Potter amounted to, in spite of Lily's repeated denials of the fact. "Lily, honey, let's just go up to bed, yeah?"

Lily wasn't listening; she frozen to the spot, watching Potter and his girlfriend draw nearer and nearer to where she stood, laughing at some shared secret as if neither of them had ever had a care in the world, which they never had, of course. Only Lily had a care in the world at that precise moment in time, and maybe Marlene did too. Poor, lonely Marlene, Lily would never roll her eyes at her again, but Marlene didn't count as much as she did because Davey Gudgeon was a stupid idiot boy who deserved to be blasted into tiny pieces and James Potter was… well, James Potter was wonderful.

"Let's go to bed, come on," said Beatrice, tugging gently on Lily's arm, but she was easily shrugged off, as James and Heather drew ever closer. "You don't want him to see you like this, darling, just come upstairs with me and we can -"

"Evans!"

It was no use. It was too late. Everything was done for. As soon as James caught sight of Lily and Beatrice, he made a beeline for them both, as he had so often been known to do, his hand jumping immediately to his hair, a move that Lily had previously thought to be an indication that he might still have a crush on her, but which she now knew was indicative of absolutely nothing at all. He looked happier than he had any right to look; there was a cheeky grin spread wide across his face as he took his new piece of eye candy by the sleeve and dragged her over to where Lily and Beatrice were standing.

"Potter," said Beatrice, very quietly. "This isn't really the right time…"

"I didn't know you were going to be around this evening!" he chirped, addressing Lily as if there was nobody else in the room but her, which was no different to his usual manner of speaking to her. He looked to be a little bit tipsy, and clearly delighted with himself, but nowhere near Lily's pitifully drunken state. "Where've you been hiding on me all night?"

Lily's lower lip started to tremble and her eyes were feeling suspiciously wet, Beatrice's hand found hers and she began to find herself being pulled gently in the direction of the staircases. Her miserable countenance had not gone unnoticed by James, however, whose happy expression was replaced by one of deep concern – he sprung immediately forward and grabbed Lily's other hand.

"Lily, what's wrong?" he asked her worriedly, his eyes roving over her face. "Did somebody upset you? Was it Snape again? Did he say something? Where is he? I'll kick him for you!"

"Relax, Potter," said Beatrice firmly. "She's fine, just leave her alone."

She pulled her towards the staircases, but James, who had her other hand, pulled her back towards him, and Lily would have fallen over had she not been held up by two people who were yanking her in opposite directions.

"I didn't ask you, Booth," James retorted, shooting Beatrice a glare. "I was asking Lily."

"Well Lily doesn't want to talk to you right now," Beatrice replied, pulling her away again. "So if you could just -"

"I'll judge for myself if Lily wants to talk to me," he snapped, pulling her back. They were going to break her arms, any minute. "Why don't we ask-"

"WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?" Lily screamed, but Merlin only knew why she'd done it. Beatrice and James stopped pulling her this way and that, Beatrice let go of her hand, and she stumbled, unsteady on her feet. She was caught, however, by James, who grabbed hold of her other arm and held her upright. She looked up, and he was gazing down at her in half-drunken bewilderment. He was so lovely, up close. His eyes were pretty. His hair was pretty. His nose was pretty. Lily wanted to melt into his arms, but she couldn't, because he was Heather Jordan's boyfriend now.

"Sorry?" he gasped, as if he had been punched in the throat and was having difficulty speaking. This was all that Lily needed. James Potter had deliberately ruined her life, and now she was going to cut him down. Cut him down like a tree.

"You're going out with, with her," she accused, looking at Heather Jordan, who was standing next to James with her eyebrows raised and a slight smirk on her face, as if all of this was really amusing. "Of all people! You and, you and Heather, and she's not even ginger." For some reason, this ranked in her soul far more than it should have. She felt her eyes well up with tears. "That's not fair, James. I thought you liked me!"

"Lily, seriously," said Beatrice, reaching for Lily again. James, however, took two steps back and brought Lily with him.

"I don't, I mean... I'm not, I don't understand." James seemed as if he had been struck stupid. "Evans, what are you talking about?"

"You told me you wouldn't sneak out and get any more stuff for parties, but you did," she wailed dolefully, in spite of the fact that she had absolutely no evidence to support this harsh accusation. The tears in her eyes began to slide unashamedly down her cheeks. "And you ignored me all night and went off and snogged with some boobs with eyelashes instead, but I thought you liked me, and somebody got sick all over me, James."

"Urgh," said Beatrice and Heather in unison, looking at Lily's vomit-splattered jumper in disgust.

"I didn't ignore you!" James protested, but Lily had pulled out of his grip and wobbled backwards.

"Yes you did!" Lily insisted, grabbing hold of Beatrice's arm to steady herself and inadvertently digging her fingernails into her skin. She heard Beatrice hiss in pain. That was Potter's fault, too. "You didn't look at me once!"

"I'd never!" James cried, looking deeply insulted. "I didn't see you anywhere! I didn't think you'd bother coming! Me and, I mean, Heather and I, were just -"

"You're horrible, James Potter!" Lily cried, suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that she had been badly wronged, dizzy and overwhelmed, and with tears that were now flowing freely down her face. Everyone was looking at her. People were pointing and whispering. Heather Jordan was giggling at her and making no attempts to hide it. Somewhere in her mind, the awareness that she had just embarrassed herself beyond any possible means of redemption was making itself known, and she wanted very much to escape to her bedroom and hide under her covers forever, and ever, so that James would have no way of finding her again. "You're horrible, horrible, horrible! I don't fancy you anymore and I never want to see you again for the rest of my life!"

Head spinning, feeling ill, and consumed by a burning feeling of shame, Lily turned on her heel and ran off to the girls' staircases with surprisingly impressive balance, considering her inability to stand upright unaided, followed closely by Beatrice, and completely ignoring James Potter's loud and anxious pleas for her to come back down and talk to him.