OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Catlady wrote:

She (Lily) 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.

Lily doesn't seem to have been a member of the gang at all, IMO. She wasn't in on the animagus research, she wasn't one of the creators of the Map, and when Harry overhears McGonagall, Flitwick and Hagrid reminiscing about what trouble-makers Sirius and James were in their school days, Lily is not once mentioned.

Neither is Lupin, true, but given that James and Lily later wed, it would seem likely that if she had been a member of the gang, someone would have brought her up in the conversation. It would have been "that Sirius Black, always making mischief with James and Lily," rather than "that Sirius Black, who was always making trouble with James." Once people become coupled in the public eye, as when they marry, people do have this weird tendency to start coupling them retroactively as well, even when they have to bend the historical facts a bit out of shape to do it.

My guess is that Lily wasn't a member of James' clique not because she was excluded, and not because she was too mature or too girly to be interested in playing pranks, and certainly not because the other guys thought she was a "Yoko," but rather, because she and James just weren't all that close until quite late in their Hogwarts careers.

After all, there's no real reason to believe that they were an item, or even particularly close friends, back when they were fifteen or sixteen, is there? Perhaps they only really got to know each other in their final year, when they had to work together as Head Girl and Head Boy. The majority of their courtship could have been conducted in the years directly following their leaving school, in which case the "Yoko Factor" would be greatly mitigated.

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 like to think that if anyone ever handed Lily a too-tight MARAUDER MASCOT t-shirt, she would have rammed it down their throat, but that's just me.

And if anyone ever dared to hand the future Mrs. Lestrange such an item, I suspect that she would have hexed them straight into the hospital wing...and then forced Avery to wear the t-shirt.

—Elkins