Some more thoughts about Lily and the Marauders

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 33850

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Alexander <lav at t...> wrote:

> say that it's more likely for Lily to be accepted within
> their gang as fifth member.

That is sort of, but not exactly, the way I imagine the relationship 
between Lily and Sirius, Remus, Peter. She is not *exactly* the fifth 
member of the gang because she doesn't transform into an animal, so I 
imagine that there are a LOT of nighttime escapades that she doesn't 
join, not just at Full Moon. 

I like to think that MWPP had already named their group the Marauders 
before Lily got involved, but she became so helpful with their plots 
and so trusted with all their secrets that they bought her a 
(too-tight) t-shirt with the slogan MARAUDER MASCOT. (I imagine the 
future Mrs. Lestrange having a similar role as only girl in Snape's 
little group of Slytherins. I wonder what Snape's gang might have 
called itself?) I imagine that this friendship was in place before 
James ever realised, or admitted at least, that he viewed Lily as 
more than the sister he'd never had. 

Btw, there is NO CANON EVIDENCE that MWPP called themselves "the 
Marauders". The map's name is Marauder's Map not Marauders' Map; its 
subtitle was something about Magical Mischief Makers, so it is even 
more likely that MWPP called themselves "the Magical Mischief Makers" 
than that they called themselves  "the Marauders". HOWEVER, I like to 
imagine that they did call themselves the Marauders. Because I was a 
kid at the same time they were (altho' in a different country), and I 
remember how we loved to form secret clubs with that kind of names 
and passwords. My (all girls) secret club was a Star Trek spaceship 
crew, the USS New Dimension, and the Captain (club president) was a 
girl named Cindy. I was Ensign Felis.

Some people on list, probably much younger than me, said they were 
repulsed at the idea that MWPP picked themselves a name that sounds 
like a gang. I couldn't figure out how to explain that in those days, 
the Bloods and the Crips had no guns and no money and no one cared 
more about them than about occasional incidents in which surfers 
versus car club members (people who soup up their cars themselves) 
hit each other with their fists and feet. In those days, everyone -- 
parents, teachers, kids themselves -- used the word 'gang' to mean 
'group of friends', as you (Alexander) did in the quote above, and as 
in the song "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here". An alternate word for 
gang was clique, but 'clique' had a bad connotation of snobbery and 
meanness.